Most people thing my mom is really fun, if a little flaky and emo, but they don’t see how crazy and mean she gets when there’s no one around but my brother and me (my parents are divorced). When she’s in a bad mood, she tells us we’ve been mean to her, and reminds us of things we’ve said that hurt her, and tells us how bad we are until we’ve apologized, and then she forgets it ever happened. There’s one cousin who’s seen what she gets like and I rely on him to remind me that it’s OK, she’s crazy, but the other day he seemed charmed by her and then, when I complained, he told me I had to get over her and not be so angry, and now I feel totally unsupported. My goal is to get someone to understand what’s going on.

Nothing gets people more stirred up than dramatically pitched false accusations and punishments by a powerful, inescapable, totally two-faced authority, like your mama.

The good news is that, while you’ve got the makings of a perfect soap opera, it sounds like you’re not getting swept away by it.

The trouble with soap operas, of course, is that they trap the good guys into endless rounds of angry, hurt reactions to crazy bad guys. In the process, they take up huge amounts of time and energy for tears and talk, talk, talk before, finally, there’s a glimmer of comfort and validation…before the cycle starts all over again.

The process leaves no time for any other (boring, make-a-living) activities or relationships, positive or negative, and the good guys’ angry responses and efforts to expose the villain usually make them more vulnerable to slander in an endless vicious circle.

So enjoy validation if it comes your way, but don’t seek it out too intensely or your life will become ready for daytime. Besides, even if somebody sees what your mother’s really like, her behavior is not going to change. Sadly, you drew her number in the mother lottery and won a nut job.

Not to be indelicate, but, as you might have guessed, your mama sounds a little crazy. On the positive side, that basically means, while her behavior is erratic and sometimes cruel, it’s not personal, just like your cousin says.

She’s not motivated by anything except a blip in her brain, so keep that in mind when you’re tempted to “fight back,” because you can’t win against crazy, no matter who acknowledges how crazy she is.

Your goal then isn’t to out your mother as a witch from hell, but to keep doing whatever you think is positive, good for you, and likely to spring you free, like getting your schoolwork done, keeping busy with out-of-house activities, and keeping these goals in mind when she does blow up and accuse you of untold (and likely fictitious) evils.

There’s more good news in that it sounds like that’s what you’re doing; you’re not describing angry, “cry-for-help” drug-downing or cop-defying behavior that will accelerate the soap opera cycle at the expense of your health and future independence.

You’re moving ahead, regardless of anger and turmoil, and that’s what you need to do. Forget exposing her two faces, because nobody will be happy if the soap hits the fan.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a standard business plan for growing up with a closeted witch. “I’ve got good reason to believe I don’t do bad things unless she gets me mad, and I can’t stop her from getting me mad, even if the world knows it’s her fault, so I’ve got to believe in myself and pursue my regular goals, like schoolwork and building a life. I can’t expect to be happy when she gets going, but if I can keep my mouth shut and fight the temptation to join her in big, dramatic scenes, I’ll be doing a good job and acquiring an excellent training in how to be a therapist.”

I’m a psychotherapist with a small but thriving practice. I’m also recovering from an addiction to pain meds (please note: I cannot prescribe medication, nor can anybody in my practice, so there’s no ethics violation there, I got my pills like any other druggie would). I’ve been completely sober for three years now, but I’m afraid to be open about my problem with almost anyone, including my family, because I can’t see how people would respect or want to get help from someone who was as messed up as I was (and I know most drug counselors are addicts, but I think this is different). The problem is, I feel more stressed than ever. I’m burning out on my practice because I’m always staying late and trying hard to make sure everyone is settled before I let them out of my office. And I feel terrible about not spending enough time with my family, and I never have time for myself. I feel I’m in danger of slipping, but there’s no escape.

Your drug use might be under control, but right now, your life isn’t.

Your life is being managed by your need to do a perfect job and keep your patients safe and happy. Meanwhile, you’re running out of gas, losing credibility with friends and family, and slipping closer to the pit of pain pills.

You’re not at the wheel, your desires are, and we know where that road leads. Caring too much about how people feel and doing a perfect job are what got you into this mess in the first place.

You can’t make people happy, particularly if you’re a shrink. Patients are unhappy; that’s why they’re patients. So far, there’s no cure to life sucking, so, like a good physical therapist, your job is to use your time efficiently to offer coping tools. After that, it’s quitting time.

Sometimes people are helped; but sometimes they’re disappointed. Your job is to do a good professional job and then move on to other responsibilities.

Then there are patients who want to hold someone responsible for their unhappiness, and their therapist is target number one. They know you haven’t done enough, or you’ve done the wrong thing, or you need to do more. If you react too much to their beliefs, you’ll never leave the office.

Of course, you can’t stop being sensitive, because that’s your nature; I might as well ask you to start writing with your other hand or grow a foot overnight. Instead, accept your sensitivity and learn to manage it.

You need to take pride in how you manage your weaknesses and, to do that, you must first acknowledge them, not disown them. Out yourself and lay claim to the management credit you deserve.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a management directive. “I always feel better if people respect me and are happy with my work; but I will not let that need interfere with my building better self-control, limiting workaholism, and doing what I think is right to balance my life. The greater my weaknesses, the more right I have to be proud of what I’ve done with them and intend to do.”

When my mother starting dating my soon-to-be-step-father, I was upset. It’s not just that my father had only died six months earlier, but that this guy was clearly a user and a nowhere near good enough for her. I’m in college, so at least I didn’t have to live under the same roof as this jerk, but I’ve already gone out of my way to avoid him and it’s really annoyed my mom that I haven’t tried to get along with him. Plus it means I’ve spent last time with her, and we used to be really close. When she told me they were going to get married, I freaked out, and now she’s says that if that’s how I feel then I’m not invited to the wedding. I think what my mom and I need is a face-off to get everything on the table and sort out this mess. My goal is to get my mom back.

You’ve got every reason to worry about your mother’s taste in men and its impact on your relationship; after all, her choice has the potential to cause you (and possibly her) great pain, at a time when you’re grieving your father’s death.

Unfortunately, however, all you can do is worry, and after that, you’re fucked. There’s nothing you can do to make things better and lots to make things worse.

Sometimes people feel that grieving entitles them to special consideration, but those people are delusional.

Loss triggers the worst in everyone bereaved, which becomes a chain reaction. Death is hard, but so is life, and you don’t get to cut in entitlement line.

If you go with your feelings—and you’re entitled to them—you’ll make things much worse. You want a face-off because you want to believe you could get through to your mother in a one-to-one conversation. Confrontation is supposed to be “empowering,” which is usually code for, “a giant waste of time.”

You’ll tell her she’s being stupid and insensitive to your feelings, and she’ll tell you you’re an immature brat, and you’ll both repeat yourselves several times at higher volume until the talk is over and no subsequent talks will be scheduled until her third wedding anniversary (or, as you see it, her messy divorce).

Remember, Hamlet had it even worse. True, he had even more reason to be angry (his stepfather had murdered his father and was eager to get him out of the way, the play he wrote for his mother failed to get his point across and got bad reviews, etc).

