To be shaking and crying after confrontation with son?

[TotallyUtterlyDesperate]

Background: DS1 is 21 with ASD and learning difficulties. DH disabled. DS2 v able & has just gone back to Uni. I have long-term chronic illness and was told yesterday that I need scan to rule out cancer.

This evening, DS1 came home from supported work upset about incident he had today. It was relatively minor in my eyes, but obviously upset him. I asked him to leave it until DH came home as I have almost totally lost my voice and can't discuss things. He refused to stop and started screaming and swearing at me.

When DH came home, DS carried on in the same vein, ratcheting up and eventually saying he wants to burn the house down. Then started hitting both of us and throwing things.

All I can do now is shake & cry. DS1 is crying & screaming in bedroom. DH crying in lounge. :(

Worth getting info from Phoebe Caldwell's books and DVD about 'intensive interaction'. She works with individuals with autism and learning difficulties and says that in the many decades she's done so, she's only ever encountered violence a couple of times, because she's learned how to use her body language and learned how to interpret ours. Brilliant stuff, and a nice lady in person. Some of her work is online - I think you can google her name and "ricky" to get a youtube video etc.

Respiradone flat lines emotions. It's an anti-psychotic, it certainly does calm moods, I take it for paranoia. It works but makes you feel numb and you don't respond to life problems with the same mindset, it might work for your son and is something you should look into.

Sorry to hear about the troubles with your son, I hope you manage to get him some help which in turn will make life easier for you.

Update: DH & I had a talk this morning whilst DS was out at his supported work/training - difficult because I was feeling v nauseous with my illness. We had both calmed down overnight and I took some responsibility for maybe winding the situation up. DH didn't do much of this - he gets angry as he is trying to protect me from a 6ft adult who he thinks is threatening me, but he does handle things better than I do.

Neither of us want to involve SS at the moment - neither of us have ever had anything to do with SS and we can't avoid feeling that there is a stigma there. Maybe that's not rational, but it's how we feel. Perhaps we will re-think that later on.

So, we kind of left it again, with me trying to think how I can control my emotional/fear response when we can see DS is "gunning for trouble". Nothing really resolved.

DS came home, happy as anything as he was told that he has passed his NVQ Level 2! Apologised to me and made me a cup of tea.

I will probably feel better when I have this scan and the results over with. I am also worried that I won't get my operation to help my voice quickly enough and that I could lose my job. Hopefully, it won't come to that. But there is no-one else who can earn any money in this family. DS2 is in his 1st year at Uni and I want to support him through this.

Thanks to everyone who has replied - I really, really appreciate your ideas and suggestions. No-one in RL has given me so much help, apart from my Mum and she has no experience of anything like this. I can't even call her on the phone as I cannot speak!

TUD, there really, really is nothing wrong with asking for help, if you don't get help, you don't, all that's happened is you are back to square one.

You've said on here that you might be the one who needs the help in terms of your emotional response, maybe that's the way forward for your family. Your son and your DP might be more open to YOU having help and be drawn into the process themselves if you say it's all about you and your problems?

Sorry I have no real advice to give but wanted to also send you support. You are going through the mill, it must be hard especially if you are less able to literally voice your concerns/express things to your family. Would a modified kind of anger management maybe help your son ( taking account of his ASD )? Maybe your local primary care mental health team would have this available?

How was the weekend? How did your scan go?

Thanks again for all of the comments. I'm still waiting for the scan, so no news there yet.