Could really use advice for my young adult son with emotional issues

In My Humble Opinion
1

This will get long, but I’ll try stick to main points and not ramble, and I’ll answer when I can with any follow-up questions anybody may have.

So, my older son who is almost 19 and lives with us, his parents, has had emotional issues since he was a very young child.

As a child we took him to several therapists over the years, but none of them ever seemed to help or get through to him. This eventually escalated to recommendations for medication and psychiatrists to prescribe them. He was officially diagnosed with OCD with associated anger issues. He had a number of behavoial problems in Middle school and was at an in-patient facility 3 times, each for a week at a time (pretty much all our insurance would pay) for expressing thoughts of harm to himself or others.

The anti-anxiety meds for OCD did not help and he was eventually prescribed with 3 medications at the same time, one of them being risperidone, an anti-psychotic. These meds not only did not help, they turned him into a zombie, and his school grades, which were good before, plummeted.

This was all before puberty. We were concerned that the meds were actually detrimental, and were worried about their effect on his development through puberty.So we made the tough decision to wean him off the meds and go with just CBT (Cognitive Behavoral Therapy). He then flourished after starting high school; his grades improved again, and thankfully his behavior in school improved dramatically (still a handful at home though). With encouragement from us and his teachers he got into a vocational computer networking program in the second half of high school and did great: top of his networking class, getting a number of certs, getting in the National Technical Honor Society. We thought he had finally turned a corner.

Flash to after graduation: he didn’t want to go to college, thinking he could get an entry-level networking job through his vocational school. But that fell through. We told him if he was going to continue to work at home and he refused college, he had to get a job. Which he did, doing park maintenance part-time, 4 days a week. He seems to do ok at his job, he has his driver’s license, but other than his job he’s practically agoraphobic; he never goes out anywhere. He supposedly has a couple friends but he almost never sees them in person (even pre-pandemic) he just talks to them online. His only interests seem to be watching YouTube videos and playing video games.

He doesn’t do well with disappointment or change of any kind. Any minor hardship: power outage, internet outage, etc. sends him into an emotional meltdown like a 5 year old having a tantrum. His latest was: he ordered a new gaming computer online, and when he got it yesterday it turned out to have some problem with the graphics card which sent him into a major meltdown.

My wife and I are at the end of our rope. He refuses any more therapy, and since he’s an adult we can’t make him. It’s gotten to the point where we’re ready to just give him the college money we saved for him as a stake so he can get his own place and get on with his life. But with the emotional maturity of a 5 year old he will beg and plead to stay, or burn through his money and be back at our door in a few months at the most. We honestly have no idea how to help or deal with him anymore. At this rate I don’t see him becoming independent anytime soon and he’s making all our lives miserable. We all walk on eggshells around him.

We also have a younger son (almost 16) who is very smart, emotionally stable, and seems to have a bright future ahead of him. We want to help and support him as well and minimize the trauma of him being in the middle of all this. But it’s difficult with our older son draining all the energy out of us.

2

My guess would be that he’s addicted to the computer (games, porn, etc.) And he knows that meltdowns work.

As you say, if he was younger you could get help. As it is, you could try to lower his rate of insanity through OTC supplements like citicholine and lithium orotate but that’s probably it.

I’d say that you should just go for the rip-cord.

Keep the money. It’s not going to come to any positive use anytime soon. It will just become a bigger fancier gaming rig. Maybe in his 30s or 40s he’ll straighten out enough to do something more useful with it.

3

I don’t have much to offer other than I wouldn’t buy into “We can’t make him since he’s 19”. Yes you can. Your house your rules. Either your son does the things that are necessary to help himself, or he can hit the door.

I think your son is still dependent on you enough, that he will begrudgingly take his meds, get therapy, etc…

4

I think it’s more like, he has no other interests in his life other than the computer to fall back on. Maybe a subtle distinction.

I don’t think it’s emotional manipulation, though I won;t deny there may be an element of that. He genuinely does not seem to be able to control himself at the time of the meltdown. It’s not like we were lenient parents, although I admit we sometimes just gave in to his meltdowns and went into appeasement mode at some times. After about an hour of him bouncing off the walls it gets pretty exhausting.

