It’s 8:32 in the morning and I send a text message to both of my boys about the Thanksgiving holiday, which is over a month away. I have to make airplane reservations and I want to check on their schedules. I expect I’ll hear from Michael; it’s three hours later where he is and he already had a class this morning. Blake I don’t expect to hear from until at least late afternoon or evening with his sleep issues. He has a 10 am class, but he’s missed attending nearly every week.
To my surprise, it’s Blake I hear back from first at 8:39 am. He confirms his schedule for me.
Me: Whatcha doing?
Blake: Waking up.
Me: You heading out to class?
Blake: Yeah
Me: Out of bed yet?
Blake: Showered.
Me: Wow. Just wow.
Blake: I appreciate your amazement at my basic levels of human functioning. 😛
Me: It’s a mom thing.
Blake: Are turnovers a breakfast pastry or dessert?
Me: They are whatever you like them to be. Love you.
Blake: Love you too!
It’s a brief moment in time, but it’s a victory nonetheless. Blake is awake. He got himself showered at a time that allows him to participate in the day. Whether he will leave his apartment and head to school or head back to bed is uncertain. It is just this – a moment.
Text message from Blake: Hey Mom. I slept through another disability meeting. Even with only two classes, I’m completely unable to function. As much as we’ve tried with everything and even switching programs, I feel like we might need to call it quits on college. At least for this year…
Me: Hi baby. I’m right in the middle of something. Can I call you when I’m done?
Blake: Yeah
I call Blake as I drive home for the evening. He’s down on himself for missing yet another scheduled meeting with the disability office at school. He’s unhappy with life, doesn’t know what he wants, can’t find a reason to even exist.
I try to be a good listener, but I get caught in my old trap. I sink down into the well of despair with Blake and I try to fix the situation. I point out how much better he does with more structure. Perhaps he needs a job, I suggest. At one point I even ask if he needs to be in a hospital. He hates when I do this and I hate it even as I say it. He wants to get off the phone with me and I ask him to call me tomorrow after he wakes up to check in. He agrees.
Saturday Evening
8:25 pm:
Text from me to Blake: Hello
Blake: Hi
Me: How you doin’?
Blake: Rough
Me: Can you talk for a min?
Blake: Yeah
“I want to apologize to you,” I say. “Last night when we talked I just wanted to be a good listener – and I wasn’t. When you’re in a really bad place I sometimes get caught up in wanting to help. And that’s not what you needed last night.”
“Thanks, Mom. I kind of do need help because I don’t know what to do.”
“Maybe the first thing to do is to know that this feeling will pass and when you feel clearer that’ll be the time to decide what you’re going to do.”
Then I remind him of all the ways that he IS functioning.
“You’ve got successes, honey. You made it to your English class both days this week. You’re grocery shopping; you’re eating; you’re going to chess club; you’re taking your medication…”
“About that, Mom,” he begins, “I’m not doing so well with the medication. I’ve been waking up too late to take it so I’ve been missing it.”
My worry starts to set in. Blake is on an SRI – a serotonin reuptake inhibitor. He’s on the highest dose a doctor might recommend and has been for quite some time. I know it’s not good to miss taking it.
“Honey, how often are you missing taking it?” I ask.
“Probably 75% of the time,” is the answer.
“Blake,” I say, “you cannot not take your medication. Even if you wake up late, it should still be taken. Maybe you should switch to taking it at night since you are awake then.When is the last time you took it?”
“Maybe…Thursday?” It’s more a question than an answer. He’s really not sure when he took it last.
Abrupt cessation of SRI’s can lead to a withdrawal or discontinuation syndrome. Two of my patients in just the past week ran out of their SRI medication and missed a day or two. The effects were swift – one had a quick return of strong intrusive thoughts of harming others; the other experienced a significant uptick in her depression symptoms and found herself unable to do even the smallest exposure practice for therapy.
