My husband worries a lot about my drinking and depression but, to my mind, I don’t think my drinking is a problem and I don’t think I’d be depressed if I wasn’t worried that he’d leave me. For the sake of our marriage, I’ve agreed to stop drinking for a while and go to AA, but I really feel that my drinking wasn’t causing me any problems and that I’m doing this to make him happy, which makes me feel weak and angry. I want to get him to accept me the way I am before I can’t take it anymore.

You’re in a tough spot, because partnership really can’t work without acceptance, and acceptance is not something you can control. The more you force acceptance, the harder it is to achieve. Accept that, buddy.

If you try too hard to get his acceptance, you’ll hide whatever you think he won’t accept, which means putting your drinking in the closet and going to the mall instead of AA meetings.

On his end, if he tries too hard to make the relationship work, he’ll pretend you’re not really drinking or that you’re going to change, which also means no real acceptance.

The sad fact of life is that you are never going to change who you really are, which, at the very least, is a girl who enjoys drinking, and he’s going to have to take it or leave it. On the other hand, if you present the issue positively and he considers it realistically, maybe acceptance will occur, now that you’re not forcing it.

That’s why your goal shouldn’t be to win acceptance from your love; it’s to find out if your love can be accepting. He doesn’t need to like your drinking, but you need to know whether he can accept that it’s part of your package and accept the whole deal.

Instead of getting him to accept you the way you are, begin by accepting yourself. Forget how much you like to drink and ask yourself, on the basis of your own experience and what you’ve read, whether drinking gets in the way of anything you hold dear, like your health or making a living or being a good woman and a good friend. If in doubt, stop drinking for a while and see if there’s any difference.

Once you know your own mind, lay things on the line with your husband in a positive way. Of course, if you’ve come to agree that you’re a lush, let him know that you want to stop drinking because you believe you need to, and not to please him.

Otherwise, state your differences positively while letting him know how much you’d like him to accept you, if he can. If he can’t, then that’s a sad reality you both have to accept on your own.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement of your own views that is not overly reactive to his. “I respect your concern for my drinking and regret that it worries you. I’ve looked hard at how much it affects my health, work, and friendships. In the end, I don’t see it as causing me problems and, as much as I love you, it won’t help our relationship to appease unfounded fears. I hope you’ll accept my decision. Meanwhile, I think we should drop the topic of my drinking and, hopefully, move on to other things.”

My daughter is severely bipolar and lives with us so my wife and I can try to make sure she takes her meds and doesn’t hurt herself. We aren’t always successful—she’s practically an adult now and hates when we parent her—so she stopped taking her meds because she thought she didn’t need them anymore. Now she’s extremely manic, maybe using hard drugs, and extremely irritable. We’re absolutely helpless and there’s nothing we can do because she won’t talk to us. Our goal is to get her to listen to us, stop drugging, and get back on her meds.

Mental illness makes all families helpless; after all, it’s hard to have a dialogue with someone whose brain is diseased, irritable, inattentive and unresponsive. You’d have better luck reasoning with a rabid wolverine.

If you believe that your only power derives from your ability to have a heart-to-heart talk with her, then you are, indeed, helpless. The good news is, you’re wrong. After all, you can help wild horses improve their self-control without first teaching them English. Thus, you, too, can become a bipolar whisperer.

As parents and landlords, you control a number of powerful incentives, like access to money, car, refrigerator, shelter, and, oh yeah, money. That doesn’t mean you can control her or her illness, but it does mean you can create some pretty strong reasons for her to do the good things she needs to do.

Set rehabilitation goals for your daughter that you believe are truly essential, which will probably include sobriety, doing enough household chores in order to live independently, controlling violent behavior, and stopping sudden impulses from affecting her safety or treatment. Add or subtract from these core goals, based on your own experience and other parents’ war stories.

Once you know your priorities, announce them and back them up with rules and incentives for following them. I said announce, not converse. If you’re too worried about her anger or hurt or lack of understanding, you’ll be ineffective.

Don’t pick a fight, but don’t hold back on saying what you think with friendliness, conviction, and optimism. Tone of voice is as important as content. Don’t end sentences with a rising, Valley Girl inflection that asks for approval. Use the same calm, assertive energy praised by Cesar Millan.

Yes, there’s a risk that she’ll do something dangerous or force you to ask her to leave, but a bipolar-veteran parent knows how to manage crises without appearing to panic. It’s a risk you need to take, and be prepared for, because the alternative is way worse than facing an angry four-legged beast.

STATEMENT:
You need a statement that says, “This is what we believe, here are the rules that are required for self-control and independence and this, very simply, is what will happen if you don’t follow them. There are no punishments and we do not believe you are being stubborn or childish; but we will withhold privileges and, if necessary, ask you to live elsewhere for a while if we think it’s necessary, either because your behavior makes it impossible for us to live with you, endangers your safety, or blocks you from making progress.”

