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Talking through the door

Jenny Butterfly

Well, I am not even sure whether I should be posting here as we are still no further forward as regards a diagnosis and, from my perspective, our son's problems seem to straddle various labels.  But I feel desperate.  He is so alone.  No friends, no further education, nothing outside the house, very little inside the house (food and the computer). He can go for weeks without going out, then, suddenly, switches to being out from the early hours (5 or 6 am, while we are asleep) and returning mid afternoon, going straight into his room and not sayng anything.  This is what has happened for the past couple of days and I don't even know whether he has eaten. 

Communication is extremely limited and generally we have adopted an easy, person-centred approach, respecting his privacy and at the same time making it clear we support him.  He is 21, after all. 

But I find this level of isolation extremely worrying.  Moreover, we have now been in this stalemate situation for a couple of years and we're at our wits end as to what to do.  I basically read and read but learn nothing of any help and then do a lot of worrying.  None of this leads me anywhere. My gentle, tentative efforts to offer support are rejected, my attempts at basic conversation just blanked or rejected.  I sometimes resort to a couple of simple questions through the door and get monosyllabic answers. 

I don't see what parents are supposed to do and, even when we get to see a professional (the early intervention team up til now and the autism team in July - at the soonest) they don't seem able to offer any more.  Is this how life just has to be?

Parents

  • Hello there,

    I think that his frustrations or negative feelings are with him all the time and that when I ask him anything at all I am, in effect, interrupting his efforts to cope with things or sometimes his energy clearing rituals, which it seems he can do mentally as well as sometimes involving physical exercises.  In addition to there possibly been an element of depression in this, I think there are features of OCD.  The difference is that my son is clearing mental contamination or avoiding/evading environmental contamination (emanating from his efforts to "purge" himself) and not washing his hands repeatedly.  Or at all, even:  physically he does not seem at all bothered by dirt and grease building up.  

    I don't know about the duration.  There were factors which were apparent in childhood - great sensitivity, easily wounded, easily absorbed in his own world to the exclusion of all else, but the negative energy seemed to come on gradually, from around age 14/15.  Then it escalated until we couldn't live in our own home and he started sleeping rough on occasions, until we realised that he no longer had any friends and wasn't staying with them overnight, as he'd said.

    "Negative energy" does seem to me to be at least very close to depression - an almost metaphorical way of looking at it?  But he won't talk about it.  He says it physically attacks him at times and that we don't and can't understand.  I've tried to gently form a bridge between his conceptualisation of the problem and ours and the closest I've come is the description of energy as emotions, or, at least, an emotional imprint or residue left in places he's been.  But no other attempts at making a link (e.g. energy clearing work, yoga, tai chi etc) have helped at all.  And I've now read a lot about the subject.  He's clear that his energy only affects him and might take a lifetime to clear.  Overall then, it's a lot of work that we don't understand and interrupting him in itself ruins his efforts to keep things clear.  I'm utterly aghast and worried about how much of his life is being taken up by this. 

Reply

  • Hello there,

    I think that his frustrations or negative feelings are with him all the time and that when I ask him anything at all I am, in effect, interrupting his efforts to cope with things or sometimes his energy clearing rituals, which it seems he can do mentally as well as sometimes involving physical exercises.  In addition to there possibly been an element of depression in this, I think there are features of OCD.  The difference is that my son is clearing mental contamination or avoiding/evading environmental contamination (emanating from his efforts to "purge" himself) and not washing his hands repeatedly.  Or at all, even:  physically he does not seem at all bothered by dirt and grease building up.  

    I don't know about the duration.  There were factors which were apparent in childhood - great sensitivity, easily wounded, easily absorbed in his own world to the exclusion of all else, but the negative energy seemed to come on gradually, from around age 14/15.  Then it escalated until we couldn't live in our own home and he started sleeping rough on occasions, until we realised that he no longer had any friends and wasn't staying with them overnight, as he'd said.

    "Negative energy" does seem to me to be at least very close to depression - an almost metaphorical way of looking at it?  But he won't talk about it.  He says it physically attacks him at times and that we don't and can't understand.  I've tried to gently form a bridge between his conceptualisation of the problem and ours and the closest I've come is the description of energy as emotions, or, at least, an emotional imprint or residue left in places he's been.  But no other attempts at making a link (e.g. energy clearing work, yoga, tai chi etc) have helped at all.  And I've now read a lot about the subject.  He's clear that his energy only affects him and might take a lifetime to clear.  Overall then, it's a lot of work that we don't understand and interrupting him in itself ruins his efforts to keep things clear.  I'm utterly aghast and worried about how much of his life is being taken up by this. 

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