Adult Son and Mental Health Issues

[richteaaddict]

Does anyone have grown up children with MH issues, who don’t acknowledge it’s mental heath and instead blame
parents for splitting up 15 years ago and screwing up their life?? I don’t know if they need help or manipulating us because they are low in mood. Are there any parent support lines .

Mental health issues can have their roots in childhood, it's not a given but it is very, very common. It doesn't mean that there was abuse or neglect from the parents/care-givers, it's more likely due to the beliefs about themselves that the child developed during this period.

What support are you looking for?

Thank you, I agree adverse childhood experiences can impact adult life, o have tried to acknowledge that us splitting was never about my son or daughter, but my sons life is falling apart, he has lost his job, his relationship is under strain and in his words we tore his world apart. I guess I just want to know what I can do to support him at this time.

Family Action have a helpline that offers a listening ear and can signpost you. https://family-action.org.uk/get-support/familyline/

Thank you so much I will check that out

I have experience with a sibling OP. How severe mental health are we talking? Any drug use? How old were they when you separated? Did they witness any abuse?

Your son needs to take responsibility for his relationship and his job and stop blaming you.

I'm the 44 year old child in this situation. Parents separated when I was 8, after many many years of domestic abuse (on both parts). I was diagnosed with bipolar and general anxiety disorder. Do I blame my parents? Yes. They were more interested in the own lives and alcohol than me. I bounced around between my parents and grandparents. Left home when I fell pregnant at 19.

Only plus side is- it taught me how to be a mum. I would never inflict on my children what my parents done to me. Yet they think they done nothing wrong. I'm now vvvv low contact with them both.

Hi son was 12 when we split, he had a chronic cannabis habit from age of 14 to 21, no abuse at home, but he is very angry, us splitting absolutely rocked his world, and he has just never got over it. He is now on late 20s. I think he is having a
psychotic episode, he thinks people
are
lsitening to his conversations.

Is he possibly Autistic OP? A slightly familiar pattern in your posts so I am only putting it out there.

Co morbid conditions are much more common. The smoking weed is often a self medicating behaviour.

The life falling apart could be burn out. The black and white thinking blaming you for everything.

This is a little familiar to me hence asking.

You can pay for him to see a private psychiatrist if you can afford it. It's going to be tough to encourage him I imagine.

No one is going to scoop him up and give him a thorough once over if he isn't willing. You can hardly get anyone sectioned anymore. Kind of glad for the poor people who need love not imprisonment but it does mean in vsdrs like this it's usually desperately searching yourself for someone's to see him quickly.

I believe many ND people get screwed over by getting some random diagnosis they don't have with our someone properly assessing for potential Autism and then additional mental health struggles.

The Paranoia could be the cannabis alone and I appreciate ND isn't an explanation for every troubled person. I had a neighbour who lost it entirely after growing weed and relentlessly smoking it.

People do listen to conversations though just to add. I had my own recent situation thinking I was going insane over a suspected hack. People can access your phones emtire interface now, even see through your camera, someone can link into your WhatsApp from another phone ( you can detect it if you check).

If he's seeing people in his room listening then it's at another level of course.

I'd check what he means re the conversations.

Thank you , I do think he is ND, so this makes a lot of sense. The people listening is he thinks neighbours etc can hear every
conversation. Ever house he has lived in he has hated for this reason. He is burnt out, the cannabis isn’t helping his paranoia but he refuses full stop to engage in healthcare at all. He was given medication for anxiety once and said he felt spaced out and not in control. That was our one chance to get him to engage.

sounds like drug induced psychosis OP. My sibling had the same and also brought on by cannabis use, would blame my mum if the sky was falling down. Manipulated her through guilt to get money and used her as his emotional punch bag for years. It’s a really hard road to go down and I hope you get help for him and you. My sibling i suspect is also adhd or asd.

I will add that my sibling was sectioned when their psychosis got really bad. We had to ring an ambulance for him when he was ranting and crying about his paranoia and the ambulance arrived with police. He was taken to hospital and then booked in to a place where he received medication and some therapy. He still has a long road ahead and has relapsed several times but he has support now and a team of great people helping him. It’s so hard trying to help someone in this position and feeling so helpless, wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Big hugs to you OP and my inbox is open if you need anymore info x

If he knew he was ND and saw someone who understood and offered support knowing this possibility, I wonder how he'd feel.

