Rigidity: Attendance

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My 15 yo has been dealing with increased anxiety, and a major trigger is the absences of his friends and teachers at school. If he doesn't see a friend first thing in the morning, he convinces himself they are absent, and that they have reached some attendance threshhold and will be kicked out of school. Today, his case manager and his band director are both out, and he is pretty much melting (and of course, because his case manager isn't there, no one else knows how to handle it) - he wants to come home and has convinced himself he is ill, just like his teacher. I'm trying to get him to stay because I don't want "coming home" to be the answer anytime he gets upset, but I hate to see him like this.

Any ideas on how to approach this? We have an appointment with a new counselor week after next. Looking for something, anything to ease his anxiety over this.

Aspies tend to be rational so when they have irrational cognitive distortions the best thing to do is attack them with logic. I would discuss these things in terms of probabilities and likelihoods. I would let him know what he is doing is called catastrophic thinking, and is a cognitive distortion and a logical fallacy as well as being unhealthy. We have been addressing catastrophic thinking for a long time, but with improvements, and it helps to be able to call him out on it when he is doing it. He likes logic and so it helps disarm the situation so we can talk about what is going on, and why what he is positing is unlikely.