Dear GoodTherapy.org,

I’m a wife, mother of two, and have a great career in the legal field. I’ve been supporting my husband since we got married three years ago while he finished his degree, which he did nine months ago. The plan was for him to start his own career after he graduated, but he has had no success finding a suitable job and is quickly losing hope for finding work in the field he studied.

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He has a history of depression, and I think he is quite depressed. The only types of jobs he can get right now are for minimum wage doing things like janitorial work. He is unwilling to do that type of work out of concern it will kill his spirits and make it harder for him to get a job he really wants.

Instead of focusing what little energy he has on finding the job he wants, now he’s talking about going BACK to school to study something else with better career prospects. Needless to say, I’m not too keen on this plan, as I didn’t think I was signing up to be the sole breadwinner for the first five to seven years of our marriage, if not longer. It’s starting to feel like he’s taking me for granted and instead should be redoubling his efforts to put the degree he just attained to use.

I think he expects me to go along with his new plan. It’s true that I can afford to provide for the family by myself indefinitely, but that doesn’t sit well with me and it doesn’t feel fair or reasonable. I am afraid to bring up my true feelings about this out of fear it will worsen his depression and sense of hopelessness. His mental health seems precarious as it is.

He’s a good father despite not being my children’s biological dad. He’s a good husband, too, aside from this ongoing saga. I just don’t know what to do. I want to be with him, but I don’t know if I’m willing to go down this road again. I don’t want to resent him, but it feels, in a way, like I have three children. What do you think? —Sugar Mama

Dear Sugar Mama,

It sounds like you and your husband BOTH may be depressed, and you appear to be somewhat angry, too, about his inability to find a decent job and help support the family. I feel for you both. It’s hard to carry this load alone, as you have been doing for three years already. I imagine it’s hard for him to be carried by you, too, and to not be able to find suitable work.

I don’t know what kind of career he has in mind for himself, but it is true that some fields are slow starters. Maybe he’s thinking he made the wrong choice for himself professionally and wants to correct this mistake. Maybe you’re thinking you made the wrong romantic choice and want to correct that, too. At the very least, you feel burdened.

You are afraid to talk to your husband about your fears. I understand your concerns, but communication is a top priority in a deep relationship. Learning how to discuss difficult things together is part of learning how to get along with each other. It will serve your relationship well both now and in the future.

Despite his real problems work-wise, you state he is a good father to your children, even though they are not biologically his, and he is a good husband to you. These are priceless gifts. His ability to be caring, loving, and nurturing are important contributions to a happy family life.

You are afraid to talk to your husband about your fears. I understand your concerns, but communication is a top priority in a deep relationship. Learning how to discuss difficult things together is part of learning how to get along with each other. It will serve your relationship well both now and in the future.

I wonder if you have each considered counseling. Your husband might benefit from consulting with a career counselor, and it sounds like you both could benefit from couples counseling and perhaps individual therapy, too. Your family seems strong aside from this issue, certainly worth working to save, in spite of your resentful feelings. Love is a great and important gift. If talking this through with your husband (with or without a counselor present) would help preserve your marriage, consider it an investment in your family.

This is a decision you must make together. If you both want to stay together, or if you’re deciding on perhaps parting, please act to find counselors or social workers who can help you with this choice. Professional help can allow space and clarity to make any important decisions.

Marriages need to be cared for by both partners, but sometimes outside circumstances don’t favor family life—in fact, it can seem like they conspire against you. I hope you’ll do everything you can, together, to prevail. Silent resentment never works.

Good luck and take care,
Lynn

There is a great deal of literature and support available for parents of children with the traits or diagnosis of autism spectrum (ASD). I write often about relationships in which this describes one partner, and there are books available in support of such couples. But what if you suspect one of your parents may be on the spectrum? There are meager resources available which specifically address such concerns.

Perhaps you have children of your own now and one of them seems autistic, prompting you to look at your family of origin with new perspective. It’s also possible you discovered that you are autistic yourself. Or you have read enough about autism that it suddenly dawned on you that ASD might explain the challenges you have always had with a parent—challenges that have, up until now, baffled you. For the sake of this article, let’s say it is your father you are concerned about.

It can be sobering to think these thoughts after all these years. It can be frightening. You may wonder whether you even have the right to consider such a thing with regard to your own father, who otherwise seems to have a successful life and a mature career. In fact, this is one of the things that has never squared with you: your father has always seemed to be a different person to you than to the rest of the world. All these years, you thought the root of the problem resided within you. Now you are beginning to wonder.

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You may wonder why what feels like relentless critical judgment always seems more characteristic of your father than confidence-building positive acknowledgment (“If you can get an A in every other subject, why do you consistently get a B in mathematics?”).

You may wonder why your father never seems to get jokes (yours or anyone else’s), figures of speech (he takes things literally), or social conventions (“Valentine’s Day is merely an excuse for card companies to make money”).

You may wonder why he can send you checks but seldom seems to ask about or understand the emotional state you may be in at any given time.

You may wonder why your mother seldom has her own interests or friends anymore, but rather seems to live in support of your father’s plans and interests.

You may wonder why your father never hugs you and doesn’t seem to like it when you hug him.

You may wonder whether your father is depressed, because he has always been so quick to anger and so slow to recover from it.

You may feel angry about all the fruitless years you have spent trying to please your father. And you may feel guilty for feeling angry.

You may wonder why a father would set out to hurt his child over and over again without seeming to understand that he does it.

The main thing to remember is that your father came of age well before the notion of high-functioning autism (until recently called Asperger’s syndrome) was understood even within the ranks of mental health professionals. Until just recently, autism was imagined in its most dysfunctional forms, as characterized by children who seemed beyond the reach of language and behavioral communication. Milder forms of autism were generally not considered.

Since ASD is invisible, those who are now older adults and had the social manifestations of mild autism as children were likely described as being “quirky,” as being someone who “hears a different drum,” or who “likes to keep to themselves.” They may have had few friends, a chemistry lab in their bedroom, and a preference for the company of adults, which was facilitated by advanced language skills.

When we do ASD evaluations as psychotherapists, we generally meet with the individual for several sessions to gather as much information as we can. Since there is no specific test for ASD, the process is narrative. Meetings with the spouse or children are of great importance in this process, because by definition people with ASD are not able to provide insight into what it is like to love them and to live with them.

The intense special interests of children with ASD were viewed most often as precocious (“Brian knows everything there is to know about the solar system”), perhaps interesting (“if you want to know anything about dinosaurs, Amber is the one to ask”), but also sometimes as weird (“Thomas knows everything there is to know about industrial exhaust systems”). The judgment depended on how mainstream the child’s special interest appeared to be.

For the fortunate, their special interests aligned with academic pursuits that led to successful professional careers (law, medicine, university professorships, music, engineering). Such individuals applied their extraordinary powers of concentration to their fields and may have had stellar success as a result. For their children and wives, this can be a source of great confusion, because this is where the split becomes most obvious to them: the doctor, the attorney, the engineer can be prominent and well-respected in the world outside the home, but when the doors are closed and the family is home alone, another person emerges. This is the person who prefers to eat in silence, who returns to the study each evening after supper only to emerge well past everyone else’s bedtimes, and who then leaves the house earlier than everyone else the next morning. This is the person who has never attended a ballet performance, who has never changed a diaper, and who may sometimes read bedtime stories in stylized and stilted English to the children.

I can tell you some things about the points I raised earlier that might help you to make sense of your father’s behavior from his perspective. This list is not exhaustive, but it can be a start.