Being a character in a play, however, he naturally had lots and lots of feelings, all of which he communicated, and his family situation definitely deteriorated as a result. You see, there’s lots you can learn from Shakespeare, namely, ye shall shut up.

Your broader goal isn’t to vent your spleen and get mama back (which won’t happen), but to minimize the damage to yourself and avoid drawing your mother and fiancé together in an alliance based on her fight with you.

Instead, keep your feelings to yourself. Lie low, finish your studies, eat cake at the wedding. Choose peace with your mother over your worries and righteous indignation, because no matter how much you hate her choices, choosing to suck it up is probably what your father would want.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement to keep you on course. “I’ve lost the family that I thought was my rock. I don’t know when I’m going to stop hurting. What mattered most to my dad is that I finish my studies and try to support Mom and if that’s impossible, try to stay out of fights. I can’t salvage or rescue my family or stop the pain but if I can keep on course, with all the sadness, loneliness, and irritation I feel, I’ll have accomplished something amazing.”

I was a real fuck-up when I was in high school; I cut a lot of class, got high a lot, got my girlfriend pregnant…she ended the pregnancy, but it was a huge mess. My oldest and only son is now 13, but he’s already becoming a chip off the old block. We’ve always gotten along so well, and I thought we were still getting along, but then I found pot in his room and my wife said she found a condom wrapper in the trash. We live in my wife’s small hometown, so nobody knows about my history, but now my son is going to have to walk around with that reputation, nevermind that he might ruin his future or end up with child support. My goal is to get my son to snap out of it and not fuck up his future.

It’s great that you and your son are good buddies, and that you understand him well, so don’t wreck things by trying to over-control his choices.

Yes, of course you’d like to save him the pain you went through, and you’re terrified of what might happen if he lacks the luck that kept you out of serious trouble. If you act on your feelings, however, you’ll turn your buddy into an enemy, and probably a nightmare.

Look at the bright side; he’s still at home, and you have lots of opportunity to give him good advice and back it up with incentives that are extra strong because he’s relatively dependent. (It’s much harder after he has a car and job).

You understand his problems, having had them yourself, so if you can just keep your emotions safely under wraps, you can be the good coach you never had yourself—you’re in his own live-in “scared straight,” without the scaring him part.

So, in order to be useful to him, start by creating a boundary between what you think will help your son and what your feelings want you to express that would not be helpful.

It’s helpful to discourage marijuana use with whatever monitoring and enforcement system you like, but it’s not helpful to tell him he’s bad, ungrateful or defiant (even if he is), or to present your efforts as punishment, or to generally give him a bad guy to rebel against.

It’s helpful to discourage unsafe sex and unsafe relationships, the latter being those that are overly close and therefore likely to blow up with lots of rage, misery, and distraction. It’s not helpful to tell him he’s got to follow your rules or else.

As an overall rule, it’s helpful to share your own vulnerability to the needs and desires that are pulling at him and state your reasons, based on experience, for not giving in to them.

It’s not helpful to portray yourself as morally superior or as a frightened protector of his image in town. He doesn’t need a visit from the ghost of ruined reputations future. Sure, you’re more his dad than his friend, but being his dad doesn’t make you his judge. Be reasonable, and he might just follow your lead.

STATEMENT:
Give yourself a pep-talk before trying it out on him. “I shouldn’t be surprised that my son has my own impulsivity and eagerness to try everything, and those are good qualities if he can learn how to manage them. It will be no easier for me to control his behavior than it was for my parents with me. Judging from that experience, I’ll get nowhere showing him anger or fear. So I’ll choose my battles carefully and explain my limits in terms of their long-term benefit and try to look calm and friendly, regardless of how I really feel, and hope for the best.”

I have a 30-year-old patient whom I’ve been seeing in weekly psychotherapy for 6 months and he had a terrible history of sexual and physical abuse and years in state care. Amazingly, despite all his trauma and several prior failed treatments, he settled into a trusting relationship with me. He tells me I’m the first person he’s bonded with, and he’s been able to stop using cocaine, and, for the first time, sees some hope for himself. The problem is that he just got a new job, and I’m not covered by his new insurance plan. He wrote me a letter telling me how much he feels his recovery depends on continuing the treatment we’ve started and I feel professionally obliged to put his welfare ahead of my financial needs, but I’d like to get paid. My goal is to do right by my patient, and not trigger the feelings of abandonment that underlie much of his negative behavior, but I’m not sure how long I can afford to see him for nothing.

There are many therapists who believe the best thing you can do for a troubled patient like this is to “be there,” providing the steady acceptance and secure relationship that they need for healing. I’m not one of them.

The sad fact is that the healing power of currently available treatments is vastly over-rated and a good example of false hope and the harm it can cause.

What’s wrong is that our treatments, in terms of demonstrated effectiveness, are all rather weak, and it shouldn’t be surprising; we do our best, but life, such as it is, is a bitchmonster from hell. You can’t undo the past, change personality, stop drug cravings, or even guarantee that you’ll be available next week.

Look where you’re going with this treatment and “mind the gap,” as they say on the London Underground, because, as ideal a healer as you seem right now, there are many ways this dynamic could get tripped up.

For example, unexpectedly, you and/or your treatment rub the patient the wrong way. It may be that you fail to live up to an impossibly high ideal or that you have a bad day and say the wrong thing. When that happens, trust disappears and with it, your patient’s rationale for healing.

You try to stay calm, remain empathetic, and ride out the storm while resenting having your personality dissected for an unpaid hour. If your anger shows, it gives your patient more reason to feel victimized and find a therapist who can help him recover from his latest trauma/treatment.

Another common outcome is the “Bill Murray Morass,” whereby he continues to feel strongly that treatment is beneficial and can’t imagine living without it, and you, and this continues for many years, while you continue to feel responsible and indispensable. “What About Bob?”, indeed.

You and “Bob” could argue that treatment has benefited his control over negative impulses, but it has also fostered a sense of dependency and fragility that will surface if, God forbid, you should die first, or, more likely, he just changes his mind.

So don’t buy into his idea of your precious relationship. If he liked you, it proves he has the capacity to like another therapist. There are many fish in the sea, many therapists in his insurance directory. If he depends on that positive feeling to stay sober or maintain a positive idea of the future, he’s in trouble, and so are you.

Your goal is for him to build up ideas for staying sober and fighting off despair that are not dependent on a single relationship or good feeling, and that can stand up to rejection and depression. In other words, you want to “be there” for your patient, but you don’t want to be the only thing between him and oblivion. Don’t beget a Bob.

STATEMENT:
Our relationship has been positive, but it’s important for you to manage negative beliefs, despair, and anger when you’re not feeling closely supported, and our stopping treatment gives you just such an opportunity. You have the capacity to form a positive relationship, so I’m confident you’ll do well in shopping around for a new therapist. Meanwhile, it’s good for you to focus more on the ideas than on the individual, because it’s your own ideas and the way you use them that will give you strength to manage yourself. I’m confident that this will work out well.”