But with no money and no plan, he would literally have nowhere to go. He used to be somewhat close with his grandparents so he’s said he could move in with them and “help take care of them and do things for them (major eyeroll)” but he’s kind of burned his bridges with them as well. Plus they’re too old to take him in and deal with his issues.

You are right. We have stood our ground on plenty of things and he will eventually come around, but it becomes a several day to several week battle of wills. We have threatened him with eviction more than once, but the sad fact is he would just camp out on our doorstep screaming to be let back in until the neighbors called the police.

5

Ok, so here’s the thing. Sometimes unconditional love can be toxic in a relationship. And this is a prime example.

Your son needs to fall and fall hard. He needs to see the real world with out the safety net of his parents. Until you can find it with in you to let him fall, nothing will get better.

A couple of nights sleeping on the streets will humble him.

6

The ability to control your emotions is at least partly something that you learn, through self-reflection on how you screwed the pooch. But, first, you have the experience that you did screw the pooch and then you have to have a high enough amount of humility and desire to improve yourself to reflect on that and start building in the right way.

For some people, their biology might be crazy enough that they just need life-long medication, I don’t know. It’s like you might have a dog who is well behaved, knows to go outside, knows to stay off the couch, etc. but he’s stuck inside for three days and starts to go crazy, destroys a bunch of stuff, destroys the couch, and poops everywhere. From a lack of exercise and options, all the self-control goes away and you’ve got a dog who is acting like a puppy again. Keeping that self-control requires a daily, healthy amount of exercise. Likewise, your son might just require a certain amount of medication consistently to keep within the self-controllable zone. …But, that still does nothing if he’s never learned nor needed to learn what self-control is.

And part of that does come from immediate, negative feedback (while the individual’s mind is in the self-controllable zone). That’s where you can start to think through what happened, where it got you to, and alternate strategies.

Unfortunately, in the modern world, it’s so easily possible to enjoy life on the crazy cheap that is really hard for them to suffer negative consequences. Food is cheap, can be made with no effort, you can save galaxies and be a hero online for cents a day, and all the porn and orgasms that your wee-wee can take before chafing. So, I mean, if you kick him out he will probably find some dump under an old lady’s house to rent for a few hundred a month, and just sit there 10 hours a day, ignoring the world outside his computer. He won’t really experience that as a negative. He’ll be annoyed that he had to make the food but so long as you have a microwave, that’s just not a big issue.

To get him better will probably require that he maintains a very healthy diet, gets a significant amount of exercise, and that he’s going out to socialize with other people, all while taking medications that are actually useful for whatever issue he has (which is pretty luck of the draw and might require munching through four or five different kinds). But just the drugs and minus the parts of life that get you healthy - social interactions, exercise, etc. - and he’ll still just be and stay an emotionally stunted individual. You just can’t become healthy without a healthy life, and the interactions with other people that can end negatively when you do it wrong.

If you can’t bargain him into going out to board game events and hiking, along with a psychiatrist, you’re probably not going to see any improvement.

7

Find him an apartment within his budget, from his job, and pay the first two months rent. That should still leave most of the money.

8

This might work for a quote unquote “normal” person who was just raised too leniently, but…I say he has ‘emotional issues’ but really, he’s mentally ill. We’ve threatened to kick him out if he doesn’t straighten up. He’s said he will kill himself if it comes to that. It’s probably all talk, but let’s walk through it-- we finally say enough is enough and do kick him out. He probably won’t kill himself but at some point the police will get involved (not for the first time). They say, so, your son with a long history of mental issues, you just kicked out on the street?

And, not to talk lightly about suicidal ideation. He’s threatened to kill himself so many times in the past that we asked a therapist “what do we do? If we take him into the ER for a psych evaluation every time he says that it will be a weekly thing”. The therapist said only take action if he expresses concrete methods for how he will do it. And he hasn’t said that with any regularity for awhile.

It’s not like we’re lenient parents who’ve never given him negative consequences for his actions. His brother is quite emotionally mature. He’s been more or less the way he is since he was old enough to walk and talk-- he was biting kids in preschool.

9

If he’s talking suicide you can have him committed.

It’s not as bad as it sounds. It helped a close friend of mine when he became manic.

10

Oh, I’ve proposed this. Find him a small apartment or flat nearby, so he can still come by to do laundry or get fed occasionally. Training wheels, baby steps. But he absolutely refuses.

