Sick to my stomach

[Childofmine]

I am so sorry that you are in pain right now. Whether or not it is true you are feeling the pain.

As we all walk through our lives, bad things, sometimes really horrible things, happen to us. We are hurt in many ways. But if we are still alive, we have survived. We may be wounded----I believe all of us are----but we have choices we can make about ourselves. We can do the hard work of healing, seeking help and working on ourselves with medication, therapy, exercise, meditation, rest, journal writing, keeping our lives simple, helping other people, praying, etc. These are just some of the tools we can use---there are many others.

Or....we can blame, hurt ourselves further, sit and cry and mope and do nothing permanently, take drugs, drink, waste our lives and potential.

We have choices. Hurt and damage are not finite, one-time things. They can be continuous---if that is what we choose.

Peeling away the layers, we get down to one thing, finally, I believe:

Taking responsibility for our own lives.

If we do we can go forward---yes not perfect, wounded, even damaged---but we can still have a good life. Maybe not the life we and others dreamed of for us, but a life that has meaning and purpose.

It is our choice and no one else's. It is your son's choice and no one else's---no matter what has happened to him or not.

So grieve if you must. Cry for him and for you and for the fact that today, things are not what you dreamed of. Feel it. Don't bury it or push it away.

Reading what you wrote, I felt pain. If it happened it is worth grieving over.

But then, there will be a time to stop and move forward. That is what we all HAVE to do regardless, getting the help we need to do so.

By the grace of God and through God or your Higher Power whatever that is to you. We can't do it alone and I don't believe we are meant to.

I am so sorry for your pain today. I am praying for you and your son.


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[SuZir]

I will not tell you not to feel guilty, because you will anyhow. When something like that happens to our children under our watch, we will feel guilty. There is not going around it. But in the end we have to learn to forgive ourselves or simply live with that guilt. And it doesn't matter how guilty we feel, or what has happened in the past, now is now and you have to deal with situation in your hands.

And your situation is, that your son is making poor decisions that are making his life even worse. You can't make better decisions for him. He has to do them himself. He has to want the help and be willing to work to make his life better. Yes, life has screwed him over big time. But it is an only life he has and no one can help him, if he is not willing to accept help. And right now it seems he isn't. Only thing left for you to do is damage control and try to limit the damage his current poor choices are causing the rest of the family. It is harsh, but it is what it is.

Something that bad happening to our children in the situation we have put them, and us not seeing it, understanding it, being able to help or rescue them, is the worst nightmare. And usually they are not able to tell or ask help, especially the boys. And if and when it comes out later, it leaves us so totally floored that easiest would be to deny it ever happen, deny the guilt, pretend it is something they just made up to make us feel bad. But that is not healthy to anyone. We often demand our kids to own up their choices and consequences of those choices and I do think it is healthy for us to do the same. And helps us recover from that guilt. It doesn't mean you should enable your son's current bad choices, but telling him, that despite trying to make right choices, you really messed up in believing those workers and trusting him to their hands and for that you are so sorry. But you can't redo the past. You can't make it better, it is what it is, and you all have to live with it. You may be able to help him find resources to help him cope with it, but he has to want it and he has to work for it. It is his life.

In my family we are still on the beginning in dealing with similar kind of guilt. I don't know how I and my husband will learn to live with it during the years and decades to come. But I'm quite sure that trying to hide from it, would not be healthy for us nor to anyone else.

 

[Echolette]

I don't have anything to add to what Recovering has said...that is really really good advice and commentary. I am just posting so you know that you were heard, seen, that we know that you are suffering, that we can (maybe) imagine what a horrible gut blow that news is, and yet....what the others have said is true. It is his to recover from. He has to deal with it, just like my daughter had to deal with me dealing toxic, just like I had to deal with my bipolar dad, just like my SO had to deal with his life-ruining schizophrenic mom (he was her caretaker since age 13)...and yet it wasn't life-ruining, although clearly it was life-impactful. You can't fix what happened to your son, if it did. You can't undo those decisions. YOu can get stuck in wallowing in them...or you can forgive yourself and move on, you can honor and respect your son by letting him manage his own *(&&(.
I am holding you in my heart today, Aud, momma.

 

[Echolette]

PS...you were right to not pick him up from jail. He got there by his actions, he can manage the coming out part too. It ain't like picking them up to come home from camp or college, which I sometimes think they (GFS') think it is...

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Hi, aud. I wanted you to know I was reading along, too.

