When I was little (elementary school age) my main anxiety trigger was fire/smoke alarms. I have never to this day been involved in a fire and I do not have any trauma around fire, but for some reason fire alarms triggered me so bad. I honestly believe that my anxiety disorder stemmed from this fear. I don’t remember ever really being anxious about anything before this. My elementary school would always do our monthly fire drills between about the 26th and the last day of the month. Around this time, from the moment I got to school for a moment I left, I would be shaking anxious, a lump in my throat, my stomach aching, feeling like I had to go to the bathroom, pure anxiety symptoms. I remember sitting there with my hands over my ears pretending I was just resting my head in my hands, or insisting on wearing a hat that covered my ears, or my hood up. if I had to write, I would even press one ear against my shoulder and cover the other ear up with my left hand. Eventually, I began pretending that I was sick around the end of every month, so that I could avoid fire drills. I remember calling and emailing my best friend every day after school ended and I was “sick” to ask her if there had been a fire drill and if she didn’t respond or answer, the next morning I would interrogate my classmates until someone would tell me. I always tried to sit as far away from the fire alarm as possible. My irrational fear became so extreme that both my teacher and my mom noticed. My mom eventually got me to tell her that I was scared of the fire alarm and fire drills. We worked out a plan with the principal where I would be called down to the office before every fire drill, and I would walk out a few minutes early with the office ladies, then go find my class on the field. I feel like I am the only person that has ever done, and I just need to know if there’s a chance anyone else here did that or something similar. I feel so lonely here.