I have a new patient who’s a young woman, college freshman, who was sent to therapy by her parents after her roommate turned her in for cutting her arms and drinking too much. After a fair amount of discussion, I started her on a medication trial and explained to her that these pills take a while to work (if they work at all), but it didn’t sink in, because after a week she’d had enough with feeling tired and hungry, especially because she still felt depressed and anxious. Not long after that, she declared that therapy in general was a waste of her time and she could stop drinking and self-mutilating on her own. Part of me thinks that it’s not my job, or anyone’s job, to sell her on treatment if she’s not ready, but I admit, there’s a softy side of me that doesn’t want to let her off the hook just so that she can really hurt herself or get kicked out of school. My goal is to get this kid to give treatment one more chance.

It’s tempting to tell a young woman with obvious problems that she should stay in treatment, but don’t. This is not the time to listen to your softer side. Of course you wish she would feel better and stay positive, but first, you and she must accept your lack of control.

If psychiatric treatment—medication or psychotherapy—were more reliable and effective, maybe it would be worthwhile to give such advice. More often than not, however, the first trial of treatment doesn’t work or causes side effects and patients who are already angry and disappointed about their life expectations are then quick to feel that their negative beliefs have been redeemed.

Your goal isn’t to get her to stay in treatment; it’s to give her tools to make rational and positive decisions about treatment. You don’t want her treatment decisions to depend on her positive relationship with you (see: above Bob) or an initial positive result. You want them to depend on her own ability to weigh risks and benefits and do what’s right.

It’s easier to help her think realistically about treatment if you crush false hope up front. You are obviously well aware that treatments of any kind rarely bring about a “cure.” I’m often reminded, when patients cite a pharmaceutical add touting a particular medication as “effective,” that the scientific meaning of the word is the opposite of its meaning in plain English.

In the language of science, effective means “better than nothing,” not “helpful most of the time.” Life is tough and so are most psychiatric problems. Unfortunately, so is your patient’s attitude.

Ultimately, you want her to know that, while you don’t care which decision she makes, you do care a great deal that you make she makes that decision rationally. Being soft won’t work, so be hard, or really, be honest, not emotional or sentimental.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a speech for encouraging her to take good care of herself and use treatment appropriately. “I wish I could tell you that treatment will ease your pain, but it often doesn’t. Given the fact that depressive feelings often come from genes and that we don’t have a cure, it’s not surprising that they tend to come and go and then return, even when a medication or other treatment has been very helpful. So the main goal of treatment isn’t to make you feel better, but to make you stronger and better able to tolerate your condition, much as if it were diabetes. You can get stronger by choosing the right psychotherapist or therapy or 12 step group and also appropriate friends and readings, because the right choice can make you stronger, and the wrong choice won’t. Medication is worth trying if your symptoms are hurting or threatening to get you canned. There’s a risk that each medication will cause side effects or won’t work, but you don’t want to make a choice about meds because you love or hate them. You want to weigh the risks of not taking them and the possible benefit of their working. If I were in your position, I’d definitely be trying them, but it’s your call.”

My son was diagnosed with severe depression when he was a freshman in high school. I know it’s supposed to be a hereditary disease, but neither I nor my husband have any history of it; we both come from stiff-upper-lip backgrounds, and when our son attempted suicide, we were completely taken by surprise. He was also doing drugs, and we didn’t know it. He’s doing much better now, seeing a therapist weekly, but I still worry about his going off to college next year. He doesn’t share much with us, but I know he wants to do what’s “normal.” I don’t want to intrude on his relationship with his therapist or undermine his confidence or make him feel pressured, but we need to decide whether he’s ready to go. My goal is to make the right decision without hurting him in the process.

You can’t protect your son from of having an illness and all the trauma that goes with it, so for your own sake, and against all your instincts, don’t try.

On the other hand, if you try too hard to avoid all potentially painful issues with your son and stick to being stoic and reserved, you’ll be helping him avoid the hard choices he has to make, instead of doing your job.

Life is hard, precisely because it includes illness and drug abuse on top of the usual high stresses of being adolescent and finding a way to be independent. It’s a clusterfuck, and you’re the motherclusterfucker; you’re all in this together.

You’re right, you need to make decisions about whether he’s ready to go to college, but if you guess wrong, he’ll get pushed into relapse and a worse sense of loserness. Then you’ll be out a big chunk of tuition that will have done him no good and won’t be there later, when it might help.

In other words, on no level can you afford to be squeamish about dealing with the issues of his illness and drug abuse just because you’re afraid of hurting his self-esteem. Life is responsible for hurting his self-esteem, and while you gave him life, the transference of responsibility doesn’t work that way.

Instead of trying to make things right, try to prevent further damage. You’ve got painful topics to discuss, but that’s why you became parents: to experience a new level of pain. Starts from childbirth and it’s only downhill from there.

You don’t have to be critical or grim or sad to discuss this issue. Yes, you have to push the sad fact that he has not one but two chronic conditions—depression and a weakness for drugs—but, having accepted that, you’re free to celebrate the good work he’s done and talk about realistic options.

It’s possible to push your son towards making good decisions without shoving him into a wall. Don’t be afraid of doing the heavy lifting parenting can require; time to forget your upper lip and, instead, stiffen your resolve.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a formula. “You’re recovering nicely from a bad bout of depression, but we know that the brain can take a long time to recover fully and that you’ll always be vulnerable to relapse and, probably, drug abuse. Life is hard, and that’s the way it is. Now, you’re doing your job perfectly; you’re sober, you work as hard as you can at school, and you use therapy to get stronger. Let’s look at how you’re doing with your current course-load, get input from your teachers and therapist, and consider how much structure you’re likely to need next year and whether it’s time yet for you to live away from home while continuing your work.”

I love my parents, and we have a good relationship, but if the issue of my sexuality ever comes up (I’m a gay man), all hell breaks lose; my mother sobs about how the family name is going to die, my father pleads for me to try and find the right woman, your typical Jewish soap opera. I know they’re not really bigots and all the hubbub comes from a place of concern, but enough already, you know? None of us is getting any younger, I’m not getting any less gay, and yet they refuse to tone it down. My goal is to get my parents to calm down about the issue before it drives me away completely.

The tough part about having loudly protective parents, as opposed to quietly protective ones like the mother above, is that loud is harder for parents to control, once they’ve gotten into the habit.

People always say that telling the truth is important, but in reality, telling the truth is more gratifying than important; unbottling all of your feelings and unbottling all of your hard liquor have a similar emotional result (and similarly damaging long-term effects).

This truth urge is especially strong for some people when they become parents; it feels right, somehow, to smite the person they’re trying to protect. It expresses all feelings at once, love and hate, protection and punishment. It’s a lost weekend of honesty.

If they were too restrained, instead of too verbal, you’d have an easier time. Then again, Jews wouldn’t be Jews and the Mediterranean would be a basin of peaceful civilization, instead of a crusade magnet for the entire world. [Full disclosure: if you missed it before, Dr. Lastname is of the tribe.]

As such, don’t make it your job to stop an honesty drunk; you can just try, and be ready to get out of his/her way if you can’t get through. If you try too hard, you’ll prolong the juicy, emotional battle all crusaders are itching for, and everyone gets hurt.

