Why does my kid see all of life through a "horror" lens?

[InTriplicate]

Hi,

I wondered if I could ask for people's thoughts on a problem here?

My DS has cPTSD from surgery in infancy, and unfortunately he had an extremely hard time in secondary school, where they used horror to liven things up a lot. I didn't realise how much DS was suffering until he effectively had a nervous breakdown and I had to take him out of school.

I was told that the way to help him recover was that he had to "feel safe, and be safe" at all times and I've been absolutely on that 24/7 while we home schooled with council alternative provision.

It's been nearly two years now though, and he still sees the whole world through a sort of "horror lens". He can look at quite nice normal things and see them as horror, which terrifies him and triggers panic attacks.

It can be quite simple things like trees and shrubs, or a building, or the cover of a book that has a particular font. He says trees are weird and creepy and he can't cope with them. Holes in bread are also a problem.

Yesterday he saw a plug that had no cable coming from it and was terrified. (It was a special plug to stick a usb cable into for a phone) He often can't open the fridge and he can't go places in the house without an escort, because he is afraid.

I wondered if anybody might know what this is and how to help him?

We have been seeing a psychotherapist weekly for a whole year, and he has been seen by a paediatric psychiatrist and we have been referred on to a clinical psychologist who does EMDR. They all say we just have to keep talking and trying until we find what works.

He is getting much better at telling me what terrifies him and it is almost always things he has seen on computer screens, either at home or at school. The things at home were all computer games or youtube and he stopped both completely two years ago, but the images seem to stay with him, and not get forgotten.

He never used the computer at home without me being there watching so I know what he was doing at all times. It's just that he really liked it at the time and only later once school added to the burden it became too much in retrospect.

DS says the problem was all the horror in school and it was just all the time and it overwhelmed him totally. We have completely left the school, but the horror doesn't seem to leave him. His mind seems to have seen to much horror that it sees everything AS horror now.

He also says he still feels afraid of and controlled by the school and he says it's just really hard to recover. It's like he was exposed to so much horror there that it changed how he sees and now he sees everything as horror.

DS is ASD and started reading at 18 months, but otherwise he is pretty normal.

He has a lot of food intolerances, and exposure to the wrong food makes the MH symptoms radically worse.

We've excluded a lot of food triggers, and that helped. We haven't yet tried totally organic but with all the exclusions I think adding in that further contraint would make it very hard.

Thank you very much if you have read this far. I just wondered if anybody might have experienced the same and know what to do?

Thanks!

In that case I would strongly recommend doing some work on the Buddhist tradition of mindfulness.

there is a difference between pain and suffering and people can suffer by imagining someone else’s pain.

the development of mindfulness and awareness of your own emotions can help you detach to some extent so that while the emotions still exist you are not overwhelmed by them.

these days you can do mindfulness courses from many providers but your local Buddhist temple is probably a good place to start.

these days many offer “clubs” for teenagers to work on mindfulness and meditation, often for teens with anxiety or similar issues.

you can hack your brain to change. It’s not quick or easy but it is do able. This is also possible for your son.

@Taranta I'm so sorry to hear that. It sounds so hard for you both there. We're in the same situation with all this fear following medical treatment.

I went on a zoom call that Naomi Fisher did and I was very struck by the number of parents who asked her to follow up with a zoom call about medical trauma. It seems to be extremely common.

@Octavia64 thanks, that sounds really good. I will look into that. I know we have a Buddhist centre near here.

We are working hard on mindfulness stuff at the moment by doing craft things with our hands. I found that extremely helpful in the past (I also had PTSD after DS surgery, but have been successfully treated)

I wonder if he has a photographic memory?
I can’t watch horror films as I remember things in minute detail. As a teen I used to have certain images play on repeat and spent many evenings petrified.
I wondered if it was a combination of this plus additional MH issues making it worse.
For myself I would ‘play’ other images the minute it started, not sure how I learnt to though. As an adult I can mostly (not always) just shake it off, although I can still remember and recall each one.

