Therapy-Shmerapy

It's happened. My family has officially driven me crazy... or crazy enough to go out therapist shopping. Insurance only covers twenty visits per year, so I figure I'd interview potential mental health counselors before letting them charge me and my insurance for actual therapy.

Just how I got to the point of seeking professional help shouldn't be any surprise. Take one Asperger's kid, take one husband recovering surgery and stir in two sisters, each with their own complex set of issues. Once that's simmering, add in the last sister dying of brain cancer. Let that simmer for three months, stirring constantly. Finally, top with crazy and abusive ex-husband vying for attention, and bake in a well lawyered casserole dish for the next year. Serve with thousands upon thousands of dollars.

With your feet, during this process, get some hamsters, some fish and some cats... try to keep them alive. Forget about them liking you because you don't sit still long enough for them, but you will pretend they understand you when you ask "Did I feed you today?".

There are maybe four people in this world I'd trust to do therapy... except two aren't taking clients anymore, one is a complete conflict of interest considering our going for adoption and one isn't technically a therapist (but should be). That leaves the other 30 candidates in the provider handbook.

I feel like a puddle of goo on the floor these days, when I'm not trying to be therapist-mom to the kid, nurse-wife to the hubby and social worker-sister to my sisters. Everyone is so darn negative or obstinate lately that it's actually becoming contagious. I'm normally positive, chipper and "half full, baby" (as my husband always says). Not so much lately. Not when everyone is all "OMFG, it is the end of the world that [insert trivial thing here]!!!" Life is awful. There's not enough. We're out of something. Something broke. You haven't... [insert non-priority action here]. Things were better when... life sucks now because... I could go on and on.

When that's added in with the general stress of daily life, Chiari Man, Aspie Boy, my sister's constant urge to add extra caffeine my coffee, and the trigger of dealing with the ex-husband (even if its second-hand), I find myself having the beginnings of panic attacks. Thankfully, I have the skill set and the support to help keep those at bay. My hubby knows panic attacks. He knows if I say I feel it coming on, I'm serious. And he's afraid that if I break down, he'll be left alone with the whole house and all it's responsibilities.

My parents and in-laws have been excellent supports, too. Both set of parents seem to have this sixth sense when I need to hear something positive. My mom-in-law has the uncanny ability to read me like a book, even over the phone. I have the strange feeling that if I ever did go into full-fledged panic attack mode, she'd call or show up or something. And she'd probably have ice cream, too. I could write an entire post, novel even, about her awesome mom-ness. My mom is great, too, but she's a thousand miles removed from it all. Even still, my parents sent me "tell us if you need us to come down there and take over for a weekend" email the other day. I told them I have to learn to cope on my own, but if I have too much trouble, I send for them.

Yet, there are times like these when we need perspective from the outside. When you are in the trenches, you need to communicate with someone removed from the battlefield so you don't end up digging your way right to the enemy. Someone who can load you up with skills and tools to keep heading in the right direction so you can win war, even if you lose some battles.

When talking about this to my family doctor, she nearly fell of her little doctor's stool while holding back tears of joy when I said, "We are just not born equipped to deal with so much stress and I feel I need extra help". I gathered that she doesn't have many patients ask about emotional and mental health care. I imagine she does a lot of referring, but no one really volunteers for a list of counselors because she was just about speechless.

I need help redefining my boundaries, dealing with a stressful life and re-learning how to react to certain people in certain situations. My skills are rusty, to put it bluntly. And by-god, I need to dedicate some time just for me, all about me, for the sake of me and my family. After all, what good am I to anyone if I'm not getting my needs met? I'm no martyr and I'm no Scarlett O'Hara. I'm just a girl... who wants to keep thriving under pressure and model the behavior appropriate for our current circumstance.

And dammit. I want to stay positive and cheerful. Even if I have to create an army of ninja hamsters to reinforce my personal boundaries.     

Mom's Day Off

Every so often, I tell my family that I am taking the day off. Even mom's need time to re-charge their batteries. To be able to take care of our families, we moms need some time to enjoy non-mom and non-wife things. Kids and husbands don't always realize it, but they get a lot more play time than their wives and mothers. (I'm not sure how this works in same-sex relationships... and I'd be interested to know if one partner feels like a traditional "mom" and needs to set boundaries down harder to take a day off...)

I prepared the kid earlier this week that Saturday was going to be an "entertain yourself day". or at least a "don't expect mom to succumb to your every whim day". I told the kid, of course, that I'd provide three meals for him, but snackage was his responsibility (and possibly my nightmare). I also reminded him that I'll be around for boo-boo mending, but otherwise, pretend your mom is at the spa.