My wife and I liked to party when we first met (nothing too crazy, we just went out a lot), but we just had our first kid, so we now spend a lot more time at home. My wife used to be a fun, bubbly person, and she still sort of is, but ever since the baby was born she’s been really stressed out, worrying that something bad will happen and the baby will die. Not stuff she could possibly prevent, just a random act that would kill our child, and the stress is so bad she is haunted by visions of our son in a casket. I think she’s dealing with this stress by drinking a bunch of wine with dinner and getting a little more than tipsy. I’ve told her to relax about stuff she can’t prevent, but she says she can’t help it, and I don’t like that she’s drinking too much, and where that’s going to go. I want to see my wife get some treatment that will relieve her stress so she can stop drinking too much.

You might wonder how wanting to help someone could be bad, and it’s because, as goals go, it’s often one you can’t reach. If you don’t accept that fact before making your plans, you’ll make things worse.

Here, for instance, there’s a good chance she’s too busy drinking and/or avoiding her problem to heed your good advice and, at least at first, she may not be able to stop herself (and if she could stop herself, you probably wouldn’t be writing me in the first place).

If you sound frustrated, frightened or critical when you talk to her, it will make her worse. Your goal is to see if you can help her, not force her into help. You can bring a wife away from wine, but you can’t force her not to (fret and) drink.

Once people get into the habit of using alcohol to treat anxiety, they often can’t stop, particularly if they’re waiting to feel better before stopping. All the while, alcohol makes anxiety worse (as well as depression, mania…the only things it doesn’t worsen are weddings and sporting events).

So, your goal for her drinking isn’t to reduce her anxiety so she won’t feel like drinking, but to provide her with reasons for stopping drinking, now, regardless of whether it makes her anxiety worse, (which it will), while she also searches for tools to feel better. You can’t make any of that fear go away, but you can give her good reasons to find ways to ignore it and focus more calmly on your baby’s bottle than her own.

Sure, remind her about the availability of treatments; but don’t be surprised if she just wants you to leave her alone because treatment makes her think about her fears, and she’d rather not/would rather open another bottle of red.

Don’t tell her that going to treatment will be enough to make you happy, because treatment is not always effective and it’s useful only if she undertakes it for her own reasons, rather than to get you off her back. Don’t tell her treatment will definitely make her happy, either, because if it doesn’t, you’re a liar and the fault is still yours.

Encourage her to consider her options, including cognitive therapies with ideas and mental exercises to counteract negative thoughts, behavioral therapies with physical exercises to reduce anxiety, and medical treatments that might ease both anxiety and the intensity of her visions.

Her biggest danger is not the pain of anxiety, but that her fear will drive her to give up doing what matters and stop her from being a good mother and wife. The fear scares her, but it’s her fear of that fear that drives her to drink, and that’s where you need to start.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement that gives her positives alternative and encourages choice, not compliance. “You’re a strong woman and great mother, and I’m sorry that you’re tortured by fearful thoughts, but I’m more worried about the way your efforts to avoid those thoughts are interfering with your life. Instead of figuring out whether there’s a treatment worth trying, you’re panicking and using alcohol for relief. I know for a fact that alcohol makes anxiety symptoms worse, while it also undermines your ability to make tough decisions about treatment. You’re good at decisions. Don’t let fear make them for you.”

My daughter likes to bring her young son to our house on weekends (she’s a single mom) so he can see his grandparents and she can relax. Of course, my wife and I love to see him, but he’s getting to the age where he can walk and likes to grab everything he can get his hands on, and she doesn’t seem to notice. He’s knocked books off of shelves, broken some plates, and I recently wrenched my bottle of Lipitor out of his hands just as he was getting the lid off. I’ve told my daughter that she needs to watch him more closely, and she assures me she has a mother’s intuition and always stops him before he does anything wrong. She’s wrong, and my wife and I are too old to keep up with him. My goal is to get through to her, and protect our grandson, without getting her pissed off.

Forgive me for saying so, but I’m guessing your daughter’s obliviousness isn’t new. That and a lack of condoms is probably one of the main reasons she’s become a single mother.

If you’ve been wrestling with her obliviousness for years, now is the time to stop. She’s been your daughter a long time, and if you (and having a kid!) haven’t gotten through to her by now, it’s time to raise the white flag.

It’s sad and scary to admit that her obliviousness is not going to go away and will always force you to bear an extra burden of parental worry, but if you don’t accept this fact, you’ll clash, drive her away, and reduce your chance to make things safer and hang out with your grandchildren, even after they can control their limbs.

Your goal then isn’t to get through to her, but to do what you can to improve your grandson’s safety. Do what you can afford, be it toddler-proofing your house or hiring a teen babysitter/child-chaser who can walk around for hours bent over at 90 degrees.

