Beyond the Diagnosis: Anxiety in Special Needs Parenting
How genetic anxiety prepared me for—and nearly broke me in—motherhood
I remember always being a rather anxious person. In my very early years, my stomach would ache mercilessly as the car neared my elementary school during my family's everyday morning commute. I stayed mostly silent about my affliction, perhaps emitting a single groan or moan during my moments of greater pain. But I never did make a huge deal out of what I was experiencing at such a young age to my parents. Maybe I didn't even know how to do so back then. I'm not sure if anything significant would have come out of it anyway.
Next, my troubles transformed into a diagnosed case of General Anxiety Disorder with a matching prescription. It was genetic, apparently, and every woman on my Mom's side of the family had dealt with it too. In this way, it was a sort of rite of passage over the threshold of the doors into womanhood.
Later, it looked like me unblinkingly poring over the text on the screen highlighting the different possible symptoms of autism spectrum disorder at every missed milestone and regression presenting in my firstborn. And then it happened again with our daughter, even if I had already come to memorize the particular text on the screen by this time.
I had chosen to stop medically treating my anxiety well over a decade before then with my children, and experiencing the full blow of mental attack in that way was nearly more than I could take. For all I know it actually was far more than I could take, and I've suffered from an irreparable degree of damage since then. It sure does feel like it.
I can trace the evolution of my anxiety like rings in a tree trunk, each layer marking a different season of worry. These days, it manifests in the space between 2 AM Google searches and sunrise meltdowns, in the clench of my jaw during therapy evaluations, in the way I hold my breath while watching other children hit milestones my own may never reach.
Sometimes I wonder if, and then I convince myself that, my early anxieties were preparing me for my role as the mother to my two extraordinary children who also don't fit into this world. I tell myself that my elementary school stomach aches were training me for the literally gut-wrenching advocacy that would become my daily work.
What I'm learning, however, during the quiet times in between therapy appointments and clinical assessments is that my anxiety does not make me a better Mother. It does me no favors in sharpening my advocacy or heightening my awareness. All it does instead is steal moments from me.
And I'm not expressing this for sympathy or even for solutions. I'm sharing this because I know that many of you can also understand supporting the weight of both genetic and circumstantial anxiety and experiencing how they feed each other worst-case-scenarios that leave you both hypervigilant and completely unprepared.
Recently, however, I've been trying out a new approach: When anxieties surface, whether the genetic type or the type that only comes from special needs parenting, I treat the worry simply as generic information instead of absolute truth. I let myself process this incoming information and then I release it as an output while holding onto none of its harm. It's as if I'm watching storm winds blow in and then I let them patiently pass by in time.
I still choose to not take medication for my anxiety, but I will never judge those who do. I used to be one of them after all. Instead, I've built a toolkit of mindfulness and grounding practices that help me on some days. And some days they don't. But they do remind me that I have choices aside from spiraling or shutting down.
And as for the damage caused by my burden of anxiety?.. Maybe it's not quite as irreparable as I originally thought. Maybe it's more like soil that has been tilled raw, yes, but is also prime for new planting and new growth. Maybe my healing can look less like returning fully back to myself, and more like developing myself into something all-new in an all-new landscape.
I'm learning to hold space for all of it: the genetic predisposition and the situational triggers, the hypervigilance that sometimes serves my children well and the anxiety that serves no one. Most importantly, I'm learning that sharing these struggles doesn't make me less capable—it makes me human.
And maybe that's the most valuable lesson anxiety has taught me: that strength isn't found in suffering silently or pushing through pain. It's found in acknowledging our wounds, sharing our stories, and believing that even our most damaged parts can be portals to deeper healing.
For every mother sitting alone with her anxiety right now, whether it's the kind that runs in families or the kind that comes with raising extraordinary children: I see you. Your feelings are valid. And you're not alone in this storm.
With hope and understanding,
Cheniece P ♡
