Our adult (23 yo) son is experiencing what we think are social anxiety attacks, last week at a dinner together he had one and had to leave the restaurant; Never having experienced this before, I accompanied him out and sat on the curb with him awhile until the bill was settled and we all went our separate ways.
He’s seen a conventional MD once and physical causes were eliminated.
Now we think it’s SAD, but he’s not on board with doing anything for help at the moment.
It’s difficult for us to see him endure this suffering without wanting to help.
Any advice you may have will be gratefully accepted.
Why does he not want to do anything to help himself? Does he not see the issue as a problem, or is he afraid of some kind of stigma? There are plenty of anxiety treatments available, including medication and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but he has to want to try them.
It sounds like you’re doing everything you can by being supportive and letting him know that help is available.
We only recently became aware of this, so currently trying to come to grips with it. Gave him the lowest dose xanax we had laying around and that seemed to have worked, but he’d rather not have to take a pill every day for the rest of his life. He’s qualified for CBT through my employee help line but so far hasn’t used it.
What a difficult situation for you all to be in. Do you know how much impact this is currently having on his ability to lead a normal life?
Unfortunately, you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves. But you can make it clear what support you can offer them. And that might be enough to give him the momentum to get some help. For example, would you be willing to pay for therapy sessions? Or to have him move back home (I assume he lives elsewhere) for a period of time?
what will not help- and to your credit you don’t seem to be trying this- is trying to “push” him to be more social/outgoing. All that is likely to accomplish is to make him fight even harder to get out of there.
Best wishes in helping your loved one through this.
One thing I would suggest is not to be too eager to “enable” (problematic word) him. I am often troubled by the continuum of mild acute moods through disabling chronic pathologies. I’m not saying your son should just “suck it up.” But life can be pretty tough to all of us, yet everyone has to figure out how they are able to deal with the good and the bad.
Hopefully, with your support and assistance, and the appropriate care including possibly medication and counseling, your son will be one of the people who lives a successful life despite experiencing some mental/emotional discomfort - as opposed to the type of person who lives a more and more constricted lifestyle due to what they perceive as their “disability.” With some medical conditions - especially mental/emotional - I perceive that there can be a snowball effect, where someone says they are limited by their condition, which causes them to limit themselves more, and so on.
I’ll suggest that you be careful about using medical terminology to define the condition. If you are not a medical professional, diagnosing is likely beyond your expertise. Probably everyone occasionally experiences situational anxiety. I think a relatively few people experience (my imprecise terminology) full blown anxiety attacks. Each person has a range of ways in which they can possibly respond to anxiety. With effort, support, and guidance, the goal should be for your son to come upon the most effective ways HE can do so.
And you really ought not give him medication that a doctor did not prescribe for him.
Please note that none of this is intended to deny the existence of incapacitating mental/emotional impairments, or to express an assessment of your son’s condition.
Thanks mods for correctly filing this–I never know where to put these things
Thanks all, just beginning to find our way through this. Will update as, or if, events occur.
Basically we try to avoid parenting, but when asked, we of course are a wellspring of well-intended but probably useless advice.
I have given him the info link to my employee mental health help line (which in my experience has provided several free sessions of CBT) while simultaneously refraining from diagnosing him. I figure he probably doesn’t want to think of himself as “crazy”.
Sandra_nz, he’s away at college, almost done, so anything’s possible, on the table, what have you.
jz78817, yes, hands off unless asked.
Dinsdale, just in discovery mode atm, I never saw this happen before the dinner at Wayfare, I wanted to go out to the curb with him to make sure he didn’t faint and bounce his skull off the pavement. being a parent and all.
Experience tells me that being diagnosed with a mental health condition, whilst it may helpful in that it gives people better understanding to tackle the problem, it can also have the opposite effect and make people feel they have a condition that only a doctor/prescription drugs can help them with or worse that they have an incurable condition. Self- or unqualified diagnosis is even worse as it largely without the insight of medical diagnosis.
Again from experience, drugs are at best a crutch when tackling things like anxiety and depression.