For your sake, hide your worry and resentment. If your negative feelings show, she’ll feel you don’t trust her (which you don’t) and then avoid you. With luck, however (and given her track record), she’ll be too oblivious to notice how you feel.

Expect problems and look for dangers, while at the same time conveying pleasure and confidence. Behind closed doors, you can share your fear and resentment with your wife, but in front of your daughter, keep a poker face.

In the long run, maybe you can teach your grandson to watch out for himself, but resist the urge to follow him with nanny cams. The hardest thing you need to do, after you’ve done what’s reasonable, is let it be. Enjoy being grandparents and lock up your Lipitor.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement to keep your fears in check. “We did a reasonable job teaching our daughter about safety and responsibility (as did others), but she just doesn’t get it. Now we watch out for her and our grandson, when we get a chance. Our biggest achievement, however, is not solving the problem, because we can’t. It’s bearing our worries, keeping quiet about them, and not letting them spoil our relationship with her or our ability to get on with life.”

My husband and I have two kids, we both work hard, and he always used to find time to play with the kids and spend time with me, but in the last few months, he’s buried himself in online poker in the evenings, and the kids see a lot less of him (I do, too, and it’s been a long time since we had sex). He tells me there’s nothing wrong and that he’s not betting with real cash, but I know what I see, so I’ve told him we need to talk, and that’s what’s really infuriating, because then he won’t talk at all. My goal is to figure out why he’s stopped caring about me and find a way to get through to him.

You’re assuming there’s something bothering your husband that you can figure out and communicate about, because that’s what would allow you to fix things; that it’s not the poker that’s really the problem (or the not being poked).

Before you sit him down and try to take him away from the e-poker table, ask yourself what happens if it doesn’t work, which it often doesn’t, and clearly, in your case, hasn’t.

Remember, there are lots of reasons for him to shut down other than his having something on his mind. He could be depressed and/or stuck in some kind of bad habit that he can’t shake. Even on-line poker can become addictive, whether or not the money’s fake.

If you push him to talk when he can’t think of anything to say or can’t own up to the bad habit or isn’t ready to fight it, he’ll get quiet and sullen. Then you’ll feel more certain that he’s angry about something he won’t tell you about and angry at you, and you’ll be angry at him, and upset that you’re angry, and worried about the kids’ reacting to your anger, and it’s a mess.

The issue will feel more and more personal. You’ll wind up water-boarding him, which won’t get you useful information and/or do the marriage any good. You will bet the house, and you’ll lose.

Remember, he’s withdrawn from the kids, too, and probably from the dog. Your own behavior was OK before and it hasn’t changed; something just happened to your husband that you can’t control. Withdrawal always feels personal, but it isn’t. If he had a tell to reveal his true feelings, you’d know it, and it ain’t there.

Your goal shouldn’t be to fix your marriage, because that’s not in your power. It’s to protect yourself and the kids from feeling responsible for what he’s doing, make the best of it, and not let anger make things worse (though Lord knows you have reason to feel angry).

If his little habit starts cutting into his other obligations, or if he starts gambling in earnest, then you’ve got a bigger problem. For now, he’s holding the line, and if you can’t make the best of it, you can always bluff in the meantime.

STATEMENT:
“You’ve always been a great husband and father, and we’ve been a great family together, but the huge amount of time you now spend playing poker has made you unavailable, which has all of us hurting. I don’t think anyone, including you, has done anything wrong, but I wonder if you’re depressed or have got stuck in some kind of bad habit. It happens to good people. I wish you could see what’s happening and try to change it, but that’s your call. Meanwhile, I’ll assume you can’t be available and the rest of us will need to adjust. I’m sorry, because you’ll lose chances to share things with us and I’ll have to rely more on my friends when I’d rather talk to you. If I can help, let me know.”

After my kids went off to college, I dealt with it by drinking too much. My husband’s always worked long hours, so he didn’t notice at first, but I managed to get his attention by totaling our car (with our daughter in the passenger seat). We were both fine and I haven’t had a drink since that day two years ago, and, while my kids have been very understanding, I can’t seem to win back my husband’s trust, no matter what I do. I’ve done rehab, attended daily AA meetings, done my best to be a model wife by anyone’s standards, and it doesn’t seem to make a difference. My goal is to get my husband to trust me again.

Though there’s nothing you’d like more than to regain your husband’s trust, it’s a terrible goal because it focuses on someone else’s feelings about you, rather than on your own priorities and values.

Surely AA has taught you to respect the things you can’t control, and surely, after raising kids with him, you know your husband is one of those things.

You know, mothers who love to nurture and are particularly responsive to their kids’ needs often have a harder time coping with an empty nest. You are simply gifted at putting other people first and it’s both strength and weakness.

