Hi Gabi.
To me your thinking given all you have written of yourself and your circumstances makes sense. Sometimes we have to get where we end up (where we started) by exploring all the options out. Especially in a place like here where we do not know each other and our real lives.
First, to speak to the psychologist's approach. Uh oh I will get to that in a bit.
My own son, at 29, much older, has a 7year mj dependency. While our early life was a paradise for me he had had a horrendous start born drug exposed and abandoned in an orphanage. I was a permissive parent with the need to believe love could redeem. For a long while it did. Until it didn't.
I became controlling, angry and depressed as my perfect fantasy unraveled.
The thing is our kids do have lives and spirits and psyches apart from us. Sometimes surrender serves the only truly important and real thing. Our love for them.
I became increasingly demanding as my son faced his inner demons. I feel compassion for both of us now. For our great pain and because I was not there for him to the extent we both needed.
I panic and take stands. (You are gorgeous I say. Brilliant. He speaks 5 languages. Self taught. As if this matters. As if there is some cash register in the sky that will recalculate. He has body dysmorphic disorder. He works not at all. You see where I go here.)
I cannot bear it that my son in my mind does nothing. On the face of it in the sober living he is housebound, depressed and unmotivated.
The counselor he was seeing told me to back off. That if he finds himself it will be the life and the terms that come from him. Not me.
I think these guys are ill--maybe it is soul sick, maybe it is psychiatric. I don't know. I am seeing that now. I do not know. Surrender. For years I fought it. I believed if he worked he would feel better. And so it went.
All of which is to say that to me what the psychologist says makes sense. How he sees this and his approach. He is saying, lay down your arms. You cannot control this. Let your son come to health. Let him heal. Deal with your fears and pain yourself.
And I will add something here to myself: all the love is still there. The dream was real. And my love was a good and healing love. Except life had to happen. And their lives grow apart from us. Where we cannot any long feel we perform miracles.
Conduct disorder is a nothing, placeholder diagnosis. It is a descriptor of behaviors.
Psychologist is saying: believe in yourself as a mother that your son can again be whole and happy and at peace. And believe in him. He is psychotic right now. The normal rules cannot apply at least in the same way.
CD just means not complying to normative expectations. It speaks nothing about what is going on internally.
Of course the 2 young psychiatrists agree. It is by the book. A convention. A stupid book. The DSM 5 which means diagnostic statistical manual. You will find this stupid book online. It is not rocket science.
There is great wisdom and generosity in this way of thinking that of the psychologist.. And for me x great hope.
