Jacob is still dealing with a lot of anxiety. I'm not sure if he's just not at a therapeutic dose of his new meds, or if he just has superhuman worries, but it's still going strong. And we're tired. All of us.
To be fair, I understand a lot of it. He's been through so much. Two years of his leg having issues. Lots of viruses and mystery symptoms. So many specialists. Fatigue. Food aversions. The list is pretty endless, and anything that pops up immediately becomes a threat to getting back to normal. Every injury or illness sets him back, and right now he feels he's running out of time--not just for this basketball season, but in general. Not to mention that he's read research about how stress can derail healing, so he's stressing about his stress. It's an endless, vicious cycle, and it sucks.
Just because we understand it doesn't mean we can indulge it, though. There's a very fine line between validating it in a way where he feels heard and helped vs. validating it in a way that just feeds his fears. Sometimes his suspicions are way out in left field, and I really don't want to confirm that it's something that should be worrying him to that degree by acting upon it. Not that I won't keep a close eye on whatever it is, just in case, but let's say the odds are generally really low that it will become a bigger issue. Take the other day, for example. He had noticed a couple pimples on his leg, one of which was pretty angry. He'd just had acupuncture the day before so we thought at least one of them could have been from that. He was feeling a bit off that day, no fever, but he was tired and had a headache (that he refused to take Tylenol for--that's another story). As a result, he very quickly became convinced that the one was infected. Craig made an appointment at the pediatrician that evening, but by the time I came home (early), they had already left for urgent care because his anxiety just wouldn't let him wait. They diagnosed him with folliculitis, which is technically an infection, but typically isn't one that turns into something concerning. He got a cream and that was that. UNTIL around dinnertime when I noticed that he had a rather large, angry pimple on his nose, as well. When he saw that, the spiraling started all over again, mostly because it was in the "triangle of death", which is a section of your face that has a direct link to the brain that infections can more easily travel through and cause serious problems. Of course, Craig and I have been through puberty and had our share of vicious zits right through adulthood, so to us that one looked pretty run of the mill. Not infected, just a little angrier than most. But he was convinced it would spread to his brain before sun-up, so he was begging us to take him to the ER at 10pm. Craig reminded him that there are people showing up at the ER who are literally dying, and I said they'd probably see him worried about a simple zit and think he was nuts. Sure, we'd look at it in the morning again, but while we were confident he'd live to see another day, he was not convinced. It took a couple hours for Craig to talk him down. And sure enough, the next morning, it was fine.
We had the similar freakout when he frantically wanted me to take a COVID test a couple weeks ago, or when he realized he was taking too many steps in Disney. Last month he was convinced he had compartment syndrome and was making all the plans for the surgery, down to finding a surgeon that did a minimally-invasive version. And remember that horrible Christmas Eve night where he was sure his leg was infected, or around New Year's when he was worried late into the night that he had a UTI? Each time, he is absolutely convinced that something is very wrong. He jumps to the worst-case scenario even if the odds of that are tiny, and there is no convincing him otherwise.
Again, I get it. That's pretty much the entire reason I made the decision to get anxiety meds myself. I was spiraling every time he did (and sometimes for myself, too), and I was assuming the worst every time, as well. It wasn't healthy and it made me realize that was not logical or normal, but yet I couldn't stop it. Medication has done that for me, but sadly not yet for him.
It gets even harder because he says and does a lot of things in the throes of this that are hurtful or disturbing. The other night he was mocking me when I said things to him. He was vaguely threatening self-harm--though he insists he wouldn't, but it illustrates his extreme frustration, and in this case he was essentially suggesting it as an alternate way to get to the ER. Or he was going to call 9-1-1 if we wouldn't take him. It got that unhinged. Luckily he didn't make good on any of it, but it was like negotiating with a mad man for a bit. The next morning he had an appointment with his therapist, and semi-joked about me intending to institutionalize him there. I mean, there have been times I've been tempted to take advantage of the pediatric behavioral health urgent care, but no, that was not my intention. He insisted we couldn't keep him there anyway and said something about getting a lawyer. Ugh. That stuff just isn't really like him, so I know there's a lot at play right now. It's hard when you just want to help but recognize that it may be something that's beyond your ability.
He's also so obsessed with ChatGPT, and it's getting ridiculous. I understand that he considers it a "learning tool", but it's also feeding into his fears and bringing up new ones. We tried to explain to him that it doesn't have a medical degree and doesn't have real-life experience, but somehow he still trusts it more than us. His therapist even mentioned how it fills in blanks it doesn't know with complete garbage. It just pulls random stuff from thin air and presents it as fact. Tell me that's not a recipe for disaster! It got so bad the other night that he not only sent me the probability stats for his zit getting seriously infected, but also used it to create a paragraph for him to try to speak to me in a way that would be more convincing (or at least, I assume that's what he asked for). I refuse to respond to AI talking to me, though. Sheesh.
The trust issue has been a big one lately. He has major distrust of food, germs, and anything I tell him in regard to his health. Now, am I one to cut mold off my cheese? Maybe, but 1) I'm still here; and 2) I likely wouldn't do that to him. He is throwing out days-old bread because he's convinced there's invisible mold. He thinks this cherry juice he made himself from a concentrate late last week is fermenting already. He wastes so much food (and expensive food at that) because he's overly cautious about it and thinks "best by" dates are official expiration dates. He assumes I'm going to gluten him even though there's very little evidence of that happening before. He's been on this earth this long without any clear food poisoning or other "sabotage", but yet he assumes it every time. He constantly accuses us of not doing anything to help him with his health issues, but literally that takes up the majority of our time shuttling him to appointments and training. It was extra frustrating when he was coming up with random things, like POTS, in the middle of me worrying about Carter having just been diagnosed with an actual serious illness. I get that he's trying to put pieces together to figure out why he's been tired or his leg isn't healing fast enough, but it has officially gotten out of hand some days. I just don't know how to regain his trust or get him to stop assuming the worst. I hope he can up his meds a bit more coming up, but I assume he needs a few weeks at this level.
My therapist wants me to look into "radical acceptance", which is a practice of accepting a situation even if you don't like it. Don't dismiss it, don't let it overtake you, just accept it and find a path forward. I have some reading to do, but I'm hoping it will not only help me through some of the hard stuff, but also that I can teach it to him. We need something for now.
In between, I promise, things are actually okay. Jacob is slowly getting back to activity, Carter is feeling better, and Craig's job situation is busy but settled. Mine is still a whole lotta unknowns for a bit, but slowly but surely those will resolve as well. I'm trying to figure out how to cram a little bit more summer fun into things in these last couple weeks (yikes, it's really only a couple!), but at the moment I'm a little bit stumped. Fingers crossed...
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