It’s A Mother

Posted by fxckfeelings on June 10, 2009

We’re all familiar with the overgrown-child/slacker archetype, the 30-something offspring who lives in the basement and still has mom do his/her laundry. In film and TV, that character is played for laughs, but in real life, adults that rely heavily on their moms—either because they can or because they have to—are sometimes very unfunny. In these two cases, those close to needy adult-children aren’t amused.
–Dr. Lastname

I’m in my 30s and have always been the responsible and goal oriented brother, but my baby brother, who’s just out of college, has always been the opposite. He basically sponges off our mother, and his ungrateful attitude towards her is making me more and more angry. I don’t want to feel this way, because I know what he does for her is not my concern, but it has gotten to the point where I don’t want to be around my brother because I don’t want to witness any of his behavior. I literally feel ill when I see the way he just takes from our mother and really uses her, but my mother doesn’t see it that way, so she resents me for feeling like this. My father is actually on my side, but my dad travels a lot for work and is not always around to put his foot down. Overall, my brother and I are just totally different people/personalities, and there are so many different conflicts in our way of thinking, but now the differences between us are spilling over into the rest of the family dynamic. Is it wrong to distance myself from him? I don’t want to dislike him as much as I do, but being around him isn’t going to help.

I’m not sure what your goal is here, but I think we both agree what it isn’t– trying to change your brother. Without the benefit of supernatural powers, you can’t get your brother to stop being a sponge or your mother to stop protecting him, regardless of how much you’d like them to change.

Trying to do so, as you’ve experienced with your mother, could drag all of you into a rut. As a goal-oriented guy, you may have a particular talent for straightening things out, a talent which helps you work hard and make a living, but if you apply that talent to changing your family, you’re in trouble.

You might feel a moment of relief after telling them what you really think; it’s what I have previous described as something of a “feelings fart,” as the relief is temporary with a lingering effect that poisons the air and clears the room.

In other words, your toxic emission with cause your brother will tell you that you’re mean and jealous and your mother will accuse you of tearing him down when he needs building up. No wonder your father travels a lot for work.

You don’t want to be pushed by guilt into spending more time with your brother, because it would strengthen your dislike and lead to no good. And you don’t want to explain your position to your mother because she will see it as destructive criticism that she must stop .

Your pain is justified, but you need to bear it, not vent it, so your goal isn’t to change your family or relieve your pain. Your goal is to be a good brother and son while making the best of the family you’ve got, and that means doing what you’re doing– distancing yourself from him. Since you can’t like your brother, spend less time with him without making an issue of it. When your mother is overly supportive, try to be somewhere else.

You said being around him isn’t going to help, and you were right, but you need to accept that there’s nothing else that’s going to help, either. Your brother is who he is, your mother’s perspective is unwavering, and if that’s the way things are, then you are making the best available choice.

STATEMENT:
Imagine a statement that would protect you from the worst case scenario: your mother urges you to spend more time with your brother because he’s less successful than you and looks up to you and needs the self-esteem that only your approval could give him. You statement should stay positive and constructive while keeping your negative thoughts to yourself. “I care a great deal about my brother’s success and would love to help him. My first impulse, like yours, is to be as directly supportive as possible. But I think he’s finding his way in his own fashion, that some kinds of support are more helpful than others, and that I need to be selective about the kind of support I offer, which I am. So we may not agree about the kind of support that works best for him, but, at this time of my life I think it’s a good thing for us to accept a disagreement and leave it at that, particularly since we both want the best for him.”

