Hi Soloma, Anxiety causes terrible problems and panic attacks –you are doing everything right by regrouping yourself using this site and using any other help you can get.
I’m not sure if you mean by saying ‘staying away from others’ whether you mean friends or family but although this may be an answer in the short term it isn’t good in the long term. Friends talk about things that have nothing to do with gambling and time spent thinking about anything but gambling is good for your mind and soul. Being switched on to one person and his problem 24 hours a day doesn’t help you or him or those around you who love you – and believe you me, I know that not thinking about your son and what he is doing is really hard.
Therein lies a thought, however, which is, that if you are worrying morning, noon and night about what he is doing, short of locking him in and throwing away the key you will not stop him gambling, so how much better it is to look after yourself first and save your energy for you .
Worrying about your son as a person is, of course, hard but he has within him the power to change his life, the ability to control his gambling, and the ability to live a wonderful life. That is the person that is your son and with the right treatment and without enablement you can give him the best support. We believe that from the time they are born we can make everything right for our children but with this addiction, that which we believed to be the right thing to do is often wrong.
Don’t try and second guess your son yet, don’t worry about trusting him yet – it will come. Be careful how you question him when you are feeling uneasy – if he is trying to control his addiction he will want you to trust him but it is far too early to trust in anything apart from the fact that he is trying. It would be naive for you to trust especially when he won’t be able to trust himself for a long time.
One of the hardest things of all is letting go of the way you thought/hoped it would be for your child – his future will be different to anything you dreamed of but it can be wonderfully rewarding too. I know that my CG is and always will be a CG but I trust him completely to protect his gamble-free life, I trust him to live in control of his addition and I love his company and I am happy.
I hope this helps
Velvet