• Regarding the critical judgment you always felt: If your father has ASD, one of the most important guiding principles in his life is likely to be his sense of justice and fairness. Therefore, for him to notice that you are clearly capable of getting all As on your report cards except for the errant Bs in math most likely means he is driven to call your attention to the problem so you can remedy it. To him, it seems perfectly clear: now that you see the error in your grading pattern, you will be able to fix it and get an A in every class. It is less likely to occur to him that you may be struggling with an ineffective instructor in math, or that you just don’t like the subject and are doing your best. It is particularly unlikely he would commend you on all the As you did receive; the grades are their own rewards, and there is little he is going to believe would be necessary to add to that. He will assume you know this already, because he will assume you think the same way he thinks.
• If your dad doesn’t get jokes, tends to take things literally, and balks at social conventions such as celebrating birthdays and holidays, it is likely due to the fact individuals with ASD process the world cognitively and not intuitively (the way of the neurotypical). This means that much of what is communicated by body language, tone of voice, gesture, facial expression, and posture is likely to go unnoticed; the meaning of the words will be heard without mitigation. Jokes fall flat. And the social conventions, those unstated but generally understood reasons for celebrating birthdays and holidays, will make no sense because they do not seem practical.
• Sending you checks may be your father’s primary means of showing he cares for you. He may not ask how you are feeling, and he may not respond much if you volunteer such information, because he is not likely to be comfortable in the realm of the emotions. This doesn’t mean he has no feelings; to the contrary, he likely feels things very deeply. He is probably at a loss for how to express them, however, and at a loss for how to offer you support when you express yours. Emotions generally don’t make sense to him.
• If you look at the arc of your mother’s life and see a constriction in her self-expression now compared to how she was when she was younger, it may be because it is so very difficult to be married to someone with ASD. Years of feeling judged and criticized have left their mark. She is lonely and tired, and she has no emotional support from the man she loves. She likely has deep pain that even she doesn’t understand. She may seem resigned to growing old, even though she is not old at all. She is likely to know your father better than anyone else. She may find great relief in your courage to come to her and raise the question. This is something for you to think about carefully, however, because sometimes bringing up ASD can sound like an accusation instead of a thoughtful inquiry to those prepared to be defensive.
• Many people who have ASD do not like to be hugged, nor do they hug others freely. It may not make sense, or it may be physically uncomfortable. Regardless, it is not to be taken personally because it is not meant personally. It is tough to think your father doesn’t want to hug you, but remember: he probably doesn’t like to hug anyone at all.
• Older adults with ASD have spent their lives trying to figure out the neurotypical world, often with great fears of never quite getting things right. This may create constant anxiety, and being on the spectrum is above all exhausting. This is why preferring to be alone for long hours is so important: transitions between one state and another (from the office to home, for example) can feel almost impossible to manage. After years of anxiety, depression is not unusual in individuals with ASD. In fact, anxiety and depression are the hallmarks of adult ASD. Your father may not describe himself as anxious or depressed, but his behavior may demonstrate these qualities.
• Your anger and frustration make sense if your father has ASD. You are just now beginning to wonder about this. Memories of frustration and disillusionment may come flooding into your mind. Remember this: you did the best you could possibly do given your age and experience at any particular phase in your life. Feeling guilty now may make sense to you, but it isn’t in your best interest because when you were growing up, you didn’t do anything with the sole intent of hurting your father. You just wanted him to be your dad. You may have acted out. That’s what kids do because they are not mature enough to do anything else. Now that you are older and more mature yourself, your inquiry is also more mature. Cut yourself some slack. This is a time to be gentle with yourself.
• Above all, the most salient point regarding ASD is this: what you see and experience in your father’s words and behavior may be different from what he means by them. It is critical to understand that your father is probably not intending to hurt you, and at the same time it is imperative to acknowledge that your pain is real. This is the great tragedy of ASD.

What can you do now that you have these questions? I recommend finding a therapist who has both a keen understanding of autism spectrum issues as well as deep compassion for those on the spectrum and for those in that person’s life. Make an appointment to discuss your thoughts and your concerns. Feel welcome to ask many questions so you can gain a sound grasp of what it means to have ASD. Remember, however, that no therapist can diagnose your father in absentia; he would need to be present in order for this to be done.

When we do ASD evaluations as psychotherapists, we generally meet with the individual for several sessions to gather as much information as we can. Since there is no specific test for ASD, the process is narrative. Meetings with the spouse or children are of great importance in this process, because by definition people with ASD are not able to provide insight into what it is like to love them and to live with them.

If after a few sessions you believe your father may have ASD, you can discuss with your therapist whether bringing this question to your father might be a good idea. There are possible benefits, to be sure. There are also possible risks. You may find it is enough for you to understand ASD well enough that you can now relate differently to your father. Or you may decide you’d like to talk to him about the possibility of coming with you to therapy to share what you are learning.

There is always the possibility this will come to him like rain in the desert and that he will welcome the opportunity to explore the possibility he has ASD. I have seen many adults cry when they recognize themselves in the diagnosis, because for the first time, certain things about their experiences over a lifetime finally begin to make sense to them. ASD becomes the key that unlocks a lifetime of mysteries.

On the other hand, he may give you a blank (or even hostile) look and dismiss the subject. If so, it may not be a good idea to push it. He has built his life with an understanding of himself that has served him well enough by his definition. Perhaps the inquiry and exploration will be for you alone. It can still be helpful to you, even without his involvement.

Finally, please remember that if your father has ASD, you likely have had a difficult childhood. It will be important for you to find a therapist who understands the impact of ASD on your life. I wish you well in your inquiry, and hope a new understanding will lead to hope and forgiveness in your life from this day forward.

Dear GoodTherapy.org,

My sister has taken advantage of our mother for years. Beginning in her teenage years, she has lied, stolen money, used drugs, left home several times, used physical violence against family members, and run up charges on numerous television and phone accounts. She also drove our mother’s car frequently, with or without permission, and had several traffic accidents, totaling two separate cars, before she could no longer be insured as a driver.

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Each time our mother has insisted she move out, she eventually comes back with some new sob story—her friends stole her money, her boyfriend cheated on her, she lost her job, she’s sick—and she is allowed to move back in. Our mother feels sorry for her because she has a lot of health problems, and she also doesn’t want to abandon her child, but my sister is 26! No matter what is given to her or done for her, she continues to lie, steal, and manipulate. Our mother has to sleep with her wallet under her pillow and shift her money between accounts regularly so my sister cannot access it, and she is still in debt from years of taking care of my sister’s many bills.

My sister is also a constant source of stress to her. She can barely leave home for a weekend without worrying that something will go wrong. For example, last time she tried to take a weekend trip, my sister disappeared for two days after promising to take care of her dogs, so she had to spend hours on the phone trying to find someone to come by and look after them.

How can I convince my mother to stop enabling my sister’s bad behavior? —Sister Act

Dear Sister,

Thank you for your question. Let’s get right to it.

Unfortunately, you may not be able to convince your mother to stop enabling your sister. It sounds as if your mother is well aware of the issues and challenges your sister presents, and is still willing to support her, even at great inconvenience to herself.

The questions to consider with her, however, may include: What about this is working for your mom? What needs of hers are getting met by supporting your sister? My hunch is she has some strong beliefs about what being a good mother means—and that may include supporting her kids through good times and bad. She also may be afraid of what might happen to your sister if she did not support her. Whatever her beliefs, they are contributing to her willingness to continue on in this way. Having an opportunity to understand why she is doing this could be helpful for you.

There is a school of thought that suggests enabling dysfunctional behavior does more damage than engaging in firm boundary setting or “tough love.” However, there are many exceptions based on specific situations, so there is no clear-cut “right” answer.

The next set of questions is harder, but centers on how well this pattern is serving your sister. There is a school of thought that suggests enabling dysfunctional behavior does more damage than engaging in firm boundary setting or “tough love.” However, there are many exceptions based on specific situations, so there is no clear-cut “right” answer. It might be helpful if you and your mother worked with a therapist who has experience with family circumstances similar to the ones you describe. It could give you and your mom a chance to voice your fears and concerns while working with a trained professional on addressing those concerns in ways that feel right for you and for your mom.

It also sounds as if you might benefit from an opportunity to let go of some of the feelings you’ve been carrying about your sister, which therapy can also help with. I hear the concern you have for your mom; I also hear the frustration you have with your sister for her behavior. It is also not unusual for siblings to feel resentment when another sibling “gets away” with certain behaviors. It can feel unfair, at the very least. Harboring negative feelings such as resentment, however, can be toxic and keep us in a state of anger and frustration that ultimately don’t serve us.

For your sake, even if your mother isn’t willing to engage in therapy with you, I suggest exploring it for yourself. You might find ways to engage with your sister and your mother that bring you peace.

Best of luck,
Erika

As a family systems therapist, it’s been my experience that when parents bring a child to my office due to acting-out behaviors or social challenges, it usually comes back to the dynamic in the parental relationship. Typically, what’s going on (or not) between Mom and Dad is at the root of the issue, regardless of whether the parents are married, separated, or divorced.

Marital dissatisfaction and parental conflict, in my experience, are often correlated with how well children adjust to situations. In addition, parental attitudes and approaches can impact children. Children may experience anxiety, depression, shame, or other issues when conflicted parental relationships result in dysfunctional parenting practices. Parental conflict can result in reduced parental involvement, harsh discipline practices, lack of praise and acknowledgement, and increased parent-child conflict.

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A common scenario that often plays out in families with parental conflict is when a child is blamed and scapegoated by the parents, which in turn may cause the child to act out. This nonadaptive parenting style creates a dynamic of discord that is enmeshed, reciprocal, and reinforcing.