Instead, try diplomacy. Show them there’s a better way to be protective, and that they don’t need to worry because you’re pretty good at protecting yourself. In other words, honor their parental functions without addressing their negative feelings.

Think of it as an endless process that may not succeed until your parents are too old, tired, or senile to keep up the war—you (I-srael) versus your family (Parents-stine). L’Chaim.

STATEMENT:
A business-like and formulaic manner can help you keep your emotions under control and provide you with a ready exit. “I know you worry that being gay will prevent me from having a normal life and expose me to lots of pain and trouble that I wouldn’t otherwise have, but the same could be said about being a Jew; it’s not for those who wish to lie low and play it safe. I can’t say there isn’t pain, but thanks to you, I’m ready to manage the problems and pursue what’s important, which is still work and friendships and being a Mensch. So genug, enough has been said, things are going well, and fear is not helpful.”

My daughter drove me and my husband crazy the other day. She’s a great kid who does very well in school, but at the beginning of every term she calls us up in great distress to tell us she can’t figure out what courses to take because the ones she really wants to take aren’t available and it’s impossible to make a decision about the others. So she did it again, and, as always, when we asked about the courses and made recommendations, she told us we were doing nothing but making her more confused and then broke off the conversation. I talked to my wife and she agrees we were careful to listen and we weren’t overbearing. P.S., the next day my daughter made up her mind and found a perfectly good group of courses to take, as usual. How can we help her get less distraught and see that we’re just trying to help?

Nobody wants their child to be in pain or agony, but it’s important to ask yourself whether it’s important if your daughter is…distraught.

Yes, her panic hurts her and it hurts you, but life is pain, pain is often unavoidable, and it’s not getting in her way, so why make it more important than it has to be?

It’s hard not to come running when a kid is crying, but this is a situation that’s familiar, always turns out well, and can’t be helped with a band-aid and a kiss on the boo-boo.

If you focus on the crying, you’ll think negative, ruin an evening, and wind up writing to me. If you ignore it, you can be happy that her anguished way works for her and that there’s nothing you need do because there’s nothing you can do.

What’s wrong here is that you and your wife are caring, sensitive parents who don’t know how to turn yourselves off and stop your helping instincts. Yes, it’s shameful, but you’ve got to fess up if you want to recover.

What’s also wrong here is that your daughter is also sensitive and perhaps a little neurotic; if her decisions end up being smart, then her difficulty making them is annoying, but not too problematic. Poor thing, she thinks too much. There are worse things.

That’s always a big bad news/good news fact of life. When there’s nothing you can do, there’s nothing you hafta do. So you’re free to go. Consider this your “get out of tantrum” card. Do not pass go, do not pay tuition.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a standard statement to address your guiltiest feelings/her nastiest accusation. “I hate to see you worry, but you always seem to make good decisions in the end. Maybe your decision-making process requires a burst of adrenaline. Or maybe you can try something more methodical, by creating a list of possibilities and scoring the pros and cons. In any case, I’m not going to hang around and make suggestions because that doesn’t help. So good luck and see you later.”

I knew it was going to happen. My daughter drifts through life, smoking pot and spending more than she makes at a go-nowhere job, and now she’s got herself accidentally pregnant with this guy who’s also going nowhere and she wants to return home and have the baby. I don’t enjoy doing childcare and I’m angry as hell, but I can’t leave her and a grandchild out in the cold. I’m worried, and, of course, she isn’t. My goal is to figure out how to get her moving so that I don’t have to raise another kid, and another and another.

You can’t help worrying, because parents are always responsible for creating a safety net for their kids, and you worry more when you’ve got a kid who’s too dumb to worry (see: the opposite of our overthinker above).

You probably can’t get her to see things differently—if she’s blind to certain things, she’s blind (or maybe less blind, more dumb). Her new-found dependence, however, allows you to push her in healthier directions, whether she appreciates your efforts or not.

You can’t get her to self-start or think about her future, so avoid that kind of goal because it will just make you tired and bitter. If you accept her limited understanding, however, you can pressure her to improve her behavior.

Put conditions on her homecoming that will promote independence and self-discipline. Insist on a certain amount of work, rent, savings, chores, and/or clean samples of pee (or maybe just a clean room to start).

If she refuses, find her an alternative living situation, like a shelter, that will be safe enough if not as comfy as home. Don’t punish her, but don’t try to make her happy. Give her conditions that push her to get going, not towards intelligence, just towards the door of her own house.

STATEMENT:
State your house rules without anger or blame. “If you’re going to have a baby, you will need to develop your strengths as a mother and wage-earner. Your mother and I will make sure you and the baby are safe for as long as we have resources, but we won’t be around forever, so our goal is to help you become as strong and self-reliant as possible. If you want to live here, you’ll need to give us a certain amount of money to pay for rent, child-care and, possibly, savings. We’ll help you take courses that improve your marketability. We’ll need to see clean urines weekly. If you want us to babysit when you’re not working, it may cost extra. If you don’t want to live with us, we’ll direct you to an alternative such as a shelter. Let us know what you’d like to do.”

I’m fine now (I’m 14), but I’m trying to figure out how to deal with a crazy father who physically abused me until a couple of years ago—that’s when my mother finally figured out what was happening and had me come live with her. The trouble is, I guess you could say my father doesn’t see reality the way other people do and he never remembers hitting me. In his mind, when he’d hit me, it was because I was trying to destroy him, so what he tells the judge is that he loves me and that my mother is a raging alcoholic who has brainwashed me to hate him (my mother stopped drinking after the divorce, years ago) and he really believes what he says. My goal is to get him to stay away from me and convince others that his version of reality isn’t real.

Kids aren’t the only ones who have trouble accepting the fact that we often can’t protect ourselves from scary crazy boogeymen, particularly when the craziness isn’t obvious, and the boogeymen are family.

We’ve said it here before: certain crazy people are not obviously crazy and are particularly good at persuading other people to see them as injured victims because they truly, truly believe they are, no matter what really happened. It’s a kind of sickness for which no one has the cure, and nobody feels sicker than the victims in the wake of these sickos, who don’t necessarily feel sick at all.

So cops, judges and social workers often can’t figure out who is telling the truth for a long time. Meanwhile, they often make mistakes and put restrictions on kids and families that hurt everyone and cost more money than the family can afford. It’s a sad fact of life, but they’re trying to do the right thing.

The system usually works to try and protect the weakest party, and when you’re aggressive, even if you’re just aggressively trying to get people to see the truth, you make sickos look that much more weak and innocent. It’s unfair, but pushing hard to express the truth will often push it underground.

So Dr. Lastname’s advice for kids is the same as for adults: don’t think that expressing your emotions sincerely and eloquently will solve the problem. If your father is sincere and has a good lawyer, he’ll persuade the judge that you have, possibly, been brainwashed by your mom, and they’ll treat you like a poor, emotional kid who deserves pity but doesn’t really know his own mind. Then everyone will spend lots of time visiting shrinks. Thanks for the business, but no thanks for the bullshit.

