My son's battle with dread and fear.

I have to write tonight or I will explode. A bad day today for my son. Physically he is grey and drawn. Emotionally he is sad and worried. This morning he was hard to get out of bed and bolshy as well as tearful. Things were good last week when he went back to school and I, foolishly, thought that it was all going to be ok. I should have known that was being rather too optimistic.

My new book on CBT and coping with an anxious child doesn't tell me how to cope with these situations. I am left angry, frustrated, desperately sad for my little boy. He tells me he is now in set 3 of all his subjects, a move downwards. He comes home from school quite happy, but gets sadder as the evening goes on. He tries hard with his homework, but gets bad tempered when he can't do things.

I don't know what we would do without student support at his school. They are just lovely and they know how to get him to lessons, calm him down.

I just don't know what to do. The summer holidays were pretty good, but now we are plunged back into the uncertainty, the misery, the tears and the fear. I am so afraid that he will spend his whole life battling mental illness. I can't tell you what a beautiful, talented boy he is, but when I see him grey and drawn, besieged by dread and worry, I am lost. Lost. I want to help him, but I fail him every day.

New Term, an annoying husband and a good CBT for children book.

My husband is a miserable bugger sometimes. I am too, of course, but really ... He is really grumpy at the moment and having got up early then cooked a delicious lunch for him I was not impressed when he criticised it. It really was delicious, but the lack of compliments flowing from him made me ask him " Do you like it? Its yummy isn't it? " His reply was that yes it was nice, but that his noodles were stuck together. He was very lucky that he didn't get the bloody noodles over his head.

What is it with people who can't say nice things?? Did he need to say that some of the noodles were stuck together? Why couldn't he look for the positive? It wasn't that bad. It just pisses me off that I had worked hard, made a nice lunch and all he could do was criticise. I said to him " Can you not just be grateful I cooked you lunch? I've worked hard to make something delicious..." He tried to pass his comment off as a joke, but I didn't think it was funny.

I get annoyed that life is always worse for him. His work is harder. His body aches more than mine. For goodness sake. When he does cook, which is rarely, its always the same stuff - spag bol, roast if we're lucky. And I always praise what he does. Does he not realise that its me that cleans the toilet, does the shopping, hoovers, cooks,takes our son to all his therapist appointments ...

I am painting him in a bad light I realise and, to be honest, he is a good, kind man whom I love. Its just that sometimes a girl gets pissed off with their man and its easier to vent on here than to get into a full scale row. There are times I am glad that he works nights and I can just shut the door and settle down with a glass of wine by myself.

Changing the subject, my son's therapist recommended a book for me to read. It came yesterday and I'm about half way through. Its called Overcoming your child's fears and worries - A Guide for parents using Cognitive Behavioural Techniques. by Cathy Cresswell and Lucy Willetts. So far it seems pretty good and I am hoping I can get my husband to read it too so we can both work off the same page with our boy.

Whether or not he will remains to be seen, but I will try. I think he finds all this very difficult ( dur ... don't we all??) and tends to bury his head in the sand or get frustrated. I might vent my frustrations on here, but in real life and infront of my son I am very calm and caring. My husband struggles to know how to behave, how to talk to him.

Anyway I hope the book will help. My son's first week at school went pretty well. He was upset the second day, but enjoyed it when he got there. And ... good news ... he walked in all three days. I really hope this term will be better.

Anxiety continues.

School starts tomorrow for my sons. Son #2, my son who is struggling with anxiety issues, is full of worries about tomorrow. I try to be calm and talk about positive things, but he cannot see how he will ever be better. I just don't understand what he is worried about or why he becomes so consumed with anxiety. This summer holiday he has been pretty good, pretty normal.

He continues to see a therapist once a week through CAMHS who is using CBT but I can't see that it is having much effect. My son is stubborn and finds it difficult to open up to a stranger who he doesn't particularly like.

I just want him to be better, to live a normal life, to be happy. We have had times in the last 6 months when I longed to hear him laugh again and, thank goodness, he has laughed over these holidays. But we are back again to him being drawn and shadowed. I don't know how parents with seriously ill children cope because I find this situation so difficult. I keep plodding on, but just as I think things are getting better they crash back down.

His sadness and fear impact on his life in a way that is heartbreaking. He is such a bright, funny, cheerful boy ... or, at least, he was. I just don't understand this change. I hope that a new year at school brings new confidence and an end to this 6 months of awfulness.

Keeping going ...

I have written on my main blog about how I am feeling. I haven't gone into details particularly, just said that I am struggling and can see the signs of depression. Its not as bad as when I had PND, but I can feel it starting.9 months of first bullying and belittling at work and then, on top of that, my son's struggle with depression has taken its toll.

I told my husband that I had made an appointment to see our GP as I want to be honest with him.Part of me wishes I hadn't though as I don't want to put him under any more stress. It makes me feel that I need to try as hard as I can to appear normal. If people, including my husband, ask if I am ok I reply breezily " Yes thanks, I'm fine!"

But I am not. I went to football today and it was painful. It was the longest hour I have experienced in a long time. All I wanted to do was leave - just go and lie down on the side of the pitch. But I didn't because I need people to think I am ok. If I had said I was feeling ill it would have attracted more attention than struggling through the game. People don't want to know that the world is closing in on you and you just want to have it all stop.

Things got better. I went for a drink with the girls and in their company I came back to life. It is such a bloody effort though - planning things to do to keep me occupied, putting a smile on my face ...

