My daughter is transitioning to online school this week. Her anxiety has been increasing for a little over a year. We had her in therapy for a couple months over the summer. Once she felt comfortable with the transition to middle school her and her therapist decided she could stop her therapy sessions.

I’d been noticing a lot of irrational fears from her the past couple months and other family members were noticing she wasn’t acting like herself. She has one close friend who always brings out her silly side, but for the most part she basically shuts down around anyone else.

I think I have already mentioned we’ve had the nasty letters sent home for all three school-age kids about excessive absences. We had every intention of doing better about that as the second semester started. We were not able to get my daughter to transition back from winter break though. She had a panic attack the first day of school. We got her to go the second day, but by day three we were back to having panic attacks. It’s all very heartbreaking because initially it would be panicking about how she’s ugly and unathletic and not good academically (all of which are untrue) then it would transition to panicking that the panic attacks were going to cause her to get held back and have to repeat sixth grade.

I wanted her to do intensive outpatient treatment for the debilitating panic attacks. So, I reached out to the school about switching her to online school until we could get that outpatient treatment completed. The school was very supportive and got us set up with an online program that allows her to still be a student in her current district. After making some calls, though, I realized intensive outpatient treatment was not going to be an option. They will only take kids who are coming out of inpatient treatment and inpatient treatment will only take kids who are suicidal or homicidal. I know mental health resources are extremely limited, but I find it very frustrating that we cannot get help for our children until they’re completely broken.

So, I reached out to my therapist who was also seeing my daughter over the summer. We have my daughter set up to start doing therapy twice per week. Online school will allow us to get those scheduled easier and the online school will spare her some panic attacks in the meantime. Currently church is pretty much the only place my daughter can go without extreme anxiety. She did manage to go to my parents’ house Sunday without issue as well. To her credit she is isolating herself less at home. There for a while she pretty much stayed in her bedroom except for meals. Now, she is watching tv with our middle son and playing card games or board games with us in the evenings.

Today, she had her first therapy session this go around. She had to attend my trial with me before therapy and that was a little tough. She’s cognizant of the fact that it is unusual for someone her age to be at Court and she has a lot of anxiety about possibly standing out. It took some convincing, but I got her to go. My trial was a simple collections case and the defendant did not have an attorney, so it was nothing sexy and was over in about ten minutes. My daughter remains convinced being a lawyer is a super boring job.

My daughter has consistently remained adamant with my husband and me that she does not know what triggers her debilitating anxiety. Today, during therapy, she indicated at least one trigger is her concern that my father may not be a Christian anymore and he may not go to heaven. Her and I had talked about that briefly on Christmas Eve. Her and I and my youngest son were the only family members who attended mass that night. My daughter read one of the readings during mass, I played piano, and my youngest at least purported to participate in the children’s choir. My daughter expressed that she was upset that my husband didn’t come to mass. My parents were also supposed to attend that night, but backed out because they were not feeling well. I told my daughter on the way home I wished my parents and my husband had been there because the priest said some things during his homily that I would have liked them to hear. I then mentioned to her that my father had lost his faith and told her all we can do is pray that he finds it again.

I believe I have mentioned my father’s loss of faith before. It has also been a huge concern for my mother. It is a concern for me, but it hasn’t weighed on me as much as other things. I convinced myself all I could do is pray about it and hope for the best. I’ve never been one to try to “save” other people. Partly because I have some trauma related to that (a topic for another day perhaps) and partly because I choose to believe my example speaks louder than anything else. Not that I am necessarily a great example, but I believe what we do says way more than what we say. Point being my daughter is not the only one concerned about my father’s faith.

I mentioned last week my father told me he was praying for my daughter when she was at the hospital. That meant a lot to me, as I mentioned, but I guess I hadn’t mentioned it to my daughter. After visiting with her therapist at the end of her session and learning that was the big concern at the moment, I told my daughter on the way home that my father had previous had great faith. He has read the entire Bible several times, I’m told he used to take breaks during the work day at the office and read the Bible, he was very involved at our parish when I was growing up, and he and my mother both made a great effort to get us to church every week and help us build strong relationships in the church.

I don’t know what caused him to lose that faith. I know I’ve heard a lot of people say they struggle to remain Catholic after the scandals that surfaced about corruption in the priesthood. I was a young child when the sex abuse stuff was really starting to surface world-wide (it had happened for years, but I think it hadn’t really been widely known until then). My father remained faithful then, so I don’t think it was that. I know he has mentioned to me in recent years that he sometimes feels like Christianity is exclusionary. I know living in the “Bible Belt” there are a lot in that “I’m right and everyone else is wrong” sort of camp. There are a lot in the area who still believe Catholics are alcoholic Mary-worshipers. I have some trauma related to that, but it doesn’t bother me anymore. True Christianity is love. If love is not the center, then it isn’t Christianity. So, those spewing hate don’t bother me because I know they are not Christians in any real sense.

The therapist suggested we talk to my dad about his faith and my daughter’s concerns when we visit my parents this Sunday. I am planning to do so to support my daughter, but I’m going to give my father a “heads up.” I don’t want him to think that we are making this terrible thing that’s happening to him about us. I also don’t want him to think I have some agenda and I want him to give her certain answers. I want him to say whatever he wants to say, but I don’t want him to be blind-sided by it. I am still trying to find the right words to communicate that to him. I also know for a fact concerns about my father’s faith are not the only thing that causes her anxiety because this has been going on since before we knew my father was sick. I have some theories about other triggers (including kids across the street who are difficult to deal with on the bus), but it is clear my father’s faith is the topic of the moment and we will do our best to address that.