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Sections of this article:
01, children do not want to socialize after illness, is a normal state
02, if the child goes out frequently, the risk is very large
03, the 3 degrees of reluctance to socialize, which kind of child belongs?
After most adolescents and students suffer from mental disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder, their personalities become self-enclosed. Especially after taking a leave of absence due to illness, they stay at home almost all day playing games, brushing their mobile phones, sleeping, and not wanting to go out. Some even shut themselves in their rooms and don't have much communication with their parents.
Many parents are anxious, they feel that only if their children are willing to go out of the house and deal with people, this disease can get better! If the child continues like this, will he not be disconnected from society, more and more self-enclosed, and the whole person will be ruined?!
Some parents sighed and washed their faces with tears, although they did not dare to say children, but they were very desperate;
Some constantly persuade children to go out and walk more, contact people, "your disease is suppressed", but the child does not listen, but also feel that the parents are annoyed;
Some parents are more grumpy, especially fathers are more common, and they will even smash the door of the child's room in a hurry, break the door, and scold the child, causing a fierce parent-child conflict.
If parents have the above performance, please calm down and restore rationality. These are not correct and scientific ways to cope, not only can not make children willing to go out to socialize, but also make the child's condition more and more serious, parent-child relationship is getting worse and worse.
What should parents do to make their children really willing to go out and socialize and go to recovery?
In two articles today and tomorrow, we will analyze in detail and provide rational and scientific ways to deal with it.
01, children do not want to socialize after illness, is a normal state
First of all, I understand that parents want their children to go out and socialize, which is a good starting point and a rehabilitation goal that we pursue.
But parents must be aware of this:
People with depression and bipolar disorder are reluctant to socialize, which is their normal reaction in an abnormal state and is one of the symptoms of the disease.
In other words, the idea of asking people with depression and bipolar disorder to go out and socialize before they improve is unreasonable, and can even be said to be absurd.
Parents need to understand their child's current mental state. Children with depression and bipolar disorder have suffered a large number of superimposed psychological traumas. Usually, many of these traumas come from their social circles, such as school classmates, friends they know outside the home, etc. So as soon as they face these people, they are prone to activation of trauma, feeling very anxious, afraid, and even panic.
The image comes from the Internet
Is it okay for children to join some new circles and meet some new friends?
This often doesn't work either. Because children after illness are often depressed, inferior, sensitive, and paranoid personality changes, even in the face of friendly strangers, they will feel uneasy, very afraid that others will look down on them.
Moreover, for children who are out of school, they are even more reluctant to go out and socialize. Others (especially neighbors) often ask curiously, "Why don't you have to go to school?" "This will make the child very embarrassed, and the feeling of inferiority and shame will be stronger."
So go play with a good friend who knows they're out of school? But others often have to go to class and write homework, and may not have time. Even if there is time, when chatting, friends will inevitably talk about things in school, which is easy to activate the child's psychological trauma, or evoke the child's sense of loss, "everyone is learning and progressing, only I stand still", "I have no topic with my friends, they are going to leave me".
For patients, this taste is very uncomfortable; what can be done without staying at home?
Many sick children are even grateful for the normalization of epidemic prevention and control now, they want to continue to attend classes, but they are afraid of going to school, online classes can temporarily relieve them, and the learning status has rebounded. But when schools resume offline teaching, they will face problems again.
Therefore, patients hide at home, shut themselves in the room, at least temporarily do not have to face these pains, psychologically have a certain sense of security; but also to avoid their superimposed psychological trauma is constantly activated, to avoid the formation of new psychological trauma in the social, which is beneficial to the disease.
If parents do not understand the child's feelings and psychological activities at this time, always hope that the child will go out, contact with people, or even urge and force, the child's emotional fluctuations will be greater, and even quarrel with parents, hitting people and smashing things at home.
