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  • in reply to: Should I tell My Son That I know? #6129
    UserNameTaken
    Participant

    Thank you so much for replying. Your post has given me a lot of hope.

    I wonder if this addiction could be related to a ‘win’ he had about 5 years ago? A group of about 8 of us went to a snooker hall to watch a big game of football on the sports screen, after the game we stayed to play snooker and have a drink – there were a few fruit machines (is that what they are called?) there and most of us had a go. All of a sudden there were loud bells ringing, music going off and lots of money in pound coins spilling out of the machine – my son had won £100, of course we were all delighted for him, he was buzzing! I never thought another thing about it until this week. Is that where it could have all begun? 🙁

    We were with our son last night and he seemed cheerful and more upbeat than he had in the previous couple of days. Unfortunately I found myself wondering if handing his notice in at work had finally lifted his spirits…or if he had been successful at gambling *blush*. I hope I don’t always feel and think this way.

    I will do my absolute best to be at the live chat tonight and look forward to ‘talking’ with you.

    Thank you again for your help
    xx

    in reply to: Should I tell My Son That I know? #6125
    UserNameTaken
    Participant

    Please help.

    My 29 year old son has an extremely stressful job and has recently been suffering from anxiety and depression.

    He has decided to hand his notice in at work and have a fresh start in a new job.

    To cut a long story short he told me that his doctor is arranging for him to have CBT and although I am very happy about that I did wonder why. I presumed that once he had got rid of his main stressor he would start to relax more and therefore feel better.

    Last night he was at our house and needed to use my PC to send an email. When I went to my email account this morning it was still logged onto his account, with all his emails showing – there was correspondence from The Self-exclusion people. At first I was just going to sign out of his account and into my own but something stopped me and I Googled ‘self exclusion’ – because I had no idea what it was. And then I was very nosey and read the email. He has signed up to it and agreed not to go into any amount of betting places.

    This is the first I have known anything about the fact he has a gambling problem. We have talked in length about his anxiety and depression and his father and I are fully supportive and will do anything to help him feel better. He obviously doesn’t want us to know as he has had ample opportunity to let us help him.

    My question is: should I tell him that I now know – that I have seen the email? Or should I keep quiet and let him deal with it seeing that he has made a start to help himself?

    I do know that many of you will think I have done very wrong by reading the email.

    Please help!

    Thank you in advance.

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