My cat’s shining moment

My parents only cared about my grades. I think they may have been depressed while I was growing up. Definitely, no one practiced self-help techniques or knew about them in my family.

I am glad that I got help. Behavior therapy was like having a second teacher that goes to your house, only they don’t teach math. They teach you coping skills. Coping skills are methods used to calm yourself down in stressful situations. I learned coping skills very easily, as coping skills are just stuff like drawing and taking a walk. But the problem was that I had trouble responding to situations in an appropriate way. My aid would ask me scenarios about what I would do in certain situations. A scenario would be like “You didn’t get a good grade

I have always been very anxious. I don’t know where it started, but from a young age, I wanted to control/make sure that everything in my life would be alright. This has caused me to have anxiety attacks where my heart rate can go up to 170 bpm. During that time period, I am virtually incapable of doing anything. I have an urge to do something, to distract myself, usually through work. It’s very discouraging for me because I know what I’m going through but I don’t know how to make myself feel better (partly because I lost my self-help