If emptiness starts you drinking, you feel terrible about letting down your family and the shame drives you to drink more. Thinking about your husband is unavoidable—second nature, even—but, as you’ve already learned, it’s dangerous.

If you haven’t relapsed by now, it’s probably because you’ve found your own reasons to stay sober. Perhaps the AA meetings have given you support that’s separate from your family and also, perhaps, a perspective your husband doesn’t have.

In AA meetings, alcoholics don’t have to feel ashamed of being alcoholic; they try to be proud of what they’re doing about it. They build a wall between their alcoholism and how they manage it and between the past and what they’re doing now. Every day, shame and sensitivity threaten to make them believe that they’re failures and their job is to protect and accept themselves.

When you and your alcoholism were outed, you were probably mortified before you discovered big advantages. Yes, you lost friends who couldn’t accept you, but then you didn’t need to worry any longer about their acceptance, and could feel much more secure about those who stuck with you and respected your efforts to get sober.

Your husband may not be able to accept and respect you as much as you deserve. If so, it means he loved the glossy version of you more than the real woman. You can’t control his feelings, no matter how painful they may be to both of you.

You must, however, protect yourself from trying to get respect from someone who may not have it to give. Better be sad and get it over with than pine over something or someone that’s lost, and best do all of it sober.

STATEMENT:
“My dear husband, you may well feel you can’t get back to the way you used to feel about me. I was always afraid of losing your respect and that’s one reason I covered up my drinking. Now that I’m sober, I’m proud of what I do. I take no responsibility for sometimes wanting to drink and never knowing whether I’ll drink again. I can’t take responsibility for your feelings. I can only take responsibility for what I’ve done with the problem, and I’m much prouder of that than I’ve ever been. If you can accept me the way I am, our relationship can be better than ever. If that’s not possible, then there’s nothing either one of us can do.”

My husband has been coming down hard on our 15-year-old daughter because she recently got caught drinking at school, and it’s undeniable now that she has a problem. I’m worried, too, but not like my husband, maybe because I was a bit of a wild child myself in high school, or maybe just because I don’t think the problem is insurmountable since I got over my bad habits and turned out just fine. Besides, yelling at a kid often drives them into just the kind of trouble you’re trying to save them from. The problem is that when I try to calm my husband down by telling him that things are going to work out, it makes him even worse. He tells me I’m not taking the situation seriously, but I am and I’m just trying to help. My goal is to find out what I can say to my husband to make him feel better (without making him angrier).

It’s tempting to express anger and fear when kids misbehave; for whatever reason, parental instinct tells us that if reason doesn’t work, terror will.

On the other hand, there’s a reason “Scared Straight” had kids being barked at by tattooed prisoners, not suburban parents.

You’re right in that there’s a large group of misbehaving kids who get worse when you yell at them. Then you yell louder and they give you less eye contact, louder still and they storm out of the room, and eventually you get so angry and helpless that you see no alternative but to call a psychiatrist. Thanks, but surely you see the error of your ways.

You probably also see that trying to offer your husband and/or daughter reassurance will also make things worse. By doing so, each can then complain that you’re either not taking the problem seriously or not offering enough personal support.

If you want to avoid this nastiness, shut up with your feelings. Then do a straightforward risk assessment of her behavior, and then, if necessary, use your powers as owner of the house, car, pantry, family treasury and/or entertainment center to encourage that behavior to improve.

Assume that your daughter doesn’t (yet) have the power to control herself. In many ways, she’s probably a very capable young lady. Among the many things right with her brain, however, there’s one thing that’s a bit off. So don’t feel personally hurt or enraged when she breaks her promises and the rules.

Don’t waste time talking about responsibility and trust. Instead, administer her penalty, express regrets, and go back to your business. The message is that this conflict isn’t going to wear me down, and maybe these rules will eventually help you control yourself, but I’m done taking it personally.

Also avoid wasting too much time figuring out what’s wrong; knowledge, insight and sharing make for great catharsis on TV, but seldom change behavior in real life. Sure, try once or twice, and then, if the behavior isn’t changing, read up on ways to manage a sober half-way house and do your job.

When you tell your husband and daughter that everyone’s going to be alright, part of why they get annoyed is because you all know it’s bullshit. Your daughter has trouble controlling her urges, and, while nothing will ever really be alright, there’s a good chance you can work to keep everything from going all wrong.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement for your hubby. “I’m worried about our daughter’s drinking, but we’ll help her more by enforcing some simple rules than by yelling at her. She’s a good kid with a bad habit that probably won’t go away quickly, so let’s be tough about the rules, watch her closely, keep our expectations low, and stay friendly.”

