Safety Plans

When a concerned therapist first warned me to plan for my safety and to remove myself from my son’s rages, it sounded like a strange suggestion coming out of nowhere. It felt like an exaggeration. Embarrassed to discuss a safety plan for me, and because there were so many more important things I still needed to focus on for his safety, I ignored it. I didn’t want to waste time or energy worrying about me. So, I dropped it. Besides, I could never abandon my son. He needed me. I am his mother, and he would never hurt me. Sure, my son scared me, but only when angry. I thought I could ride out his anger, and we would be okay. In reality, his anger had a habit of escalating into a rage that erupted at the drop of a hat. The mood of the house - one of survival. Do whatever necessary to avoid his wrath. We walked on eggshells around him.

My son directed this wrath primarily at myself. It went from saying mildly hurtful things to screaming insults and profanities at the top of his lungs. Frequently, these rages culminated in the destruction of nearby objects. When he didn’t get the results he wanted, threats of self-harm came next. I learned to hide the prescription bottles and kitchen knives. (Hiding the knives made preparing dinner challenging—having to sneak into another room for a knife every time I needed one). I learned to stop reacting to his threats. Instead, I would calmly tell him what would happen if he carried them out. Acknowledging my powerlessness to stop him if he made good on his threat, I firmly and confidently explained to him I too had an action plan. I promised to call 911. I then described what would happen when the first responders arrived. This standoff resembled a game of chicken and the only option left was for me to wait him out. Thank God he did not escalate past threats. I believed in this safety plan - our plan to keep him safe.

His verbal abuse disgusted me, but I knew I could handle it. I ignored the blatant disrespect and tried focusing on the bigger picture of my son, out of control and suffering. As his rage built, he had a tell—he would glare into my eyes with such a look of hatred, a warning signal he gave letting me know things were about to get intense. Buckle up for the ride.

I learned to cope by not showing my emotions during the rages. It was crucial to remove my feelings from the arguments instead of matching his volume. I used a trick to help with it - I pretended to watch the interaction between the two of us on television instead of living it in the now. It kept me calm, which I understood to be vital to his de-escalation. By not showing emotion, I thought I set an example of how emotions need not consume. But as our arguments continued, it somehow worked in reverse. The television watching exercise made him feel unheard, and so he ratcheted up his emotions until I finally reacted.

But I never wanted to react. I actually tried to instill the lesson in my son from a young age to respect girls and never hurt them. We would figure out the verbal abuse and threats eventually, and what a relief it was not any worse. So it came as a shock when his rages turned from verbal abuse to physical harm, and he directed it at me. In disbelief any child of mine would do such a thing, I justified the behavior to myself. It had to be a fluke. He must have gotten a little too angry, and his negative energy had to go somewhere. He didn’t hurt me, so it wasn’t serious. We were both surprised it happened. And it was just the one time.

As I retold the story to his therapist, and how his behavior happened so out of the blue, this therapist, very matter-of-factly mentions I needed to keep myself safe and walk away from the conflict. And he added, it wouldn’t surprise him if one day I told him my son had hurt one of us. Outrageous! Why would this therapist say such a thing? “He is only a child with a onetime mistake!” I wanted to yell in frustration. He then warned me to call the police if my son hurt any of us. Those words stung. Suddenly his therapy turned in such a different direction. What was it I could not see? He is my son. He would never hurt his mother.

I wrestled with this dilemma. Once a line was crossed, it meant it could happen again and with more intensity. And as I discovered wherever things escalated to during the last blow-up is where they began with the next. I needed to be cautious. However, I still could not wrap my mind around abandoning my son when he needed me the most. If he was so worked up with rage, how would he be if I walked out on him? Wouldn’t it be saying my safety was more important than his suffering? Wouldn’t I communicate that I didn’t love him enough to help him through this horrible experience? Conflicted, I stayed for his safety, but the fear grew.

It made for a challenging balance between being his mother and being my own person. The more I feared him, the less I mothered. I was afraid to correct him for infractions because, in the back of my mind, I knew he might hurt me. We had an imbalance of power in our home. His behavior was out of control. He walked all over me as the meltdowns grew with intensity. Because I was too afraid to correct him, it was easy to see why he believed he no longer required me to parent him. This defiance became the central theme of a circular argument that continued the mayhem in our home.

To be clear, it wasn’t as if I was oblivious to my safety. There was a magic line in the sand, a personal limit I had thought through, that would reveal itself when things were a real danger for me. I knew that if my son ever crossed that line, I would have no choice but to protect myself. But I also believed that day would never come.

I was wrong. At that moment, time stopped for me, and my reality shattered. I now understood I was not safe. No parent earns a badge of courage for remaining in a dangerous situation while it escalates. He was at maximum capacity. My child did not have the emotional ability to cope, especially during a violent storm orchestrated by his own hands. It felt like a betrayal as I enacted my plan, but for his safety and mine, I had to do more.

And more I did. I made a plan. It started with worrying about being trapped in the house and the fear of not being able to escape. My worst fears were of being overpowered or of being attacked in my sleep. Now I own stun guns I keep charged—one by my bedside and one in my car. Additional sets of keys are accessible throughout the house, and I have pepper spray. If things get bad, I have mapped out escape plans from every room in my house. The goal is to get quickly into my car and go. I have accepted the fact that keeping my cell phone with me is more than a convenience. It is a necessary habit in case I need to call for help. And I changed out the doorknobs on bedroom doors. They now require keys to unlock. I never want to use these keys or stun guns, but they are a part of my safety plan. And having a plan helps me sleep better at night. As the saying goes, plan for the worst and hope for the best.

With my plan in place, I then needed to help my daughter understand she needed one too. She is older than he is, and she has a car. If he escalates, and she no longer feels safe, she can walk out of the house. She feared walking out mid rage, as it would anger him even more. I assured her that her safety was just as important as his feelings. She needed to value herself enough to stay safe.

Part of her plan is to keep a copy of her keys with attached pepper spray hidden in her bedroom. She is to wait for a safe moment, walk out the front door, get into her car, and go to a friend’s home. Other places to ride out the storm are the library or grocery store.

But that plan wasn’t enough. What if my daughter couldn’t get out of the bedroom because her brother was pounding on the door? Would she know how to climb out of the window? I taught her how to push through the window screens to get out of the house. Although we replaced the doorknob to her room, she was told that hiding in her bedroom closet was never part of her safety plan, no matter how natural a choice it was.

No one wants to plan escapes from potential threats, nor do they want to believe that the child they raised poses a danger to himself or others. The reality that I must value my safety is as essential as his feelings and safety. If I am not safe, I won’t be able to help him pick up the pieces after he calms. A mother’s instinct puts her child’s needs before her own. She gets so used to doing so much that it becomes a difficult concept to put herself first. A hard act to unlearn, but vital to do so. Otherwise, it can develop into a codependent relationship that continues to spiral out of control. As I see now from writing this piece, the codependency we somehow developed was not a way to help my son change, but a definite way to ensure that we remained in danger.

It’s been about a year since I lived in fear of my son. I am thankful that our home life is entirely different now. I am convinced that it was necessary to plan for everyone’s safety and to communicate the need for the plans. My family has grown by leaps and bounds over the past year. It is with a grateful heart that I say since the horrible circumstances of why we needed to develop safety plans, we have not had another need to implement them. My son found help. We all did as a family.