When overt or covert (silent or aggressive) parental conflict is present, there may be a tendency to create “alliances” or “collusions” among family members, which typically only alienates healthy family relationships. Additionally, some parents who do not actively engage in conflict in front of their children may allow their negative feelings toward each other to guide their decisions. These decisions, when motivated by resentment and not the best interests of the children, may be equally harmful.

Naturally, parental conflict also can result in reduced emotional availability toward children. Generally speaking, the lower the level of parental conflict, the more positive parent-child relationships tend to be.

Suggestions for Managing Parental Conflict Around Children

Conflict is a natural part of relationships. It is important for children to see that parents can disagree and work through conflicts. The problem solving that follows occasional conflict between parents can be a healthy thing for children to witness. When parents are able to demonstrate effective problem-solving strategies collaboratively, they model supportive parenting and parental involvement at a much higher level.

The lower the level of parental conflict, the more positive parent-child relationships tend to be.

However, when conflict is chronic and parents aren’t able to come to resolution, it can become problematic from the children’s standpoint.

So what can parents do to demonstrate healthy conflict management in front of their children? Here are some suggestions to consider:

• Try to avoid arguing in front of the children.
• When discussions become intense, take a “time-out” and continue the discussion when kids are not around.
• Set aside time to have discussions when the children are not present (such as when they are in bed, at school, visiting grandparents, etc.).
• Demonstrate courteous and polite behavior with each other in front of the children.
• Take turns talking.
• Actively listen to each other.
• Validate the other parent’s feelings and perspectives, even in times of disagreement.
• Brainstorm possible solutions to the problem.
• Focus on maintaining a positive relationship with the children.
• Articulate that the children are not the issue or even part of the issue.
• Support the other parent’s relationship with the children.
• Be mindful about not sharing too much information with the children about conflict that may be present.

Finally, when trying to resolve conflict, it is important to look at family-of-origin patterns to determine how conflict was resolved in earlier generations, as patterns tend to be passed down in families from generation to generation. Then, it is important for parents to look for patterns in their relationships as well as their own behaviors and motivations.

Ideally, parents should be open to seeking help from a professional, as getting input from an objective third party who is trained to help resolve conflict can be beneficial in identifying ineffective resolution strategies that parents may be engaging in.

Dear GoodTherapy.org,

Our son, who turned 18 last month, is about to graduate from high school. He’s a great kid, an Eagle Scout, and a straight-A student (3.96 grade-point average). He’s the president of his senior class and has multiple full-ride scholarship offers from elite schools across the country, including Stanford and Princeton.

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So why, pray tell, would he possibly want to join the military? This is the dilemma our family faces. Bernie Sanders isn’t president. College isn’t cheap. A quality college education is unaffordable for many families, including ours. By the time our son would complete his service, it seems doubtful at best that opportunities like this will still be waiting for him, and we won’t be in position to help him much. We feel like he is leaving not only free money (and a lot of it) on the table, but also his future, and for what?

His mother and I both see the nobility in wanting to serve our country and we admire him for it, but this decision puts not only his financial future at risk but also, potentially, his life. It’s an unstable world we live in, and not too many people who enlist these days manage to avoid deployment. We’ve tried to talk some sense into our son, but he says he’s made up his mind. Easy to say for someone who has never had to pay for anything in his life.

Please help us. How can we convince our son that going to college is a much better choice than going to war? —Dumbfounded Dad

Dear Dumbfounded,

Thank you for writing. I can’t help but think the answer to your question lies in the emotional undertone of the question itself.

As I’m sure you already know, the teen years are often a roller-coaster for teens and parents alike. It’s a phase marked by intense contradiction, as a burgeoning young adult seeks individuation and freedom while under the care and protection of the very people they are trying to separate from. It’s easy to get lost in the minutiae of curfews, driving privileges, allowances, homework, drugs, sex, and so on.

Though I find it a worthy question to ask, what is really at the heart of this? Usually it’s anxiety or fear. On the parents’ side, there is the fear the child will be somehow unsafe, now or later, and is throwing away a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Parents fear that the kid who struggles in school may not be well enough prepared for college later; the kid who experiments with pot may be “setting themselves up for failure” down the road; and the son who says no to full-ride scholarships at elite schools has somehow gone off-track. What the heck is he thinking? That does it, I’m putting my foot down!

The teen, meanwhile, worries about the same thing, only from a different angle. Can I survive and flourish—socially, financially—once I’ve left the nest? If I’m too reliant on mom or dad now, what happens later when I’m working or at college? I can’t rely on them forever. I know they want me to take these scholarships, get an education, but I want a different kind of education. What’s wrong with that? To hell with ’em! I’m on my own!

Anxiety, in other words, rules the day, as each side feels disrespected or abandoned or shut out by the other.

Your letter is full of understandable parental anxiety focused mostly, it seems to me, on the future. He is “potentially” risking his life or possibly throwing away opportunities that may or may not be “waiting for him” later on. One could say these scholarships are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. You could also say any kid with the smarts to get into these schools with a 3.96 GPA, and with a willingness to take the road less traveled, will likely continue to find opportunities. I know plenty of struggling adults who went to Ivy League schools, and successful people who went to community college, then specialized in grad school or elsewhere later on.

You have, again understandably for a parent, developed a vision for the best path forward for your son. What father wouldn’t want his son to go to Princeton or Stanford? I empathize with your confusion and frustration. I imagine you’re tearing your hair out.

But this is the great challenge of this mind-warping transition phase. As a parent myself, I foresee a time when my daughter will announce to us she has decided to become a doctor or lawyer (or better yet, a psychologist!)—which means, of course, that when she’s 18 she’ll announce to us she’s skipping college to join a punk band or travel to Antarctica to save seals. We want our kids to be safe; they want us to back off so they can test limits, take a bite out of the world, and dance near the edge. This is itself the delicate, anxious dance between teens and parents at this complicated phase.

As I often do in this column, I’ll throw out my 2 cents regarding some practical suggestions, followed by a more psychological angle.

First, talk to your son—as neutrally as possible—about what you’re seeing as the risks involved. The idea here is to model balanced decision making. Make sure he knows your “agenda” is only to talk through the decision with him. Does he know what a rare opportunity these scholarships actually are, how few kids get into these schools, for a free ride, no less? That these schools provide first-rate opportunities for networking and lifelong connection for just about any field of interest? That he could always enlist after getting his undergrad degree, or try college first and then decide? You could also talk about what assistance you can and possibly can’t provide both now and later.

Which branch of the military is he most interested in? What about it, specifically, draws him? What are they offering in terms of higher education down the road? What about any interest in specialty training? Also, to your points about his safety, is he interested in being deployed on dangerous assignments or tours of duty? If the answer is yes, would he be interested in doing some more research, such as talking to veterans who have served where he’s interested in going?

I don’t know your son, so he may or may not be taking some of his cues from you. If he is, try as best you can to be an example of curiosity over judgment, and most of all empathy for what he hopes to gain from the military.

I don’t know your son, so he may or may not be taking some of his cues from you. If he is, try as best you can to be an example of curiosity over judgment, and most of all empathy for what he hopes to gain from the military.

Empathy is the key, saith the psychotherapist. By this, I mean I would try to get as curious as you can about what draws him. Does he like the idea of discipline, training, and order? Is it weaponry and combat he’s interested in? Is it the idea of the safety of a “strong” institution to which he will belong, a new kind of family?

Listen for the hopes and yearnings more than the literal aspects. Then you might—as calmly as you can—explain why this is difficult for you (and possibly your wife). You have your own hopes and wishes for him as a caring dad.

Try to avoid a trap a lot of us fall into, which is playing the “this isn’t normal” card. Example: “It’s not normal for a kid as smart as you to enlist and blow off Stanford; it’s just not rational.” The implication there is he’s weird, an oddball, or worse. It will probably make him dig his heels in even deeper. Make your statements personal, not about “what kids your age normally do” or in the vein of “what’s really best for a guy like you, though clearly you don’t see it, is …” It’s possible he does see it and wants to do something else. Better to say, “Well, here’s what I foresee for you, and why, and I guess I just don’t get it, so help me get it.” Or, “As your dad, it makes me uneasy to think of you in harm’s way. We think that’s rare or never happens, but it does. I’m not saying don’t do it, but I am saying be clear about the risks.” You could also ask the gutsy question of, is his seeking out enlistment a way of compensating for something he felt he never got at home or school? You might also be listening for how he thinks this experiencing will point him toward whatever definition of manhood he has developed.

But again, be respectful, as this is his dream, his decision. You can disagree with it, but I would honor the fact the son you love finds it important.