My boyfriend and I have been together for a long time, and since I’ve known him, he’s been the last person to leave the bar. We were in college then, so that wasn’t too strange, but as we get older, it’s starting to make me worry. He gets buzzed every night, and while it hasn’t gotten him into trouble at work and he’s not a mean drunk, I worry about what it’s going to do in the long run. He hates it, however, when I bring up my worries. He tells me this is Boston, he’s Irish, it’s not a big deal, and everyone in his family drinks more than he does, and if I keep on nagging him, I’ll drive him to drink. I care about him and want to spend the rest of my life with him, so I want him to be healthy, but I also don’t want to address the issue with him and have him get angry and upset for no reason. My goal is to do what’s right for my boyfriend without causing conflict and making things worse.

It’s tough to have a husband with a loveable personality and a hateful habit, particularly if you have kids. He may not be your husband yet, I know, but if you stick together, it’s not like he’s going to turn into your dog.

So forget for a moment how much you love your boyfriend and ask yourself where his drinking habit is going and how much it’s likely to get in the way of his being a future partner, worker, and father.

Don’t pretend he’s going to change. If he’s had his habits a long time, they’re part of his culture, and he has no desire to change, well, he’s more likely to become a canine than randomly decide to get sober.

If you can’t change him, but you can decide whether he’d make a good partner the way he is. The answer, from what you say, is not really.

If that’s your answer, deal with your feelings before you speak to him. If you ask him to make your fear go away, he will, by kissing you sweetly, and then you’ll be back to pretending that things will be great. You don’t want him to make you feel less worried; you want to see better behavior and strong motivation to sustain it.

Don’t take it personally, thinking that, if he loved you better, he’d be willing to give up drinking. He’ll show you he loves you and then you’ll start pretending that things will be alright, but love can’t make things alright. This is one of those instances where love can make things quite wrong.

Finally, don’t worry about upsetting him. The most important issue isn’t whether he gets upset, but whether you can accept him as a partner. If you can’t, you hope it upsets him, not because you want to make him angry, but because you hope he cares.

He might even care enough to decide to quit drinking…or you might end up looking into adopting a puppy.

STATEMENT:
Your best chance of influencing him is to give him the facts as you see them, without drama. “You’re a wonderful guy and I think you’d make a great partner except for your drinking. After a certain hour, you’re not all there and I can’t count on you for driving and I wouldn’t trust kids to you and I’m sure I’d have to be the responsible adult, which I would hate. You’re a wonderful guy, but you don’t meet the job description. Let me know if you want to change.”

Do you think sex addiction is a real disease that needs therapy, or is it a way to make a big deal out of nothing that helps cheaters and the people they cheat on feel better while people in your business get paid? I love my wife—we’ve been together for almost 20 years—but I don’t think anyone would say I have an disease because I grab a little extra action if the opportunity comes along. I don’t think she knows I’m not faithful, it doesn’t happen that often, and I don’t think it hurts our marriage at all. It’s not like I have a steady mistress; I just end up going home with women I meet when I’m traveling sometimes, because it’s nice to feel young and like I haven’t lost it, whatever it is. As far as I can tell, everyone wins, because I feel better and my wife is less annoyed by my constant begging for sex. So my goal is to figure out if the way I live my life, which seems to be A-OK, is actually reason to go into rehab.

To rehab, or not to rehab. That is the question.

You’re raising the timeless question, and obviously, we’re not going to tell you to let your feelings be your guide, or, for that matter, your daddy, your minister, your rehab counselor, or your parakeet, Ray.

As to the validity of sex addiction, it either doesn’t matter, or it depends on your definition of illness. I define illness as something wrong with your body that’s personal, important, and out-of-control, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s cellular or behavioral, neurological or psychiatric. Or kinky.

Some people have lots of guilty feelings over nothing, others have no guilty feelings ever, and others are swayed by whomever they spoke to (or whatever website they read) last.

In reality, you can figure out the answer to the rehab riddle yourself if you’re willing to push aside false hope and wishful thinking, as well as unreasonable guilt.

Wishful thinking is believing there’s no risk of anyone’s getting hurt because, so far, no one has been hurt; that’s what it means to think with the little head. Unreasonable guilt is feeling so bad about having sinned that the only way of getting relief is to do it again.

That said, let’s look realistically at the risks and benefits of a sexual adventure. The benefit is a good (or even great) feeling, but the risk is that, despite your efforts to be discrete, your cover may get hit by an STD, a partner’s passionate clinginess or nastiness, or some other accident. You’re the one who knows best what happens after the great reveal in terms of your wife’s feeling hurt and/or deciding to end your partnership.

Whatever happens, it will involve lots of pain for you and your wife (and your kids if you have them), and lots of business for yours truly, never mind realtors, lawyers, jewelers, you name it.

For most people, that kind of marital apocalypse is an emotional and financial catastrophe. On the country music timeline, begin with “My Cheating Heart” and wind up “Sleeping Single in a Double Bed.”

You may think you’re in the clear if your partner subscribes to an “open marriage” and tells you she doesn’t believe in jealousy. Again, if that’s what you’d like to hear, don’t trust your ears until you ask yourself what she’s really likely to do, given all you know about her and her past relationships.

