At the ER again. Backslide for G.F.G

SuZir

Well-Known Member
I came home from work today to foul smelling pyre on our backyard and G.F.G agitated and trying to patch up his arm in the kitchen. His story is that he was cleaning his closets, throwing away and burning rubbish he found and accidentally burnt himself a bit.

Pure BS if you ask me. Yes, stuff he burnt is his but not rubbish. I took a look and what I could figure out much of it is stuff with sentimental value. And most in no way fit to be burnt. Either doesn't burn well, should had been recycled or was worth money if sold. It also seems quite obvious he has been raging and throwing and breaking things both in his room and at kitchen. For some damage he blames the dogs. And sister in law stopped by to check if he is okay because she felt he was agitated and upset at the morning when he stopped at her place.

And it also seems evident G.F.G been playing with capsaicin again.

His burn isn't bad, second degree, not the size of his palm, close enough to the joint I was able to talk him here, but not really in joint, and would I believe the accident story for a second I wouldn't have insisted trip to ER. Not that this is likely to achieve anything. I got a word between when nurse was doing the admittance interview and checking the urgency and mentioned self harm and recent mental crisis. But G.F.G is coherent, stable enough and likely denying anything. He is currently with the doctor and it seems to take long enough that at least he is asked about it more thoroughly. But basically I just hope that they will refer this to his mental health provider so that even if he doesn't tell, they learn about this.

Just huge blah. It seemed like he was slowly gaining his ground again and this is rather big set back after him being seemingly more normal, social and moving forward during last few days.

Getting rid of the personal belongings is of course the warning sign of the suicide but I kind of think this is not that. Things he burnt are more signs of achievements than anything else. Not so much stuff that would be dear to him or something he is attached to.
 
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GuideMe

Active Member
I am so sorry Suzir. I know how scary and sad this is for you. You seem like you have a lovely son who is full of potential but he doesn't see it at all. It's like having a Ferrari , but no keys. He needs to find his key. It seems he truly does suffer from a chemical imbalance in his brain or perhaps suffered a trauma as a child that you may not know about. Whatever the case is, he is suffering from evil thoughts that tear him down. He is too scared to tell anyone what is going on for fear of judgement, rejection or abandonment most likely. Again, these are all just guesses, but something to ponder none the less. I can't imagine what it is like for you to see your beautiful son so tormented and not knowing when he will do something to harm himself. You are such a lovely woman Suzir and my heart goes out to you.
 
S

Signorina

Guest
I am so sorry you are going through this.

I hate to overstep- but since you mentioned suicide - I seem to remember you had concerns he may have attempted suicide a few months ago (jumped into water? )

I know it's hard and please know that I am not judging - but many people attempt suicide multiple times before they actually succeed. I know he has a lot at stake with his career if he were to appear unstable- but I think you need to be frank with his doctor that you think it could have been a possible suicide attempt and that he had another possible attempt prior to this.

Just to be cautious...

I am so sorry for your hurting heart
 

Albatross

Well-Known Member
I'm sorry, Suzir. I agree with Signorina. To me this is a red flag and something his doctor needs to know about.
 

SuZir

Well-Known Member
It's like having a Ferrari , but no keys. He needs to find his key.

His sport psychiatric has likened him, with humour, to Ferrari that has accidentally been set up with breaks and steering of Fiat Punto.

He does have the makings of something rather impressive, but it will to be seen if he is able to live up his potential.


I hate to overstep- but since you mentioned suicide - I seem to remember you had concerns he may have attempted suicide a few months ago (jumped into water? )
I know it's hard and please know that I am not judging - but many people attempt suicide multiple times before they actually succeed. I know he has a lot at stake with his career if he were to appear unstable- but I think you need to be frank with his doctor that you think it could have been a possible suicide attempt and that he had another possible attempt prior to this.

You are not overstepping. I don't like to mention my worries about suicide around here often because I don't want to sound overly dramatic, but you have to understand that in our neck of woods suicide rates are something totally different than in North America. It is down from what it has been (dramatic change after SSRIs came to market), but it still is over the double of your suicide rate. It is the most common reason of death for young men by far. From the moment I found out about difficult child's gambling addiction, it has been a great worry of mine (suicide rate for gambling addicts is insanely high), but it is also a thing I can't really do much about.

He has admitted suicidal ideation before. He did finally admit his fall to the water was indeed more or less a suicide attempt (not really premeditated or thoroughly considered but impulsive and he did change his mind midflight) and while it originally was reported as accident in his medical file, I made sure that during this latests crisis and hospital stay the doctors were informed and it was written down as a suicide attempt. Getting things down was also a reason I insisted to take him to ER today too.

