Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello my 15 year old son became hugely anxious and stopped attending school about 5 months ago. He’s since had an autism diagnosis and we’ve come to realise that he has been masking and struggling for years and that the pressure of GCSEs finally pushed him to a point where he couldn’t continue. I feel horribly guilty that we didn’t spot it before now and he has been struggling for so long - we had a big bereavement in our family when he was 4 and I think everyone assumed his behaviour was trauma related.
Other than the autism assessment he’s been unable to attend any medical/therapy appts in recent months - he gets to the door and then has a melt down. So we’ve decided to take all pressure off and just give him time to recover and only do things he feels able to do. So no school (and accepting GCSES prob wont happen this year) and focussing on his love of music and films.
However, I am worried about his mental health - anxiety is still high (although not as intense as it was) and he has body image issues. He is not self harming and doesn’t seem to have suicidal ideation. We had our first meeting with CAMHS last week and I really don’t feel like they are taking his mental health issues seriously and are only focusing on signposting autism support. He’s found art therapy helpful in the past (for trauma) but that therapist feels he needs more help than she can offer eg cbt.
I’d love to hear from anyone who’s been in this situation, am I doing the right thing by allowing time for him to recover with the hope that he’ll manage more therapy in the future?
thank you!
I agree that you're doing the right thing. Reducing demands is an important feature of burnout recovery. This is a useful article showing the four stages of recovery and how to progress.
https://www.barrierstoeducation.co.uk/burnout
CBT isn't really that helpful for autistic people generally and I certainly haven't found it helpful in the past. Much of it seeks to correct what is deemed 'faulty' thinking. However the autistic way of thinking is different but not 'faulty' and doesn't need to be corrected. The autistic person will often experience anxiety for very different reasons than the non autistic person and those reasons can be perfectly valid (eg sensory overload). Often it is the environment that needs to change rather than the thinking. The books by Luke Beardon are good resources for learning more about this approach.
Hello thanks so much for the reassurance and for sharing the resources I will take a look.