Archive for generalized anxiety disorder treatment
Subject is a highly intelligent 16 year old female / Straight A student / top of her high school class of 500 with nothing but laudatory remarks from teachers praising her behavior and performance in class. Subject wants to be an FBI Agent and to lead a life of risk, danger, and intrigue with a gun and a Federal badge, but when asked to board an airplane by herself, refuses to do so unless her younger 14 year-old brother (who she leads around / not the other way around) goes with her.
When offered a paid adult escort by plane, she refuses because the escort would not be known. Subject cannot think through the exact source of her anxiety but becomes very defensive when trying to think through what she fears. It is not a fear of flying in that she flies cross country multiple times each year. It is just a fear of traveling away from home without her brother — even though she will go to camp for 2 weeks without her brother and has no problem with that.
This appears to be a generalized anxiety disorder which threatens to debilitate her future mobility if not dealt with and corrected. Such anxiety disorders do exist but are hard to understand given all the other exhibitions of independence and confidence in self in other areas (e.g. she is an accomplished martial arts practitioner).
What is the treatment for this kind of generalized, undefined anxiety associated with travel away from home without the presence of a younger sibling?
This anxiety issue is not abnormal for her. It is par for her makeup. We tend to label and/or mislabel people and their situations when in actuality it is we who are misstepping. There is nothing wrong in a person’s finding herself more comfortable when escorted. There may be difficulty in meeting the contractual obligation, however, and that may need to be addressed at a later date.
If this is a chapter in a novel, it might be wise to rewrite it. If it’s a real life situation, I’d stop myself from yielding to judgments. The future is hardly a problem today, or is it?
Len