Playing Tetris is supposed to interrupt the formation of images of traumatic events into long term memory but unfortunately I can imagine your DS could find even Tetris alarming.
My husband found EMDR worked for PTSD for him.
My son with ASD developed awful contamination OCD, followed by some of the other variations, after a visit to the Poison Garden at Alnwick Gardens when he was about 6 or 7 so I can relate. Luckily I managed to work out a play based therapy based on his interests that worked while we were waiting for treatment.
Good Luck, you will find things that will help if you keep exploring options.

One thing that I've also thought of is the importance of assertive communication for DS. He tends to shout or run away and I think that calmly stating what he needs might really help motivate people to help him. We are working on that.

I also heard of Mode deactivation therapy for boys with externalising emotional dysregulation and I am going to read about that. I understand that it is one thing that is stastically very effective.

OP, is it just you and your son in your household? Are you having any therapy also? I not saying you need it just interested.
What does your your son enjoy doing? Does he have any hobbies or interests? What do you do as a family for enjoyment?

Bananarama2000 - I think we are both very close to having a photographic memory. I did extremely well at university because I was able to memorise everything that I was taught.

I did once try just looking at a page of notes without reading it and then tried to read it in my mind when I got into the exam but I couldn't actually do that so my memory is not literally photographic, but DS is very close.

I had long covid very badly in the last few years and that took the edge off my memory and it's been much easier since then. I see nasty things in the news sometimes by accident but now I just forget them, whereas in the past I would have been haunted by them for days.

@JuicySmoochy - thanks for asking. My DH is very present and very involved. He works very hard to help DS and takes him out on walks before the after work and does DIY with him at the weekends and watches safe tv with him and plays cards. He does bed time and gets up in the night if DS needs help.

DH had some problems with his own family which affected DS, and DH is having therapy to get past that. Again I can't go into details or it would be extremely outiing but DH is 100% on board.

I had therapy about three times a year for ten years to resolve issues in my own family and problems with my inlaws, and the PTSD from DSs surgeries. My family are all on board and trying really hard to help. They live fairly locally and my brother visits regularly. They used to be not so helpful but I have turned things around and everyone is helpful now.

Grandad is also very involved and visits almost daily. He couldn't before but DM has recently gone into a nursing home so having grandad available is a huge help.

The remaining problems are that we can't have pets because of allergies and we can't easily get out into company because I have a health problem that is a bit limiting for any kind of indoor socialising. I can't give details because this thread would then be extremely identifying. We go to a social group weekly which is really good, and we have started going lawn bowling a the local club. We also have started a repair hobby and local people bring their things to our house for repairs. That has been really good.

I've had massive luck in getting a great EHCP for DS and we have good remote tutors who have helped through out this year. I've now found a good private school who are happy for us to book lessons in-person for the coming year and I am allowed to attend with DS. I really hope that that will give him nice new memories in his mind and help to chase the old ones away. We visited the school and he said it felt like a lovely safe place and he is looking forward to going. Conversely we visited another different school and he said it was just like the old school and he wouldn't go there, so he does know what he needs in that respect. I could also see the differences in the schools.

The new school is all books and no screens so much safer.

@JuicySmoochy in fairness, we are not funny people. There is not a lot of laughing or relaxation.

If I do laugh DS often takes it the wrong way. Actually he takes a lot of things the wrong way. I'm not sure what to do about that.

Thank you very much for listening to all this. It is really helpful.

he goes to scouts too. I forgot that. He loves scouts.

You might like this as an example of meditation or mindfulness.

https://www.brisbanecitypsychologist.com.au/chocolate-meditation-mindfulness/

I can't really go into details, but the senior folks I talked to at the school confirmed that their kids thought horror was funny and loved it all. My DS just didn't see it that way at all.

Do you mean actual horror films, OP? Or did things happen at school that he found traumatising?

It is common for kids to be attracted to horror films. My DS (yr 7) is currently hoovering up Stephen King books, is obsessed with Stranger Things and is begging to watch classic horror movies.

I can't really complain as I was exactly the same as a teen and still love them.