Remember, you’re not asking for permission from your mama; you’re the papa and a grown-ass man whose job is to figure out how things will really work out for the entire family.

So don’t wait until you’re scared by the evening news or local preacher or shrink to find whether or not to rehab. Look at the risks realistically and then do what you think is right.

If you decide to stop and can’t, then look for whatever help is simplest, cheapest, and most available and move on to costly treatments only if you absolutely have to. Remember, as much as you’d like to think that the costliest intervention—a month at Betty Ford—is more likely to give you the strongest, most permanent, temptation-resistant self-control, it’s not so.

If your sexual behavior is out-of-control and can do serious damage, and there’s a treatment that might work, then it’s worth a try. Start cheap, however, before you plunk down a college-tuition’s worth, and remember that treatment may not work. Or you can keep going, and pay the equivalent of my entire Harvard bill during your divorce.

Either way, the decision is ultimately yours, and hopefully things will work out better for you than they did for rehab Hamlet.

STATEMENT:
Write up a risk-reminder before the next time you leave town. “There’s nothing wrong with the pleasure of being attractive but there’s lots wrong with what can happen next. If I think the risks of causing harm are too great, I’ll do my best to avoid temptation. I may feel like a nervous wimp who’s afraid of what other people think. In reality, I’m doing what’s necessary to manage my life and do what’s right.”

When I was a teenager, I used to shoplift a lot, and I stopped, like a lot of kids, when I turned 18 and could get into real trouble with the law. That was a long time ago, and while I haven’t stolen anything from a store with a price tag on it since then, I do, and I’m not proud of this, grab any freebies I can get my hands on. For example, everything from the sugar packets to the toilet paper in my house is taken from local coffee shops. I want to stop doing it, because I’m really ashamed of the habit and I know it’s stupid, but I honestly feel like I can’t help myself. My goal is to stop taking things, whether or not they’re free.

Any behavior that doesn’t measure up to your standards of control will make you feel bad, but if control-of-everything was important, then those iron-willed guys who like to see how long they can hold their fingers in a flame (you notice they never hazard other body parts) or tolerate vigorous self-lashing would be the most virtuous, instead of the most insane.

Your goal then isn’t to feel in control (or put any vulnerable body parts at risk); it’s to have enough control over the controllable things that really matter.

You can judge the importance of any behavioral control problem by asking yourself how much harm the problem is likely to cause and how hard it is to control.

Don’t question whether it’s an addiction or not, or, at least, don’t do it more than once. Questions about whether or not you need withdrawal symptoms to define something as an addiction, or what the difference is between addictive and obsessive behaviors, help you dodge the tough question you don’t want to face, namely, how you’re going to deal with it.

Instead of debating the nature of addiction, ask yourself whether you have bigger behavior problems that are harder to notice, like, say, not doing enough with your life. Often a weakness for petty thievery is a sign that you don’t have other goals that are more important.

So add up the risk assessment of your out-of-control behavior. No, you’re not likely to get arrested, but you’re not going to like yourself for the fact that whoever sits down on the can after you’re finished, both with the toilet and taking the TP, is in for a nasty surprise. You need to ask yourself whether you’ve got better things to do with your time and, if not, what are you going to do about it.

Don’t ask yourself whether this sin will prevent you from getting into heaven, or even whether it will cause you embarrassment. Instead, imagine that your time is running out, and then wonder whether you’ve taken on enough meaningful tasks in life, like making a living and caring for others, to make you proud, with or without an iron-will.

STATEMENT:
Keep your smaller guilts from interfering with your bigger concerns. “I don’t always like my behavior or control it as well as I should, but I do my best with the bigger, harder responsibilities of life and that’s the source of my pride.”

My husband always saw himself as the righteous protector of our daughter and, after our divorce, he got into the habit of dragging me into court to force me to pay for some super-costly treatment or schooling that was always no more than a little bit better than what was available for free, but he’d look like a hero to our daughter and the court and the social worker, and I’d look like a miserly shit, and I’d complain bitterly, which just got everyone more on his side, and I was screwed. My daughter bought the bullshit, which meant she and her father shared a tight bond based on hating me, the Scrooge. But I thought the court assaults would stop when she turned 18, until yesterday, when I learned he’s suing me, once again, this time to pay for our daughter’s college tuition, even though she never asked me, she’s over 18, and, with her history of alcohol abuse (and no attempt to get sober), paying for her to go to college without going to rehab first is a waste of money. I think they’re both just scraping the barrel for reasons to drag me into court and I’m getting flashbacks about being raped by the judge. I don’t have any illusion about all of us getting along, but I think it’s fair to want this craziness to stop.

