Tired again. My son wanted to "talk" last night at bedtime. I told him I needed to get to sleep but we could talk for a few minutes. It turned into a fight, and I didn't get to sleep until midnight.

I'm so nervous about the lowering of the medication. I want to stay positive, but I'm worried. Then he does things that seem to be signs that he's slipping into odd ways of thinking, and I get even more nervous.

I imagine one of the hardest things about being dx'd with a mental illness is that people around you - and even you yourself - are constantly scanning you for signs of MI. Act a little happier than usual, and you're getting manic. Seem a bit more withdrawn than usual, and you're depressed. Well, last night my son was saying and doing things that made me worry he was showing early signs of descent into psychosis. I don't want to make a big deal out of nothing, but I also don't want to wait until things are bad before I try to intervene.

He got so angry with me about a scenario he'd completely made up. He asked what if he had a gif and what if I didn't like the gf and what if we all went out to lunch and what if the gf was being a b!tch to me. I told him I would leave if I was being mistreated. He said, "Exactly! You'd storm out." Then he got really angry with me - almost as if the whole thing had already happened.

It worried me, because this is exactly how his delusions start. A bunch of what if's that he decides really happened. Then he proceeds to act as if they had happened. Then he makes up a bunch of supporting stories to back up the central delusion.

I tried to talk with him about it last night, but he just said, "What does this have to do with my delusions?" Well, many of his delusions are centered on gf's who aren't really his gf's. And the first thing he does when he's going into psychosis is get angry with me. I can see a lovely delusion blooming from this one argument: he used to have a gf but I didn't like her and drove her off.

I don't want to let my fears cause me to imagine a problem that isn't there. I want him to be able to express his feelings, both positive and negative, without being accused of being "crazy." I don't want him to fear being open with me about his delusional experiences. He's been more open with me about this recently. I don't want him to think, "Oh, I confide my experiences to her, and she uses it against me, so I won't tell her anything that's happening with me again." But I also don't want to ignore the early signs that he's slipping. That's the perfect time to begin working with challenging the delusional thoughts.

I don't know what to do.