My 20-something daughter is bipolar, and as a single mother especially, I’ve had to struggle to care for her, particularly since I’m the most stable presence in her life. Most of the time, she does a good job taking care of herself, taking her meds, seeing her doctor, sticking to a routine, etc. A couple of times a year, however, she doesn’t do such a good job. It usually starts with a breathless phone call about meeting some guy or running off on some unannounced vacation or buying something expensive, and then it ends just before somebody gets hurt or goes to jail. I’m not just her mother, I’m also a nurse, and in either role, I’m really not sure what the right response is to her mania. If I call her repeatedly to check in, I’m being a nag and she tells me I’m “ruining her fun” (at least that’s what she said the time she ran off to Hawaii). If I tell l her how worried I am about her actions or how strongly I want her to stop, she starts to yell at me about how I’m treating her like a child and trying to control her life. And if I tell her she’s sick, she accuses me of being cold and clinical. I wind up saying nothing but I can’t keep my distance. The only reason she’s not pregnant, in jail, or dead has less to do with me and more to do with luck. But I don’t want to rely on luck—my goal is, I want to know how to help my daughter.

Like the instinctually protective parents who wrote in couple of weeks ago, you share the natural goals that occur to someone who wants to help a mentally ill daughter, and those goals always cause trouble.

You want to keep her safe by keeping an eye on her, but you only have so many eyes, and she’ll undoubtedly flee from your intrusiveness. You want to arrange for her to get the best treatment, but the more you try, the more she’ll turn into any involuntary patient and dismiss treatment as your idea and take less responsibility for her part of it.

You want to reason with her and get her to understand what she needs to do, but, as you know, you can’t reason with crazy; at the core of this problem is the fact that your daughter’s brain isn’t working, and trying to talk logic with someone temporarily devoid of logic will irritate you and stir up her craziness. Trying too hard to achieve control on any of these fronts will wear you out, heat up your relationship, and cause her symptoms to get worse.

Once you accept the impossibility of controlling what you would dearly wish to control/would be able to control if this were a fair world (ha!), then you’re ready to consider realistic goals. Your goal is to help her if and when you can, and otherwise keep yourself focused elsewhere for the sake of your sanity and survival, all while avoiding the temptation to express negative emotion. It’s to figure out what she needs the most, and offer her advice and incentives that steer her in the right direction without becoming critical or negative. It’s to know what you can and can’t do to ensure her safety and do it, regardless of her reaction.

If she becomes irrational about a relationship, tell her that you think relationships are important but that they can be over-stimulating and trigger her illness unless she takes things slow, and that you’re seeing danger signs. As such, you’re advising her to follow her usual procedures for chilling when she’s getting sick, like talking to her psychiatrist and delaying or slowing any exciting experiences.

Don’t push her with your feelings by saying “I can’t stand that guy,” “you’re worrying me to death,” because your both making it personal and using earth logic. She won’t react well to judgment or sanity.

Think of being the parent of a mentally ill daughter as a job, that you must handle her with a professional responsibility, keeping your deepest feelings to yourself. Learn how to assess her risk of harm and, as difficult as it will be to execute, how to arrange for an involuntary emergency room evaluation if she won’t agree to go willingly. And then you’ve done your job and have to mentally clock out of your shift, no matter what happens next.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement about your plan for being helpful that avoids argument or conflict. “You and I want the same thing: that you stay as healthy as possible and live life as normally as possible which means, of course, that sometimes you should take risks. My understanding of your illness, however, is that it can sometimes undermine your judgment and/or put you in danger, even if you’re doing all the right things, so it’s my job to let you know if I see the warning signs, notify your psychiatrist if you seem too disorganized to do it yourself, and notify the police if I think you’re about to cause serious harm.

It’s also my job to help prevent relapses, if I can, because they are always a possibility and each relapse tends to cause permanent brain damage. I will always treat you as a respected adult by interfering if, and only if, the illness is interfering with your judgment and then doing so as little as possible. Ideally, I’d like you to tell me what you want me to do under those circumstances and to help me identify warning signs; but, basically, I’ve got to call it the way I see it. Right now, I see you doing many healthy, positive things to move ahead in your life and manage this illness effectively. I think you could do better, however, by thinking more about a crisis plan for managing relapses and thinking through what you’d like me and other friends to do if one seems imminent.”