First things first, give up on the goal of convincing others, and try instead to make positive sense of this experience and prepare a statement that you could, if necessary, read to your father.

The less anger and fear you put in your statement, the more it will help others get at the truth. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have negative feelings—of course, they are what they are—but the goal of your statement is to keep out the negative feelings without in any way holding back on the facts of what really happened.

You might not make his sickness go away or get people to see the truth, but being clear, honest, and emotionless is the best protection against the boogeyman.

STATEMENT:
Here’s an example. “I think it’s a bad idea for us to spend time together. I know you care about me and want to see me, but I think you forget about the bad things that happen when you get upset and lose your temper. You forget about (put in details, including bruises and dates). I don’t want to hurt you and I want you to be happy but I don’t think we should spend time together until I’m old enough to protect myself from your temper. Sincerely.

I’d like to get help for my wife’s younger sister because she drives the family crazy. Simply put, she’s a lying drug-addict, and my wife’s parents are always trying to help her in a way that ruins things for the rest of us—they give her money, pressure my wife and me to accept her at family events, and then make us feel guilty if we don’t want to see her. She’s totally poisonous as she is, but I know she can’t help herself, and I’d like to get her real help, not just hand-outs and pretending everything’s OK, so we don’t have to continue like this.

Your goal is just as bad as your wife’s parents’ goal, because you’re both assuming that your sister-in-law can be helped when all the evidence points the other way. They’re throwing their money away at her directly, you’d be throwing your money away at “real help” she isn’t ready for. It’s a lose/lose.

Really, everyone wishes your sister-in-law could be helped, but proceeding on that assumption when it’s not true is a good way to make things worse, and that’s exactly what you’re complaining about.

The sad fact is, treatment is often hopeless. You know that’s true for lots of medical problems, from cancer to Crohn’s disease, so why not accept the fact that it’s equally true for everything else.

Instead, stick with the realistic hope that she’ll change someday, and that you (and others) will have an opportunity to help. It might happen, but it’s not something that you can make happen or are responsible for.

In the meantime, don’t blame her, because there’s a good chance she has as little control over the problem as you do, even though it’s her body and her problem. Blame life, it sucks more reliably than anyone or anything else.

Now that you’ve listened to me and given up on your goal of getting help for your sister-in-law, realistic thinking suggests some positive things for you to do. Since you’re not responsible for saving your sister-in-law or protecting your parents-in-law, you can bow out of family events you don’t really want to go to.

Ignore feelings of guilt or responsibility. You’d help if you could, but you can’t, and there are other important priorities, like going on with your life and enjoying time with those you love.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement that responds to the most guilt-provoking accusations you can imagine. “I’m concerned about my sister-in-law and take full responsibility for helping her whenever possible. One thing I’ve learned, though, from watching her parents do a wonderful job of trying to help her is that, for the time being, it’s just not possible. When it’s not possible, we do more good by distancing ourselves from her problems so as to limit their harm and provide her with more incentive to change. Distancing ourselves from her problems does not mean distancing ourselves from her. The better we protect ourselves, the more welcoming we will be if and when she begins recovery.”

My daughter is turning into a petty criminal. She’s getting kicked out of school again, she won’t stop messing around with drinking and drugs, she has unprotected sex, and her boyfriend is probably the guy who broke into our house and stole our TV, though she refuses to believe it. My husband and I have tried so many times to get her to see what she’s doing wrong and steer her in a better direction—we’re our own private “scared straight” program at this point—but every time we confront her about where she’s headed, she says she feels terrible, that she’s sorry, that she never wants it to happen again…and then she gets wasted and everything repeats itself. If only we could get her to understand the harm she’s doing, maybe we could get through to her and turn her around. Meanwhile, it’s killing us. We try to forgive her, but it’s hard. My goal is to forgive her and get her to see what she’s doing to herself and everyone who loves her.

There’s no point in getting your daughter to see what she’s doing wrong if she can’t really stop herself from doing it, and she really, really can’t. You can’t scare straightness into a boomerang.

Regret and remorse will make her feel bad, and you might think that will stop her from fucking up next time. Well, au contraire, my dear unHarvard-educated sap. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it works. You should know that since you’re the one missing a TV.

According to Christmas movies and sentimental parts of the Bible, repentance leads to redemption, but I say, goddammit, that’s just wishful bullshit.

Repentance leads your daughter to hating herself more for the shit she does when she loses control, and self-hate makes it that much easier to lose control again. Your goal isn’t to get her to repent. It’s to get her to accept that she’s fucked and should nevertheless try for better self-control.

Fuck forgiveness, too, while you’re at it. You wouldn’t forgive a snake for doing its thing with your foot and its fangs, because it does what it does, and your daughter’s lack of self-control is probably the same kind of thing. If you weren’t around, she’d still be having the same problems. She’s just steal someone else’s TV.

No one knows why some kids have so little self-control over anger and neediness, or sometimes we know but knowing does no good. Acceptance means you aren’t entitled to judge or forgive; just to make the best of things.

Making the best of things means trying all the standard tricks for keeping a kid of any age away from over-stimulation and temptation. Keep her busy, move her away from the bad kids if you can, and find good activities you can schedule regularly. Above all, stay calm and positive, and don’t show how scared and upset you are about her fuck-ups.

Don’t expect treatment to change her. Sometimes a 24 hour control-your-every-activity residential school will break bad habits and build new ones, but it’s expensive and often doesn’t work.

As for the oft-derided “Good Will Hunting” one-on-one psychotherapy, it’s less expensive and similarly unlikely to lead to a basic transformation. More realistically, therapy can do the same thing as you’re doing: positive coaching towards better behavior. As for achieving that better behavior by getting her to take responsibility, own her actions, and feel bad…you’d have better luck with a snake charmer.

STATEMENT:
Compose a statement of purpose that will keep you positive. “I think you want to be a good kid and that you regret at least some of the things that happen when you mess up. But it’s hard for you not to mess up because your brain pushes you so hard to act before you think, that’s just the way you are. So we’ll keep on trying to keep you away from risky situations and slow you down, so you have more time to think about what you really want to do. There are some troubles we can’t protect you from. You may get HIV or go to jail. But nothing will change our determination to help you get the control that you need, sooner or later.”

My sister and I have had issues over the years, but we’ve always managed to stay cordial despite our differences, at least until she got married. Just after she got married five or so years ago, she did something to my parents that really pissed me off—she was basically stealing from them, as far as I can tell—and while, in the past, she and I would have eventually gotten over it, her husband got into the crossfire (I chewed both of them out, not just her), and now he won’t let me anywhere near my sister to even try to move past this. I still think what she did was awful, and I still think her husband is an asshole, but she’s my sister, and she’s family, and I need her in my life. My goal is to figure out how and whether I should make amends to my brother-in-law, even though I’m not really sorry, so I can put my family back together.

You’re right to start thinking about what’s best for your family relationships and forget about who’s a conniving criminal, because you’re never going to stamp out family crime or protect its willing victims. You’re not God, or even Judge Judy.