I read many people hating any interaction with counsellors etc when they're ND potentially. Could you research ND aware/ experienced counselors? They don't prescribe, they're for talking.

There are many medications. Fluoxetine is often prescribed in anxiety for Autistic people. One can half the tablets and start at such a low does to off set side effects. It took 6 weeks for sertraline to help me with depressed when I was in my 20s.

You could discuss going to the GP with him and discussing trying something again but you go half the lowest dose.

You could actually talk to him about the possibility he could be ND, with a positive way of reflecting it. It might help. He may absolutely reject it too.

I have a house situation where I don't trust my neighborurs. They have done things and behaved in ways making me very uncomfortable. I can hear them talk sometimes. They can hear me too sometimes.

The more you stay in and the less you're out interacting with the world, the more you can think about things like this. I know I have. I know neighbours can be nosy arseholes.

You can only gather all the information, find possible providers for talking or prescription. Talk to him openly. The horrible thing is you can't necessarily fix this, you can't force him. I hope you have support 💐

Hi son was 12 when we split, he had a chronic cannabis habit from age of 14 to 21, no abuse at home, but he is very angry, us splitting absolutely rocked his world, and he has just never got over it.

Thing is, people don't go from happy loving home to splitting up, there's a period of months or maybe years of many mixed emotions before the actual split happens. And no matter how sure the parents are that the children were oblivious of any signs of disharmony and that all rows were limited to hushed whispers once the children were asleep, the child knows something is wrong.

And, being a child and not understanding that the split is nothing to do with them, there can be a belief that they were somehow responsible, that there was something they could have done to prevent it. It's not true but the subconscious mind can create it's own narrative.

@richteaaddict I'm not saying all this to hurt or blame you (or your ex) but to help you understand that your son could still be trying to make sense of his world being rocked. If he is suffering from psychosis then he needs professional help. It wouldn't hurt for you to have therapy to understand the feelings on all sides.

The level of the grudge he has, if I can call it that, is beyond typical in my opinion. This fixation on a situation from long ago ( altho we agree it's very upsetting and a tough, often traumatic experience), it is a situation many have to navigate through in life.

The fixation on this and the mum blame is to me a direct reflection of a different way of thinking which I see time and time again where mums are dealing with Autistic sons struggling in life.

I don't feel it's the right road for OP to explore family therapy right now.

Son needs to get in a better place in his mind as the first priority. There's a huge risk he will absolutely exploit and manipulate any sense of guilt he detects in his mum. He is at high risk of offloading blame for everything onto her in my experience, including all poor decisions he makes going forward.

It is essential OP stands firm in forgiveness for herself regarding the split, accepting it wasn't something she could fix and not in any way feeding this little boy lost narrative by feeling guilty and letting him see or sense it. He will exploit this. That's dangerous to her imo.

Absolutely correct, this is what happened with my sibling

I think you just have to accept that's his perspective as the starting point. No parent got it perfect (or needed to get it perfect). Good enough parenting is okay and tough love is also okay.

Maybe he feels some of it wasn't good enough and its fine to air things, what isn't going to be helpful is to ruminate ( a very common neurodivergent trait). Distraction / changing the topic may help?

The paranoia sounds concerning, can he see a psychiatrist? It may be neurodivergence but there's other things like schizo-affective disorder. Living with constant paranoia is exhausting.

Counselling such as CBT also may help him.

I agree with Blueberry. It kind of doesn’t matter what he acknowledges and what he doesn’t. His experience is the starting point, and it can also be true at the same time that you and his dad splitting up was the right thing.
I wonder how it is for you when he says it’s your fault? I imagine it feels very difficult, but these things can have a massive impact, even if it’s also true that it needed to happen and was a long time ago. Maybe if you were able to acknowledge how it impacted him, it might help him to be heard.

he would likely benefit from therapy if you can support him with that. Mental health is very closely connected to what happened to us.

I hope things settle OP. it’s awful when our children struggle.