This one I don't believe to have been a suicide attempt. Burning one's personal things could be preparation for suicide, but the burn he got was anything but dangerous. Capsaicin doesn't cause real damage either. I did check for any sign of preparation to real suicide attempt as well as I could. He couldn't have got himself killed with the fire he had, he had taken gasoline away before lighting it, no spare ropes anywhere, no knives out of their place, he doesn't have medications he could use to kill himself, no sign of him driving around (cars and rock cuttings on highways being popular methods) and so on. And he absolutely denies it.

We are back home and I did ask if the doctor asked about suicidal thoughts. He had but difficult child said the same thing he has said from the last spring after he admitted that falling that bridge wasn't an accident. He has decided against it and he is not quite that selfish that he would do it to me, husband and easy child, our extended family or his girlfriend. Of course when person gets depressed enough, their can become delusional and start to think that their death would be a relief to their loved ones. Or he could be just humouring us.

If nothing else this visit goes to his record as suspicious and possible self harm and it should show to his counsellor when she opens difficult child's record on next visit that is luckily tomorrow. difficult child also says that ER doctor put forward a note to difficult child's treating psychiatrist. But you are right, I will also call and tell my worries about self harm and burning valuable personal belongings. And maybe also the narrative to his life I wrote her couple weeks ago. It is extremely negative and lacking hope.

And yes, also the MD of his team has to be informed even though it may hurt his career and he will be dead set against it.
 
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SuZir

Well-Known Member
I had to leave for work before he was up this morning. Makes me slightly anxious not to see myself what kind of mood he is before leaving him alone. But I have an early meeting in other city and had to leave early. And I can't really stay home to babysit my 21-year-old, can I? husband promised to wait till he is up at least and he also asked father in law to stop by in right time to make sure difficult child can't 'forget' his appointment with the counsellor today. I will try to reach his case manager later today to tell her about our worries over burning his belongings.

I guess that is about all we can do at this point.
 
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SuZir

Well-Known Member
difficult child seems to be doing relatively okay. Is rather calm and rational and not that tense. Sticks to his story, but is quite clearly lying - and knows that I know he is lying, but makes it clear that he is not willing to talk about it at this point. Does talk about future (yes, I have been fishing a bit) in diverse manner; both short term (tomorrow this or that, next week maybe that), mid term (at Christmas) and longer term (during summer, next season) and really long term (something would be really cool one day) and both very practical level (what do we eat at Monday, about his burn and it maybe hindering getting back) and more abstract and long term plans, goals and dreams.

For husband this did hit hard. To be honest he is really freaked out. I think that it hit him first time, that we could really lose difficult child, that maybe we will not get through this and it may not end up being okay one day. Maybe it was because the stuff difficult child burnt was maybe dearer to husband than to difficult child. Mementoes of that son husband can be proud and happy about, the son husband would wish difficult child to be. Also senselessness of difficult child hurting himself on purpose, causing himself real and acute pain, seem to have hit husband only now. Maybe till now he was somehow able to explain to himself that it was some one time stupidity, or difficult child being out of his mind when he did it or something. This time there is no excuse to explain it away.

I have gone through those feelings for longer time and I hadn't really understood, that husband hasn't seen it before. He was so shaken that he actually didn't even yell at difficult child or scold him, but tried to explain him how cherished and important he is to us instead. And that is kind of freaky on itself.
 
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dstc_99

Well-Known Member
Suzir,
Last night i was laying in bed fighting insomnia and I was wondering. Did the stuff difficult child burned have to do with the sport/time in his life when the bad things happened?

The reason I ask is that you and husband may associate those things as positive memories from doing well in his life. He on the other hand may only see them as reminders of a time when he was in pain and or reminders of the people who hurt him. Possibly the person giving the items was the one hurting him? I respect your privacy and his on that one so I am just guessing.

When I was younger and a member of the family was an issue. I didn't want anything from that person anymore. I also didn't want anything from anyone in that family unit around me. I knew they had nothing to do with what was going on but the association of it all was too much for me. I avoided social events they attended especially if the offender was there. I was angry and often got rid of things that I should have kept because I couldn't disassociate them from the issues. I didn't want anything that had memories of or reminded me of that family but because of issues beyond my control I wasn't able to completely detach.

His actions, other than the capsacin and the burn he received, might have started out as something simpler like ridding himself of some painful reminders. Is it unthinkable that he was making a positive move to rid himself of pain and then got it all mixed up inside because he doesn't know how to handle the release of emotions that comes with getting rid of a burden? That relief you feel when the burden is gone can be almost overwhelming when you are healthy and probably much more when you aren't? Then his confusion led him to return to something he does understand which is the pain of a burn? Its kind of a safety zone for him since he knows what to expect and is in control of the pain then.

Just a thought and something to take in mind. I could be totally off but I thought it might be worth mentioning.
 