Like it or not, it’s your ex’s legal right to haul you into court at his whim, force you to hire a lawyer, and make you look like a creep. As a reward, you get to give him a good chunk of your savings to pay for something you don’t believe in, to someone who’s out to ruin your life.

Say what you will about justice, but most of the time, it isn’t very fair.

There’s no way you can avoid feeling helpless and outraged, and there’s no shower long or hot enough to make the violated feeling walk away. If, however, your goal is to stop this from happening again by repeatedly venting your outrage, you’ll actually make it worse.

You’ve described the process well; when you’re angry, you look like a monster, not a victim. Your ex has got the knack for pushing your buttons down so well, you shouldn’t be surprised that he treats you like an ATM.

Instead of fighting back again and again then, accept the fact that he’s got you nailed, and shut up. (If you don’t like being told that, remember, I’m not the one who told you to marry him.)

Don’t mistake a Jerry Springer shouting match as the best way to stand up to someone. Remember, no matter how cleansing the venting is on Springer, nobody walked away from that show without looking like an asshole. If you can get yourself to shut up and keep your rage to yourself, you can start to work on a more effective defense. You’ve collected lots of good facts and they can speak for themselves…if you don’t drown them out with your feelings.

Put the facts together, forget your ex-husband’s allegations, and respond to the issues like a caring parent. Then sit back, shut up and be patient. Initially, people will believe him because he believes himself, but if the facts don’t check out, they’ll come around to your point of view.

Don’t pursue your daughter or the Tag Team of Educational Virtue will punish you with her silence. Make it clear that you care by taking your parental responsibilities seriously and articulating that it would be better for her to cultivate her own relationship with you. Beyond that, however, you can only respect her choice, and hope those facts, not blustery emotions, lead her to the light.

The legal process isn’t very fair, but as we often point out on this site, not much is, so it’s better to keep your mouth shut. If you don’t want to remain tied up in the courts forever, stay quiet until your ex has enough rope to hang himself.

STATEMENT:
Put your response in writing and edit out your rage. For example: “You and I both want our daughter to get a good education and I am more than willing to help financially if it looks like she is ready. I wish I knew how she’s been doing for the past 6 months, but I can’t say because she hasn’t kept in touch. Before that, as you know, she had several drug-related legal problems and hasn’t finished a course. As much as I share your desire to help, I don’t have any reason, as yet, to believe that she could make use of college. Asking the court to mandate me to pay her tuition does her a disservice and wastes a large portion of my remaining resources in legal fees. I would advise her to get sober first, get some work habits going, take a course or two, and then she’d have a better chance of success. Talking to me herself would also give her an opportunity to let me know what she’s accomplished and benefit from my input.”

I don’t think she beats him up, but my son can’t seem to stand up to his crazy wife, no matter what she does. She gets furious with him over nothing and then anything goes. She’s thrown away his model airplane collection, screamed at him in front of friends, and locked him out of the house. The grandkids are always nervous. She always has to have the last word and insists that he apologize for things he hasn’t done. I wish he could stand up for himself and let her know that she’s got to stop. She wouldn’t act like this if he were stronger. All he does is keep quiet, look sad, and try to make her happy, which allows her to act like a jerk. My goal is to protect him or teach him how to stand up for himself.

If standing up to someone means out-intimidating them, it’s seldom a good goal, particularly when you’re up against someone who seems to believe they’re as infallible as the Pope.

Go toe to toe with her holiness and you’ll get a slugfest that not only scares the kids, but draws police like flies. It’s tempting to believe that toughness will carry the day and straighten out the bad guys, but that’s only in the movies. Everyone wants it to happen, which is why you can sell tickets, because nobody ever sees it off the screen.

On the other hand, you don’t want your son to feel responsible for the anger and unhappiness of his crazy wife. It’s nice that he’s caring and nurturing, but this is the evil flip side of being overly-sensitive.

If you push him to confront her, he’ll feel more responsible for her feelings and you’ll quickly see his backside (as I’m sure you’ve already discovered); you’re actually making him more responsible for her feelings by suggesting that he could get her to act better if he was firmer.

He thinks he’s upset her, you think he hasn’t upset her enough, and you’re both making him responsible for her. The Pope/wife remains without fault. Holy shitstorm.

A better goal is to help your son develop a better boundary, and this doesn’t require confrontation or hostility. By a boundary, I mean not allowing an excessive feeling of responsibility for his wife’s unhappiness to get in the way of his doing what he thinks is right.

He wouldn’t fight back, he just wouldn’t take such a hard hit every time she attacks. Then eventually, please Jesus, he’d also ask for a divorce.

STATEMENT:
Show him how he can reject blame without attacking her. “I think we’ve got a good thing going and that it would be better if you could manage your anger. I want you to be happy but you’re right, after all is said and done, I don’t necessarily agree with you about what you feel I’ve done wrong. If you yell or try to punish me, it makes things worse. I am who I am. So my idea about how to make the best of things is to back away from confrontation. I’ll always listen to new suggestions but I won’t stay in the room with yelling or physical intimidation.”