Parenting can be extremely difficult, and it’s a never-ending duty. But sometimes kids somehow have to do the one thing they know drives us batty. It can be a test to see if they will still be loved by us in spite of their decisions, or that they are capable of making their own decisions completely free from parental influence. If there is any element of rebellion in his decision, try to be understanding rather than dead-set against it, as that puts you in opposition and back in the tug-of-war.

I wish you the best of luck, and encourage you to post any follow-ups to let us know what happens.

Thanks again for writing!

Best wishes,
Darren

At an age when human development can be awkward and challenging, a large number of children are additionally burdened with their parents’ divorce and resulting implications. Parental strife, parent-child conflict, familial and residential changes, financial problems—these factors and more can create the perfect storm of adolescent angst. As divorce affects every person differently, it also affects developmental age ranges differently. Even as they transition toward independence, adolescents continue to be caught in the upheaval and end of their families as they knew them.

Although the groundbreaking 25-year study by Wallerstein and Lewis (2004) is now 12 years old, its findings are still relevant today. Divorced children of all ages eventually reach a conclusion that terrifies them: personal relationships are unreliable, and even the closest family relationships cannot be expected to hold firm. This realization creates a shaky foundation that adolescents then use as a touchstone and reference when making their way in the world.

As further noted by Wallerstein and Lewis, two-thirds of the children they studied experienced multiple marriages and divorces, plus the unrecorded broken love affairs and temporary cohabitations of one or both parents. Fewer than 10% of the children had parents who established stable, lasting second marriages in which the children felt fully welcome and included. The frequent discrepancy in the post-divorce adjustment of their parents was also a source of deep distress to the children well into adulthood.

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It makes sense, then, that the turbulence and resultant pain associated with divorce creates a barrier for adolescent children of divorce to feel stable and hopeful. When adolescents see their parents divorce, there may be either a sense of “it won’t happen to me (when I’m an adult)” or “all relationships end up broken, so I won’t even try.” Which is why, as noted in the study, divorce is not an acute stress from which the child recovers, but a “life-transforming experience” (Wallerstein and Lewis, 2004).

Often, a dramatic change in family structure accompanies divorce. Logistically, one parent must leave the family home. This parental absence creates an absence in the child’s life that is irreversible. Although adolescents are moving toward independence, the parental role is far from minimized at this age. Adolescents accustomed to two parents typically come to rely on them as moral guides, support systems, and physical presences in their lives. As written by Marquardt (2005), almost two-thirds of divorced children felt they lived in two families and inherited two worlds in which to grow up. This sense of division can be challenging if there are two sets of rules and standards to balance. It is almost as if children become travelers into the newly adopted lives of their parents, but without a road map to navigate the pathways.

Family dynamics often change drastically with the addition of significant others into the lives of newly divorced parents. Mothers get boyfriends, fathers get girlfriends, and sometimes these relationships come with additional children. Never do divorced adolescents feel more alone than when they come to see themselves as “third wheels.”

Divorce also may bring about an enormous reallocation of money. Some researchers have suggested that the economic hardship custodial parents face following divorce is the critical factor in predicting children’s post-divorce adjustment. Dramatic losses in income may contribute to additional life stresses such as moving to a smaller residence in neighborhoods with increased crime, lower quality schools, and loss of familiar and developed community supports. Lower income also forces many custodial parents to work additional hours to cover basic necessities and bills. Financial strain, by the way, is one of the strongest predictors of depression in single parents.

Another significant aspect of divorce includes child support. Even though parents have been supporting their children financially since birth, the divorce and resultant child support payments create the illusion children are now a mandated financial obligation, like a loan or a bill, which may become a contentious battle if payments are withheld or missed.

Family dynamics often change drastically with the addition of significant others into the lives of newly divorced parents. Mothers get boyfriends, fathers get girlfriends, and sometimes these relationships come with additional children. Never do divorced adolescents feel more alone than when they come to see themselves as “third wheels.”

Overall, according to Wallerstein (2004), adolescents from divorced homes acted out more than adolescents from intact homes. Twenty percent of girls in the Wallerstein study had their first sexual experience before age 14, and over half were sexually active with multiple partners during high school. As noted, it isn’t the sex itself that was relevant; it was the attention received. Divorce creates a void, and adolescents test themselves and their parents with their choices to fill it.

While divorce is often inevitable, its implications are far-reaching to all involved. Adolescents are particularly affected given they simultaneously want independence while needing nurturing and guidance. If parents are divided and conflicted, adolescent angst may be intensified, potentially causing lifelong issues.

References:

1. Marquartdt, E. (2005). Between two worlds: The inner lives of children of divorce. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press.
2. Wallerstein, J., & Lewis, J. (2004). The unexpected legacy of divorce: Report of a 25-year study. Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol. 21 (3).

We all have things and ideas and ventures that we turn over in our minds, sometimes on paper, maybe with other people who share our inconsistent commitments—projects that, even in their incompleteness, still have some hold on us. Our interest and our thoughts keep circling back to that place. We come back to them again and again, and we work on them in fits and starts. Unrealized projects we have yet to find the space or time to help become something concrete in our lives.

My unrealized projects are the fragments I have been writing for years about my mother. The Book (probably an overly optimistic way of seeing it, but we’ll go with that for now), or A Thousand Illegible Scribbles (I have the title, at least), that keeps flipping me on the back of the head, insisting that I pay attention. For almost a decade, my mom has struggled with a mental health condition. I’m still not sure what it is. It’s easier to describe symptoms than state a diagnosis. She cycles through the day between extreme emotional states—through anger and frustration, through sadness and a deep, deep stasis. She doesn’t think she has a head. She stares in the mirror to locate herself, brushes her hair ritualistically. She struggles with self-care; the shower hurts. She knows that I’m her daughter, but no longer cares for me as one. Her script has been unchanged for years: “I’m a bit nervous.” “I just worry about my sleep.” “I was a good mum, wasn’t I?”

[fat_widget_right]To gather the fragments of the book, my own unrealized (or maybe unrealizable) project, I decided to sit down with Amber Cady for an Office Hour on Unfinished Business. This was part of the program that day at Storefront Institute, a cultural and learning organization I recently launched with Kate Griffin in the San Francisco Bay Area. Amber is both a practicing artist and therapist, a combination that drew me to her (my own background is in contemporary art curation). She brings together the high-level ideological language of the art world with the empathy, compassion, and openness of the wellness industries. She’s my unicorn.

Amber’s Office Hour, then, sat between these two seemingly opposing but actually quite complementary worlds: she had designed a session that would take on a creative project that is loved and obsessed over, but that we don’t actually work on or don’t work on enough to actually make happen. Amber’s Office Hours would try to help us figure out why that particular project—that artwork or business, that blog or zine— keeps mattering, why it keeps insisting on space in our lives. She’d bring to our creative endeavors an emotional life and give them validity.

I started writing A Thousand Illegible Scribbles four years ago. It started with an article that was published in The Independent newspaper in the UK. There was a story that my mother couldn’t tell herself, but I could. And through telling it, I thought that I could do more for her, and others like her.

Would you put your mental health story, or that of your family, down on the page? Do you talk about it? Do you share your anxiety, depression, break-downs?

I’ve dealt with my mother’s struggles in various ways: spending time at home. Spending time away. Seeking out people to help her, to help my dad who is home with her, to help me. I have researched and discussed her condition. I have planned and argued with and for her. And I have written (in bursts), since I realized the condition that began the year I got engaged, like my marriage, had the promise of a life-long commitment.

I now have 40,000 words, pages and pages of fragments. I sit down and write when there’s no outlet for what I feel about her condition, or when she’s having a bad episode and I’m back in the UK living alongside her every day, or when we have any interaction that throws me back with her and less in California, where I now live.

“I suggested a walk. Mom asked to feed the ducks at Marbury Park. She’d collected scraps of bread which, it turned out, meant dad had pulled together almost a whole fresh sliced loaf. She didn’t notice. Too cold outside for us in April, we walked straight from the car park to the lake. She broke off the bread in handfuls, almost like pulling out hair, and chucked it at the ducks. Bits so big they should have choked. Ten seconds to tear through a loaf, then back to the car.”

Having done my own time on the couch, I know the structure of weekly therapy, but my Office Hour with Amber was different. The orientation of the session, its focus on unfinished business, meant that I had a clear, definable framework in which to work. Though going into it, I had thought that we’d talk about words on the page, about how to get the book going, about how the pieces I write occasionally can come together into a coherent whole. Plotting and planning its progress, making it take shape, setting goals. But this was therapy-of-sorts, and we lingered in that space of the emotional content that makes up the book.

