Wish I’d never had a child as I spend everyday terrified I’ll lose him

[Bluepolkadotteapot]

I’m in an absolute mess.
My DS is 7 and is my only child.

Everyday I am absolutely terrified something will happen to him. I don’t know how I can live like this for the rest of my life. It’s truly debilitating.

I don’t sleep very well at night , as I spend lots of time going into his room to check he’s still breathing. I have this huge fear that he’ll just stop in his sleep. I’ve actually convinced myself that if I write it down or think it - that it’ll happen, so it took me an awful lot of strength to write that.

I have diagnosed OCD , autism and ADHD.

I see danger everywhere, I keep reading stories and seeing news articles about parents losing their children for many different reasons and in my worst moments I think it’s a sign it’ll happen.

I have regular intrusive thoughts and images about it.

I’m so frightened of living this way for the rest of my life. What happens when he’s a teenager out with his friends or starts driving? Or he goes abroad?
I live my life in a constant state of terror.

He seemed a bit off tonight when I put him to bed. Said he was really tired which is unlike him (he’s normally a live wire from morning until night) now I’ve convinced myself there’s something wrong and I’m going to need to check on him all night in case.

I think back to before I had him and although I have always suffered with anxiety it was never to this extent. I’m literally living in fight or flight mode 24/7.

Is this normal for parents or not?

I’m so sorry you’re feeling like this. I have to admit it resonates with me quite a lot…it’s not all the time and not constant like you describe but I do have these thoughts more than I think is normal and for someone who was previously very laid back, I feel like I’m running on anxiety a lot of the time.
I had an unplanned pregnancy when DS was 13m…we were surprised but happy. I then had an unexplained 2nd trimester loss at 19 weeks and since then honestly I’ve had the most awful thoughts about what could happen to DS. Shortly after he had an unlucky slip that my rational mind knows I couldn’t have prevented and broke his femur and I completely thought it was my fault for already having bad thoughts, as if I had manifested it. Part of me thought maybe it was a warning…his leg healed but basically I shouldn’t be thinking these things and should be grateful for him.
I try to rationalise this by realising that I’m thinking these things in response to trauma from the loss but given he is my only child (my DP is also a lot older and we are not planning on having more) and that hopefully these thoughts will lessen as time passes.
I have had to hide posts on all social media showing things like what you describe. Any time I see one I mark it as something I dont
want to see and it has definitely reduced dramatically. I’d encourage you to do this if you can.
For many reasons I do think it’s possible I could be autistic…have thought this for many years but on a scale where I don’t really think a diagnosis would make any difference to my life so haven’t pursued. Not sure if this is relevant at all to these thoughts but thought I would mention since you did.
Reading everyone else’s replies makes me think I should also seek therapy or help of some sort but I feel overwhelmed at the thought of it to be honest.

Please consider trying medication. 💐 I’m diagnosed with GAD and medication has transformed my life, I’m far less anxious than I used to be.

This definitely isn’t normal it’s extreme heath anxiety. I had online counselling through the NHS where I talked to my therapist over a live chat. It helped me in a lot of ways as I could really write down what I was feeling and target it that way.. sometimes face to face I clam up and forget what I wanted to originally get across. Maybe look into this? You cannot go on this way though

I can relate to some of this op as I’m a worrier and sometimes my anxiety spirals. I’m also AuDHD but what you’re going through sounds extreme, even to me.

I think you need to be very gentle to yourself. Can you avoid reading or watching anything upsetting - that can actually be more traumatising than real life experience because of the way the visuals are framed with heightened language, and other special effects that are designed to activate a nervous system response.

If you are trying to access medical support, don’t have someone who can come with you as an advocate, or even just as a second pair of ears. It’s also harder for a professional to minimise your experience when there’s three people in the room as the psychology is different.

Best wishes

I’m sorry you’re having a difficult time op. It is totally normal to have moments when we worry a lot about our kids, but yours sounds extreme and debilitating.
i think seeking specific therapy with someone experienced in autism/ adhd. Common therapies like cbt are not often helpful, at least not when the therapist is not skilled in working with ND people.
whilst medication might be helpful, again make sure it’s someone who is skilled in working with ND patients.

