Hello Star68. Thank you for sharing your truth and raising some really interesting questions. I am sorry that you're struggling with anxiety. That can be so tough! I live with depression and anxiety, sometimes they bother me more than others. Today I am feeling well. I was born into a very dysfunctional family. My parents were honestly quite clueless about raising children. They got the practical basics done but there was no consideration for our emotional needs. My father became more and more abusive over the years. My mother was a highly anxious person and this played out as being extremely controlling and authoritarian toward her children. She also never acknowledged that her children were separate entities from herself....a very, very dangerous path for any parent to head down.

I have seen our "non-suitable ecosystem" affect myself and my siblings in various unhappy ways BUT

here's the point I want to emphasize. Those of us who grew up in less than ideal families are NOT doomed. Far from it. THis is where we need to be really careful with the medical model and psychoanalysis. There are some benefits but the problem is that once you start labeling people with diagnoses and tendencies etc it can do a number on their sense of self and sense of hope. I was told at a very young age that I was born with a "genetic predisposition toward depression" and "needed medication." I tried the various meds they pushed on me though it never helped. All they did was make me sick from side effects. The child psychiatrist agreed that they weren't helping my mood. CBT helped greatly. But even that can only get a person so far. So i relapsed multiple times after that. Tried more meds as an adult. They didn't work. I gave up on meds but I still had this medical model notion in my mind that I was essentially broken since birth. So then I felt stuck and doomed for quite some time. UNTIL, I started teaching myself about mindfulness, meditation, developing happiness skills, acupuncture etc etc. Now I am starting to know my true self. And she's not broken at all! Just human and going in and out of balance and needing to keep working on those happiness skills. I feel better than I did for so many years. Truly!

I did not get the best start in life but I am a successful person. I have done therapy on and off. There were times when it was more helpful than others. The older I get, the more I favor a holistic approach to health: physical, emotional, and spiritual (I'm not using spiritual in a religious sense though that works for some people). Mind, body, and spirit need to be cared for and honored in order to achieve balance. As humans, we go in and out of balance throughout our lives. Anxiety is communication that something needs to be adjusted. Panic is a louder communication of a need for change.
Except for a minority of cases where pathology seems to dominate, we can continue to bring ourselves back to balance regardless of the childhood we had...not everyone in psychoanalysis would agree with that and that's why it can be problematic.

Truth be told, I believe that fear is a part of the human condition. Not everyone will admit to it but it's there to varying degrees at different times for everyone regardless of their upbringing. Death anxiety, for example, runs very deep and is very common. Just one example.

In short, live your life! Sure, learn about your family and how that may have affected you. But at the end of the day, you need strategies to calm body and mind whether your parents triggered your anxiety or not, right? You can't go back in time and choose different parents so at a certain point it can be counterproductive to dwell on our families and their influences. My sister and I like to say: "Sometimes it's just time to get on with the show!"

You certainly don't have to agree with me Star68. Just my thoughts. I'm sharing these because I seriously wish someone with this approach had spoken to me when I was first diagnosed as an adolescent!

I wish you peace, healing, and a bright future