He has this insane idea that he will take his college money, buy a piece of land, put up a shack and live in it, and he will be happy away from annoying people. This from a kid who melts down if the internet goes down for a 1/2 hour. He says “I only need those distractions in my normal life. In my shack in the woods I won’t need any of that”.

11

My apologies if you’ve already mentioned it but is there a way you could afford to pay part of his way for a place on his own? Maybe somewhere close enough where you could drop by for supervision? Could he function semi-autonomously or is that out of the question?

12

Per my OP, we’ve had him committed. Three times for threats to himself or others. All three times they declare him “all better” after a week. But it was more about our insurance not being willing to pay for longer. The insurance co. even allowed for a team of two therapists to come out to our house for one-on-one sessions for awhile after the first two, because it was cheaper.

13

Asahi, this is great advice, and I did address it in the post right before yours. The fact is, he’s terrible with change but he is okay once he establishes a non-deviating routine. So he could live by himself eventually I think, as long as it was done with baby steps. But he has crazy notions of how he wants to live on his own (shack in the woods, per above post) that are light-years away from being realistic.

14

Oh, I feel for you. These issues sound so much like the issues I had with my foster son, the son of a younger family friend that I had been close with my whole life. I took him in when he had problems living with his dad and brother,

He couldn’t spend an evening with friends without melting down because one of them looked at him funny or said something disrespectful. Once he was hanging out with his friends and kind of pacing around, one of them said something like “Dude, sit down and relax”. This was to him, an act of disrespect so profound it was unforgivable and he never saw those friends again. Needless to say, he didn’t have friends after a while.

Something similar would happen every time he got a job, after a day or three someone would “disrespect” him, and he’d meltdown and cause a scene, then isolate at home for weeks.

He would go in and out of really strict diet and exercise regimens, and beat himself up about his “food addictions” when he fell off them.

I don’t know that I’m the right person to advise you, because this was a problem that I ultimately couldn’t fix.

The one thing I did try that worked, for a while, was the “written contract” thing, I wrote out everything I expected from him and reviewed it with him and got him to agree. We are both writers by nature (he was actually quite talented) so this was an approach we were both comfortable with.

My situation was very different in one big way in that I had no legal relationship with him. I actually ultimately had to go to housing court to have him evicted.

Putting your foot down and setting rules that your son must obey and kicking him out if he doesn’t might not be an option, legally. Generally, the law takes the position that all members of the family living at home, including adult children, have an equal legal right to occupy the family home. It doesn’t matter who owns it or who pays the bills.

But you can always bluff, the kid probably isn’t up on housing law,

It may be possible to convert the relationship to landlord/tenant by having your son sign a rental agreement, but that’s a legal question that may vary jurisdiction by jurisdiction.

Good luck, I really wish I had better advice but it’s a problem I couldn’t solve.

15

Thanks @Ann_Hedonia! Even if you feel like you don’t have much to offer, just being able to talk this out with you guys is a big help fro me mentally. It’s good to hear the experiences of others who’ve been in a similar situation.

We have treid this a few times over the years, with varying but yeah, some degree of success, at least for awhile.

16

*Solost, you mentioned that your son has had therapy but have you and your wife done therapy together? What you need help coping with your grown son. You feel you can’t make him go to therapy but you might benefit from some outside perspective both on how to deal with him and how to handle your own emotions about him and his situation.

I would avoid drawing comparisons between your sons. Your son is his own person with his own needs that differ from those of your younger son. Saying or suggesting to your youngest, “why can’t you be more like younger son?” isn’t going to help him. I’m not sure why it’s relevant to this thread. Maybe you thought it would help us understand that you are “good” parents who raised a capable child but by seeking advice, you are already showing you are a good parent. You just need some help.

I wouldn’t either. They have moral guidance and leadership, suasion, money, and a home to offer. That’s a lot of influence.

If you set limits, you need to stick to them. He has learned that meltdowns work. I understand it’s hard but it’s only going to get harder the longer he can rely on meltdowns to get what he wants. He needs to learn new ways to cope.

If you give him the money, even you don’t believe he will use it responsibly. If you give him a little money at a time, on a fixed budget, and stick with it, he might learn to live within those means.

