Hello. Last school year in June, I was having bad anxiety and my teacher said if I needed someone to hug, just go see her. I was like "that'll be good" since none of my friends like hugging and sometimes having a hug helps, you know?

Anyways, so the last time this happened was that we were practicing music pieces (because music is my most common panic attack trigger) and there was this one song that I knew would trigger a panic attack in me and it was always worse when we played it last. The teacher originally had that piece in the middle, and I was happy about that, but he changed it to the end and I was freaking out before that.

Once we finished it, I was in panic attack state because I knew I was going to be. My friend asked me if I was okay, but I kinda just pushed it off. She noticed that I was having trouble putting my instrument away because my hands were shaking so bad and I need to put the instrument in this protector and it was really hard to put it in.

Anyways, I went to see the teacher and she was helping me deal with my panic attack.

Now, I had the worst panic attack in my life and I was trying to find her, but when I did, she told me that she can't give me a hug anymore because it was in the school's policy and she doesn't want to lose her job over that, which makes perfect sense.

The main reason they have the policy so a parent can't sue them if they think their kid is being sexually abused or assaulted or what not, but I mean, I don't consider a hug to be sexual. I hug my friends, family. It's not sexual in the way the school interprets it. Yes, I can understand kissing, like that's a no-no, but a hug actually is suppose to release happy chemicals in the brain.

I really just wanted someone to comfort me going through a really hard panic attack because panic attacks are no fun at all if you guys have ever experienced one.

I believe it's a dumb policy, but what are your thoughts? Do you consider hugs to be sexual? Do you think it's appropriate for a teacher to help a student through the means of a hug? I mean, I consider myself responsible enough to not be sexual, and that would be extremely weird if that were the case. Just no. Maybe it's a case by case thing, but I wouldn't ban hugs from the few cases of teacher-student relationships, but who knows? Thanks for the response .