Lightbulb moment - even his "stress disorder" was about getting supply

I persuaded XN to get therapy at the beginning of this year, because he was unhappy and had "anger management issues" (my polite way of telling him he was a nutcase).

He saw a psychologist for an initial assessment and paid for himself to have CBT.

The cognitive behavioural therapist diagnosed him with a "stress disorder" and taught him CBT techniques to reprogramme his negative thinking and his stress & anxiety.

Funnily enough...this gave him an ideal opportunity to get lots of supply from both me & his mum.

During one of our last conversations, I'd been worried about him so had called him (he'd been down the day before but I deliberately hadn't called him that evening because I didn't want to stifle him).

So...I called him on the Saturday morning and he said he was about to phone his mum and ask her to go food shopping with him because he couldn't face the stress of buying food for himself. He said he didn't know what to buy.

I gave him a talking to and told him that this is the kind of thing (having his mum take him shopping) that he ends up beating himself about up after.

[It turns out the real reason he'd been down the day before was because he'd spent about 2 hours talking to the girl he'd started idealising in work and he didn't think she fancied him so his ego was bruised - I found this out when I saw his "anxiety book" that he'd left open by my side of the bed when I went to stay with him.]

Anyway, this guy is:
- 35
- earning well over £50k in a responsible job in the NHS
- coping so well with aforementioned job that he wins a £15k leadership award to spend on management courses
- living on his own (at last! He'd finally moved out of his parents' a few months before after living there for 6 years)
- managed to book a 2 year round the world trip
- managed to travel and cope quite well on aforementioned round the world trip

And then he started to claim that he couldn't make it round the supermarket to buy food so he had to get his mum to come and hold his hand!

I believed his BS at the time. And it was all cr@p. He just wanted a way to get attention from his darling mummy because he wasn't living at home anymore and his so-called "stress disorder" gave him the perfect excuse. And there was me feeling sorry for him too when all the while he'd been feeling down because the girl in work he fancied didn't seem to fancy him.....

Duh! Palm slap to forehead!