I said the similar lines to my husband. His response was supportive, with a hint of "why is she telling me this?" because he doesn't truly realize how difficult it is for me to get away. That's understandable since he's sequestered more often than not in his convalescent area (aka our bedroom). He'd love to need to day off instead of dreaming of having everyday on, so to speak.

I thought I had everyone prepared. Thought being the operative word. You see, my little social aspie creature, who a year ago would be happy to go an entire day without having to have a conversation with anyone around him has turned the opposite direction. The poor child is used to having someone entertain him in some way, shape or form. He's spent the past few months with family and/or friends, visiting or being visited, at home doing something extraordinarily fun or out and about doing summery things. It's great and has been a huge distraction in the absence of his father from his daily life, but it does not bode well when we have a chance for down-time... or I have a chance for down-time.

While I got to sleep in until eleven in the morning (sleeping in was more like I couldn't be roused due to sheer exhaustion), I haven't had much other time off. As a matter of fact, I spent the greater portion of today doing what I always do. Then when I reminded said kid about said day off for mama, he promptly called his aunt to tell her I needed him to go spend the night with her. Cause, you know, I'm taking the day off?

She wasn't game and she shouldn't have to be. My boy has plenty of independent play skills (despite him forgetting he has them) along with plenty of games, books, movies and toys to provide a rich, fun experience when no one is around to play with him. Instead, he was bored (which is code for "help me cope with not getting my expectations met").

And he started to meltdown... so Mom swooped in, took him outside where he was more able to keep himself together. We reviewed the misery which is his life (Sam's not home, Dad is having a bad pain day and Moster said no to staying the night). I told some stories of my childhood that revolved around having to entertain myself when I didn't want to. I'm not sure those stories help as much as the change of scenery and talking being used as a way to cope do.

I love that my kid is relishing in socialization while hating that he isn't prone to moderation. It's all or nothing. One extreme to the next... for now. The boy has learned a lot in the past year, especially in the past three or so months. He's been asked to deal with a huge amount of stress, more than any kid should have to bear. Through it all, he's been absolutely amazing considering all life has thrown our way... thrown his way.

Now that Daddy is out of the woods as far as he knows, we are seeing the kid's stress manifest in strange new ways, like this no longer being able to keep himself company anymore and not wanting any downtime at all. He's all go-go-go these days. Of course, that makes it harder for me to take any breaks because either I'm going with him, shadowing him with his peers and on the days he's sleeping over at my sister's, I'm running the husband to appointments, running errands and taking care of non-kid related things.

I knew he's been in sorta Asperger's pressure cooker all this time. I just didn't know what the result would be or when the lid would blow off-- I just knew eventually we'd find out! Well, this is part of it. The child doesn't want to be alone... at all. This isn't anxiety related, or not like it was before the Paxil (irrational fears keeping him prisoner), but its something. It's not wanting time to dwell on the what ifs, perhaps?

In any case, I'm trying hard to help him cope through this period, to remind him of his wonderful imagination and other outlets he has that are fun, yet independent. And I am encouraging him to do little things with his dad, like have lunch in bed together. As a matter of fact, I've been able to write this because the two guys went to the store together-- Daddy was finally feeling up to it.

Yet, I'm thinking with the manifestation of this newest symptom-- the inability to do anything solo-- it may be appropriate to go back to therapy. As a mom, I see this as a regression back into toddler-hood, when I couldn't take my eyes of my boy for a second without disaster. We are just a small step away from bringing him into the bathroom with us because he refuses to occupy any room by himself for more than two minutes. We are also a small step away from losing the ability to sleep in his room by himself (or self-soothe at bedtime). As the stress creeps out of his little (okay, bus sized) head, I worry about regression.

We've worked so hard for so long on all these independent and socialization skills. Matt has worked hard, extremely hard on acquiring skills and coping mechanisms, managing his behavior and expressing himself and feelings. I saw today his own frustration seep out. Yet in this, he recognized and expressed that he did not like how he was feeling. My heart breaks for him in these moments.

Facing the mortality of a loved one is hard as hell for a normal adult. For a kid with Asperger's Syndrome... well... is there an expression worse than "hard as hell"? Whatever you can come up with would fit.

So while I didn't get a true day off (which I never really expected anyway), I did get something that is important to moms: I got an understanding, a clearer picture of my son's reaction to his father's Chiari recovery. The only way I can help him get through this is to see the big picture. It's just one piece to the newest puzzle we are putting together.

