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15 year old with severe Social Anxiety and OCD

Asked By: Anonymous     Views: 889 times

I am wondering if you might be able to guide me in order for me to help my son. He is 15 years old and we recently were told he suffered from severe social anxiety disorder along with some OCD. At this point the social anxiety has taken right over and he is suffering extremely in highschool. He is in grade ten this year and has been out of school more then in. He was prescriped a medication but will not take it. He wont seek treatment either. When I speak to him about this he gets extremely upset with me and says hes fine and hes not living on medication. The school says the support him but in the next breath say hes about to be removed from school for days missed. We do have a medical note on file regarding his condition. I am a mother who honestly doesnt know how to deal with this and what Im doing right or wrong anymore. I dont want to enable him but dont want to hurt him. I dont know if im being to harsh when i say, no your going to school. I am so lost and desperate to help him that I think im screwing everything up for him.

In order to have any chance of resolving this problem you need to understand the following basics:

1. Given the current anxiety-driven primitive functioning level of your child he is not capable of "initiative" for any healing process. Therefore; let go of any unrealistic expectations.
2. You need to understand your role of "enabling" his "addiction to avoidance".
3. You need to decide if you have the motivation to make changes; empowering vs. enabling, setting limits, faciltating effective communication, and more.
4. In order to to this it is crucial that you be ready to learn to manage your own emotions and anxiety regarding the empowering process.

At this point treatment can begin. Lot's of relevant self-help content for you in the book "Beyond Shyness" and the DVD "Social Anxiety: The Untold Story".