I hate that after all these years I am back in this place - a place of muffled emptiness, where nothing has any point or purpose. I am only writing this because this is my honest place. In my real world I am keeping on - cooking tea, going to work, comforting my son, supporting my husband, working. I have to keep going for these next 12 days, until I have my doctor's appointment

BritMums Live Failure ...

I am sitting in my hotel room, lap top on my lap funny enough, telly on, ready to order food. Where should I be? At the BritMums Live Award Ceremony. I don't really know why I went in the first place.I paid for my ticket and my beautiful husband paid for this amazing hotel room. I went along, a little nervous, but hoping to have fun.

Oh My God. Who was I kidding? How many circuits of the hall did I make before I was just overcome with the whole bloody loneliness of it all? Lots of bloggers chatting away ... and to be honest I did chat to people too. But at the end of the day you are not going to find bosom buddies in the flash of a five minute conversation are you? Complete strangers are not going to say "Hey! We've just met!! Come for dinner!"

In the end I just thought "What the hell am I doing here?" I am a Finalist in a category of the BiBs, but they are just about to start and I can't face being there, to sit alone in a room full of jolly strangers, fighting back tears. So here I am.

And I wonder why my son is depressed ... The closest I got with anyone this afternoon was with Ruby Wax. She spoke about her web site Black Dog Tribe which is a meeting place for those suffering from mental illness. Afterwards I bought her book and as she signed it I started to say what a good job I thought she was doing. I couldn't finish my sentence. I just choked up and the tears started to well. I felt awful. I am so emotional at the moment. Even as I type the tears are dripping down my face.

I think perhaps I am heading for depression again. This year has been so hard and my emotion is so close to the surface all the time. Inside I feel so fragile.

I don't know if I will win an award and I don't really care. I don't know if I will go back tomorrow. The fun of these things is to be with friends, to talk and exchange ideas. This is more about sitting and listening to speakers. And I have nobody to sit with. I just feel terrible that my husband has taken 3 days off and paid for me to come here. How can I tell him that I gave up and sat in my hotel room? I feel so pathetic and so lonely. This is the only place I can come to to be honest and write my feelings without fear of ... oh God, I don't know. I just hate that I am so bloody weak. And what I hate more than anything is that I have passed my mentalness on to my son.

Frustration and anger and moodiness

Things seemed better today for a while. My son went to school in a reasonably positive frame of mind and came back in the same way. All was well until the three boys - my two sons and my husband, decided to have a nerf gun war. And then it all went wrong. Bad tempers, sulking ... and that was just my husband.

It is so frustrating. I love my husband very much and he is a good kind man, but when he gets angry about something, or with someone, he cannot see that he might be in the wrong. With both him and my son in moods I could just walk out of the house and drive straight to the airport.

Of course I don't. I spend my evening attempting to pour oil on troubled waters, trying to calm them both down, sort out their sulky stubbornness. My husband rarely gets cross. He is calm, loving, funny, but when he is tired and frustrated a dark cloud can take hold of him and he just goes ... well, really quite annoying really. It bugs me that his behaviour can be so childish. After all, he is the adult. He should swallow his pride for the sake of our son. Our son should not be so stubborn and rude himself.

I suppose its all just a reflection of the situation in our family - tension, frustration, unspoken anger. My son has all the selfish egocentricity of a teenager. My husband has been working non-stop, awful hours. In the end something has to break.

I have made an appointment to talk to the SENCO at my son's school. Now I have to spend my evening sorting out yet another problem when all I want to do is scream " Pull yourselves together!!! This pathetic from both of you!!!!"

Depression in young people.

It's been quite a while since I wrote on here. Partly because life has been busy, partly because my son began to get better. This week has been half term here and my son was due to go away with the school on an adventure holiday. He went last year with his old school and absolutely loved it. It was touch and go this year as to whether he would be well enough to go, but in the end he did go and we were very proud of that.

My husband, eldest son and I were looking forward to a stress free week together. Sadly this only lasted 2 days. On the second day we got a phone call to say my son was not coping, wouldn't stop crying. I came off the phone and couldn't stop my own tears dripping down my face. We drove home from the garden centre where we had been having lunch and I packed a bag to drive down to the coast.

Before I left the three of us just held each other quietly. Then off I went.

When I got there to pick him up he was silent, subdued ...  a shadow of what he was this time last year. We drove home together and as we got closer to home he began to cheer up. We started to sing along to the radio.

This whole experience is exhausting as a parent. To be with someone who is constantly negative, constantly needy is so incredibly draining. I try to be patient, loving, reassuring, but some days its too much. I just want to scream.

The therapy sessions he is having with CAMHS are appalling so far. The therapist is an incompetent nincompoop. I phoned my GP on Friday, having reached a low ebb and was told by the delightful receptionist to phone back next Thursday ... or I could have an appointment on the 3rd July. I curbed my impulse to say that I hoped my son hadn't actually killed himself by next Thursday and asked if there was nothing sooner bearing in mind my 12 year old's desire to be dead. A vacancy in the doctor's schedule on Monday miraculously opened. But that was still 3 days away.

This whole experience has revealed to me the hopeless position one is in when confronted by illness like this. You have to fight for everything.

So ... tomorrow my jobs are:

• phone GP to discuss uselessness of CAMHS therapist ( does he even have a qualification??)
• phone school to ask SENCO for appointment for help.
• Try and push for counselling somewhere effective.

I so desperately want my son to be better. I look at photos of him a year ago and wish I could get him back. I just have to stay positive. He did start to get better and this is just a set back. We are in a far better position than some people.