We'll just keep working on it until he can find that balance between introversion and extroversion, always wanting to be alone or never wanting to be alone. Until we get it right, we'll all be taking a lot of deep breaths and taking things one second at a time. Like boy said just a few minutes ago (they came home a little while ago) "We'll try again tomorrow for a day off".

All sugared up and nowhere to hide

I love my child to pieces, but every so often I count down the hours to bedtime. This used to be much easier when the kid was 7 years old because we'd convinced him that bedtime was at 7:30pm. Even if we parents went to bed at 9:30pm, we still had two whole hours to say "who the eff is Mommy?" or "whose your Daddy?".  Now that the child is 10, he's to smart to be fooled into a 7:30 bedtime. What's worse is that he has friends who can verify that 7:30 is not the normal bedtime for tweens. Crap.

Now we are stuck with a 9pm bedtime. By that time, parents are too tired to go do the whole tucking in thing. The joy of Aspergers means that stopping that ritual would be similar to dropping a nuclear bomb on Ohio. It just wouldn't be cool. So, our happy behinds are dragged up the stairs with all the bedtime accouterments to perform said ritual. As Murphy's Law would have it, the more exhausted us grown-ups are the more labor intensive the bedtime requests seem to be. When we head back down the stairs 30 minutes later, we say a prayer to encourage God to make our child fall asleep fast enough so we can watch a television show we've DVR'd in peace before we fall asleep in our livingroom.

Normally, God mocks us by bestowing an a sudden, ravenous appetite for Frosted Mini Wheats or something on our child.

The Lord sayeth "The young shall need their bowls filled with fibrous foods when the parents have discovered a plot twist on the newest episode of Bones. Thy young will call from the top of stairs until thy will is met. Mothers will have to rewind the funniest/most amazing dialogue of the entire show so that the bowl is filleth."  

I know God mocks us because the child takes 2 different medications to help him fall and stay asleep. I know the Melatonin knocks me out immediately, but its effects are no match for that power cord plugged into my kid's behind.

Then there are times like tonight. I decide that since I had zero child free time today, that I would stay up to enjoy some solitude since everyone is in bed. Except, I hear the child bouncing, the chandelier is shaking periodically and my child continues to check on me because I'm standing between him and the giant bag of Easter candy his Grand-mommy gave him. 

I don't know about other children, but something happens to mine when he ingests sugar. I cannot be totally sure his sugar intake wasn't responsible for the recent tornado outbreaks. I am sure that this sugar intake prevents him from being able to sit in a chair. I knew he sneaked candy today when he started falling out of his chair. Really. No exaggeration. Since Easter left us with about 20lbs of candy, it's still fresh on the child's mind and he thinks it all belongs to him. (Since Grand-mommy doled out the family candy to him, his Aspie mind is made up)

Next year, he's getting Doritos in his Easter basket. And sugar free gum. And some stronger sedatives because he already takes them, but his growing body will demand more next year. The meds now reduce his speed from 750 mph to 50 mph without candy, but are 70% less effective after a solid chocolate bunny. Or as his dad would put it: He's got an electric power cord plugged in his butt that is impossible to dislodge (because he moves to quickly and we can't catch him).

At that point, as parents, we need Xanax. I'm not stretching the truth here at all. My child's hyper-activity means, as a family, we require medication to cope. So, I'm putting 5 Hour Engery and Xanax in the parental Easter baskets. Maybe even liquor.

We've tried to go the sugar-free candy route, but turns out it contains sugar alcohol. You know what sugar alcohol does to your body in large quantities? Anal leakage. It has a laxative effect that is intensified for a child. I do make almost sugar free cookies with sugar free icing, but they aren't Easter candy and I don't make them all the time. I really need to start making more cookie treats with a low sugar content (I've gotten really good about making them taste sinful).

The Easter candy is officially living in my bedroom from now on. It will be doled out responsibly to the kid and hopefully to us parents. Maybe, just maybe the poor kid will be able to move through the world at a normal speed for awhile-- until the next confounded holiday or the next time another grown up in his life besides his parents thinking buying affection with a lollipop the size of head is a great idea.

I wish I had the energy to compose a really hilarious image of my child with said power cord in his bum, but alas, I have not the energy or time to do so. I'll just leave the visual to you, dear reader, and your vivid imagination. I will tell you that I think our Jesus action figure laughs at us... which may be cause to call the Vatican, except I don't want a crowd of Catholic miracle lovers surrounding my house when I'm trying to get more mommy time. Nevermind, Jesus wanted to pose: