Anxiety is insidious. I am familiar with both panic and anxiety attacks, having had many of both. They can both occur suddenly. The difference I have noted is a panic attack stops everything. I couldn’t speak or function through one. Anxiety attacks I could still function through, just poorly.

James had a lot of anxiety, too, in the couple years after the separation. But in recent years, he has been much better.

Until this summer. It was a Monday. Erick and I were dropping him off to dance camp. It was a short camp, just two and a half hours. But when it was time to go from the lobby to the dance room, James had his worst anxiety attack in years. He clung to me whimpering and refused to go into the dance room. After a few minutes of trying to reason with him, I realized it was hopeless. We went back outside. Erick was waiting in the car, and I shrugged my shoulders. I showed James the dancers in the room through the window. He just wanted to get in the car. So we did. A mother with two boys a little younger than James went into the building. James was crying and still did not want to go. So we left.

That evening, we helped at the barn. I arranged for him to go to pony camp the next day. By the next day, we took him to camp, and stayed at the barn for 30 minutes. When he was engaged in an activity, I told him I needed to take his brother to an appointment. He said “Bye,” and went back to his activity. And we left.

There was nothing different about dance, except his teacher of two years had left. I asked James about his visit with his dad. They had gone to Dorney, and James said he had a scary moment when his dad was not close by him. But he ran to his dad and that was that.

I related all of this to his former behavior specialist. We are still friendly. He told me we had done the right thing, offering a choice of activities the next day. He said it wasn’t clear what caused the anxiety attack. He said the best we could do is what we are doing, being supportive and offering choices.

Erick suggested therapy. He always suggests that. I decided to wait to see if there were more anxiety attacks. There were not, thank goodness. I am still watching for them. As I said, anxiety is insidious, and it can pop up anytime. Oh, the joys of trauma.