Posted by Racer on February 18, 2004, at 19:52:47
In reply to Teenager late (AGAIN) for school, posted by fallsfall on February 18, 2004, at 7:16:41
I was late every day. I couldn't get up in the morning. Didn't matter when I went to bed, because I couldn't sleep. My mother, unlike your daughter's mother, really just zoned out about everything going on with me. Oh, well...
From the time my grandfather first got sick, until my grandmother's death several years later, I never slept through a night without the sort of horrific nightmares that keep your eyes wide open all night long. I was depressed, being abused at home and at school, and really, really needed help.
Go ahead, ask me. I know you're dying to ask me. It's OK, you're allowed to ask. I'll even volunteer the information: No, at the time I did not know how to ask for help. No, at that time in my life, there would have been no way for me to tell my mother what was wrong -- because I didn't have any words for it. One counselor I saw once or twice at that time started to bring it out of me back then -- and got transferred to another rotation before we got anywhere. It took that one counselor asking the same question dozens of different ways for me to get to where I could start to try to describe what I was going through. Looking back now, I wish so much that I'd been allowed to stick with her. I could have been saved almost three decades of agony and anguish. The other counselors focussed on my behavior, on my thoughts about why I was doing what I was doing. This one therapist asked, over and over, what I was feeling, what the sense was, the mood.
Now I'm here, long after, going through the same steps with a new therapist. I've got a bigger vocabulary, but still can't describe the feeling, the mood, the atmosphere.
I guess what I'm suggesting is that you get your daughter to a really good adolescent psychologist yesterday. It really does sound as if something's going on, and if you can save her from herself, you'll be her hero for life.
poster:Racer
thread:315042
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20040209/msgs/315332.html