The best advice is simply that doing things makes doing those things easier. I.e. the best tactic is to make sure you keep doing things and don’t avoid social situations just because they cause anxiety.
Did he specify what types of symptoms he experiences during one of his episodes. I have known quite a few young men in their twenties that will go through a variety of anxiety related issues that seemed to resolve themselves within a few years.
Quit that! Resist the urge to solve his problem. As a parent I do understand that you feel his problem issues are yours too, but trying to solve them, as a parent may not be the best way. He needs to address them. Your role is emotional backup. I know you want to make the pain go away but just hang loose for now.
You say that the problem is recent. Perhaps there is a new life issue that he doesn’t want to talk to you about. He wanted to at dinner but couldn’t and you are reading this as an anxiety attack. He just couldn’t bring himself to talk to you about it.
Maybe he just doesn’t know what to do after college, maybe he has decided not to finish. Since this life transition is impending that would be my guess at the source of anxiety. School to career or school to more school, or just failure at the program he is in. It happens. Maybe he has been saying everything at school is fine and it is not and this ruse is coming to an end soon.
It is hard to read a family dynamic and understand it all from just a paragraph. I do think that the school transition is a likely source that manifested itself at dinner with you. There was something that needed to be said, discussed, and he wasn’t ready or able to do so yet.
Cheer up! Maybe he is just gay or his girlfriend is pregnant!
Just let him know that there are solutions to all problems. Life is long and full of stuff to deal with. It will be fine.
Nausea, difficulty breathing, “feeling like I’m going to die”, (that one got our attention!). So far, no vomiting or suchlike.
He had some mysterious respiratory problem at birth, was in infant ICU for a while, tubes coming out like something from Dune. It resolved itself, and the pediatrician and obstretician basically shrugged at the time and said “It’s just one of those things”.
I sure hope the OP does NOT follow your advice ! How the HELL do you know
everything will be fine ??? No one here has anything what is going in this young man life . I do hope he get some help if this happen again and I think his dad was wise to had follow his son outside and made sure nothing happen to him. The son is lucky to have a dad like that .
Dallas Jones, we figure it’s partly the college thing that’s got him so worked up. His last two semesters have been the worst coursework wise. Downhill after this. We have been talking about it. I’d never seen an attack happen before the restaurant, and just wanted to accompany him out for safety’s sake. After consideration, we decided to part ways for the evening.
I started having anxiety attacks around the end of college, and even though my stress wasn’t related to being in social situations, that was when the attacks happened.
I did recess a bit when it came to being social. But over 10 years or so I did make my way back in to things. In fact I feel better now socially than I ever did as a kid or in college.
I did have my worst attack ever while on Wellbutrin for smoking cessation, a few years after college. According to my doctor the drug won’t give you panic attacks unless you are prone to them, then you will get an epic one. I sure did. It was awful.
Your Xanax might not help but exacerbate the problem.
I never sought or got any treatment for my panic attacks. They just sort of went away. My life is much less stressful now too. I do have to take a beta blocker for my racing heart - which I think is where my stress reaction went. From panic attacks to a racing heart. Whee!
Don’t give your kid drugs (unless he eventually can’t handle the panic attacks and a doctor prescribes them), and make sure he learns how to safely ride out a panic attack. You learn how to safely and supportively deal with them, too. “Being there” is fine, I say. No problem with that. There’s stuff you shouldn’t do or say, though. Like “are you ok yet?” and stuff. You can look it up online.
Benzodiazepine drugs (Xanax included) are only really useful for short-term transient situations. Their effectiveness tends to wear off in a short time (like, maybe just a few weeks), then you need steadily increasing dosages to maintain any effect. Furthermore, they are highly addictive, and can result in nasty withdrawal problems when you try to quit.
So don’t try to imagine that he might need Xanax every day for the rest of his life. It won’t work. For long-term anxiety problems, you need either non-drug treatments, or very carefully managed drug therapy.
Perhaps it would be good to mention to him that medication can be short-term as well. I took anti-anxiety meds while doing therapy to learn how to recognize triggers and how to deal with them. Now I don’t take meds anymore.
Also, regular exercise does wonders to help with anxiety.
