I was just thinking the other day that I actually had symptoms before anxiety that no one picked up on and also things I do now. This is a post of other sorts of symptoms you may never have though of or picked up on. Let me know what yours are!

One thing I remember is that from anxiety you can get pretty much every symptom going under the sun. As my mum calls me a hypochondriac I am not though I think from anxiety I just notice very subtle changes with my body. This notifies me and because of me being a worried person I will look up on the internet and worry about getting the worst illness and diseases checking off all my symptoms as I went. Obviously I wasn’t a hypochondriac because I could actually feel the feelings but being the natural worrier it is always best to check it out. In fact the other day one of our hens was sick I googled all the symptoms, depressed chicken, standing still, diarrhoea and what looked like a swollen neck. I found out it could be – red mites –depression-a Marricks disease-eggbound-filled crop-worms but there was one condition which Henrietta seemed to have checked all the boxes for.  It was the deadly Newcastle disease with only a few known cases in the whole of England and the last being 40 years ago. Once I found Newcastle disease I knew it was too late. It was only a matter of time before Henrietta died as once diagnosed there was nothing you could do after a certain time limit. Well some died at the end of the day, I informed my parents and if she didn’t die, it would make their heads twist upside down and they become paralysed. The worst was it would spread to all the hens in the area uhuh peckers was going to get it too.

I read on about the dreadful condition telling my mum if it says you suspect it you need to call the authorities straight away because it spreads to wild birds as well. Then the pictures of dead birds everywhere filled my head, the disease had covered the whole of the UK as the birds were flying to a warmer country and now they spread it to that country. Gosh what would we do without birds? Do we need them to live? Mum didn’t want to ring up “You just said it was worms!” She said.

“Yes, mum I did because I thought it was that, but this condition is the only one where Henrietta has all the symptoms and now when I go out to see her, her head tilts at a funny angle because their heads twist after a while! Will you get dad to kill it I don’t want it to be in pain with a twisted head?” Luckily about a week after Henrietta got better and Peckers didn’t get it, turns out she could have just been a broody hen where my dad hadn’t collected the eggs.

I do remember one time when my anxiety and googling from the anxiety actually helped me, you see CAMHS (child and adolescent mental health services) didn’t believe that I had a problem, in fact they were just about to dismiss me, I googled all the symptoms and read about them in books, I knew from these books I didn’t just simply have Panic attacks and I wanted to know more.

In fact googling and anxiety really interrupted me when I was starting to take medication, before my mum could say swear on your life you won’t google the side effects I already had and I was crying and worried about taking it for the dreaded side effects which would plague me for about 2 weeks. As soon as I took them I was like wow I feel sick. My mum said t wouldn’t have got in you that quick. Anyway after settling with it and feeling comfortable I had suicidal thoughts which put me off them even more.

I enjoy going to the doctors because I can boss them around, well I get my mum to tell them well we read this on the internet. Actually I will admit the internet has often been wrong!

Another early symptom for me was not wanting to go into school even when I was really young, I would not go in the playground and would get really upset if my one special friend wasn’t there my mum had to take me into the playground and I would literally cling on for dear life not wanting to let go. If my friend wasn’t there I would cry.

I noticed that just before I started getting really nervous I used to engage in safety behaviours even when I was practically ‘normal’ I would take bottles of water with me where ever I went and I had to pack my bag for anything which may/ probably won’t ever occur, I had every thing pain killers paracetamol plasters in fact every body at the time was moving from school bags to hand bags this was absolutely impossible for me to do as I wouldn’t fit any of my stuff in. My school bag was so heavy everybody would say to me have you got all your school books in there? Actually I didn’t I only had the ones I needed as my bag was abnormally heavy already but if I could have carried all of my books with me I would have! My school blazer was the heaviest one when we took them of for PE and someone would move your stuff to another hook they would say what have you got in there? Trouble was my shoulders actually ached from my blazer and combined with the heavy bag it was hell. When ever I had my blazer washed I would put it on and it would be like holding onto a feather!

I guess you can say another security thing for me has been friends although I didn’t always have them and I don’t have them now. I guess when my mum wasn’t around it was as though I needed some people wherever I was that I knew and liked so that I could feel secure in myself and I guess PROTECTED!