Then when the follow-up consultation, the doctor will think that the child's condition has worsened, increase the amount of medicine, and even hospitalize the child. If the child's original diagnosis was depression, the doctor may also think that the child's irritability at home is a hypomanic/manic attack, and change the diagnosis to bipolar disorder, which is a more serious "major mental illness" than depression.
If so, aren't parents doing bad things with good intentions, contrary to the original intention of hoping that their children will be better?!
02, if the child goes out frequently, the risk is very large
However, not all patients with depression and bipolar disorder are reluctant to go out, and a small number of patients even go out frequently. This deserves the parents' high attention and determines whether it falls into the following situations.
First, does the child have a hypomanic/manic episode?
The core symptom of a hypomanic/manic attack is "three highs":
Emotions are high, and during that time there is a constant feeling of joy, excitement, and even excitement;
Thinking is easy, talking a lot, speaking fast, and loving to talk to people;
Energetic, set up a lot of plans and thought it would not be difficult to complete.
Because patients feel good about themselves during hypomanic/manic episodes, they don't shy away from socializing and even want to find someone to communicate with, talking endlessly about their good feelings and plans.
The image comes from the Internet
If a child is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, parents should pay special attention to whether the child is in the condition.
If the child is diagnosed with depression, parents should not take it lightly, and some depressed patients will also have this situation. If the child is not taking antidepressants, it means that the child may be a typical bipolar disorder patient, not simple depression, it is recommended to see a psychiatrist as soon as possible to adjust the medication regimen; if you are taking antidepressants, it may be a "turning" reaction caused by taking antidepressants, which we have talked about in detail before.
Second, is the child going out frequently to drink alcohol, abuse prescription drugs, or even take drugs?
Some patients with depression and bipolar disorder will release the huge pressure in their hearts in an irrational way, such as going to bars to go crazy, drinking, playing games in Internet cafes all night, and even abusing prescription drugs and drugs to evolve into comorbid addiction diseases.
We have a patient, Xiao Qian, who, depending on her condition at the time, is likely to be diagnosed with depression or even bipolar disorder. When she was seriously ill, she smoked and drank heavily, often ignored her parents' obstruction of clubbing until the early hours of the morning, and also smoked marijuana, K powder, methamphetamine, and smoked "laughing gas" addiction...
There may be parents who do not know what "laughing gas" is. "Laughing gas" is nitrous oxide, which is an anesthetic gas in clinical practice, with obvious analgesic effect; it is also used in the food industry to send cream and preserve fruits.
However, many young people at home and abroad fall in love with the excitement brought about by smoking "laughing gas", and abuse it madly in bars or carnival parties, which brings great harm to the body. The media has reported that in 2017, a Chinese student studying in Seattle became addicted to smoking "laughing gas", and after half a year, he developed symptoms of inability to stand and urinary and urinary incontinence, and had to return to China for treatment after ending his study abroad.
Therefore, parents should be cautious and careful about their children's abuse of prescription drugs and various new drugs, which will make their children's condition more complex and difficult to treat.
Third, do children go out frequently to go on a shopping spree?
Regarding the excessive shopping behavior of some people with depression and bipolar disorder, we specially pushed 2 articles last week for analysis.
Fourth, is the child trapped in an irrational relationship?
Especially parents who have daughters at home, pay more attention.
It is not that people with depression and bipolar disorder must not fall in love, but if the child's condition is still more serious, they are prone to emotional instability in their feelings and frequent quarrels with lovers.
If the other party proposes to break up, the child is out of love, which is easy to form a major psychological blow, which is likely to aggravate the disease.
In case of encountering a "scumbag" or "scumbag", not only will they be dumped, but they will also suffer greater psychological harm, and the child may even be born lightly, or make other extreme behaviors.
If the father finds that his daughter is easy to fall into a relationship and is difficult to extricate herself from, "love brain", he must also take the initiative to reflect on the parent-child relationship between father and daughter.
In clinical psychological intervention, we found that if the father-daughter long-term parent-child relationship is not good, such as the father's lack of attention to the daughter, companionship, and even the education method is relatively rough, the daughter may excessively desire the love of the opposite sex when she grows up, and is easily blinded by superficial small favors and rhetoric, and loses her mind in love. The patient we treated, Allie, is a prime example.
