Sharing self-injurious thoughts

[Anonymous]

I have been on this board for a long time. My DD is now in high school and doing well with her anxiety/ adhd/ dyslexia. She works hard in CBT and takes SSRI to manage her mental health. In early HS one of her challenges was having suicidal thoughts when things were really hard. I share this background because it informs our new challenge.

My DS has started “dating” in the 9th grade. They are both quite young and sweet together. They mostly play video games and talk about fan fiction. DS has ADHD and doesn’t always pick up on social cues, plus he’s a 9th grade boy learning to navigate his first relationship. I don’t know the profile of the girlfriend and I don’t know her parents.

Yesterday the girlfriend had a terrible day at school. DS texted her after school to see how she was doing. The girl said she wasn’t doing well and she was going offline to take a break because she was upset and having self-injurious thoughts. DS said he was sorry and hoped she felt better soon, and asked her to let him know when she was back online or would see her at school today.

DS was talking to me about this because he is worried. He doesn’t remember a lot about his sister’s challenges. He wanted to ask the girl to promise not to have self-injurious thoughts. I explained that isn’t how this works and that she can’t control the impulse. I suggested that he ask how he could help or even ask if she thought she needed to talk to someone for more help. I shared a couple of hotline numbers to have in his wallet.

Now DS is worried that if they fight, she will think of hurting herself. And he is getting anxious about that. I’m trying to explain that it is up to each of us to manage our mental health and his girlfriend seems to be working on that.

But this dating stage is new to me. DD hasn’t dated yet and is watching with great interest these discussions since DS brings these things up during dinner. DD says she feels like she would just be honest by sharing she was having a hard time and that is her issue to fix. DS feels overwhelmed at the thought that he might be the cause of these sorts of thoughts for someone he cares about. And as he put it, he knows he ‘s going to mess up and hurt her feelings at some point.

How have others navigated this? I would be very grateful for any suggestions.

[Anonymous]

Does your kid have a therapist? This would be a good one for a pro. Way too much potential for trouble.

My (now college) kid got sucked into other kids' similar dramas routinely and needed help navigating them.

Pending professional guidance for your son, the response to his GF is some version of "I'm not a professional and really can't help with this."

[Anonymous]

My DS had a long term relationship in HS with a girl who had self-injurious thoughts and was extremely anxious and controlling. From the outside, I could see that her sharing the thoughts about self-injury was a way of controlling him. It was pretty clear that she was engaging in emotionally abusive behavior - control, isolating him from friends and family, criticism, buying him inappropriately expensive things (she came from a very wealthy family.) I am not saying abuse is your situation, but it is something to watch out for.

I didn't think that my telling him to break up or forbidding him to see her would be successful - he had to do it on his own.

I made sure he has his own therapist for his own issues, but, unsurprisingly, he spent much of therapy (I think) talking about her and how to deal with her anxiety and threats.

I had complicated issues to navigate about her safety and mental health and how to talk to her parents about it.

I spent a lot of time educating both my kids about mental health and various kinds of abuse in relationships. This was mostly through sharing stories of my own relationships growing up and talking about public figures, media representations, etc.

I also made sure we had a private college counselor so DC had someone independent supporting his decisions about college.

Really all you can do is keep listening to them and educating them about healthy relationships and how to draw boundaries, not necessarily with direct reference to their relationship at the moment. PP is right to keep repeating the "I'm not a professional, so I really don't know how to help you cope with this, you should talk to a therapist or doctor."

My DS also had to know explicitly that: it is OK to break up with a mentally ill person, and you are not responsible for their choices in response. We are each responsible for developing ourselves to be ready for healthy relationships, and there are times in our lives when we should be working on ourselves and not a relationship. You can love someone, and they may not be a forever person. In fact, the latter is common in your teens and 20s.

I would definitely make sure, for safety reasons, you are monitoring cell phone and social media use and that location tracker is on cell.

It was a very scary time for me. I had to do a lot of thinking about my own emotional responses to the situation.

[Anonymous]

OP here- I can’t thank you enough for the extremely helpful responses. You have captured so many of the issues I have swirling around in my head about this situation.

My DS has agreed to set up some time with a male CBT in the same practice we used for my DD.

I plan to adopt the strategies you all have shared for talking about healthy relationships and boundaries more generally and historically. I shared a story the other day and my DH asked me why DS was suddenly asking him about his high school girlfriends.