Over the course of an hour, as we sat in the cozy booth at Makeshift Society where these sessions were held, Amber took me through four different ways of thinking about the project. We covered the strengths that the book represented for me and with that, the daily build that would support it, the obstacles for working on its daily pages, the allies and supportive forces to fortify progress, and the self-care necessary for keeping it a reality. Amber talked with me about how our creative projects are not just carefully contained goals, but real relationships, with all the complexity and messiness that those entail. Especially this one.

Talking with Amber, that’s where I got—this project is so much more than building chapters and momentum. It’s a deeply meaningful and emotional project that is about connection. Connection with my mother and the family I left behind.

“Mom paces. Dad was 40 minutes late for coffee, but we were together in a nice café, with warm drinks and each other’s company. Not so bad, but she slipped off her chair and shuffled from side to side, looking around for dad, though when he appeared she didn’t see him.”

But Amber also helped me realize the reason that this book languishes in that “unfinished business” category. She helped me identify the huge emotional roadblock, the one that would and does keep me away from the book: the threat of conflict. As much as it touches on urgency and meaning, the book also touches on points of contention and denial. It’s about connection, but holds the promise of its opposite: disconnecting me from those I care about.

When you talk about mental health, you very quickly enter the language of stigma; when you talk about mental health in your own family, you very quickly get to your own family’s biases and fears around the subject. To write to this subject means opening up our lives in ways that are terrifying and complicated to those involved, to admit to a problem that we don’t want to identify. I see writing as the invitation to connect, as an opening to a conversation, and I believe that we need to talk about the reality of mental health in our society.

But writing can end relationships too. As soon as I write a sentence, any sentence, there’s the possibility that the conversation I want to have around my mother’s situation may end in silence. Family members may shut down and turn away, or accuse me of airing our dirty laundry in public, acting on motivations that have more to do with fame and money than impact and value.

“By day three she is angry. She’s already at the breakfast table when I come down for a shower. She wears a ridiculous fluffy peach sweater that accentuates her size and attracts my baby daughter’s curiosity. She says nothing. No acknowledgement of the new baby, no acknowledgment of her old daughter. No good morning. Dad makes slightly burnt bacon butties. He asks Mom again and again if she wants one. Always ‘no.’ Her rice crispies are already stuck to her sweater. ‘No.’ I put the baby down for a nap, then hear ‘No,’ louder this time. My husband shuffles our son out of the house. I hear them chatting. More ‘No’s. Voices starting to rise.”

The book, even just lingering in the idea stage, contains the power dynamics in my family, the lingering shock of losing people I have loved, the pain that confrontation can bring. I’ve been framing the project as a way of making meaning from an awful situation, of researching and thinking and processing ways beyond how we currently think about mental health. Done in the right way, it may help my mum, my family, me, and others like her. But received wrongly, it might go the other way.

We are all touched by mental health issues. We know that now. We know that one in four people lives with mental health issues. We know someone who has a mental health condition. We’re starting to learn that we need to take care of our psychological well-being as much as our physical selves. We’re increasingly comfortable going to therapy or seeking help when we’re in crisis. What we’re less able to do is tell our stories or share our experiences or stand out as that someone who is, in fact, struggling. We’re not there yet. My mum is not there yet. My family isn’t. Maybe I’m not, either.

So this is what we do: we hide her away, we deal with it in private, hoping the neighbors don’t call the police with another outburst, that the local coffee shop doesn’t get tired of her rants and ask her to leave, that people don’t continue to turn away from our family, to give up on us. And we don’t get the help we need because we mistrust, we’re afraid, and we don’t talk about it, don’t know how to, and actually don’t want to.

That’s the real reason for the book—the belief that we need to tell our stories, to ourselves and each other, to make sense of our mental health. We need to talk about what preventative care looks like, what we do when someone “gets sick,” and resources for how to care for someone with a mental health condition. But it’s also a threat. Would you put your mental health story, or that of your family, down on the page? Do you talk about it? Do you share your anxiety, depression, break-downs?

Yeah, that’s where I am, too. Right in that space of knowing that to reach out is necessary, but to do so, in the words of my mother tongue, is bloody terrifying. That fear can silence us, even when we need those words on the page more than anything. That’s not just my unfinished business—it’s ours.

Claire Fitzsimmons is the Founder and Co-Director of Storefront Institute, a co-learning space based in San Francisco’s Bay Area that delivers discussion-based public programs facilitated by innovative practitioners – writers, artists, designers, teachers, and thinkers. Our programs provide the practical, social, and intellectual connections to open up new perspectives that help us better navigate our lives. Claire is a curator who has worked internationally and has spent more than a decade as an exhibition-maker and explorer of ideas and cultural practice.

Any divorcing parent knows that one of the hardest parts of a marital ending is feeling forced to stay connected to someone you don’t particularly want to see or spend time with. Not all co-parenting situations are toxic—in fact, many couples find parenting is easier after they have separated—but the adjustment to parenting separately can be tricky for anyone.

Children can be one of the biggest stressors on a marriage, and even when that marriage ends, the co-parenting relationship maintains its own level of stress. Once your custody has been set, you may be faced with all sorts of issues and circumstances that challenge you to reflect on your parenting strategies. Among your considerations: how best to cope with your ex as you figure out what this new relationship means and how it’s supposed to go.

Productive co-parenting isn’t about following any particular formula. Each couple has their own unique dynamic, story, and situation that needs to be worked out in a way that serves the context of that family. However, there are techniques, strategies, and practices that can improve both the co-parenting dynamic and each partner’s experience of that relationship.

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In my work with divorce, my focus is almost always on what each individual can work on within themselves. I encourage couples and individuals to refrain from trying to change or control their partners, and to focus on their own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors instead. Based on that philosophy, here are five strategies you can use to improve your co-parenting relationship that are completely within your control.

1. Use Empathy and Your Child’s Perspective

Having compassion for an ex can be hard when there has been betrayal, hurt, or rejection, but this is an essential component to co-parenting well. Seeing the situation through your child’s eyes will help you drop down into your heart, and it may give you a different perspective as you deal with your ex. Children simply want to feel loved, safe, and to spend time with their parents, so if you can make your main intention to help them in these respects, you’ll be co-parenting from a compassionate place. As you co-parent, remember it’s more about your child than you, and stepping into that place of empathy will be a good reminder. No matter how much you struggle with your ex, your children are always the priority.

2. Set Clear Boundaries and Maintain Structure

From the minute your marriage ended, your marital relationship shifted into something different, but you may still be engaging in old dynamics. Many of the ways you interacted with your ex in marriage are no longer appropriate or necessary, and a lack of good boundaries may make it even harder to transition into a new way of relating. Becoming clear about what works for you as you move forward untangling the relationship may help you set healthy boundaries. This includes how your children are picked up, whether your ex has a key to the house, and what kind of contact there is when you have the kids. Your boundaries may be violated, but it’s still important to communicate them.

3. Relinquish Control and Accept What’s Happening

There may be things you don’t approve of when it comes to your ex’s parenting style, or how they spend time with the kids. You may also feel differently about introducing a new partner or dating when it comes to parenting time. The reality is that more often than not you have no say over how your ex decides to live. Unless the situation is dangerous or neglectful, you need to learn to accept and let go of your need to control what happens in your absence. Instead of trying to control or change what’s happening, learn to let go, accept, and work with it as best you can. This is one of the hardest consequences of co-parenting, but also the one thing that can really reduce unnecessary stress.

4. Maintain Your Values and Live from Integrity

No matter how frustrated or annoyed you feel about co-parenting with your ex, maintaining your integrity and sticking to your values is essential. It’s easy to get pulled into ugly dynamics or engage in bad behavior when your buttons are pushed, but keeping your cool and staying true to yourself will feel better than reacting. It can help to make a list of the traits and qualities you want to uphold as you co-parent. These might include patience, kindness, respect, and/or grace. These are hard to stick to when you are dealing with someone who doesn’t have the same agenda, but rising above and taking the high road will be better for you and your kids.

5. Enjoy Your Time Off

Many parents spend the whole time they don’t have their children worrying and waiting for them to come back. It’s hard to not see your children half the time, but this alone time can be considered a silver lining. The more you take care of yourself by using that time to reboot and replenish, the better you’ll be for your children when you have them. Try practicing self-care, spending time with friends, exercising, or just having quiet time. All of these forms of self-support may lead to a greater sense of happiness, and you’ll have more space for caregiving and for dealing with your ex.

Learning to co-parent well is a growth-promoting process. You gain skills in negotiating, compromising, as well as stretching your internal capacities for compassion, patience, and empathy. All aspects of divorce can be used to transform the self, so making co-parenting another arena for becoming a better person may shift your focus and intention as you manage this challenging part of the process.