I know how Blake has reacted in the past when he’s even been a few hours late to take his medication. He starts to feel like he’s having electrical shocks in his head. He starts to feel dizzy. He claims he hasn’t felt any of that, but the problem is he hasn’t been awake. He’s been sleeping very late. He slept til almost 8 pm tonight. He’s feeling very down and depressed and not sure of his path. I give him a quick rundown of SRI withdrawal and have him take his medication right away.
When I explain to the Hubby what I’ve learned, he is concerned. Could it be that our 19-year-old son is not able to take care of himself on his own? How could he not have realized that it was not okay to miss his medication? Why didn’t he say anything until now if it’s been going on for a while? I tell him that we need to wait and see if he makes the correction and if it sinks in.
In the meantime, Blake has now taken his medication two days in a row and I’ve been checking in with him regularly to make sure there haven’t been issues with that. Since he didn’t wake up until nearly 8 pm last night, he’s been up for over twenty-four hours. It’s a familiar cycle for him – one I’ve lectured him on many times before, but resist doing now. He’s still down today, but he’s been in better spirits, texting me funny photos and fun facts about goofy things. Another episode in this journey…
Blake is in his fifth week of college classes. It’s been a trying time for everyone, not the least for me. I’ve realized over the last month that I’ve spent a great amount of time over the past fourteen years involved in Blake’s well-being – in helping him to be successful. Whether it was running him to neurologists to answer to his teachers’ concerns that he was having seizures (he wasn’t; he was experiencing intrusive thoughts), meeting with occupational therapists to ensure he could find his way around the school, or teaching school personnel how to manage anxiety, OCD, and depression, much of my time was running interference so that Blake could do his job of being a student.
Listening to my son’s feelings of overwhelm these past several weeks and hearing about the days he has missed school entirely and succumbed to depression has sparked that old impulse in me to jump in, to make it better, to pave the path for success. Yet, at the same time, I am learning a new way to interact with Blake and his schooling. And I am learning to define success in a different way.
In the past, helping Blake to be successful meant teaching others to understand the way he learned, and to recognize when mental health issues were interfering or needed to be attended to. It also meant pushing Blake forward when he didn’t believe in himself and helping him to find the tools he did not know he had. It sometimes meant forcing him to get out of bed and to follow a schedule for the day – or even for the hour.
But Blake is not six-years-old anymore. He’s not even seventeen. He is a young adult man – one who has had help and labels poured on him for most of his life. And those things probably continued to come even when he did not want them. In some ways, sometimes, they likely made him feel like a failure, because he struggled, at times, to even do the basic things people do to get along in this world.
My beautiful nineteen-year-old son is living in an apartment nearly 1,000 miles away with three other young men. He is struggling to get along in school, having chosen a major that, as his adviser has pointed out, plays more to his weaknesses than to his strengths. He struggles to get out of bed some days or to find what motivates him. He has dropped all but two of his classes and is teetering on dropping out of school altogether.
BUT…
He is feeding himself every day and getting to the grocery store weekly. He visits his adviser at school and is working on a plan with the disability office. He figured out how to transfer his prescription from our pharmacy at home to one near his apartment in the new state. He gets out of bed MOST days. He got his hair cut (he doesn’t know I know this) which means he figured out where there was a salon, got a ride over and back, and paid for it all himself.
My husband and I were worry warts in college. We were scheduled; we were efficient with our time. We were not our sons. They have their own way, and Blake’s way is to pave his own path. It is not the path I would have taken or that his dad or his brother would take, but that does not make it any less valid a path. My son is brave and I believe in him. His road is his own. I am here to assist and support if he needs me, but right now what he needs is for his dad and I to believe in him.
Blake, Dad and I believe in you and whatever your path may be. Thank you for teaching us that success comes in many different hues. When those big feelings you have seem too overwhelming to manage, we will be here to remind you that feelings pass, and that you have what it takes to hang on through them and then to forge onward.
OCD In The Family 