This sounds like intrusive thoughts.

When you have one of these thoughts touch something near you and say 3 things about it
eg. touch the bed side table and say "hard, solid, brown"
it brings you back to the present and helps break you away from the intrusive thoughts.

I’m so sorry, OP that sounds so difficult. It’s completely normal to worry about your children, but when those worries become overwhelming like this, it’s a good idea to get some support. Counselling/therapy could be helpful, but do you also have anyone close to you that you can talk to about this, friends, family, partner? 💐

I have considered EMDR therapy, I did have an event happen to me when I was 16 that may have been a trigger for this.

EMDR therapy can be really good for ptsd and similar things. X

I was going to suggest EMDR. I had some very intrusive thoughts along similar lines to yours, but only in occasional specific scenarios, so wasn’t as debilitating. Nonetheless I found it exhausting in those moments and a private therapist recommended EMDR. It was astonishingly effective.

those thoughts about my DC sometimes still come to me, but fleetingly and rarely. They don’t control my behaviour in the moments any more.

You describe my situation exactly and my dd is 26… it’s horrible and likely contributes to my chronic illness.

If it helps my dd lives a hugely exciting life filled with solo travel, scuba dive master, mountaineering on sheer rock faces etc so whilst my anxiety may well have fed into her (she is ND and suffers with anxiety too) it hasn’t held her back.

It helps me when spiralling to allow myself a period of intense worry with a short time limit and then to switch off for a planned period until that worry would actually be logical.

Also when thinking negative what if’s I work on turning it round to what if all was well.

So for example tonight I started worrying what if she has an accident driving home in a 40 year old car with few safety features to what if she has a fantastic meal out catching up with old school friends and walks back in super happy when collecting her dog?
Which is exactly what happened.

Hopefully I am retraining my brain.

I'm exactly the same. My manager told me she'd never thought about her kids dying and I realised not everyone is like me

You just need to take medication. Therapy is unlikely to work for someone with your severity of symptoms without some medication too.

I had terrible postnatal OCD (which lasted several years) and when I finally got help for it I did Exposure Response Prevention (ERP) therapy on the NHS and it worked really, really well. It tackles intrusive thoughts. See if you can get a therapist who specialises in that. It really does work.

Try ADHD meds. I was plagued by intrusive thoughts and anxiety my entire life. They have all gone since I've been appropriately medicated.

You absolutely need to be on medication!
Please don’t worry about it - there are some amazing medicines developed especially for this eg Sertraline or Propalanol.
They have no/tiny side effects but will bring you so much peace and calm! Can highly recommend.
Sending a hug x

Hello OP
I had similar when my DS was born. He's a few years older than your son and it has got easier over time. I'm still anxious and worried about him but to a less intense degree. It is truly debilitating and you have my utmost sympathy as I know how tough it is.
I'll echo what other posters have said here and that's to see your GP as soon as you can. They will have heard this before and you will be supported so please don't worry.
Mine was triggered by PND after a traumatic delivery and it was horrendous for a few years after he was born. I'm on sertraline now and had talking therapies and doing better. Feel free to message me on here if you want a chat anytime.

Have you ever had ERP therapy for the OCD? People talk about this as being life changing. But medication can help a lot as well. Medication really helps me with my ADHD.

It doesn’t help that I keep reading about ‘manifesting’ - that you can think yourself into good things, so why doesn’t it work the other way around?

Stay very far away from this line of thinking. My mum was into it when I was a teenager and I took it a bit too literally and became so afraid of having thoughts in case I accidentally "manifested" some terrible thing, which is not at all a mentally healthy place to be in, and I didn't realise until years later I was getting stuck in OCD type compulsions trying to control or drown out those thoughts. I have not been diagnosed with OCD, because the compulsions come up so rarely now that I don't really consider them current, but I can absolutely see how that might happen, and I would seek advice if they did ever become prominent again. It certainly opened my eyes to the fact that I could could easily end up in that mental place if the circumstances led to it.