On the other hand, you may benefit in the long run by avoiding unnecessary conflict, retaining your family membership card, and participating in events that allow you to make the best of the family you have, crooks, liars et al.

If forgiveness is important to you, you’re fucked, because whatever you forgive your sister for, she’s likely to do again, which will destroy your faith and make you nasty. Fuck forgiveness. Again.

If she’s a criminal, she is, so your goal is to accept her the way she is and decide what you want to do with her and the family relationships that you will always unavoidably share.

Figure out if the fight with her is worth it, and if it’s not, and you decide that peace will give you a better chance of enjoying family events, then mend fences, declare the war over, and let all hostilities from this point on be for her and her husband to sustain, or not.

You can’t stop her and her husband from continuing to hate you or freeze you out, but by refusing to hate them back, you just may lull them into giving it up, shutting up, and making nice.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement that stays positive, doesn’t lie, and lays out the advantages of peace. It may sound like an apology, but it’s not. An apology would be dishonest. “I know we’ve had our differences, but there were tensions in the past that no longer seem important, at least not to me. I believe you and your husband are an important part of my family and I think we’ll all be happier if we can share some friendly time together. I think it’s better to put the past behind us and remember that we share lots of good childhood memories, a love for our parents, and responsibility for their welfare as they grow older. I think we’ll all gain from resuming a positive relationship.”

I can’t seem to make a decision about the life/death issue. I want to want to live, or have the balls to call it quits. Shit or get off the pot. It takes too much damn energy vacillating.

“To be or not to be”—that’s still the question, right? Well, it’s also a question I never like to answer or hear.

Shakespeare or no, it’s a bad question to ask, because most people who ask it don’t really want an answer; they want an antidote to their hurt or someone to blame for not providing it.

It’s similar to the way Boston taxi drivers ask the passenger whether to take the Pike or Storrow to Logan airport — to have someone else to blame when, either way, they inevitably run into heavy traffic.

I know, the question expresses your deepest feelings. It also wears out friends, drives them away/proves that no one can help, and confirms your right to be very, very unhappy. The whole cycle sucks and it’s unhealthy. Keep asking it, and somebody will go ahead and hurt you more.

Hamlet, after all, was once a nice guy, A-student, and highly respected politician-in-training. Then some anguish over loss and hard decisions pushed him to ask his famous question and become increasingly self-centered, murderous, whiny, paralyzed, and dangerous to his friends until a couple of them tried to assassinate him, which shocked him back to his good old self just in time for his death scene, which would otherwise have been a relief. Goodnight, sweet recovered asshole.

And that, for whatever reason, is what I usually encounter when people ask me this question, often telling me they’re traumatized by something they don’t want to talk about, have a suicide plan they’re ready to implement, and are speaking into a phone at a location they refuse to disclose. They’re not just deliberating life vs. death, they’re challenging me to reduce their despair; otherwise, it’s my bad.

They can’t help feeling angry and despairing—their feelings are authentic, and I never buy the idea that the question represents nothing more than a plea for help or attention—but by channeling their feelings into an unanswerable question and posing it to others, they invariably make a bad thing worse.

So I won’t tell you to live or not live. But, until you decide to end it, try to forget about your pain, make a living, and be a good person. Pursuing your usual goals will distract you from pain and navel-gazing and protect your from becoming a full-time victim to whom more trauma and bad things will happen to happen.

And yes, if you stop measuring your pain and challenging others to respond to it, you’ll have more energy to consider how to make it better. Like trying various therapies and medications, and giving yourself enough time to recover from loss and depression.

Ask people, including me, how to make things better, and we’ll offer suggestions and heart-felt support. Ask us whether you should live or die, and we’ll stop a conversation you shouldn’t be having, even with yourself.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement you can use on yourself to stop poisonous rumination. “I feel despair and death is starting to feel attractive, but thinking about suicide will make the pain worse and ruin what I value about my life and what I respect myself for. Sure, I’m fucked, but as long as I’m living, the best thing I can do is live according to the values I’ve always had, and not let pain stop me, unless or until it does.”

My son drinks too much, and when he’s drunk, he gets into serious trouble, like fights, arrests, or both. My husband and I have done all we can to keep him out of jail with a clean record—this town is small, and the cops know our family—and also get him into rehab, residential and otherwise, or just on probation, anything to try and keep him clean without jail-time. He just got arrested though (again) for violating his probation (he was high and violent), and I don’t know what else I can do. I keep waiting for him to hit bottom and turn his life around, but instead he keeps falling further and further down, and unless I try something new, he’ll definitely end up in jail and probably wind up dead. I don’t want to give up on him, because that’s the same as killing him, but I feel like I’m out of options. My goal is to figure out an alternative to letting my son die.

The sad news is that you don’t have much power over your son’s life or death, and trying to exert a power you don’t really have will make him worse. That’s why, unless your son is presently choking on a sandwich and you know the Heimlich, saving your son’s life is a bad goal.

Since you can’t save it, your efforts will do nothing more than make him think you’re in control, and allow him to forget the sad fact that no one is in control until he finds the strength to control himself, if he can.

Also, you might have noticed by now that would-be saviors usually wind up madder than shit and ready to murder the person they want to save; it’s one of life’s little paradoxes that happens almost inevitably.

You can’t save him so you try a little harder, get a little more tired and frustrated, encounter a source of resistance that you’re sure you can overcome by becoming more forceful and, voila, you’re ready to murder the kid yourself.

Then you feel terribly guilty and more responsible and resume the saintly approach, so being part of a cycle that generates a big source of my business.

[There are a couple books that illustrate how to do the difficult but supremely worthwhile task of continuing to show love to someone you know is dancing on the edge of a precipice while accepting that loving them is the only thing you can do; George McGovern’s Terry, My Daughter's Life-and-Death Struggle with Alcoholism and Norman McLean’s A River Runs Through It.]

If it’s not in your power to let him live or die (unless you have secret powers/a deadly sandwich), then your goal isn’t—can’t be—to back away and let him die . It’s to keep your fear and anger to yourself while encouraging him to do better next time, to keep on loving him, knowing that you’ve done your best and that, despite all of that, he may not live much longer.

STATEMENT:
Write a statement to protect yourself from false guilt and dangerous over-responsibility. “I love you and I see your wonderful strengths, but I haven’t found a way to protect you from a life-threatening weakness that isn’t getting better, and I know you haven’t found a way, either. I’ll never give up on you. I’ll always love you and offer help if you find the strength to use it. Many people have found a way to control themselves when it seemed hopeless. Meanwhile, I want us to share good times when we can and not think about the bad times any more than we have to.”

My older daughter just turned 10, and I’m fairly certain that she is pure evil. My wife and I are not bad people—no family history of mental illness, either—but our older daughter, who looks like a normal little girl, says such nasty things to her little sister that it would make your head spin. Our younger daughter, who’s 7, thinks her sister is a miserable terror, and I have to say, I agree with her; the stuff that comes out of our 10-year-old’s mouth is so cruel, I’m almost in awe of it. My wife and I have sat her down and asked her if she acknowledges how awful her words are, how much it hurts her little sister, and how serious we are about how much she needs to change her attitude. Since then, our older has been less mouthy with us, but just as terrible to her little sister, and we have no idea how to make it stop. My goal is to stop my older daughter from being so mean—that is, if she’s not just satanic and hopeless. I’d really like to get her to understand what she’s doing and why she needs to stop (if I can get that through her evil mind).

