Panicking about adult child

[freshpatchouli]

Please help me, I'm going out of my mind worrying that my only child son will be alone as an adult.

Stop bumping. Re-read. Seek help for anxiety.

You need to seek help for your anxiety. We can reassure you until the cows come home, but it won't help.

You need to speak to the doctor and get this sorted.

Oh and most of my friends have stopped at 1 kid.

I am seeking help. Please don't be so rude and presumptuous and tell me to stop posting. If you don't wish to reply, then please don't.

The thing is, you are reassurance seeking, which is actually feeding your anxiety.

It's the equivalent of someone with health anxiety repeatedly going back to the doctor, even though the doctor has said everything is ok.

You are compulsively looking for reassurance for the temporary relief it gives you from your anxiety. But the thing is that in the long run it won't improve your anxiety. You get a hit of relief and then the panic will come back, as bad as ever.

You need to start CBT I think and possibly get a bit of help from some anti anxiety meds.

Holly60 I understand what you're saying but hearing from people on here is helping me immensely when I'm particularly struggling.

I'm lined up to receive some long term support but in the meantime having people 'check in' is helping me to not feel alone and desperate. I have no one in real life.

I'm finding it quite upsetting that in effect I'm being told by some people on here to not post in quite a blunt way really.

I completely understand your points of view and agree that there may be an element of truth in it but it feels quite cruel.

If you don't want to offer support with real life experiences of your own, it's fine not to post.

But OP it genuinely doesn’t help.

It would help if you could ask for help and strategies to help manage your anxiety until your therapy can begin. But at no point, ever, has continually seeking reassurance for anxiety reduced the anxiety longer term. It just reinforces that there is something to be anxious about.

I worry about this too. I have no family at all - single parent/ useless father who shows no interest and has a gambling addiction/ I don't have parents or siblings.

My youngest child will have to go into a Care Home when something happens to me (hopefully not until he's an adult) as he is severely disabled and will never be able to live independently.

It breaks my heart that my children don't have a doting father or grandparents but I have to try to switch off from it.

You have provided your son with an absence of potential stress, friction, trauma, hatred, jealousy, frustration and unhappiness. Siblings can, and often do, provide negative input. You have done very well by him by not exposing him to all of that.

You are selective in your belief of what a sibling relationship provides. Your son needs what he needs. If he needs support, company, joy etc, well that is what friendships provide. He can chose his friends, but he would be lumbered with a sibling.

This was directed at the OP

Well put Afonavon