Hello, I am new to the boards. My 10 year old son suffers from extreme anxiety. We are currently not doing any meds but we do have him in therapy(can't say that it's helping much)
Anyway, it started years ago with separation anxiety and what I thought was just childhood phases that he would outgrow. One year it was the fear of swimming pools, the next it was the movie theater, etc.
When he turned 9, he started with a tic disorder and his anxiety increased big time!
Here's a list of what's going on these days:
1.Fear that every disease he hears about or sees something about will be something he can get.
2. Fear of being left at church services, that I won't come to pick him up(this has been ongoing for about 3 years now)
3. Fear of images he sees that are disturbing, think the preview for CSI, etc
4. Fear of eating out: he had food poisoning almost a year ago from a restaurant and now he's ready to puke whenever we go out to dinner. Sometimes I wonder if it's really more of a social anxiety thing, though.
5. Recently, he had some travel anxiety where he was throwing up while on vacation,etc, but he couldn't pinpoint exactly what was bothering him. He has since traveled on a plane twice and has stayed in a hotel a few times since then, too.

Now to the OCD: a few months ago we saw some major intrusive thought stuff going on. Repetitive worries about God and fears about whether he was bigger than God, etc. He also had fears about whether he could say NO to drugs when he's a teenager. YOu all get the picture and it would bring him to tears and he was terribly distraught.
We have found a supplement from our naturopathic DR that has helped with the intrusive thoughts for the most part but the daily anxiety exists. You never know what will set him off b/c you can't plan what you will see or hear from day to day.

Does anybody have any advice or experience with this? Any support out there for parents of kids with anxiety? I could really use it b/c none of my friends understand!
Thanks,
Bon