GuideMe

Active Member
Just a thought and something to take in mind. I could be totally off but I thought it might be worth mentioning.

I think your totally on. There is a possibility it might not be the case, but it is definitely worth considering.

Suzir, I am having strong feelings that your son is tormenting himself about something, something that actually happened and is too scared to tell anyone. If that's true, than maybe not a chemical imbalance inside his head.
 

SuZir

Well-Known Member
Thank you Dstc for incredibly valuable insight and point of views again.

Some of the stuff he burnt does have a link to his trauma. Sport awards or mementoes from that time frame, some achieved together with people who hurt him and so on. But also stuff from other sports and earlier times, music school material (but that could have been something he considered rubbish he doesn't need anymore, and that actually burns, most of the sport stuff didn't burn that well even with avid helping of gasoline), some school stuff (of course school was traumatic too), but also some family related stuff. I think that what most got to husband were Technical Legos he and difficult child used to build together before difficult child hit his teens. Then again, while we are close knit family and difficult child is very attached to us and loves us and while he has been very loved child always, we do have our dysfunctionalities and I and husband have also really screwed up big time in ways that have in doubt been traumatic to difficult child.

And he didn't burn anything he actually may need, like diplomas, certificates, other paper work or anything like that.

But can't help but wonder if he was trying burn away his whole childhood, though he didn't take and burn anything from the attic where I have put away many mementoes of him as a kid, just his room, which is rather bare right now.

Today he has been calm and in fact rather pleasant. We are having Father's Day today, he had an appropriate present for husband and he and easy child took husband breakfast to the bed and all that stuff. He even got his atheistic butt to church with us, we have congregation counsel elections today and he is still a member if not practising nor believing one and father in law is a candidate. And there are certain rather heated topics in our congregation difficult child does have strong opinions on (minority/majority stuff and how to allocate money used to services for both.) Dinner at in-laws is still ahead of us, I'm sure difficult child wants to go for father in law, who he absolutely adores, but as those who remember more about our situation know, mother in law and difficult child at anything but at his best possible condition can be gruesome. Though she has lately been so busy at being angry (and total witch) to one of her own daughters, so I haven't been her lightning rod for few months now, so maybe she doesn't attack difficult child either (difficult child usually gets thrown under the truck, when she doesn't dare to attack me, but wants to make me suffer.) Though mother in law has, to my knowledge, been perfectly nice (well, totally indifferent, but that is her perfectly nice when it comes to her blacksheep), now that difficult child has been around and stop by or when she has been here. And she has been totally okay with these new developments after we did assure her that difficult child's 'concussion' hasn't rendered him to the drooling imbecile (okay, that was not nice from me, she does care about difficult child, on her own way) but she tends to ramp up in big way for special occasions and family festive.

Guide Me: difficult child's main diagnose is PTSD, so definitely acquired rather than some innate biological problem. Of course the environmental cause doesn't change how the actual brain chemicals act to cause the symptoms and so also same medications etc. can be used notwithstanding the cause. Though for difficult child SSRIs were sold by his psychiatrist as something to make his brains more flexible so that the therapy would work better. Of course he did decide to keep a break from therapy since and starting again is an issue. The recommended treatment for him still is intensive exposure therapy with medications to support that but his life situation is complicating things.

difficult child has experienced some major trauma; some we do know about, some likely not. We do know about major incident when he was 16, which started the real deterioration for him and we for example do know he was bullied badly at school and neighbourhood. It was daily, both physical and mental, and he was totally isolated and we do know at least one incident that was life threatening; not that other kids were likely purposely trying to kill him and likely difficult child didn't really understand how huge the danger was either, though he was scared. It was one of those fully clothed cold bathes difficult child fancies in icy watered rivers occasionally (and OMG, did I just try to crack (a lousy) joke about that, I think I may be the more insane one in this house...) But how much of everything he has told to us, is the question. And how much did he tell to his therapist, when he was still at therapy. And of course he hasn't really told us almost anything about what happened when he was 16, we learnt from it from elsewhere and it has been more that he hasn't denied it (of course with evidence there is, it would be difficult to deny.)

We did talk with husband about trying to talk with difficult child and proposing the possibility of citing personal reasons and taking rest of the season off. Staying here (yes, ugh!), finding the therapist and concentrating on his mental health. Yes, it could be difficult to get again going with his sport career after that, but these kind of bumpy seasons are not good either. Not to mention that sports shouldn't be his main concern (but they are, so not much point trying to argue about that with him.) Others have taken time off for different personal reasons and while most have never came back to top level, some are, so it is not impossible to do. While he is under contract, they will surely let him go, if he wants to dissolve the contract for mental health reasons. He would even be paid by his athletic insurance for a while and we can support him for the rest.

But to be honest, neither of us truly believes that difficult child will take that offer.
 
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