No, this sounds terrible. It might push him away, break his trust with his parents, lead to more tantrums that his parents aren’t able to withstand, or lead to psychological strain that makes it even harder for him to develop healthy habits. Many homeless people are mentally ill (I’ve known many dozens through volunteering). Some of those had parents who thought things like “a few nights on the streets will help him!”

Crazy isn’t a helpful word but many people do need lifelong medication. It’s not easy to find medications that work and patients and doctors need to work together constantly to make sure that it’s still working.

I’m glad you recognize this and I hope you don’t judge him for that. He needs treatment and he probably needs your help to get it.

I know essentially nothing about Social Security Disability or other support programs but I wonder if you should talk with a social worker about what types of programs might be available to help him.

Best wishes.

17

I have thought seriously about this. Problem is, my insurance with my current job is worse than what I had when we were taking him to therapy in his pre-teen years. Not sure if they even cover family therapy.

(Bolding mine) My only point with bringing up the younger son is that some of the posts seemed to be implying we haven’t given our younger son enough negative consequences for his bad actions and he’s suffered from it as a result. So, the part of your quote I bolded was what I meant with that. I don’t compare or play favorites with my sons. When the older son has done good things in his life (some of which I mentioned in the OP) no parent has ever been prouder of their son than me.

BTW, I can definitely relate to your username today :slightly_smiling_face:

18

I said crazy biology, not crazy person. If someone was born with a foot growing out of their armpit, that would likewise be crazy biology but you wouldn’t connect it to a mental state because we’re talking about biology.

In this case, “need for medication” is the connection to mental health, but even that is fairly oblique.

19

“We are all walking on eggshells around him.”

This is a form of passive agressive bullying. Your son is bullying you and keeping you in fear that whatever you do will be wrong and that he will react badly. So nothing gets changed and he gets to live the way he wants. In this way he is remaining in control of the situation and your household. You know that this is not good and can only get worse.

You need to decide if you can continue to have him lead the discussion or if you are going to do some hard things. I work with young people your sons age in a job training environment and we try to get them to understand that there are expectations that need to be met and that meeting these benefits them, not only the people with the expectations, it benefits them. If you can get them to understand why these expectations are there and what they can do to meet them then they will usually move in that direction. This is what the expectation is and by meeting the expectation your life will improve in this way.

No one likes being told what to do. No one likes rules. No one likes losing control of the situation they are in by having to compromise and do things differently than they want. But that is life. Negative feedback does not work.

I have no specific instructions for on how to do his because I am not living in the situation, but try to think about change in ways that will benefit him and you. If you can get him to move, just a bit in the direction that is best for you both, and get him to see how it is better for him, then you may make progress.

Sorry, that’s all I got. You already know that letting him dominate your household is not working.

20

It might also get him killed. Remember this is a young man with genuine emotional problems. I know a family that did throw their son out and he did commit suicide. But, hard as that is to live with, you also need to think about how hard it will be to live with what happens if you continue as is. But those aren’t the only two choices.

You, your wife, and your younger son need therapy for YOU. Like most of us, you are not equipped to manage your older son’s mental health needs. A professional can help you find ways to cope, and perhaps change, the situation. You should also look for support groups – you’re not the only parents trying to figure out how to handle this and you can’t have too much emotional or practical support.

You have to get him out of your home, for the benefit of everyone, including him. You can’t just throw him out, this is your (mentally ill) son, & suicidal talk can’t be dismissed. But it certainly sounds as if your son is manipulating you emotionaly & you need to find out how to stop that – it’s not coincidental if he copes at work, but melts down at home.

In the short term, what about giving him that shack in the woods with some of his college money for a month’s rental/living. He gets to see the reality of what he’s proposing and you get a much- needed break. Assuming he can take care of his basic needs, and you can afford the cost, what is the harm. Though I would definitely arrange for someone to check on him often.

Also you could try to make home less comfortable & moving out more attractive. Insist that if he continues living at home he has to get therapy and continue with vocational classes (online classes are great if he can’t do in-person), or some sort of activity other than sitting in his room. If he’d rather move out, instead of giving him money, maybe you could cover his rent/living for a period of time plus some extras (bribery is often effective). Even if this means he moves back in 6 months later, it would be a break for everyone & would at least disrupt the current dynamic.

I hope someone offers an idea here that helps you and your family. Thank you for trying so hard to help your son, you are a wonderful parent and he is fortunate.