As those Spanish Inquisition cardinals learned while swishing around in their gorgeous red gowns, any effort to stamp out the devil gives him a giant energy boost and brings him (or her) to dramatic life.

This is because most of us—even the best of us, like David Letterman—have some devilish impulses that bust out when we’re tired, or rubbed the wrong way, and generally when our control is far from perfect.

So when someone tries to eradicate our wickedness, we may initially agree with their goals. Sooner or later, however, when our impulses don’t cooperate by disappearing, self-hate and shame get stronger and, yes, you guessed it, feed the nasty impulses, whatever they are. The cardinals get to meet the very devil they were trying to exorcise, and the devil’s poor host snarls back and throws up pea soup. A classic vicious circle.

So your goal isn’t to stop your daughter’s evil behavior, but to help her manage it by providing advice, incentives and acceptance for the person who isn’t always able to control her nastiness. Yes, being mean is wrong, but assume there’s a part of her that doesn’t like her behavior, either, and that tries to control it. (Even if you’re wrong, it’s a good assumption to begin with).

You haven’t mentioned trouble at school, so I’ll assume she’s doing a good job of controlling herself there, and you should give her credit. It’s probably better for her to control these impulses in school than at home, because bad behavior at school will cause much more trouble.

Telling her she needs to take more responsibility for controlling herself is the modern way of telling her she’s sinning against Christ, so don’t use that stupid r-word. Of course she’s responsible, but telling someone they’re responsible when their feelings have swept them away isn’t likely to strengthen their self-control. If anything, it’s more apt to make them feel helpless and self-hating and undermine their control.

Instead, assume she’s responsible but doesn’t yet have the strength to control herself, and it’s your job to help her get stronger. Give her disincentives, like time-outs or lost points. Give her structure, like scheduled activities.

Don’t present your procedures as punishments or babying, but as respectful attempts to help her keep her negative impulses at bay. After all, you’ve probably got a temper (as do the best of us, especially David Letterman), and it’s not always under control.

So don’t look at your child as the devil you don’t know, but the devil you know all too well—a chip off the ol’ evil block—and let her know even if she’s being bad, she’s not alone, and you’re there to help, not call a priest.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement that offers tough controls in a positive package. “You’re a great kid and you’re doing well in many, many ways. But you get too negative with your sister, and by that I include saying sarcastic and critical things, so we’re going to help you. If you start doing it, we’ll ask you to stop. Then, if that doesn’t work, we’ll insist that you go to your room and do something pleasant until you think your control is stronger. And, if that doesn’t work, you may lose something you like, like TV time, until you get yourself back together and do some work to make up for your behavior. I know you’ve got negative feelings for your sister and it doesn’t surprise me that, in spite of talking about them, they’re still there and they still hurt. That’s why life is hard. Those feelings will eventually get better but, in the meantime, you’ve got to learn to live with them without letting them out. And that’s what we’re trying to help you do. It won’t make you happy, but that’s not our fault. Life is hard. It isn’t any easier for us. So you’ve got to learn to do what we do: shut up and try to act decent.

I am what my father would call a terminal fuck-up. Basically, I know that drinking is a bad idea, because when I get fucked up, I tend to do dumb shit, like steal, get into fights, and hook up with random guys. I’m on meds for bi-polar disorder, which my doctor tells me should help me be less impulsive, but he also tells me that I can’t drink and take meds, and I can’t not drink, so meds don’t really help. I don’t mean to be so stupid, and sometimes, when everything’s mellow and I can focus, I can really keep my shit together and be normal and think. Most of the time though, I just can’t help myself, and I’ve started to get a long arrest record, which makes my dad want me to go to rehab again, but I think AA is culty bullshit that never works, anyway. So if pills don’t help, and rehab doesn’t help, is there any straight-up advice you can give me to be less of an idiot? I wanna fuck-up less.

Ouch, you’re in a tough spot. Simply put, life is hard and it’s starting to knock the crap out of you. It’s not fair, you don’t deserve it, but unless you find the strength to get yourself together, you’ll find the shit-pile getting deeper and deeper and your capacity for fuck up-ery never ending.

I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, and I do think you’ve learned your lesson. But you know that the part of you that wants to party and drink is stronger than the part of you that knows you can’t afford to, and that’s the way it is.

Obviously, no one can give you the strength you need to control yourself. If all you needed was a lesson, you would have benefited from one of the many you’ve already received. In your case, lessons don’t work, nor does punishment. You want to fuck up less, but when given the option of rehab, your inner fuck-up says “no, no, no.”

Here’s the only practical advice I know of to help you get stronger, over the long run—try to keep after what you really value, even if you can’t have it at the present time. Try to be decent and independent. Try to take care of your illness. Try to get sober. And when you slip, don’t give yourself a hard time. It doesn’t help.

Try to figure out how much harm you’ve done yourself and, if the harm was bad, think about what you might do differently next time. Be shameless, so you can talk about your efforts with others, maybe even in rehab or AA one day if the planets finally align.

And even if you never go to rehab, think of this as your first appearance at Fuck ups Anonymous; you’re a fuck-up, you’re fucked, and you need to take it one day at a time. That’s the way it is. Be proud of your efforts to control it, and thanks for sharing.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement to keep yourself on track. “I’ve got a couple genetic traits that push me into chaos and self-destruction and, so far, I haven’t found the strength to control myself. I hate what I do to myself and others but I can’t stop it. But I won’t stop trying to stop and I respect myself for that. I’ll welcome helpful ideas and I’ll look for ex-fuck-ups who’ve found the strength to control themselves. And maybe, someday, I’ll get there.”

My mother was crazy (bipolar or schizo, it was never clear), and as her youngest, I was the one who took care of her and eventually found a way to get her into the hospital where the state took care of her until she died. I was a crazy kid, but not technically crazy like my mom—I drank too much, got high a lot (too much), crashed a car or two. I met a girl who was crazier even than me, she got pregnant, and so we got clean together to start our family. I’ve stayed clean, but the mother of my kids—now my ex-wife—didn’t. She held it together when she was pregnant all four times, but otherwise, she’d fall off, and now that she and I are finally through, I’ve got the kids and she’s got a nasty drug problem which she funds through alimony, boyfriends, and money she wins from taking me to court for one bullshit reason or another. As for the kids, one has gone through rehab, one is a mom at 18, one’s on tons of medication, and one was killed earlier this year when he was driving drunk. This is a long way of asking a simple question: what the fuck is wrong with me, after the way I was raised, that I can’t stay away from crazy women? Now I’ve passed this curse on to my kids, and now one of them has died because he was unlucky enough to be born to a former-drug addict and a current psychotic crack whore. My goal is to get crazy out of my life for good.