When Mommy’s little girl grows up and goes off into the world to have her own life, struggles with issues of separation and difference may occur. Eye rolls, hugs, tugs-of-war, and tears are familiar to those who have witnessed or participated in mother-daughter relationships. Frequently, in this new phase of their relationship, mother and daughter are unprepared to deal with their differing needs for the amount, form, and content of contact. Moreover, the impact of physical separation between mother and daughter is affected by the degree to which each needs to feel connected, or to not feel rejected or disconnected.

When adult children desire to individuate and develop autonomy, they may struggle to trust their choices and may fear being unable to withstand mom’s influence. Often, to avoid feelings of criticism or incompetence, the daughter will pull away. (These may be the daughter’s feelings and may not reflect the reality that mom feels critical or entitled to continue her earlier, authoritative role.)

From early childhood, mothers and daughters tend to identify with each other. As the daughter moves into adulthood, both may have difficulty with the daughter’s developing an identity that differs from a past shared view of being alike. For some mothers, this can be experienced as a rejection of the mother’s character, worldview, values, opinions, etc. Daughters may have a similar experience. Although we typically think of the daughter needing to pull away from mom to individuate, some daughters who are ambivalent about developing a separate life and sense of self may find they are being pushed by a worried mom to do so. These mothers may try to influence what they see as necessary individuation by reducing the amount and nature of contact with their daughters.

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When Daughter Wants More Contact

Maggie began therapy at the age of 26 when her mother told her she didn’t think it was good for them to speak every day. She said Maggie should talk to someone to help her feel more confident and self-assured. Maggie sounded irritated when she told me she didn’t really want to be in therapy:

“I don’t see why I need a therapist. My mother has always been the one in my life who’s made me feel good about myself. She reassures me. I know my biggest issue is I wish I had a boyfriend. I know mom thinks I’m smart and cute and there is no reason for me not to find a man. I’m not so optimistic. There’s something about me that I can’t seem to find a relationship that works. It’s true; I don’t feel so good about myself. But if Mom hasn’t succeeded in helping me, I don’t know what you can do.”

I asked Maggie why she thought her mother wanted her in therapy. Maggie began to cry and barely managed to speak:

“This has never happened before. I guess I’m upset with Mom. How can she do this to me? I tell Mom everything. I rely on her for everything. She’s always there for me. Lately, she’s been pulling back. I feel so rejected. I don’t know what’s going on. She tells me I need to learn to rely on myself and trust myself. How can I do that if she rejects me? Doesn’t she know I need her input? I feel so abandoned. How can therapy help me? I just need my mother back.”

When you are the same or one, the relationship is symbiotic, with no space between the two. When you are two separate, distinct people, there is a space within which each can attach to the other. That may be the best contact of all.

Maggie and her mother had rarely experienced conflict:

“I always felt we were on the same page about things. She had great ideas and I was happy to do what she suggested. I took up piano, which we both love, and went to her alma mater when I decided on a college. I enjoy making her happy. I always feel safe that she knows what’s right for me. Now she seems to be telling me that what’s right is to be more on my own, have my own ideas. I do have ideas. They just happen to be the same as her ideas. How would I know what other ideas to have?”

Maggie decided to work with me and see if I could help her sort out her feelings about being more separate from her mother. She is beginning to realize she felt good as long as she was living the life her mother valued. She hadn’t recognized that she was so used to looking to her mother for guidelines for living, she paid little or no attention to her own wishes and desires. In fact, when we started working together, Maggie had no concept of her own unique needs, separate from what her mother believed would be good for her. The notion of differences between them was not part of her thinking or feeling.

Maggie has begun to think about how her reliance on her mother has limited her by preventing her from developing herself through her relationship to the world. She is considering that her mother may believe she had interfered with Maggie’s ability to individuate and was pushing Maggie away not to reject her, but so she could develop her sense of self. The challenge for Maggie is to move beyond her mother’s wish for her to individuate, and choose to grow her own desires and develop the capacity to feel self-confident and derive self-esteem from a variety of experiences.

When Mother Wants More Contact

Susan was beside herself. Her 34-year-old daughter, Isabel, who lived in another state, just had her first baby and wanted Susan and her husband to wait a month before visiting their new grandson. Susan had been seeing me for three years when she came into her session overwhelmed with feelings:

“I can’t believe this. You know how I’ve been so excited about going to visit Isabel and the baby and helping out. I assumed she would need me as soon as the baby arrived. I know she can bristle when I give her my opinions or suggestions about things. But I figured she doesn’t know anything about babies, so this was going to be different. Finally, she would let me be a mother.”

I asked Susan why she thought Isabel wanted her to wait. Susan let out a huge sigh and responded:

“I guess I should have anticipated this. Since she left home for college, she’s been keeping me at a distance. When I worried about her in college, she would take forever to respond to my contacts. I remember explaining that it’s a mother’s job to be concerned and she told me it made her feel like I don’t think she can take care of herself and I need to stop. She was partly right. I still don’t think she knows how to be a mother to a newborn and should welcome my input. But I fooled myself about this. I suppose I need to feel like I’m valued as a mother, and I do get worried that she is too independent and will get herself into trouble.”

I reminded Susan that she has been talking with me for some time about how distressed she is about Isabel. When she first came to see me, she was overwhelmed with anxiety that Isabel was about to make a mistake and marry Jake. She was hurt and angry that she had been given no clue that the relationship had progressed to the point of engagement. I recalled that early in our work she had told me she didn’t know why Isabel kept her out of the loop on everything, and I reminded her that we have been looking at that question in our work. Then I asked, “What have you come to understand about this?”

Susan shook her head sadly. “I know, I know. Isabel has to live her own life. Jake turned out to be great. I have to remember that my anxiety about Isabel’s life is about my own needs to feel like a good mother. When she was younger, I felt we were two peas in a pod and I always knew exactly what was right for her. That made me feel like a good mom. Now, she has such a different life from mine that I don’t always know who she is or how to be her mom.”

I recognized how painful this was for Susan, who wanted to feel like a good mother and desirable grandmother. I thought it important to remind her that lately she has been doing a good job thinking about what Isabel wants and being less intrusive. I told her I knew it was difficult to wait for Isabel to ask her on rare occasions for advice. I also hypothesized that perhaps becoming a grandmother triggered her feelings of wanting to be a good mother/grandmother and she was reverting to old patterns of wanting to be involved on her terms, not Isabel’s.

Hopefully, Susan will have an opportunity when she visits Isabel to practice what is so difficult to do: not attempt to influence Isabel’s thoughts and feelings. She knows the more she can admire and recognize Isabel’s differences, the more likely Isabel will learn to see her as uncritical and not controlling. Susan is working on this.

When mom and her little girl spend their early years thinking of each other as the same, the daughter’s seeking to separate can become a painful process for both. If the daughter wants to remain the child and not venture into the grown-up world, the mother who sees this as problematic faces the dilemma of how to help launch her daughter without creating feelings of abandonment and rejection. When the mother finds separation painful, she has to learn how to give her daughter space so they can attach in a new way.

Mother and daughter ultimately have to understand that being separate and different, rather than the same and enmeshed, facilitates a stronger experience of attachment: When you are the same or one, the relationship is symbiotic, with no space between the two. When you are two separate, distinct people, there is a space within which each can attach to the other. That may be the best contact of all.

Note: To protect privacy, names in the preceding article have been changed and the dialogues described are a composite.

While new parents frequently seek the “right way” to parent, there is no one rule book. Rather, there are many, often contradictory, guides to parenting. The lack of certainty about how to raise and care for a child can create intense anxiety for a new parent. Some learn, soon enough, that they will figure out how to be good enough parents. Others never lose an overwhelming anxiety that each decision could have life-or-death consequences. The communication of high levels of parental anxiety frequently results in children whose anxiety controls, limits, and shapes their relationships to the world.

Anxiety is an internal state that is communicated in a variety of ways. The anxious mother holding her baby can unconsciously communicate her inner agitation through her body tension and facial expressions. The young child may sense a parent’s anxiety in the parent’s frantic behavior or speech.

Eventually the child becomes old enough to be the recipient of clear expressions of anxiety in the parent’s verbal communications. The child can experience the parent’s anxiety when told, “No, honey, you’re not old enough for play dates,” or, “I don’t care if your friends can stay out until 9. It’s not safe out there,” or in the parent’s intake of anxious breath every time the child goes down the slide or falls and bruises a knee.

