anxiety Archives - Page 195 of 497

I’m a little lost right now

It's no secret that I'm struggling a bit right now. If I'm being honest, I'm struggling more than just a bit. I sound like a scratched record but the withdrawal from Paxil is killing me and it's impacting me in many areas of my life, this blog being one of them. Once upon a time, I had a direction and was moving in a somewhat linear fashion. Lately, most of what you will read here are random thoughts and experiences because that's just where I'm at. I know that makes it harder to follow and I understand that but my life isn't easy to live either. I'm really trying to make this user friendly and as helpful as to my families as possible. I ask that you remain patient with…

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April 10, 2018

Autism Parenting Insight / My thoughts

How U-Laces help my family and can probably help yours as well

I love connecting people with the technology that can improve their lives. When you're a special needs parent, sometimes the simplest life hack can make all the difference in the world. One example of this in my house, is U-Lace. I've worked with, written about and did a detailed review of U-Lace before. You can check out the YouTube video, as well as the gallery from that review below. https://youtu.be/vfbX5UnGvSw Click the image to view the gallery [foogallery id="67595"] Seeing as it's Autism Awareness month, I wanted to circle back and share how U-Lace has benefited my Autism family because they may just benefit yours as well. ☺ Let's start off by explaining what U-Laces are and how they can benefit a child with Autism. If you check out their…

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April 8, 2018

Gavin / My thoughts

It’s simply exhausting

The boys spent the night at Lizze's parents house last night. That left us with only Gavin in to worry about for a little while. In truth, only Gavin to worry about is a bit misleading. Gavin is an amazing kid/adult and we love him to the ends of the Earth and back but he is incredibly stressful to live with. We have to keep a closer eye on him than we do the other boys because Gavin lacks the capacity to self-regulate and completely lacks commonsense. I don't mean these in a disrespectful or degrading way either. He just requires a tremendous amount of time, energy and patience. It's exhausting. That said, we had a few hiccups last night but they weren't anything that pushed me over the edge.…

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April 8, 2018

Autism Parenting Insight / Confessions / My thoughts

Confessions of an #Autism Dad: I’m emotionally struggling tonight

I've been trying to write all day and I just can string my thoughts together in a way that makes sense outside of my own head. In the spirit of Autism Awareness month and in an attempt to help you better understand what at least this Autism Dad is struggling with, here's what I'm feeling tonight. I'm exhausted. I'm overwhelmed. I'm beyond stressed out. I'm totally emotionally drained. I'm completely physically drained. I'm finding myself in a dark place tonight. I'm feeling seriously demoralized and beaten down. I'm broken hearted for reasons that are too many to explain. I'm conflicted because I know tomorrow's a new day but it seems far away. I'm doing the best I can but I can't fix the many things in our lives that need…

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April 8, 2018

My thoughts

When your goal is to simply survive the day

I'm not having a good day and it's only 8:30 AM. I'm still not feeling well and I've got a busy day ahead of me. I had to deal with a teacher who clearly is teaching the wrong demographic of children and has no business working with special needs kids. I would address the problem directly with the teacher in question but unfortunately, there ends up being blowback for E while he's in class, in the form of public shaming. E and I met with the principal to let him know what's been going on inside the classroom. He was not happy to hear this and will be dealing with it accordingly. We are not the first to approach him about this situation. Elliott has state testing today and Emmett…

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April 6, 2018

Announcements / My thoughts

Here’s a massive update on my Facebook stalker

What's Been Happening As you may or may not already know, I've been experiencing ongoing issues with Facebook since the beginning of the year. Someone has been reporting all links back to my blog as offensive or malicious. This results in Facebook pulling all posts or blog updates that I've shared with my personal timeline or community page. I only post my blog updates to my own page and timeline. People typically share it from there. Unfortunately, Facebook also bans my blog URL https://www.theautismdad.com from Facebook completely. This means that no one is able to Like or Share anything that originates from The Autism Dad blog. My only recourse is to appeal each and every report, and I do. Facebook will then put human eyes on each report, determine that…

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April 6, 2018

Depression / My thoughts

I’ve been off #Paxil for a month and the nausea is still a problem

It's been about a month since I took my final dose of Paxil. To say it's been an easy process would be a boldface lie. Frankly, it's been an absolute nightmare. Slowly lowering my dose over 90 days was rough but it didn't truly suck until the Paxil was completely out of my system. Having taken my last dose about 30 days ago, the medication has been out of my system for about the last 25 or 26 days. It's a very short half life and that's one of the reasons it's so hard to come off of. For the first week or two, I was completely overcome by emotion. It was like Paxil had been functioning like a dam and when it was gone, the emotions it had kept…

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April 4, 2018

Elliott / My thoughts / School / Today's Victory / Victories

A MAJOR Victory flew under the radar yesterday

Yesterday was a rather challenging day for me personally, but I muddled my way through it. In all the frustration, stress and otherwise chaotic events of yesterday, something didn't get mentioned that should have. For years we've struggled with Elliott and homework. It didn't matter what it was or how much he had, it was a nightmare. There were plenty of times I was hanging on by a thread because the whole homework thing was too much. I don't know what happened or when it actually began but Elliott's attitude towards homework has changed. He does his homework right away and without issue. In fact, lately he's been working on his homework on the way home from school, like you see in the picture above. This deserves to be mentioned…

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April 4, 2018