The truth is manifestation is not real. You may motivate yourself towards positive things and take more risks in a direction by making yourself feel confident about it, which is half of what people are experiencing when they say it "works". The other half is confirmation bias and Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. There is no possible mechanism for thoughts to affect the material aspects of the universe and make things happen. Good or bad. You can imagine some awful terrible scenario inside your head and it is totally separate from the real world and does not have any bearing on whether or not that thing happens.

Not a doctor, just what I understand from my reading about it

The thing with OCD is that you have a thought (like perhaps my child isn't well) and then the OCD will convince you that in order to ensure that all is well, you need to do something (like check on him). It provides reassurance for a short time, but the problem is that you're then creating a feedback loop in the brain where you're reinforcing to the danger-sensing part of your brain that it was a totally legitimate fear and that checking on him alleviated the danger, but it also reinforces the opposite (which is not logical but it makes sense to this primitive bit of brain software) - that if you had not checked on him, he would not have been OK. That's the tricky part. So the problem is that it's never just once. It gets worse. The reassurance is never enough, this danger-avoiding bit of your brain always wants more until you're checking on them multiple times a night and googling random symptoms. This doesn't stop unless you stop responding and following the compulsion, which is exactly what ERP therapy teaches you to do.

Most people might think hmm my child's behaviour was a bit subdued today, I'll check on them once as I go to bed, and that would genuinely be enough. Or they might feel OK not to check on them at all. These are more typical responses. It is not typical to wake up throughout the night to check on your child, except when they are a tiny newborn (when, I think, we all get a bit of this same system overreacting, but it's a temporary effect which passes).

There is a very good podcast on OCD in the series Ologies. And I was just listening to The Hidden 20% today which had a recent episode about OCD, ADHD, Autism and motherhood all rolled into one which you might find useful.

This writer also writes very eloquently about OCD and helped me understand it a lot more too. A lot of her stuff is paywalled but you can read the start of most of the linked articles here which contains the main aspects.

https://www.cartoonshateher.com/p/my-ocd-was-in-recovery-then-chatgpt

I absolutely adore my son and sometimes worry about losing him but it's nowhere near your intensity.

OP, you are not alone. I am currently in a spiral of this, I have been diagnosed with ADHD and OCD (which particularly manifests as health anxiety). I'm going to see my GP tomorrow for a good cry, and am on the waiting list to go back to the psychiatrist to discuss further treatment (I cannot take the usual ADHD meds because of high blood pressure). It is hellish, I feel for you so much. The terror is so real.

So yes, you are not alone, but please try and seek help.

Wishing you all the very best, truly.

I say this as someone who also has autism and ADHD, and has a son a similar age who genuinely did nearly die as a baby and has profound disabilities so there is a genuine concern for the future - you have GOT to stop this. You already know this isn’t normal. You need to seek help before it starts to become debilitating for him too.

The most likely way for you to loose your son is to carry on like this, and him to have to cut contact with you for his own mental health.

I spent 5 years like this and it’s no way to live. Counselling and SSRIs, asap - don’t put it off until it starts negatively impacting your DS if it hasn’t already. It can and does get better but please don’t let it go on - the sooner you seek help the better.

You need to take your meds because your anxiety is not normal. Your symptoms are extreme. Your ds is going to have a hard time growing up with a mum with an unmedicated mental illness. This will harm him if you don’t take the proper dose of meds and speak to your dr.

Hi op, you could be me! I’m also autistic and I’ve felt so similar about losing my kids! Still do at times.
Best thing I did was get off social media! You don’t need the constant articles that Facebook throws at you because if your like me, although you don’t want to read it as it fuels your anxiety further you won’t be able to help yourself. I did do this, I think almost as a way of control, I’d read all the articles so I had as much info as possible, and know the signs of what ever illness the article was about! But coming off or really limiting your time online really helps!
I’ve also had cbt which has helped a lot, and I try to refer back too! It’s manageable now for me, but if it isn’t in the future I’d definitely consider medication. Get some help and delete the online articles!