Repeated exposure to parental expressions of anxiety teaches children to expect that they will be vulnerable in a risky world. These lessons are not simply intellectual. They are emotional communications which often have an unconscious component: the lesson to be learned is transmitted and received unconsciously. It is a very powerful communication.

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The Inability to Self-Soothe

When parental anxiety is communicated, consciously or unconsciously, the child’s defenses are put on high alert. If parents are overwhelmed by their own anxieties and can’t soothe themselves, it can be difficult to calm and reassure their children. Without an experience of being calmed as infants, children may not develop an ability to self-soothe. They may develop anxiety, which paradoxically functions as a signal that they are in protective mode. It’s as if the anxiety is evidence of vigilance toward pending danger and thus has a calming influence.

It would be risky to let go of this essential feeling by using rational thoughts to challenge the basis of the anxiety. Instead, anxiety can be put on temporary hold with behavioral distractions that anesthetize against anxiety but don’t alleviate the feelings.

The Intergenerational Transmission of Anxiety

Kate initially came to see me two years ago because she was unhappy with her work life. She is a painter with a master’s degree in fine arts working as an administrator in an art gallery. She was doing little painting, hated her work, and felt clueless about what she wanted to do with herself professionally. She was married with a 17-year-old daughter.

Through our work, we learned about Kate’s lack of belief in her ability to be a good painter and her intense anxiety about showing her work publicly. She described a history of feeling tortured when she painted and had anxiety attacks when she had to submit work to her professors. She acknowledged that even though she won several prizes for her art and was considered very talented by the faculty, “Putting my work out there feels like I’m walking naked in the streets where everyone can see my private parts.” She never was able to initiate the showing of her work and became filled with dread the few times she was persuaded to allow her work to be seen in public.

Talking in therapy helped Kate to paint more at her small studio at home. She began to allow herself to enjoy the experience after she learned to slow down her anxious feelings and use her thoughts to calm herself. But she was clear that she thought it best to leave painting to her personal enjoyment and figure out what else she could do with her life. As we began to look further at Kate’s history, her narrative revealed her to be a person with intense anxiety about almost everything in her life:

“I’ve always had terrible separation anxiety. I went away to college, but it was less than two hours from home. I drank a lot and smoked pot from late middle school until midway through college. I over-ate, I still do. I know I’ve used these things to get rid of my feelings. I think when I started to paint and could get into a kind of Zen place and not worry about any audience, it calmed me down. That’s what probably helped with my drinking and pot smoking. But as soon as my painting was up for judgment, I would freak out. Sometimes I would skip classes or feel sick and go home for days.”

I asked how her parents dealt with her anxiety and her homecoming. Laughing ruefully, she told me, “They didn’t have a clue what to do. I made them, especially my mother, very anxious. She always seemed so agitated when I was conflicted and anxious. It was as if she didn’t want to address my issues because she didn’t know what to do, and that made her a ball of anxiety. I would feel so helpless and angry, and I think she did, too. I soon learned not to come home when I was upset. That only made things worse.”

Then Kate went silent and became tearful. I waited as she slowly began to speak. “You know, I’ve talked mostly about me and my work life in my therapy with you,” she said. “I know that my anxious mother is not news to either of us and how much that has influenced me. But I’ve been ashamed to bring up the fact I’m just like her. My daughter Erica just turned 19. She’s finishing her freshman year in college …”

Repeated exposure to parental expressions of anxiety teaches the child to expect that he or she will be vulnerable in a risky world. These lessons are not simply intellectual. They are emotional communications which often have an unconscious component: the lesson to be learned is transmitted and received unconsciously. It is a very powerful communication.

Kate paused, then started to sob and shake. “I see what’s happening,” she said. “Erica is just like me—a ball of anxiety. She calls home a lot to talk to me, not her father. I know she can feel how anxious I am about her being away at school. I don’t know if she’s calling to reassure me that she’s OK or to check in to see if I’m OK. … I’m an awful mother. I know I don’t help her and only make her more anxious. The problem is I really am scared for her. I didn’t give her the tools to take care of her feelings. Like me, she doesn’t know how to use her thoughts to find ways to counteract her anxious feelings. Worse is when she tells me her anxious feelings, I feel like the best I can do is not share my anxious feelings with her. I feel totally at a loss to offer any useful, thoughtful, soothing response.”

I was familiar with the phenomenon Kate was describing: the intergenerational transmission of anxiety. Like her mother and now her daughter, Kate’s anxiety always lurks at the edge of her emotional life. It is on call to alert her to danger and can be summoned consciously and unconsciously to send out the signal to a loved one that he or she, too, must be vigilant. What else can a good mother do? How can she not warn her child of impending danger? Kate’s mother couldn’t contain her dread and needed Kate to feel it so she could become part of the team to defend against harm. Kate needed to be sure that Erica would be able to function in the world and protect herself from all the dreadful possibilities she was at risk of encountering. While often unconscious, it is a relief for an anxious mother to know that her child is on alert and aware of the many possible threats to her well-being.

Unlike her mother, Kate had become aware of the disadvantages of being unable to manage anxiety. Her recognition that Erica’s anxiety was intensified in the presence of her own strongly contributed to her wish to disrupt this harmful intergenerational cycle. Talking with me helped her use the rational thought that “if I soothe myself and lessen my own anxiety, I will be better able to help Erica with hers.” She was determined not to perpetuate the cycle of anxiety.

Kate has begun to talk with Erica about what she has learned about the intergenerational transmission of anxiety. They have had some honest and painful discussions about the ways they each make the other anxious and have needed the other to mirror their anxiety so they could feel better. Erica has decided to begin her own therapy, and Kate continues to work with me on becoming more comfortable with all her feelings and the feelings she evokes in others. She is slowly developing a greater tolerance for her negative feelings and the negative responses she has been protecting herself from for so many years. When she experiences the anxieties of her mother and daughter, she has started to think thoughts that help her to remind herself that she is a separate person with her own feelings. She can say to herself, “I’m not the same as you. I see you are anxious and scared, but I don’t have to be. These anxieties are not rational, and I don’t have to be in that irrational-feeling space.”

This is hard work for Kate, but the strong wish for her daughter to be free from the same anxiety that has debilitated her is strong motivation for Kate to continue her struggle for change.

Note: To protect privacy, names in the preceding article have been changed and the dialogues described are a composite.

I hear your love and concern for your sister. There is nothing more painful than watching someone you love make choices you believe are harmful. Unfortunately, they are her choices. You will not get anywhere with your sister if you lecture her about the choices she is making. Letting her know (directly or indirectly) you think her boyfriend is a “loser” will most likely only serve to distance her from you and strengthen her bond to him. It also makes it less likely she would confide in you if she did have misgivings about her relationship or her choices; nobody wants to hear “I told you so” from anyone, particularly family.

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At 19, your sister is technically an adult. You characterize her behavior as stubborn. That feeling may be contributing to a dynamic that makes her believe you and your parents don’t respect her, don’t see her as a capable adult, and don’t understand her needs. Given that dynamic, of course she isn’t going to listen to you. She may insist on sticking to her (destructive) choices just to prove her independence. As long as you continue to approach her with opposition, little is likely to improve. Also, even if you were successful in “getting rid” of the boyfriend, that is no guarantee her life choices would improve.

May I suggest you reach out to her from a different place? Listen to her. Find out from her what works for her in her relationship. What draws her to her boyfriend?

May I suggest you reach out to her from a different place? Listen to her. Find out from her what works for her in her relationship. What draws her to her boyfriend? Let her know you aren’t trying to “meddle”; you are just trying to understand her choices. Lead from a place of love and compassion, not judgment and fear. You can also ask her if she’d be willing to engage in family therapy with you and your parents to see about changing your family dynamic, independent of the boyfriend.

The drug use is absolutely a concern. Not only are there potential physical, financial, and legal ramifications for what she is doing, but emotionally, it is likely distancing her more from you and your parents and connecting her more to her boyfriend as well as impacting her ability to make effective choices. Working with a family therapist and an addiction specialist (with or without your sister) can help you identify some effective intervention strategies. Attending a Nar-Anon meeting could also shed some light (again, with or without your sister).

Best of luck,
Erika

Thank you for your question, which sounds like just about every parent’s nightmare—one that’s more common than you might think.

For me, the key to the answer is in your last two questions. You seem to assume that you did something “wrong,” leading to feelings of guilt, shame, anger (at yourselves or each other and/or your son), and say you want to get your son “back.” I assume you mean the way he was before he took on the appearance of a “rebel” from a bad 1950s movie.

