So, at the beginning of the summer we started CBT. I say we as I went into all the sessions (his choice not mine) and we both learnt & benefited. School starts tomorrow, and I have had good nights’ sleep for over a week. He stayed at a friend’s house on Friday with no drama or angst. At the moment he is singing in his bedroom after an hour of baking with me. This is the first last day of the holidays when I haven’t felt like rocking in a corner due to cumulative stress. This is an amazing breakthrough. I get that CBT won’t work for everyone, and I also get that he clicked with his therapist straight away, and she ‘got’ him straight away, explaining the science behind what he thinks & feels, suggesting pod casts and YouTube sites for both of us, and books for me. When the sessions end at the end of September, I’m going to miss them. I have learnt new words  – catastrophising and awfulising – and I also learnt that I do both of these far too much. I also learnt that I know more than I thought I knew, and all of the things and coping mechanisms I have done with him have been right, I just needed to teach him to do them himself. And, obviously, there have been lots of new things that we have both learnt too.

In a month, we will have been discharged from CAMHS (again). Whether we go back again remains to be seen. I would like to think that, at the moment, things are under control and we won’t need to go back at all, and if we do, it won’t be for a while, but I also know and understand that there are no rules to any of this. We will take each day, week, month and term as it comes, and deal with any issues that may come along.

I think the picture below sums up our summer quite well – this is what happens when your clinically anxious son has a summer of CBT……and we haven’t quite hit the teenage hormones yet!!!