DS1 is 16 and has Asperger's. For the past few years, despite suffering bullying at school (which we were very proactive and supportive about) he's blossomed into a confident, responsible, articulate and lovely young man with great, close-knit friends and does very well at school.
The past couple of months everything has gone to hell and it's happened so fast we don't know what's hit us. He has a new girlfriend who has anorexia and has made several suicide attempts, which i'm sure is a factor. He lost his virginity to her a couple of weeks ago and is really obsessed with her CAMHS told us to take his phone away at night because he was messaging with her literally all night and was exhausted. He sees this as an infringement of his human rights and it's a nightly battle. He's cutting himself, he's having explosive rages (almost exclusively at me), saying irrational and often very cruel things, writing reams of abuse about himself all over his bedroom furniture. I think the effort of "doing so well" has been too much strain on him for too long, I think he's dealing with some unresolved grief about having ASD because we've always been relentlessly positive and "it's not a disability", maybe we haven't left room for him to have those feelings.
Sometimes he cries and clings to me like a toddler, then other times he screams and spits in my face that he's not my son. He says he hates himself. He's hurt me once (he didn't hit me, he grabbed my arm with both hands and squeezed really hard) and I feel intimidated by him when he's angry. I spent one night at A&E with him on suicide watch and we had an emergency CAMHS assessment in the morning. We've since had one CAMHS family therapy session and DS is on the waiting list for CBT as well. DH and I have been treated like criminals and don't feel like anyone wants to help or advise us on how to handle things, we just feel out in the cold.
The family therapy session was horrific. There were two therapists there, ds1 and me and dh. DS1 said awful, destructive things about us, some of which were just factually untrue. We said we were out of our depth, unsure of how we should be coping with his mood swings, especially the explosions of rage etc (because of my own abusive background I'm not great with people who are bigger than me screaming in my face), and asked for advice. They told us we were following an unhealthy script, by dh staying calm and logical and trying to get ds to talk about what is behind the rages/cutting, and me trying to hide the fact that I get upset. But ds1 said "we all know she's crying upstairs, she's not exactly quiet about it ffs" and said he would rather we were more real with him. But when I got upset in the session (because he said there was no trust between us and he would never come to me with a problem) he said I was weak and I was making him responsible for my feelings. The therapists asked us to "step out for ten minutes" so they could ask ds1 about the specifics of his suicidal thoughts (he has made concrete plans to [redacted*] ). They left us out there for 45 minutes, then brought ds1 out and just said they want to see him again in two weeks. DH said "sorry, but you've told us we're doing everything wrong but given us no guidance on how to do better" and the guy just sort of spread his hands and said "do nothing...we've had a great chat with ds1, maybe things will start to get better now". We don't even know if the appointment in 2 weeks is for all of us or just ds1.
Since the appointment ds1 has completely blanked me - not his dad - won't even say goodnight to me, pretends I don't exist. He's chatting about politics and Brexit and usual stuff, completely oblivious...dh was in tears after they'd gone to bed last night, it feels like we're falling apart.
The thing is, I feel angry with ds1, which makes me so ashamed. The only thing I really felt proud of was that I'd managed to break the cycle and bring up two basically healthy, secure kids without abusing them or destroying them. And it's been taken away. We failed. I've lost my confidence and feel like I can't even ask ds2 to do his homework because we're shit, failed parents now. And I'm angry with him for telling the CAMHS workers there's no connection and no trust between us, after all the hours I've spent cleaning his wounds, stroking his hair, holding his hand, listening to him pour out his feelings in the middle of the night. He said he would never consider coming to me with his problems, but two weeks ago he appeared in my doorway in the middle of the night [having cut himself] and said "please help me, mum". It's like I've slipped into a parallel universe.
I know this post is disgustingly self-indulgent and me me me. But RL is where everything is about ds1 and what we do next and how we support him and love him through this. I just wanted somewhere I could pour all the me me me stuff out.
- [Post edited by MNHQ to remove mention of suicide methods, in line with guidance from the Samaritans]