{"id":28672,"date":"2015-07-14T08:00:31","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T15:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/?p=28672"},"modified":"2017-04-27T11:09:16","modified_gmt":"2017-04-27T18:09:16","slug":"when-parents-struggle-with-feelings-about-adult-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/when-parents-struggle-with-feelings-about-adult-children-0714155","title":{"rendered":"When Parents Struggle with Feelings about Adult Children"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AdultIn my psychotherapy<\/a> practice, I work with many young adults who come into treatment as they recognize that they haven\u2019t developed the necessary emotional tools to succeed as an adult in the world of work and relationships. In the media and in society, I believe that the emphasis on youth frequently leads us to overlook the experience of parents who become increasingly anxious<\/a> and depressed<\/a> as they watch their adult children struggle to create satisfying lives.<\/p>\n

Parents<\/a> often come to see me because they are uncomfortable with their feelings about their adult children. Typically, they worry<\/a> that their children will never be successful or happy, and they are confused about whether they and\/or their child are responsible.<\/p>\n

Eric was suffering when he came to see me. He felt his 27-year-old daughter, Holly, was ruining her life and it was causing him great pain. In our first session, he seemed tormented as he told me that Holly \u201clived in a fantasy world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s been in one rock band or another since middle school and through college,\u201d Eric related. \u201cShe plays guitar and she\u2019s good. But so are a lot of kids. She majored in education, and I thought she\u2019d be a music teacher. But since she graduated college, she hasn\u2019t pursued teaching and says she isn\u2019t interested. She keeps auditioning for bands and sometimes gets a gig, but nothing permanent. My wife and I think she\u2019s depressed. We agreed she could move back home after college, but that was more than four years ago. She makes very little money and barely seems to get by on what she makes playing music. I don\u2019t think she is ever going to grow up. She doesn\u2019t seem very happy. My wife and I keep arguing about whether we should give her an ultimatum that she has to get a real job or we won\u2019t keep supporting her. I don\u2019t know \u2026 I just don\u2019t know what to do. I think I\u2019ve become more depressed than Holly.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Eric\u2019s situation was familiar to me. Many parents are caught between their desires to love<\/a>, nurture, and protect their children and their fear<\/a> that their children don\u2019t have the skills, drive, or emotional strength to enter the adult world and figure out who they are and what they want for themselves. More significantly, these parents frequently find it exceptionally difficult to make demands and behave in ways that evoke their own and their children\u2019s bad feelings. Eric was angry with himself and with Holly. His ambitions and hopes for her were mixed with his feelings about himself and the kind of parent he was and had been.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always supported Holly\u2019s musical aspirations,\u201d he said. \u201cI took her to lessons, went to her rock performances, let her bands practice in our garage. I loved every minute of it. I suppose I thought that maybe she\u2019d become a professional, maybe even shared her wish that she\u2019d become a rock star. Now I wonder if I lived in a fantasy world also and didn\u2019t give Holly enough of a taste of reality. Maybe I didn\u2019t help her with reality in other ways. She was always so busy with her music and her friends that my wife and I didn\u2019t ask very much of her. We pretty much said yes to almost everything: music camp, expensive instruments, drove her everywhere. She never had to pay for anything, and we\u2019re not rolling in money. We never even gave her chores, which drove my wife crazy and we fought about that. Maybe I just let her off too easy and now I don\u2019t think she can take care of herself. The problem is, I don\u2019t want to take care of my grown-up daughter as if she were still a child. I feel angry at her and I hate myself for feeling this way.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo matter how I look at it, I\u2019m a lousy father. If I cut her off, I\u2019m not doing what I should and that makes me bad. But I\u2019m already a bad father because It\u2019s my fault that she doesn\u2019t know how to be a grown-up in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many parents are caught between their desires to love, nurture, and protect their children and their fear that their children don\u2019t have the skills, drive, or emotional strength to enter the adult world and figure out who they are and what they want for themselves. <\/span><\/p>\n

