Last Wednesday was quite a day in our house. For the second time in 13 months, we have been discharged from CAMHS. This obviously means that after our discharge last October we have to have another referral (in January), which was very hard at the time (details about that here), but now, almost 11 months later, it was the best thing that could have happened.

Luckily, our referral took us back to the same case worker as before, and he listened to our concerns, got our son to do an anxiety test, and was going to talk to colleagues about the possibility of re-testing for ASD. No joy with ASD, but the test showed that he now had clinical anxieties, and so was eligible for CBT on the NHS, but we would have to wait.

We waited for a little while, but no where near as long as I was fearing, and we started the therapy with the most amazing therapist. She got him straight away, explained everything in scientific detail, and barely raised an eyebrow when he talked about neurotypicals annoying him. The CBT made a fantastic improvement (details here) but there were still missing pieces. He was almost as good as he could be, but I wasn’t ready for him to be discharged. Luckily Super Therapist was also trained in EDMR (details here) and so that followed CBT.

It was a little strange, and I thought I would find it much more distressing than I did. Watching his body language throughout was fascinating from a scientific point of view, and I could certainly draw lots of similarities from my training in animal therapies. He found the sessions very tiring, and after the first two he was incredibly clingy and emotional, and although he slept well, he didn’t feel refreshed when he woke up.   After the final session last week, however, he has been better. Maybe a little more tactile than before, but definitely more confident, more assertive and possibly even less tolerant of those he doesn’t like!!

So, on Wednesday we were discharged from CAMHS. Super Therapist and all the wonderful people who work constantly with tight deadlines and even tighter budgets have worked they magic on our youngest, and, for now, we have no more appointments, no more safety net and it is equally exciting and terrifying. He says he feels more himself, and he can feel a big improvement, but he still doesn’t like school (meeting on Wednesday so expect another blog at the end of the week), doesn’t like most people, and still doesn’t like being social – but that’s fine. We know that he will always be an anxious person, a worrier. We know that he will always have ASD traits. What his therapy has done is allowed him to take control of them, rather than him controlling him.

Super Therapist’s final words to us were that we could always get a referral back, if we need to. Hopefully we won’t, but it does feel more like Au Revoir than Good Bye……..