Hello,
My youngest son (20) has had problems with anxiety since he was a small child (for example, he was electively mute for two terms when he started school and we had to have a specialist dentist when he was a preteen, due to his anxiety). He stopped attending school at 13, due to extreme anxiety (GAD) and his life has been one of insularity, rigid routines, fragmented engagement with education, employment and services, every since. We have tried everything we know to change this and social services were involved with our family until he officially left school.
He used to be very angry and aggressive, but that seems to have calmed down a lot over the past two years. However, some of the things he says concern me.
For example, he does a lot of walking. He has set himself the task of walking thousands of steps each day, and he goes around our local nature reserve for hours each morning. This is all part of a health anxiety and eating disorder. Sometimes he will come back from his walks and tell me how he 'F%%%%ing hates people' and how they 'laugh' at him or 'look down' on him. He then states how he had to stop himself from picking up a rock and hurting someone or how he feels like 'smashing someone's face to a pulp, then cradling their head in his arms and stroking their face as they ....!'
I try to ask him for a little more context, and it appears that he has stared at someone to see if the person will smile at him, and the person has perhaps turned away and walked off, or maybe laughed nervously. I have advised him to smile first and say 'hello', but he tells me they still shun him.
I do think my son has problems reading facial expressions and understanding social interaction (some people may be a little wary of a young man walking on his own in a remote area). However, it is the graphic description of his reactions that concern me.
My concerns are intensified by the fact that his older brother was arrested and sectioned for making threats to kill (he wrote graphic descriptions and 'plans' of assault in a note book) and was later diagnosed with a psychotic illness. Both my eldest son and his father have a diagnosis of autism.
I think my youngest son's expressions of violent intent are not the same as his brother's. His brother definitely wrote of some external force and carrying out the demands of this entity; my youngest knows the feelings are his own.
However, I do not know what to do. My youngest will not engage with any services. He refuses to see his GP, refuses to engage in any social activities (even a few hours of voluntary work) and insists he can manage on his own.
I do not want to contact the police, because he has not really made a threat, and I don't want to escalate things. If he just said 'I felt like hitting that person', that would be a response I could perhaps understand. However, it is the graphic description of the action and the fact that he describes a scenario that is out of the ordinary, that concerns me.
Should I just do nothing about this, and hope that, if he does manage to engage in something his intense internal anger will subside, or should I report my concerns to someone, and if so, to whom?