Cheers!  Karla Yazzolino here! 

I have authored five books in the last four years.  I am quite happy with them all.  I hope you will take the time to check them out here at Authors Den and Creatspace.com and Amazon.com.  A few of them are also available at B&N.com and Powellsbooks.com.  Thanks for taking the time to read about me and my struggle with chronic anxiety.  BOOKS:  If Seen My Journey Living With Anxiety, Me Finally Understanding anxiety and panic, SeeMee "Asks", SeeMee Ponders (About children's fears, anxieties, and emotions), and last but certainly not least Mr. Big and Butter!

 I have suffered from chronic anxiety and generalized anxiety and agoraphobia since I can remember.  I was an unseen child that needed full disclosure and feedback about the world that truly frightened me and puzzled me.  I did not get this from my single working mother.  I, like many of the 40 million people who have anxiety, was predisposed to anxiety through genetics.  In the sixties, having anxiety wasn't heard of, a silly notion, not worthy of speak.  Because my mother was so busy being a wage earner and student, she didn't have time to "see" me, nor did she imagine she needed too.  So I stuffed my anxieties and fears into my shell of a body and let them sit there and fester.  I never spoke out or up for myself and as I aged, the worse it got.  As a girl hitting puberty I experienced sexual abuse from my step-father and that was the catalyst to my exploding with panic attacks and fear of death.

I never spoke up about the abuse for fear it would ruin what semblence of a family structure we had.  So I stayed silent.  Mother never saw my pain, she was just too busy earning a degree.

I have many fears now as an adult about negotiating through life.  Bridges are a big one, flying, buses, elevators, stop lights, standing in lines and more.  Living with fears can really debilatate a spirit and deflate a life.

I gained a lot knowledge later in life through therapy, especially with the one doctor I continue to see.  I began writing when I lost my job for disclosing my disorder to my new employer and when my mother died, which happened around the same time period.  The wirting began as prose poems and when I accumulated a host of them I decided to put them into a book thinking people might indentify with them.  Then I thought "well, I might as well write my history of anxiety" since that is what I know best along with the prose poems to complete a picture of a life living with anxiety or the Ghoul, which is what I call it!

What I learned about myself and my self examination was profound.  I no longer call myself abnormal.  I no longer see myself as unworthy.  I have been able to re-invent myself and to accept my "Ghoul" and to live with it rather than fighting against it. 

I also went so far as to write a children's guide about communication and urging parents in a thought provoking way to "see" their child.  Because that was all it would have taken for me--I needed my mother and absent father to talk to me, to question me, find out why I was silent, and inquire and urge me to speak up.  Such a simple act that leads to profound results.

I am writing my second novel Me Finally that gives my reader the chance to see why I was broken for so long and then also to see what transformation I take to see the joy in life and the acceptance of who and what I have become and more importantly to see and embrace how proud of myself I am.  There are a few people out there that believe my illness is faked.  I would not pay homage to those that suffer if I didn't bring this up.  Many naive people do not understand and cannot possibly conceive how this disease works and how slippery it can be.  Nor do they understand how one can still survive this wreckage and have a life in spite of it.  Shame on them for whittling down the symptoms and sufferring to suit their own idiocy in thinking.

See Karla's YouTube video.  Copy/paste to your browser

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHBaKzbZTqY

SeeMee "Says!"  is a childrens guide to communication!  SeeMee, the bunny, asks to be noticed and for his needs to be met.  Simple and thought provoking.  See the article on the US Review. 

www.amazon.com   www.barnesandnoble.com  www.powells.com