Reply to How to deal with teenage a-holery?

Forum Index » Tweens and Teens

Reply to "How to deal with teenage a-holery?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is op.

I can’t tell you how helpful some of your posts have been. As another PP said, there is some BS advice to be waded through, but I know at this point as to who has been down this road and know what it’s like. And just also wanted to acknowledge the patience and wisdom you have to navigate this.

I did want to give a quick update. We’ve had some healthcare follow ups in the past week. Some unrelated, and others related to her lack of growth. It’s been incredibly trying, but also really revealing.

Her anxiety levels were through the roof. It was helpful for them to actually physically measure her blood pressure and heart rate at the visits because it was clear evidence she was under stress and in complete fight or flight mode.

I won’t go into specifics but I’ll just say she did try to escalate to threats of violence against us. And when I said when she says things like that, it tells me how much she’s hurting inside and how it’s clearly a cry for help. I know she didn’t like that, because she is unable to acknowledge any feelings other than anger, or vulnerability.

Then she started saying she was going to kill herself for the first time.  We did not escalate, we stayed calm. We talked about how we knew this was hard for her, but her dealing with it in this way was leading her down a path that she was terrified of- losing freedom  autonomy, and getting herself sick.

The threats to kill herself came from the result of a health diagnosis, unrelated to every thing else, and also wouldn’t have much impact on her life other than needing to follow up every year or so with a specialist. She has been telling us her whole life that “there is nothing wrong with her” and in her mind, we were basically torturing her by subjecting her to doctor visits. So receiving this diagnosis was in a way, a huge reckoning for her, and a loss of the idea that she was perfect and invincible. It revealed to us how severe her anxiety was around doctors and authority figures.

The anxiety was so intense she was feeling the urge to avoid and take flight in the extreme.  It was a few days of exposure therapy basically, facing her deepest fears.

It led to a lot of good discussions about what she was feeling and how it was necessary for her to learn how to face these feelings in a healthy way.

So I think she’s in the grieving process of losing this very rigid idea of how she viewed herself, and also this idea she had in her mind ( a fantasy) that she could eventually (at age 18) escape to a reality where she would never have to see a doctor, authority figures, or any rules or demands placed upon her. Which is kind of a huge step.

I also think she’s been trying to adopt this identity of herself as this angry, violent, hateful person.  And I think it’s better to just not give aspects of that too much attention. It’s her armor as she feels like the world is assaulting her.

And until she learns the tools to cope with the stresses she feels from the everyday demands the world and her life puts upon her, it’s the only thing she feels like is protecting her.

We’ve also been reaching out to our other kids to make sure they’re ok and acknowledging that hearing all that stuff come out of her mouth can be very distressing and upsetting as a sibling.

Anyway, it’s Christmas and this is a lot but I did want to share in hopes it helps anyone else.[/quote]

Who did you take her to for a therapist?[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics