When my younger daughter was nine, we had cause to take her to the paediatric mental health unit. She had frequent nightmares and had pulled out all her eyelashes – something called trichotillomania. The mental health unit did all sorts of tests and handed her back to us with the diagnosis, “You just have a nervous child.” Very helpful.

We now know what it was. She has Irlen Syndrome, a condition which can present like dyslexia, but which is the inability to process certain wavelengths of light. The condition causes, among other things, disturbance to the amygdala, which is the part of the brain associated with anxiety. Not only was there as physical cause for her anxiety but she was also distressed because she couldn’t do her work at school. She’s a bright child but, having done very well up to year three, she stopped dead and made no further progress in the next three years. The school merely said, “Children don’t develop in a straight line,” and obviously thought she just wasn’t as intelligent as we, poor deluded parents, thought she was. It wasn’t until the end of year six, when she confided to a friend, “Isn’t it difficult to read when the words won’t stay still?” that we realised what the problem was.

We took her to a specialist optician, and she was referred to an Irlen consultant. It took some time, years in fact, but she now has glasses that filter out orange light. She’s doing very well at university and is also less anxious: the glasses stop the irritation to the amygdala.

The Moodscope cards Nervous and Distressed deal with this sort of thing. The Nervous card says, “Worried that something unpleasant is going to happen.” The Distressed card says, “Extremely anxious.” 

I’m not sure that Nervousness can always be attributed to something as concrete as “something unpleasant.” I was nervous going into my presentation for the Licenced Lay Reading Selection (I still haven’t had my letter from the bishop, by the way), but that was, in a way, a good nervousness. There was a reason for it and, quite frankly, if I wasn’t nervous there would have been something wrong. But what when there isn’t a concrete reason, when we are keyed up and jittery, tapping our feet and biting our fingernails, but we can’t attribute it to any particular cause?

Anxiety can be an extreme form of nervousness. It’s defined as “an overwhelming feeling of fear, dread, or unease, often occurring without a direct trigger and interfering with daily life, unlike normal stress. Common symptoms include a pounding heart, dizziness, fatigue, and intense worry.” Anxiety can be crippling.

The Distressed and Nervous cards are obviously on the negative side of the Moodscope daily test. How do you tend to score on them? Do you find that depression sucks the life out of even these and you feel nothing? Or do you find that anxiety and nervousness are just a part of the whole?

Mary

A Moodscope member