He is still the kid you love, still good—just struggling with something beneath all of that strange and troubling behavior. I would hesitate to conclude he is definitely “ruining his life” because I would bet, in the larger context of his life, his behavior probably makes some sense. Most teens go through a rebellious phase, whose aim in part is to annoy or even frighten the living hell out of parents. So I wouldn’t take the bait completely. Of course this is very concerning and needs to be investigated, and consequences are crucial (provided they are communicated clearly and enforced consistently), but something tells me “tough love” or drawing a line in the sand may only alienate him. The trick is reaching to connect with the kid behind all this behavior (fighting, smoking) that also keeps his teenage need for individuation and autonomy in mind. Not the easiest relational dance by any means, which is why the teen years can be very difficult indeed, and why a good school counselor or family therapist can help.

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Seeing this as a family problem, not his problem or your problem, is key. Drawing in teachers and school counselors is good, as is including the parents of the other “troublemakers” he runs with. Something is attracting him to this crowd; what is it?

And again, what was happening before? Was he a good student? Fortunately, this is all happening now more or less under your roof, which tells me this is in part a communication to you—a rebellious, perhaps angry communication at that. As if he’s saying, “I’m making my own rules, got it?” But what might be happening in the family dynamic such that he feels compelled to “say” and do these things? And why isn’t he fearful of consequences? The compulsion to do these things, which includes numbing or distancing from certain thoughts and feelings, means whatever feelings he’s pushing away and expressing via behavior are more powerful than the fear of going off track in school and developing “shady” friends.

Why might he identify with these friends, incidentally? Try to really put yourself in his shoes and forget black/white, right-and-wrong thinking. The harder you push for “the right side” of the line, the more he’ll likely stand on the other side and dig in. Welcome to the teen years. But keep in mind this may be the only way he knows how to express whatever is happening inside him, probably inexpressible.

Of course your concerns are understandable, given his behavior at school and his alarming drug/alcohol use. Yes, many teens experiment with booze and pot, but in this case 15 is pretty early for him to be using it in such a casual way (as opposed to sneaking a beer or joint with friends at a concert). Again, it’s as if he wants you to know about it, as it’s happening, right under your nose.

In some cases, children have tried to be “good” for so long that this goodness becomes a burden, often privately felt, leading to a swing in the opposite direction. Or there’s an anxiety or hurt that drugs and booze cover up. Could your son find some rebellious expression in arenas besides pot—such as music, drama, filmmaking, sports, etc.? Something assertively geeky or super cool where he can stand out and feel good about himself? Teens want to be cool and feel cool, in all ways, be it computer programming or punk rock. These other kids he hangs with make him feel cool, though I wonder why he has embraced this particular incarnation. Of course, many of our greatest innovators were rebels; the challenge is finding an outlet that is free from self-destruction and liberates/transcends rather than medicates the difficult emotions of adolescence. (It’s difficult for parents, too!) It’s likely that underneath all this tough-guy stuff is fear and/or anxiety. It sounds like you may be anxious also, which is why you need to be a role model of calm. Anxiety is contagious throughout a family “system.”

It’s good that he wants to feel cool and have friends; what’s not cool is that his current behavior will lead him nowhere positive in the long run.

Has your son demonstrated an interest in anything previously that might provide for his self-expression? Anything creative rather than destructive? Can you or a counselor or teacher help him find such a direction? Anything that can “hook” his interest can help him find a way back into engagement with school, such as a magnet school for music or technology, for instance. Volunteer work, too. Karate. Photography. Fly fishing. Think outside the box; offer him incentives for trying something new. Maybe his dad or grandpa or someone could even try doing it with him for the first time or two. I’d bet he has an untapped passion.

You and your husband ought to decide, first, what is and isn’t acceptable to you both. Make sure you’re both on the same page. The calmer you are in general, the safer he’ll feel bringing his troubles to you. I recommend tough love if and after the other ideas flop.

And now, consequences. I imagine you have leverage, since he’s 15 and, I’m presuming, approaching driving age. He’ll want driving lessons, need car insurance, and so on. Here’s where you get to be loving but firm parents and decide what is and isn’t acceptable. Anything less than a “B” average, for example, means no driving. Missing a curfew means no car (and possibly phone) for the next __ days. Drinking and driving means no car keys for the next __ months, minimum, and the loss of other privileges (social media, etc.).

You and your husband ought to decide, first, what is and isn’t acceptable to you both. Make sure you’re both on the same page. The calmer you are in general, the safer he’ll feel bringing his troubles to you. I recommend tough love if and after the other ideas flop.

Usually a child his age struggles with developmental challenges. He may not be completely comfortable talking to you about them, which isn’t your fault. Is there a school counselor or teacher who can get involved? What do these folks, probably seasoned observers of teens, think might be happening? What about the parents of his pals?

Does your son have an uncle or grandpa, some adult he trusts, who can spend some time with him and help him open up about what’s going on? Can they go to a movie or a ballgame? It takes a village, as they say, and parents are often the wrong messengers for the right message because of the rebellion factor. Also, children need to complain and gripe about their folks a bit; sometimes “delinquency” is a kind of grandiose, covered-up lament or expression of hurt feelings that they feel can’t be expressed any other way.

What do the parents of these “bad influences” have to say? The more communication among all of you, the better. You need to know where your son is, within reason, and to let him and his friends know that caring eyes are watching.

Also, what is your own attitude toward drinking and drug use (including pills)? That may have some bearing on your son, if you or your husband tip too far toward rigidity or looseness; at any rate, his drinking and smoking is a symptom of something deeper, but neither is helpful to his development if overdone.

It would be interesting to reflect upon how and when the “old version” of your son changed, and what may have been going on in the overall context of his life. We all change. But was there any big change? New neighborhood, new school, the loss of a girlfriend? If he is self-medicating with drugs and alcohol, why? What might be causing anxiety, worry, or other troublesome feelings? Is he worried about dating, college, becoming a man? I think it is important to remember he is still the boy you love, struggling as manhood fast approaches. It’s a confusing world, and teens are bombarded with all kinds of conflicting messages. Personal identity questions around freedom, autonomy, and self-expression are all being worked out, often awkwardly, as a new “family” of peers is developed. Again, the calmer you are—and the less your emotional security is dependent on his behavior—the better.

Also, what bothers you about this behavior? Are you concerned you or others will deem yourself a parental “failure”? Are you imagining the worst—i.e., he is headed for the penitentiary if this doesn’t stop yesterday? Are you already preparing the care package you’ll take to the visiting center, where he’ll be waiting in an orange jumpsuit? Try not to panic, as this may alienate him and scare him off. I know many productive, happy adults who went through a “dark period” in their teens. In fact, it’s better to get it out of the way now. He could also be testing you, to see how far he can go before losing (or not) your love of him. The trick as parents is loving the child without necessarily condoning certain behavior. Easier said than done. But he is and will always be your boy (even if he doesn’t express it that way). Often in the mid- to late twenties, there is a period of reconciliation where kids, now adults, realize how hard adult life really is.

Finally, the most important point of all, which may sound somewhat counterintuitive (but here goes): Take care of yourself. One thing parents forget, and I include myself here, is that we are most of all role models for our children, even when they act like we’re invisible (or annoying). Sometimes, our children will “counter-identify,” meaning they’ll take on the “reverse” identity of a parent, to distinguish themselves as different. Your son’s behavior is communicating something important to you, most likely unconsciously; it’s a good idea to try to “decode” what he’s trying to say. There’s no harm in some family therapy to seek some help in this.

Children often bridle at the implication that they are responsible for their parents’ emotional well-being. This only decreases and constrains the very freedom they’re itching to define. Of course parents get upset or angry or anxious when a child is in trouble—that’s normal—but I’m talking about something more profound, a core, existential sense of OK-ness. Parents who feel, consciously or not, that “my child’s ‘performance’ is a direct reflection of my own core worthiness” are setting themselves up for trouble.

I like the concept from recovery programs of “attraction, not promotion.” You want to provide an attraction to a peaceful sense of stability, calm, and strength which you personally embody. Not pounce and pick apart all of his behavior, which will only make him defensive and/or angry. In a way, you and his dad are the guardrails for safety, in deed and not just word. The guardrail needs to be flexible but not breakable, solid but not overly foreboding (or flimsy). Our children provoke our own need to grow and stretch as a person, and again there’s no shame in getting help. This might include therapy, Al-Anon, or a parents’ support group so you can learn from others—which would also be good role modeling for him. And any non-pressured family time, in whatever form (movies, ballgames, let him choose), will hopefully cultivate unity.

Finally, the National Institute on Drug Abuse has a page for parents on teens. There are other good resources for parents on the Internet also.

Thanks for writing, and warmest wishes to you and your family.
Darren