Kicking It Down the Line

Part 5 The letter....

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

One morning, just before my son left for sixth form college, a letter was pushed under my home office door. By the time I picked it up and began to read, he had already left to catch the bus.

The letter was a confusing, emotional jumble of thoughts. He wrote about how he had been living under a different name online, one that reflected a female identity. He mentioned a recent conflict within one of his online groups, and then, buried within the paragraphs, he revealed that he had attempted to take his own life as a result of it. The letter ended with “your daughter,” followed by the female name he had been using online.

I was in shock. My heart broke as I reread his words, trying to make sense of everything he was carrying alone.

Soon after, I found a box hidden under his bed. Inside it was fetish gear, along with strips of knotted-up t-shirts. Alarmed, I did some research and realised it was linked to auto-asphyxiation, a dangerous and potentially deadly form of self-stimulation. I was terrified. I had no idea how deep his pain had gone, or what he might do to himself next.

We sat down to talk. He opened up, at least a little. Most of his distress seemed to center on how isolated he felt at college, how impossible it was for him to make friends in real life, and how much he had come to depend on online communities for his sense of identity and self-worth. We spoke about the dangers of auto-asphyxiation, but he brushed off my concern, insisting that we didn’t need to worry.

But I was worried. Desperately. He must have been visiting some very dark corners of the internet to be exposed to this. I tried to restrict his access, to pull him back into something safer, more stable, but by then, it already felt too late.

I took him back to the GP, and once again, he was referred to CAMHS. In the meantime, I had started searching for support myself. I found online parent groups and other families who were facing the same confusion and concerns. I joined them, listened to podcasts, and read the stories of detransitioners. We watched some of these together, I was desperate to help him see that rushing into a new identity might be a response to loneliness and trauma, rather than a true reflection of who he was. I could feel it, I knew this was coming from a deeper pain.

By the time we finally received another appointment with CAMHS, I no longer trusted the system. The session was held online. The woman conducting the interview had no background on my son, no history, no context. And yet, within minutes, she asked him if he wanted to actively transition and told him that, now he was 17, he could self-refer for treatment.

I was stunned.

After everything we’d been through, after all the confusion, the withdrawal, the self-harm, the online influences, that was the takeaway? A pathway forward without any exploration of the why?

After speaking with my husband, we made the decision to pull him out of the system. We couldn’t trust it to protect or understand him. We agreed to pursue private therapy somewhere he might be truly heard, rather than rushed toward a solution that didn’t feel grounded in who he really was.

We found a wonderful therapist, someone he met with once a week throughout that year. It felt like a small step in the right direction. He was making plans to go to university, and we wanted to help him prepare for that next chapter. We supported him in finding a part-time job, and for a while, he seemed to be doing well, more stable, more focused. In parallel, we also put him on a waiting list for an autism assessment. We had long suspected that some of his challenges might be rooted there, and we hoped that a proper diagnosis could bring clarity not just for us, but for him too.

The therapist told us she thought he might be “kicking it down the line” that he wasn’t ready to take action but also might not be fully honest in their sessions. Still, we felt reassured. She believed he wouldn’t make any major decisions in the near future, and at the time, that was all we were hoping for: time. Time for him to grow, to reflect, to heal. Time for things to change.

His university course involved two years abroad. In our minds, that built in even more time, more distance from immediate medical interventions, more opportunity to mature before making irreversible choices.

But we were wrong. So wrong.