I could really use some advice and/or help, on behalf of my Eldest son. There are some triggers involved in what follows, as things have been really rough.
He's thirteen years old. He has Austism, ADHD, Pragmatic Speech Disorder, Dysgraphia...and, most importantly right now, severe anxiety and depression. He's very smart, and hypersocial -- adults love him, small children adore him, and he has no close friends of his own age. In school, he's the "weird" kid. His classmates know him well, and protect him to some degree, but he has a way of testing their patience -- like instantly reporting any minor infractions to the teacher, or standing up to inform everyone that he's the smartest kid in the class.
Eldest sees a therapist weekly, and a psychiatrist on a monthly basis. He's taking three different medications (dosages currently in flux), and generally needs to be repeatedly reminded to take them. They do make a difference, and he's well aware of this, but still hates taking them.
The issue at hand is that his anxiety has gotten a LOT worse over the past several months. Two months ago, there was a suicide attempt. He was completely uninjured, and confessed it to his mother that night, but we and he were very, very scared. His therapist thinks that there's genuine cause for worry, but he's not in immediate danger.
Even so, the anxiety is getting worse, and is being triggered unpredictably. He and his brother have just discovered the Simpsons, but I'm wondering if I have to forbid them from watching it -- I discovered yesterday that Eldest is now terrified of down escalators -- I turned to say something to him and saw that he was still at the top, making a sort of screaming noise. I had to run back up to get to him, and he almost broke down completely. This was apparently sparked by an Itchy and Scratchy segment. Today, an episode in which Lisa was thought dead by the town turned into a full-blown panic attack because he doesn't want to die...or live in a tree house. Seeing a brief snippet of the Strain from a trailer terrified him for days, and he still has flashbacks.
Last night, we went to the first meeting of a group intended to bring together autistic kids and their families. There were only four people there: Eldest, myself, the woman running the program, and her fifteen year old autistic son. There was food and drink, and nothing being asked of him -- he had his DS with him, and his tablet if he got bored. The anxiety started instantly. He began crawling around the room, and then found a cabinet that he could barely wedge himself into. Once in there, he began shouting out things: apologizing for trying to kill himself, asking if we'd be better off if he'd never been born, did I want to disown him.... Sometimes he would interject with responses to things that the organizer and I were speaking to each other about, usually with a weird and silly non-sequitur. Someone said "summer", and he chimed in with "Daddy killed summer!" The word "partnership" triggered a Strain commercial flashback. At times, he would get super childish and speak in affected baby talk, or do things like draw "war paint" on his face with a dry-erase marker.
When he emerged from the cabinet, Eldest would swing between severe anxiety -- he has a tic that's triggered by stress, and his entire body was violently twitching -- and being loud, silly, and showing off trying to make everyone pay attention to him. This mood swings were, so far as I could tell, entirely random. I didn't scold him (the woman hosting the event was great, and understood the situation perfectly), just reassured him as much as he would allow. I asked him several times if he wanted to leave, each time he said that he didn't. He had no interest in speaking to or interacting with the older kid in any way, but was resentful that the boy was "grabby" and only wanted to play with the electronics that Eldest had brought with him.
On the way home, I asked him if he had any idea why he'd been acting like that, and he said that he didn't. He couldn't control it, and that scared him. He's been a nervous wreck since, even getting upset when I was out of the room for a few minutes. When I went to the store and got stuck in line, he was terrified that I'd been kidnapped, and that the kidnappers were making me write the texts that I was sending his mother.
He's seeing his therapist today, who already knows about last night. I'm at my wits end, though -- I'm really scared for him, and have no idea how to help. And I know that, despite my efforts to hide it, he was aware of my being scared...and yes, both angry and embarrassed. These are all MY problems, and I need to deal with them, but Eldest is an expert at blaming himself and there's little doubt in my mind that I amped up his anxiety to a significant degree. But I don't think that I triggered it in the first place, and I have no idea what did.
There's no easy answer, I know that. He doesn't know why he was acting as he did. But I'm hoping someone might be able to provide some insight that we aren't experienced or knowledgeable enough to see for ourselves. Thoughts on triggers, coping mechanisms, anything at all -- all I care about is his being safe and happy, and I know damned well that I am doing a lot of things wrong.
27 Jun 2017, 11:03 am
