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<blockquote data-quote="scent of cedar" data-source="post: 594322" data-attributes="member: 1721"><p>We want them to succeed, to be okay, so much! </p><p></p><p>If you could find some phrase that helps you feel calmer when you think of your son's vulnerability, some imagery (like the one I posted about ~ the one in which I envision praying for difficult child and placing her in God's hands) that helps you over that place where anxiety for your son overrides all other emotion, I think you will be able to find a psychological place to stand, in a daze. Those phrases, that imagery, will be different for each of us. Here's the thing: there comes a time when we need to understand that we are destroying our own health with our thoughts and worries. We need to acknowledge that our sickness is not going to help difficult child, is not going to somehow "pay for" the difficult child's health or success. I spent so many years living on the very edge of depression that it became who I really was. One day? I realized that each of my days had turned into a desperate effort to overcome the shock and really, the horror of my situation, the horror of what had happened to my family, to my fantasies of what was to be, to my belief about who we were, about who I was and what I was entitled to, in my marriage and in my life.</p><p></p><p>We, all of us whose children are in a danger we never foresaw, are living our lives by the seats of our pants during the time we are figuring out the rules for these new lives we never, in a million years, thought would be OUR lives. We have to learn to be very strong. We have to learn to choose health, and laughter. We have to learn to choose to save our marriages, to view our partners and our extended families with compassion when they just don't get it. We have to figure out some way to relate to our difficult children without destroying ourselves. This is an impossible thing. No one could do it. But we do. Every one of us who survives this has had to make that choice to survive and even, to thrive, in spite of her lost child, her lost life.</p><p></p><p>Or, we have to put all of that behind us and start over, make other lives. </p><p></p><p>And that is just what so many of us do, in a daze. We lose our marriages, change our friends, relocate. I kept my marriage (only by the skin of my teeth ~ and that was more husband's doing than mine), but changed everything else. I am getting ready to enlarge my life again so that I can cope with what seems to be a permanently changed situation for difficult child, now.</p><p></p><p>Last time this happened to me? I went back to school. Took ballet classes. Took karate classes. Wrote a book. Started working. We bought another house and moved. Then, we moved, again. We have to make our lives bigger, have to make more of ourselves, to survive what has happened to the children we once based our lives on.</p><p></p><p>I don't know that we could survive this in any other way, in a daze. </p><p></p><p>Have you always secretly wanted to go back to school, take a photography class, hike the Appalachian Trail, see Paris? Now is the time to begin making those plans. You need something to refocus your attention, some way to clear your mind and remember what happy anticipation feels like.</p><p></p><p>I'm so sorry this is happening to you, and to your family, in a daze. Posting here helps. Your son completed the treatment phase, and is cooperating with the half-way house and its rules. Those are very good signs that he will come through this successfully. :O)</p><p></p><p>Barbara</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="scent of cedar, post: 594322, member: 1721"] We want them to succeed, to be okay, so much! If you could find some phrase that helps you feel calmer when you think of your son's vulnerability, some imagery (like the one I posted about ~ the one in which I envision praying for difficult child and placing her in God's hands) that helps you over that place where anxiety for your son overrides all other emotion, I think you will be able to find a psychological place to stand, in a daze. Those phrases, that imagery, will be different for each of us. Here's the thing: there comes a time when we need to understand that we are destroying our own health with our thoughts and worries. We need to acknowledge that our sickness is not going to help difficult child, is not going to somehow "pay for" the difficult child's health or success. I spent so many years living on the very edge of depression that it became who I really was. One day? I realized that each of my days had turned into a desperate effort to overcome the shock and really, the horror of my situation, the horror of what had happened to my family, to my fantasies of what was to be, to my belief about who we were, about who I was and what I was entitled to, in my marriage and in my life. We, all of us whose children are in a danger we never foresaw, are living our lives by the seats of our pants during the time we are figuring out the rules for these new lives we never, in a million years, thought would be OUR lives. We have to learn to be very strong. We have to learn to choose health, and laughter. We have to learn to choose to save our marriages, to view our partners and our extended families with compassion when they just don't get it. We have to figure out some way to relate to our difficult children without destroying ourselves. This is an impossible thing. No one could do it. But we do. Every one of us who survives this has had to make that choice to survive and even, to thrive, in spite of her lost child, her lost life. Or, we have to put all of that behind us and start over, make other lives. And that is just what so many of us do, in a daze. We lose our marriages, change our friends, relocate. I kept my marriage (only by the skin of my teeth ~ and that was more husband's doing than mine), but changed everything else. I am getting ready to enlarge my life again so that I can cope with what seems to be a permanently changed situation for difficult child, now. Last time this happened to me? I went back to school. Took ballet classes. Took karate classes. Wrote a book. Started working. We bought another house and moved. Then, we moved, again. We have to make our lives bigger, have to make more of ourselves, to survive what has happened to the children we once based our lives on. I don't know that we could survive this in any other way, in a daze. Have you always secretly wanted to go back to school, take a photography class, hike the Appalachian Trail, see Paris? Now is the time to begin making those plans. You need something to refocus your attention, some way to clear your mind and remember what happy anticipation feels like. I'm so sorry this is happening to you, and to your family, in a daze. Posting here helps. Your son completed the treatment phase, and is cooperating with the half-way house and its rules. Those are very good signs that he will come through this successfully. :O) Barbara [/QUOTE]
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