Has the statute of limitations elapsed for your son to press charges? This would be something concrete to explore. NAMI can be emailed (find the address on the NAMI page for your area). They have provided me with names of attorneys who may be able to help difficult child daughter. It is worth a try, aud. I emailed a brief synopsis of difficult child daughter's situation. I received an email back within a few days. This is one of the things NAMI tries to help those diagnosed with mental illnesses to do. difficult child daughter decided she would prefer to work with the public defender. I don't know whether the attorneys NAMI suggested would have worked free of charge or not. But I do know that doing something is better than doing nothing. I know that is enabling, is getting locked in again...but there are times, like this one, when new information comes out.

This should be addressed.

The only way I know to survive the horror of what is happening to you now aud is to decide, coldly and implacably, to survive it. To survive, and to flourish with love, with faith in the best outcome, with absolute understanding that you are acting in the best interests of your children and yourself.

When new information is presented, you can change your mind, aud. For now, you need to stay the course. There isn't anything else you can do. Stop beating yourself up, aud. Stop second guessing yourself. That is what I meant about "coldly and implacably". None of this is easy. New information is the only helpful reason to question the decisions you have made regarding your son and his situation. You did the right thing. It is the situation that is wrong.

I'm sorry this is happening, aud. But if you are going to make it through this, you are going to have to be stronger than you know how to be.

I only know this because I have been there too, aud. That guilty, shamed, self-accusing place is like a death. It doesn't help us. We need to scream "STOP" when it happens to us. Recovering calls it the FOG. Even to understand that is where we are is helpful.

I am so sorry this is happening, aud.

But you can do this.

I am.

Cedar

 

[tishthedish]

How did your son end up in a mental facility

Read more: http://www.conductdisorders.com/community/threads/sick-to-my-stomach.56225/#ixzz2rnvWzhzt
Aud, haven't been back for a while. Sorry for the delayed answer. My difficult child son was arrested. He was homeless and was having a meal at a grocery store in their cafe. (He has food stamps) I don't know what triggered him, but he tipped over the table, picked up a couple of bottles of juice and fled the store. Security gave chase, police were called and in his agitated state he hit someone and was unruly.
He was assigned a public defender and he appeared in court. The judge ordered psychiatric evaluation and he was uncooperative/uncommuicative with the forensic psychologists who were sent to interview him. They are required by law to try to evaluate 3 times. They space the evaluations out, so after his August arrest he was in the mental health division of the county jail and was eventually found unfit to stand trial in January. The state's attorney said within 1 year they would be able to make him fit. In order to do so, he was sent to a state psychiatric hospital. I don't know what his treatment entails as we are out of touch. We do speak to the public defenders, but because of his age the medical personnel are off limits. He has been in this facility before so they have a full history on him so I don't feel the need to hector the doctors and social workers with his story. To get a hold on any of them is an undertaking that takes hours...days sometimes. I am battle-weary and not going to put myself through it. He hasn't contacted us and refused our visits. In his state we are the enemy. He also brings up things from the past. I chastised him when he was in preschool and scratched another child in the face. His father physically took him to his room after a conflict at the dinner table. He was 11. He was swinging and my husband just restrained him by holding his arms down. He was picked on in school. I took him to specialists and had him medicated for his Tourette syndrome. The psychologist I chose was no good. The list goes on and on and new things pop up all the time. All I can say is that we did the best we could as parents. We were not perfect but we were damn good. I can't let my mentally ill son's skewed perception of his past negate the loving, stable home we gave him for 24+ years. It's what my husband and I dreamed of and worked hard for. I love him, but in this state, he doesn't speak the truth. He doesn't know the truth. I hope and pray that someday he remembers the truth. Be kind to yourself. Let yourself off the hook. Years from now all the treatments and medications that we had available to us will look positively archaic. You and your husband did the best you could with what you had available. There was no way you could know what was happening at that medical facility. Heck, look at all the church scandals. Are those parent to be faulted for taking their kid to church? At some point these adult children have to take responsibility for their treatment and their actions. It sounds to me that you are a very loving and compassionate person. Don't let anyone take advantage of those wonderful qualities.

 

[aud]

Well the last few days I have been so depressed and cant seem to stop crying. Today has been a better day though. The last couple of days my son has sent me the most horrible messages through facebook. Telling me I have never been a good mom and how after telling me he had been raped n psy. Hospital many years ago he has said he dissent blame me anymore and that he wants to just move on. What I didnt realize by moving on he also means cutting me out of his life. Says he wants nothing more to do with me and to stay out of his life. His court date from beating up his sister was this past Monday which he failed to show up for. How can someone hate their own mom this much.