It doesn’t take a Harvard degree (or two) or even a passing familiarity with Sigmund Freud to know that you tend to feel attracted by people who are like your parents, whether you like your parents or not, whether your parents were certifiable or not.

If you expect that feeling to go away, and meanwhile keep dating the people you feel like dating, you’ll keep on getting into trouble, because, surprise, that feeling doesn’t usually go away. And don’t expect therapy to take it away, either.

Like it or not, that feeling—that attraction—is stronger than whatever most therapists have to offer, so if your goal is to stop wanting crazy, forget it. You’re crazy for thinking you can help yourself. (That sounds like it might make a good country-and-western lament).

You’re right to think about the kids, but wrong to think about what your crazy-loving has done to them. The past is past and remorse will do no more than get in your way now. Instead, you should be thinking about how to help them handle their own crazy-loving urges.

Look, being wild (assuming you don’t wind up dead, in the loony-bin for life, or on a reality show) is what makes people interesting and creative; it’s not all bad. If you’ve got to feel guilty, then blame your genes, but right now, your job with the kids is the same as it is with yourself: to help them, and you, manage the attraction to crazy people so it doesn’t ruin your lives.

Face it, messing with crazy people is exciting. The talk gets raw and mean in an instant, which is why people watch soap operas and Judge Judy. Nothing gets unsaid, everything gets said with feeling, and all that intensity feels like living life to the fullest (when in fact it’s to the stupidest). You may get covered with shit, but the rollercoaster ride down to shit gulch makes up for it.

Lots of men love crazy women—as long as the world keeps turning out Brandees, Tiffanis, and Ambers, that means more crazy women are breeding—so you can at least take comfort in the fact you’re not alone.

In relationship terms, sex with sane women normally requires courting and foreplay; with crazies, this stuff is instantaneous (as in, “hello, let’s bone”). The first step to managing it is knowing there’s a part of you that wants it and that will find excuses to put you in harm’s way. The second step is to remember that women like this will just as instantaneously decide you’re the devil and try to burn your house down while you’re asleep.

The usual excuse is that you stick by the crazies, even after they turn, because you’re a gentle, good guy trying to do a kindness; someone is messed up and needs help, and it feels great to provide support when you know what it’s like to hurt. It’s like you’re helping dear Mamma, except she’s young and wants to take off her clothes. And then wants you to perish in flames.

So approach it like your other addictions. Learn the “triggers” that draw you in. Resign yourself to a life without the old, familiar excitement. Screen prospective partners by using your wisdom and experience, not your desire for sex in the backseat of a car and your instincts for wildlife protection.

And if you feel guilty about not saving your mother from a life of illness and confinement, your wife from addiction, and then your son from a horrible accident, ignore it. The grief is awful, but you never had the power to protect them, and so much of what you did was wonderful. Respect your grief as a measure of your love, and don’t let guilt get anywhere near it.

And if you feel vaguely unhappy, guilty and blah because you haven’t had a helpful, meaningful, misery-comforting conversation with a sad-eyed, oh-so-available lady, remind yourself that you must be doing an excellent job.

STATEMENT:
Compose a statement to protect yourself from remorse and old yearnings. “I may always feel most alive when I’m trying to help a dramatically disturbed and sexy lady, but what I want in the end is a friendship with someone I can respect and trust, and I know what that’s like and the kind of person I need to choose. So I’ll watch out for my sneaky and persistent reflexes while I get active about a more sensible kind of choice. Whenever I feel low and in need of a fix, I’ll remember my feeble powers as a white knight, my long-term wish to find an un-distressed damsel, and the virtues of ignoring my feelings and holding steady. And when those I love are in trouble, I’ll reject feelings ofresponsibility unless there’s something truly helpful I can do for them.”

I’m raising my daughter’s three kids…sometimes she has them with her and is a great mom, but after a month or so of that she just drops them off at my house one afternoon and then I don’t hear from her for a few weeks, and when I do hear from her again, she’s either with a new guy, in a new state, or angry at me for some reason that comes out of nowhere. The kids all have different dads, and the dads keep their distance because they all owe child support, plus she goes after them all the time in court saying she’s taking care of the kids and deserves to be compensated, so they don’t want anything to do with me because they think I’m backing up her lie (I take care of them much more often) and helping her steal from them. I know my daughter’s troubled—she has a really bad temper, sometimes says awful things to me she later denies saying in the first place, makes big decisions without thinking them through—but I think if she could just get a little help, have somebody to talk to, she could see some priorities and get her head on straight. If you’re really a shrink, then tell me how I can get her to a shrink who can get her to see sense.

If you want me to help you get her into therapy, you’re barking up the wrong shrink, and it makes you a bad mother and grandmother.

Yes, you’re doing a wonderful, generous and caring job of caring for your grandchildren, but you’re also doing some needless harm by blinding yourself to certain sad realities, the first of them being your daughter’s character, which is not going to change.

I can do a lot of things—give advice, prescribe medication, make a mean omelet—but I cannot, nor can any shrink, change a person’s character. There are certainly times I wish I had that power, but then, think of all the work I’d have to do.

On the other hand, if she was interested in a lobotomy, I think I could help her; the stylus of my palm pilot might do the trick. And hey, procedures are much better compensated by insurance than talk-sessions. But I digress.

So stop believing that crap about psychotherapy stopping people from being assholes. I’m not saying your daughter can help being an asshole, but I’m also saying that you and I and all the king’s shrinks aren’t going to change it, and you have a job to do as a grandmother (and mother) that could be better done if you were more realistic. So stop pining for your wishes, get real, and dump your make-believe goal.

Now that we’ve resigned ourselves to reality, try this goal on for size: providing as much stability as possible for the grand-kids, knowing, and in despite of, what your daughter is likely to do.

Of course, she will periodically fuck things up and blame you and others, and at those times the kids will suddenly be yanked from their schedules and introduced to a brief mother-child reunion, to be followed by a disappointing breaking of promises, a vanishing mommy act, and return (hopefully) to their life with you.

Ask a lawyer and/or state social worker whether there’s something you can do, by documenting her comings and goings, to give you more say over what happens during these crises. So instead of facing a judge who believes her sad story of frustrated devotion, there’ll be a solid record of her active behavior and a good, responsible recommendation that will give the kids more stability, you more say, and your daughter a less erratic and better managed connection with her kids.

Your daughter has a million reasons to stop her behavior—three particularly strong reasons, in fact—but if they haven’t gotten her to see the light, then no MD is going to do the trick. It’s too late for her, but not for those kids, and thankfully, they have someone as caring as you to look after them.

STATEMENT:
Compose a statement to protect yourself from the guilt of adding pain (or so your daughter would have you believe) to an already tortured life. “I’m doing a good job with these kids and my first responsibility is to their stability. I feel rewarded by their happiness and my daughter’s gratitude, but I must accept and prepare for the fact that she has an evil, uncontrolled side. That doesn’t mean I blame her or am disloyal to her. I’m loyal to the good ideals we share about parenting, and determined to protect the kids from bad behavior that interferes with those ideals, regardless of whether my daughter can understand what I’m doing or ever forgive me.”