Do you think maybe a symptom of his ASD is having such a vivid imagination that he is scaring himself? Have psychologists ever mentioned OCD/intrusive thoughts? It really sounds like he's torturing himself.

I found it particularly frustrating how little understanding and accommodation there was during medical treatment of the needs/responses of ND children. Every treatment session I had to get in quickly with an explanation to the medical team of his autism/ADHD, how to frame things to him, what to do and not to do etc. There were a couple of early episodes that were handled really poorly by the team just through lack of understanding/awareness but which fixed the narrative for DS at an early stage in a really negative way and made already very difficult treatment ten times harder.

DS has a very visual memory, if he sees a picture that bothers him he can’t unsee it and will talk about it for weeks until something else replaces it. Unfortunately in life we’re surrounded constantly by images that have the potential to bother him, and I can’t always predict what they will be and shield him from it.

@InTriplicate yes, absolutely, it feels like it's "catching" because the problem isn't the thing/situation in itself - the problem is your brain and how it is interpreting things. Just as in a horror movie anything can look scary given certain shadow and music, so in life anything can become threatening - your brain provides the context. When I was deep in trauma I thought the answer was to avoid anything that made me feel uncomfortable. But that doesn't work, because everything has the potential to make you feel uncomfortable when all the awful memories are constantly knocking on the surface of now. And those memories knock regardless of how shrunken a world you construct for yourself.

I wonder if your son has difficulty splitting memories, thoughts and feelings. I know I do, although I'm sure I've been told it at CBT multiple times. So I have a bad memory in my head, leading to a thought about how something will go wrong tomorrow leading to panicky feelings. But to me, they're all one thing, seemlessly glued together. I have to write them down to be able to split them. Sounds a bit daft, but they just swamp me in my head otherwise.

I thought elements of OCD too; sorry did you say you already have psychology support or not currently? (Oh and @Ramblingaway that also sounds like OCD) - editing to say that OCD can be triggered by trauma, It sounds pretty bad what your son went through.

I was also thinking that this sounds like the intrusive thoughts that go with OCD. ASD and OCD co-occur a lot.

The OCD-UK website may be worth a read.

Hello i just wanted to say that fear of holes is a recognised phobia, called tricophobia I think.

My son (ASD) has this in some situations and its worse when he is stressed.

I was just about to say, this sounds like trypophobia

@Wareart that is a very interesting thought about how the brain can interpret even actual horror movies from only very small hints in the actual film. I hadn't thought about that at all.

That's a very good point indeed.

I sometimes wonder if he's just watched too much total crap and got stuck.

I've noticed that if we can get him out into a group where he can be genuinely helpful, then casting him in that more positive role really lights his candle and can lift him up quite noticeably.

I am trying to get him out every day to have a positive bland converation with someone in the hope that might regroove his mind a bit.

He's particularly good in groups of quite elderly retired people, because they really appreciate quite small bits of help.

I don't quite understand the references to OCD. How would it be that? Thanks!

oh, no I read about OCD, it's not that. He's afraid of what other people will do to him.

@Taranta yes it is the same here exactly. We didn't know DS was ASD when the surgeries happened, but the paediatric surgery ward was in chaos the second time. They were put into special measure the following week.

It's the pictures as you say. They hit him hard and stick.

and as @Wareart says, it's impossible to escape the problem as it's internal.

Sorry you’re going through this

Has he any siblings? Is good that he enjoys scouts. Has he made friends there or is it more a matter of the teenage version of ‘parallel play’? Do any of his therapists or the psychiatrist recommend family therapy. If I were you I would want as much help as possible as I wouldn’t have a clue how to deal with it. I feel like it would be too easy to end up with the whole family living in a state of high alert and in constant fear of what might happen and that obviously wouldn’t be good at all. The feeling of needing to protect him must be so strong that might it mean that he doesn’t end up working out how to protect himself. You mention the new school is all books and no screen and as such is ‘so much safer’ where there is actual no danger in screens if they are used correctly. By cocooning your son might it be that you are re enforcing his fear that the world is dangerous and scary.