Some of my readers may remember a song "Born to be Wild" which we used to belt out at parties a very long time ago.I could go off and Google who used to sing it and when, but I want to stick to the subject of this post.It seems some of us are born worriers."Born to be Anxious".Your mothers also perhaps used to say things like "Paul is not good at Math"; "Paul always gets upset when.", etc.And because your Mum said it, you knew it must be true.And while I don't remember my Mum actually saying this, another thing they could say was "Paul is a born worrier".I came across an article in the weekend magazine of The Courier Mail (Saturday 24 April 2010) by Robin Marantz Henig entitled born worriers.In it he discusses the work (begun 1989) of Professor Jerome Kagan of Harvard University.He decided to submit babies to 'worrying' experiences (unfamiliar happenings such as new sounds or voices or toys or smells).The first 18 babies showed no special reaction, but Baby 19 got really agitated.She showed it by "flailing her legs, arching her back and crying." When baby 19 was 15 she described her struggles with anxiety. ".A horrible dread at the pit of my stomach.A sense of the insecurity of life.".At school she had few extra-curricular activities "but likes writing and playing the violin".The interviewer asked her what she worried about."When I don't know quite what to do and it's really frustrating and I feel really uncomfortable, especially if other people round me know what they're doing.I'm always thinking, should I go here? Should I go there? Am I in someone's way? I worry about things like getting projects done.I think, will I get it done? How am I going to do it? If I'm going to be in a big crowd, it makes me nervous about what I'm going to do and say and about what other people are going to do and say.".Kagan had many other such children who displayed the worried signs as infants and who would grow up to be highly anxious adolescents and adults.Henig goes on to say that in this "Age of Anxiety" most people can begin to feel overwrought by many of the issues such as stagnant retirement funds and global warming, but some people, no matter how strong their stock portfolios or how healthy their children, are always preparing for doom.Two further studies at Harvard and the University of Maryland have reached similar conclusions. babies differ according to their temperament; 15 to 20 per cent of them will react strongly to novel people or situations and these strongly reactive babies are more likely to grow up to be anxious.Many babies in Kagan's original study, like baby 19, are now in their twenties and no matter how they manage to avoid looking anxious to outsiders, 'fears still rattle in their skulls'.As Henig says, anxiety is not exactly the same as fear, because fear is focussed on something present to you, whereas anxiety is a 'generalised sense of dread about something out there that seems menacing - but that in truth is not menacing, and may not even be out there.If you're anxious, you find it difficult to talk yourself out of this foreboding; you become trapped in an endless loop of what-ifs'.Further findings from the studies..Children who had been highly reactive at age four were four times as likely to be behaviorally inhibited as those who were low reactive.At age seven, half the jittery babies had developed symptoms of anxiety - fear of thunder or dogs or darkness, extreme shyness in the classroom or playground - compared to just 10 percent of the low reactive babies.The children tended to get a better grip as they got older and could work out their anxieties in niches such as say becoming a ballet dancer.They may be highly conscientious and self-controlled.One thirteen year old in the study wrote. "Inner struggles pulled at me for years until I was able to just let go and calm myself.Because I now understand my pre-disposition to anxiety, I can talk myself out of simple fears.As far as being able to predict how the anxiety-prone "Baby-19's" of this world will grow up, Henig says the predictive power works in one direction.Not what they will become, but not what they will not.All you can say with some certainty is that they "will not grow up to be exuberant, outgoing, bubbly or bold."Baby 19? She is at uni and doing pretty well, but, according to Kagan, she tends to be 'melancholy'.She is still a worrier.What does this mean for those of us who are "Born to be Anxious?".We can do something about it, but I know for me it is a case of it all being a daily battle.I can now (but this has not always been the case) think of what our 13-year-old said and act upon it. Because I now understand my pre-disposition to anxiety, I can talk myself out of simple fears.To help me do this consistently I turn to books.I cannot wish you an anxiety-free day perhaps, but I hope you can control it.Paul.
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