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[Childofmine]

Aud, I am so sorry. Why do they have to be so mean? And why do we believe them when they are like this, when we know that all they do is lie about everything else. Why would we believe this?

Don't believe him. He is reacting. He is stirring the pot. He is doing what difficult children do.

You know the mom you have been. You don't need anybody else to tell you how good a mom you have been or haven't been. You know that in your heart. We love our kids so much. We are not perfect moms, but we do the very best we can with what we have, and usually, we put them #1 on the list above ourselves and all else. We wouldn't have them hurt for ANYTHING. We would rather ourselves be hurt than them.

That's part of the problem. That we keep doing that when they are grown adults.

Aud, please sit back now. Please stop struggling for a while. Rest. Be kind to yourself. Be with people you love and who love you. Take walk, read a book, take a nap, take a bubble bath, sit and watch some funny mindless TV. Just be with yourself on the couch with a pillow and blanket.

It's time to stop for a while and just be. You are depleted and who wouldn't be? This too shall pass. let it pass. Be silent and rest.

We are here for you and I am saying prayers for you and for your family, all of them, right now.

 

[aud]

Thank you

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[Scent of Cedar *]

aud, hold tight. This is what we mean when we say the kids are going to up the ante. Your son wants what he wants. He doesn't care if he has to hurt you to get it. He is angry. I know how this hurts aud, but you are not the one who created this situation. Your son does not think straight sometimes. He says and does hurtful things, things that don't make sense no matter how you try to see it.

This is one of those times, aud.

Your choices were to continue living with your son beating you or his sister pretty much at will or to declare your independence from that same son. You made the right choice.

In reality, he left you no other choice. Verbal abuse invariably comes before physical abuse. Life for you and your daughter must have been such a hurtful thing. Verbal abuse is so damaging that it is hard to believe we deserve anything better.

It took so much courage for you to turn him in, aud.

And if he hates you? What he hates is that you rebelled, took his power away, turned him in.

aud, you have value.

Your daughter has value.

What would happen if you told your son that you hear him, that you are very sorry he feels that way, and to keep a civil tongue in his head when he talks to his mother?

No more allowing this son to victimize you, aud. He has had it his own way for too long. He beat his own sister. You do not tell us whether he has hit you or not. Whatever the case, aud, this has to stop. You do not need to be afraid of this man who is your son. You made the right decisions every time aud ~ it is your son who is making the bad and hurtful decisions.

You are free, aud. You need to declare freedom from this manipulative son. Love the good, strong man he could be if he wanted to, but fight back at this mean mouthed, mother hurting, sister beating, verbally abusive son.

Who does he think he is, anyway?

If you just once tell him what you really think aud, it will feel so right that you will never go back to the old, retiring, scared to say anything ways, again.

This grown man is trying to hurt and destroy his own mother. He is saying the terrible things he says TO hurt you, aud. There is no truth in them. aud, this is what abusers do. They tear their victims to shreds on the inside, where it hurts most. Once that pride in ourselves is gone, we believe we can be beat, we believe anything the abuser tells us.

Shame on him. Really. Shame on him.

Time to take your life back, aud.

Cedar

The Verbally Abusive Relationship
Patrica Evans

www.patriciaevans.com

 

[BusynMember]

Well the last few days I have been so depressed and cant seem to stop crying. Today has been a better day though. The last couple of days my son has sent me the most horrible messages through facebook. Telling me I have never been a good mom and how after telling me he had been raped n psy. Hospital many years ago he has said he dissent blame me anymore and that he wants to just move on. What I didnt realize by moving on he also means cutting me out of his life. Says he wants nothing more to do with me and to stay out of his life. His court date from beating up his sister was this past Monday which he failed to show up for. How can someone hate their own mom this much.

Sent using ConductDisorders mobile app

Aud, he doesn't hate you specifically. He hates everyone. He beat up his sister. On what planet is that even close to acceptable?

Your son has serious problems, not you, not other people he blames, HE does. He is choosing atrocious behavior and is trying to punish you into doing what he wants you to do (money?) in spite of what he has done. Is he sorry?

Move on with YOUR life. You can't do anything to control your son. He has a lot of thinking to do or your next call from him will be from jail.

Hugs for your hurting mommy heart!!!!

 

[recoveringenabler]

Aud, I can't say anything any better then Cedar and MWM and Childofmine, listen to them, they are right. Just want you to know I am reading along here as well............we are all here for you Aud, you are not alone. Stay the course, you're doing well. It's hard, but you can do this............wishing you peace of mind, you deserve that.