After many hours of talking with Eric about his relationship to Holly, we began to understand how he and his wife, Ella, had unwittingly undermined Holly\u2019s ability to make her way in the adult world. As I learned about Eric and the early years with his daughter, a picture of two loving parents who were smitten with their daughter emerged. Both Eric and Ella had been raised in very strict, cold families. Eric told me that he and his wife were drawn to each other when they realized that neither of them was raised with feelings of recognition or appreciation from their parents. Eric remembered talking with Ella about how they would be different and give their children extra attention and make them feel special and perfect. In talking with me about this, Eric wondered aloud.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe we went too far in the other direction,\u201d he said. \u201cEverything that Holly did we delighted in. We oohed and aahed over everything. The smallest thing\u2014a smile, a scribble, a sound\u2014was enough to get us to be gleeful toward her. We were in love. I suppose we went overboard. We married late. When we realized that we would have only one child, we got even more enthusiastic and involved with Holly. We scheduled any activity she asked for; we tried to nurture all her interests and pretty much praised everything she did and made no demands. Now I\u2019m always so irritable with her. I feel critical, but I don\u2019t want her to know. I don\u2019t want to upset her. It\u2019s awful.\u201d<\/p>\n

It became clear that Eric and his wife had never set limits for Holly and that they hadn\u2019t helped her develop a sense of herself that was realistic\u2014i.e., that had both positive and negative aspects. I suggested a hypothesis to Eric: \u201cI think it\u2019s likely that if Holly only received praise, she knew, if only unconsciously, that she wasn\u2019t so completely and totally fantastic. If she couldn\u2019t believe that she was so terrific, it would have been difficult to develop a balanced view of her strengths and weaknesses. If Holly couldn\u2019t trust the good stuff, she probably had a great deal of uncertainty about her abilities. She even might have leaned toward thinking more negatively about herself. I think it is very likely that she is quite anxious about whether she has what it takes to make it in the adult world.\u201d<\/p>\n

I asked Eric what he thought of my hypothesis. After some silence, he replied: \u201cYes, you have put into words what I haven\u2019t been able to put together. It hurts, but it\u2019s a relief to feel that this all makes sense and maybe now we can figure out how to make things better for all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

While my hypothesis made sense to Eric and he wanted to find more productive ways to relate to Holly, he found it very difficult to change his behavior toward her. He agreed there would have to be limit setting, but he could not get comfortable with what limits and how to implement them. For example, he thought it would be a good idea to ask Holly to start paying some rent (his wife agreed). But he obsessed about how much, when to begin, and how to bring it up. As we explored his difficulties, some of his resistances became clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know I should ask for rent, but I\u2019m sure Holly will think I\u2019m mean. I hate that she\u2019ll feel like I\u2019m not supporting her musical aspirations. I don\u2019t want to make it more difficult for her to pursue her music career.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eric and I spent many sessions exploring his conflicts. He had to come to terms with his feelings of meanness and get to a place where, even if it didn\u2019t feel good to him, he could believe that setting limits was helping his daughter by giving her the opportunity to see that she could take care of herself and succeed in the world. Some of the questions I asked Eric to consider were: What is it like for you if Holly thinks you\u2019re mean? Do you think you\u2019re mean? What would you have to tolerate if Holly did think you were mean? Eric also had to reconsider what actually was and wasn\u2019t supportive of Holly\u2019s music career. I asked: \u201cHow do you conclude that asking for rent means you\u2019re not supporting her career? Can you consider that (even if she didn\u2019t like it) paying rent could help Holly see herself as able to take care of herself and might give her the confidence she needs to make it in the very competitive world of music?\u201d<\/p>\n

Eric is wrestling with these and many other questions. He and his wife decided to give Holly three months notice to begin to pay rent. As expected, Holly was angry<\/a> and hurt. She cried and accused her father of not thinking she had what it takes to be a musician. Eric stood his ground (although he reported that he felt like a bad father). He is also working on being aware of his gushing about anything his daughter tells him. He is trying to be more honest with Holly when she acts entitled or does something irritating.<\/p>\n

Eric and I continue to work on the difficult feelings that emerge as he asks Holly to be a responsible adult. He is increasingly able to appreciate that this is having a positive effect on Holly. She is paying rent and is talking about substitute teaching. At the same time, she has formed a new band and is writing more music. Without withdrawing all of his involvement, Eric is trying to let Holly become her own cheerleader. The more he sees her taking charge of her life, the better he feels about his limit setting and the more able he is to set limits. This should lay the groundwork for Holly to become more of an adult and for Eric to feel like a \u201cgood enough\u201d father.<\/p>\n

Note:<\/strong>\u00a0To protect privacy, names in the preceding article have been changed and the dialogues described are a composite.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Parents who wrestle with their feelings about their adult children can benefit from partnering with a therapist who understands sensitive family dynamics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1777,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[542],"tags":[31,450,51,25],"class_list":["post-28672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-articles","tag-psychotherapy-practice","tag-individuation","tag-healthy-parenting","tag-psychotherapy-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1777"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28672\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}