How to dissolve repetitive, self-condemning thoughts

No top tips as such.  I'm a great fan of compassion-based approaches but am also wondering whether there is anything useful arising from your listening that might help. If he's already shown you that the listening and the hugs are helpful, I'd keep going with that, plus probably make notes after each round of listening to identify any themes and feed into the next conversation.  

I'd probably also want to zoom in on what was happening in your son's life when these thoughts first became problematic for him, with a view to seeing whether any of this might be addressed or improved.  From your brief outline I would probably wonder about the role that the run up to GCSEs is playing, how he feels about them, what beliefs he might have about their importance and role in his life.  Also, since the GCSE year is immediately followed by a transition into other options, how he feels about those too.  It can be a daunting time. 

There are certainly ways of "dissolving" such thoughts, and yes, these might include mindfulness and CBT, but what are your son's preferences and what might he choose?  Pushing, or even just persuading or hinting at something that he's already demonstrated resistance towards will, to my mind, probably increase the problem.  What are his interests and hobbies and might they indicate a way in?  There are dissolving practices within chi kung that might be helpful, likewise somatic experiencing, but I think he would need to be motivated rather than feeling that this is somehow an additional requirement coming at him from outside (like the GCSEs?).

Does the staff member have any suggestions to share with you?  I'm thinking that your own notes and experience, the school's support and especially your son's own thoughts on all of this might just come together into a way forward.  

Jenny Butterfly said:

dissolving practices within chi kung that might be helpful, likewise somatic experiencing

What are those?

Could you explain a bit your experience of it?

For chi kung I would suggest looking at the work of Bruce Frantzis. I was originally looking for a tai chi class when I stumbled across this and, over time, I found that the deeper meditation, "dissolving" techniques were very good at releasing tensions in the body that might have been building up for some time.  The notion of "chi" or "qi" was hard for me to accept initially, but belief in this wasn't at all necessary for me to find practices such as the standing meditation deeply relaxing.  Hard to give a potted summary, but it basically involves taking the mind or the focus into the body and keeping it in particular areas of knottiness or tension until they "dissolve" or release.  

In some ways I find somatic experiencing quite similar, although I'm not at all sure that practitioners of these methods generally accept this.  This again brings awareness to the ways in which trauma, tension and emotions are held in the body.  My own tendency was to be too much inside my own head and not to have much mind-body awareness, and I found that moving back into my body, so to speak, helped to relieve my anxiety. 

Before I became interested in these, I did find that simple body scanning techniques helped a lot.  Likewise yoga and breath work.  In a way these prepared me for chi kung, such that it seemed like a logical progression.

Hard to do it all justice in a few words here though.  

Holly Bridges' book, Reframing your thinking around autism" goes some way towards working with the mind-body connection, with particular reference to polyvagal theory and the nervous system.  I think its mainly slanted towards children and adolescents but it's also more generally applicable too.

For chi kung I would suggest looking at the work of Bruce Frantzis. I was originally looking for a tai chi class when I stumbled across this and, over time, I found that the deeper meditation, "dissolving" techniques were very good at releasing tensions in the body that might have been building up for some time.  The notion of "chi" or "qi" was hard for me to accept initially, but belief in this wasn't at all necessary for me to find practices such as the standing meditation deeply relaxing.  Hard to give a potted summary, but it basically involves taking the mind or the focus into the body and keeping it in particular areas of knottiness or tension until they "dissolve" or release.  

In some ways I find somatic experiencing quite similar, although I'm not at all sure that practitioners of these methods generally accept this.  This again brings awareness to the ways in which trauma, tension and emotions are held in the body.  My own tendency was to be too much inside my own head and not to have much mind-body awareness, and I found that moving back into my body, so to speak, helped to relieve my anxiety. 

Before I became interested in these, I did find that simple body scanning techniques helped a lot.  Likewise yoga and breath work.  In a way these prepared me for chi kung, such that it seemed like a logical progression.

Hard to do it all justice in a few words here though.  

Holly Bridges' book, Reframing your thinking around autism" goes some way towards working with the mind-body connection, with particular reference to polyvagal theory and the nervous system.  I think its mainly slanted towards children and adolescents but it's also more generally applicable too.