Robert and I are more or less alone on this autism ride here where we are. We dont know anyone else with autistic kids other than the people on this board so I thought it would be easiest to ask you guys this question.

I have had anxiety since I was 14.

This past year and a half has been a roller coaster. Autism sure seems to be at the front of it a lot.

Have any of you had any increased anxiousness or stress response since autism came into your lives? (I probably already know the answer) I just want to know how you handled it-- medical or natural. I have a lot on my plate and its been kinda tough.

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JungleButterChick aka JungleButtGirl aka Ovarian Aroma,

After Vincent's diagnosis, the major stress of seeing 'no cure' on every bit of info I tried to read on autism, sent me into hell on earth. I believed every grim forecast....well, anyhow that's when I started having really bad heart palipitations and shortness of breath, black outs but also a really great buzz like at dental surgery when it started beating again...it turned out I have mitral valve prolapse. I've had to take meds for it every since my dx. I take what's called a beta blocker which basically blocks adrenalyn from my heart and makes it always beat steady and rythmic. It's a condition I had before his dx, maybe even born with it, but the stress made it act up. I might need to get it fixed with heart surgery if it worsens, or, could be like many people who have it all their lives but it doesn't get worse quick enough so they die of old age before they need surgery.

So, that's my story.

I have post traumatic stress sydrome from my childhood, so my anxiety is managed through shear will. It has been worse since having children - period.

I live in two worlds, like Jekyl and Hyde. By day I am a confident, educated, empowered woman in control of my life and I am content and happy. By night I live a fear riddled existance. It starts as I drift off to sleep with endless violent nightmares. My dreams, and subconcious thoughts are always negative and out of control. As I wake each morning I climb out of more nightmares. If I am woken early, or woken when I am dreaming I can recall horrific dreams but prefer not to. I have lived with this for YEARS. All of my nightmares are about death, death of my children in particular.

In my sleep I have desperately attempted to rescue my children in an upside down car that has flipped into the water and I rarely if ever save them. I have pulled them from burning buildings, searched for them and found them frozen white in abandoned freezers, I have run them over accidentaly in the car and sat on the drive way screaming as they have blood pouring out their ears and eyes, I have wrestled with strangers that disappear into the crowd taking my baby, and have found them accidentaly smothered, and knocked off their bikes by passing trucks off the road. In my nightmares I turn up to school to collect them and they are not there and no one has seen them all day despite me knowing they were dropped off. They have been in head on car accidents, fallen off bridges, fallen off rooves, attacked by dogs in the park........ I have walked down thousands of hospital corridors to have doctors shake their heads and break the news to me as I collapse in a heap. I have only 5 children, but I have been to hundreds of funerals, all theirs, in my dreams... This I live with, this I have every night and why I hate going to bed most nights.

I am better now, but in the day I used to panic if I could not see the children. Or know exactly where they are and who they are with. I can now let my kids go with friends for the day. Or entrust them to others, and I am alright about Breezsha being away from me providing she has a charged cell phone. I am still unable to let my children go with anyone if there is swimming involved. If they are swimming I have to be there. When I was 9 I saved my 7 year old sisters life in a swimming pool, and I girlfriend lost her two year old son to a drowing accident. I sat by his coffin all my sences soaking up the image of him pale, still, beautiful, but dead and it burned into my head.

The freakshow existance is fed my the news media. I watch the tv news and images of death and ways to die bury themselves in my head and then I relive them in my nightmares. After the Asian Tsunami's I had weeks of dead baby in the waves in my head. Screaming women and panicing parents. I was unable to watch the Beslan images but I still caught enough for it to be added to my video library in my head. Bombs, blood, knives, accidents, burning, asphixia, overdose, abduction, suicide, running with scissors, walking over thin ice that collapses in the centre of a pond. I can not get to my son as he struggles to get out of the water and I cant get to him as his breathing seizes up and he slips under the water. Endless, endless, endless death and burials, bodies, cremations...

I have not been able to stop thinking about Steve Irwin and his family. Steve was a particular favourite of ours anyhow. But my ****ed up head has absorbed and fixated on their greif. It feeds my fascination and subconscious mind so that I shall be quite tormented for months I imagine.

So - has an autistic dx made my anxiety worse? I dont think so.

SM-- I've definately heard about your horriffic childhood and you and P are definately nothing shy of heroic making it thru that. No children should have to endure what you did.

I cant say that my childhood was as horriffic, but I was constantly told I was fat, ugly, and stupid (by my dad's sisters and parents). Three things I was not but I believed it and became those things. I was just different than my 'perfect in every way' sister.

I have a lot of anxiety from the comments made by those people-- and my parents never protected me because my grandparents often times came to my parents' rescue when they were in need. So they gambled my emotional well-being for material well-being.

Worrying about the consequences of my actions or possibilities of tragedy is a huge problem for me. When Aaron was diagnosed, I knew it was all my fault. Eventhough I took precautions before all our kids were born, to make sure that our kids didnt have vaccine induced autism.

But I built the house while pg with him and he was given augmentin-- so naturally, I took the blame for it all. Despite that everyone else said I couldnt have controlled it.

I have had 2 cycles of greif. Before and after his dx.

I worry all the time that Im going to die and that my husband will have to do this all alone and that the kids wont have a mommy.

My new job offers benefits. Im going to take full advantage of them as soon as I get them-- (in about 60 days).

Im not much into medicating my problems, but its starting to get rediculous and I want to make sure there isnt anything else wrong.

For me, it was mostly stress rather than anxiety. First DH and I went through all those Elizabeth Kubler-Ross stages (just like dying or death), with anger, denial, acceptance, etc.; then we went through (typical of two scientists) a stage of doing nothing but trying to read everything we could, learn everything we could, and try to decipher what Andrew needed vs. what could be provided by us or by the local school system. AUGH.....exhausting, frustrating, and just a wee bit stressful (yeah, that was a small understatement). But working as a team, we were able to vent to each other when the frustration and anger got to be too much for either of us to bear.

I can't imagine trying to do this as a single parent, and I bow in humble appreciation to all the single moms (or moms with husbands who don't get involved) on the board who struggle through this every day, you gals ROCK!

I'd highly recommend getting counseling or some kind of support from your company's benefits plan. If I had to do it all over again, starting from when Andrew was first diagnosed, I'd probably get both DH and I into some kind of counseling or support environment to just reassure us that we were NOT bad parents, we WERE doing all that we could, and that we should stop beating up on ourselves for thinking that we needed to be superparents.

Good luck, honey, remember that we are all here for you.

I have missed you guys so much this summer. I didnt realize how much I needed u all till BT was down again.

I wonder if Aaron's benefits thru the state would cover family counseling over his dx. Its worth checking out.

Our older kids dont see Aaron as different at all. He's just Aaron to them, you know?

Noah will say (when introducing him) something like, "This is Aaron, he doesnt talk yet, but he's a good boy."

We had the kids watch the movie "Radio". Their hearts are so pure and unprejudiced-- they didnt even see Radio as different than everyone else.

But in the real world, I imagine there will come a time when they need to explain 'whats wrong with your brother?'

I remember a friend of mine had a sister that was MR. She told me right away so I wouldnt be weirded out or something. Her sister didnt seem that much different, a little immature for her age, but that was all.

All this can be such a huge gaping hole of uncertainty. But I need to take it day by day instead of looking at the vastness of what tomorrow might bring. Thats even biblical,* dont worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself* so I should take that advice LOL!