And the "love brain" girl in case of encountering a scumbag with ulterior motives, it is easy to be PUA, and suffer great psychosomatic harm.
So, when children's condition has not improved significantly, their reluctance to socialize is not a bad thing, but reduces the above risks.
03, the 3 degrees of reluctance to socialize, which kind of child belongs?
Of course, we can't let our children escape socializing all the time. Under the premise of meeting some conditions, parents can take correct and scientific methods to slowly guide, children can speed up recovery, and can really go out.
Before providing a specific scientific method, parents should first determine which of the following situations the child belongs to:
First, the child's self-isolation is mild.
Although they are reluctant to go out and have contact with people outside the family, they have a fair relationship with their parents at home, and they can maintain normal communication between parents and children. When children talk to their parents about topics of interest, they even talk and laugh.
That is to say, although the child's social function is seriously impaired, the family's role and communication function are still normal.
The "role and communication function of the family" mentioned here refers to the role that the child undertakes in the family and the functions and affairs that need to be performed accordingly. For example, the basic living and eating can be completed by themselves, can properly undertake some housework, have basic communication with their families, respect the elderly, love their younger brothers and sisters, and so on.
Among the superimposed psychological traumas suffered by such children, it is likely that fewer from families, but more from schools, and there are serious learning disabilities, and even can not go to school. Many parents also feel that most of the time when the child is at home is relatively stable, but when others mention learning and school, the child is easily angry and irritable.
The image comes from the Internet
The second situation is more serious than the first: the child is not only reluctant to go out to socialize, but also less willing to talk to his parents at home, and only has the most basic communication of a few words.
This shows that the child's social function is not only seriously damaged, but also its family role and communication function are damaged, which means that parents have caused superimposed psychological trauma to the child, may lack companionship, attention, or often blame, criticism, etc., and the parent-child relationship is relatively bad.
Some parents are also aware of this, such as long-term lack of companionship, often accusing, criticizing and so on. They are distressed about their children, and out of a certain sense of compensation, they may propose to take their children out on a trip, hoping that the children can be happy.
But some children, because of the sensitive and suspicious paranoid personality, may understand the intentions of their parents from a negative perspective, such as "I am so uncomfortable, are you still in the mood to plan a trip?" "Can I get this disease cured by going out and playing?!" You can't understand Me at all! ”
The third case is the most serious: the child stays in his room all day, the communication with the family is basically zero, he does not even want to see his parents, the family has to deliver food, and the social function and the role and communication function of the family are seriously impaired.
At this time, the child's condition is already very serious, they may frequently self-harm, prepare for suicide (write suicide note, confess affairs, prepare tools, etc.), or have committed suicide but attempted, or do not eat or drink for many consecutive days, intending to go on hunger strike and commit suicide.
Some children may also have psychotic symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations, such as feeling that someone is spying on and murdering themselves, feeling that food has been poisoned, and refusing to eat. Others may hear accusations, laugh at their own voices, or even command auditory hallucinations, and may act extremely according to the instructions of the auditory hallucinations. This is very dangerous!
We have seen a patient who has severe auditory hallucinations. One day, he frequently heard the voice of a young woman at home humiliating and insulting him. He firmly believed that someone outside the house was cursing him, and in a fit of rage, he went to the kitchen and grabbed a kitchen knife and rushed out of the house, trying to kill "the young woman".
Fortunately, after he left the house, he only saw a few children, and some elderly people, and did not see "young women", plus his family rushed out to stop it, so that it did not cause a tragedy. His parents were afraid when they thought about it, what if a young woman really passed by?
Therefore, parents need to be highly vigilant and carefully distinguish which situation the child belongs to, otherwise tragedy may occur if they are not careful.
So, for the above 3 situations, how should parents deal with each other? Tomorrow's article continues to analyze and provide recommendations.