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.”

Please note: There will be no new post on Thursday, 12/24, due to the holiday. Please continue to write in, however, because there will be a new post on 12/28. Thanks, and happy holidays!

My ex-wife was always a wild outlaw in high school, (I got the kids), she’d show up from time to time, but rarely when she said she would, and you never knew when she’d be high, so the court imposed supervised visitation. I want my kids to have a mom though, but when she no-shows, the kids are crushed. Of course, the kids want to see her, particularly for Christmas, but what they don’t know is that she and her current boyfriend were caught on video robbing a liquor store, so if she’s going anywhere, it’s probably straight to jail. . My goal is to figure out a way to break this to my kids so that they don’t hate their mother (even though I sort of think they should).

You can’t protect your kids from the hurt of loving an outlaw mother, any more than you could protect yourself for falling for her years ago. Telling your kids that she’s a bad person inflicts a worse kind of hurt, because it devalues the love you and the kids have given her (which, as you know, you can’t get back).

Even if you can’t protect them from hurt, you still can and should protect the value of their love for her and whatever is meaningful about hers for them.

To begin with, don’t buy the idea that outlaws are regular people who make bad choices. That’s one of those stupid, false-hope ideas that assumes that everyone has the choice to be good or bad and can redeem themselves by making better choices. It’s sort of a hybrid of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and Santa’s “Naughty/Nice” list…and it’s bullshit.

As someone who’s counseled a lot of bad people and their innocent bystanders (like you), I can tell you that people who do bad things don’t have the same control that you or I do.

Maybe their control was weakened by childhood trauma, or addiction, or maybe they were born that way, but it doesn’t matter. Life isn’t fair and some people are fucking weak in ways that cause all kinds of trouble (and some of that trouble gets caught by the crook cam).

So think about which is better: to think of mother as a self-made asshole who chose to neglect her kids because she didn’t care and the people who loved her couldn’t get through to her; or, to think of her as having a fucked-up nervous system that made her unreliable and vulnerable to drug addiction and criminal behavior in spite of all her good impulses and the good love of people who cared for her.

Don’t tell me that saying that your wife was fucked-up lets her off the hook or tells the kids that crime is OK; they know that crime isn’t OK because her life and relationships are fucked and there’s pain everywhere. Nobody’s off the hook here, except maybe for you.

Tell your kids the truth—Mom can’t help it, but she loves you—and Christmas will not be lost. If Santa had a heart, he’d give her presents in prison because, with the gifts she’s lacking for good judgment and impulse control, she doesn’t stand a chance.

STATEMENT:
Write out a statement you could share with the kids. “There’s something wrong with your mother and you have to be careful with her, no matter how much you love her. Most of the time, she can’t meet your needs or anyone else’s needs or even her own needs, other than the need to feel good right away. Recently she stole something and got caught and she’ll probably get put in prison for a while, so I don’t think you’ll see her this Christmas. She probably didn’t mean to hurt anyone, but she certainly hurt the people who love her and need her and she hurt herself. But that’s the way your mother is. You’ll never know, when you hear from her, whether she will keep her promises or get you in trouble. But I’ll teach you how to be careful so you can keep in touch with her as much as possible. And maybe someday she’ll get more control of herself and you’ll be able to trust her as much as you love her.”

My alcoholic father and whiny, always-in-trouble younger brother were asshole buddies who always felt neglected by selfish, got-it-together me and they took great delight in cutting me and my kids out of my father’s will. I was angry for a long time after my father died, but when my brother reached out to me recently (he explained that he’s on medication now, although he didn’t offer to give me any of the inheritance), I was happy to meet and socialize. But now he wants my grown-up kids to be part of his one-happy-family-at-Christmas reunion, and the kids, who are now grown, aren’t interested. Their memories of him are negative but they’re not mad, they just don’t care. My brother genuinely does not understand why they’re cold to him and don’t respond to his calls or emails and he asks me to intervene. My goal is to get my brother to back off without reopening the rift.

Don’t let yourself get sentimental about a Christmas reunion. You might yearn for a re-unionable brother, but you don’t have one and never will (especially now that you’re father’s gone).

Your brother will always be a high risk earthquake zone, so don’t make yourself responsible for avoiding a rift or you’ll find yourself triggering one. His dangerous expectations could easily cause a natural disaster, no matter what you do.

Medication may have made him more even-tempered, but you have no reason to believe his attitude has changed. He’s probably following the 12-step shuffle and doing gracious forgiveness now, but then, when the kids don’t respond, he’ll think he has the right to feel wounded by your neglect all over again. Of course, he’s more likely to feel that way if you say something negative about his past behavior.

So your goal isn’t to prevent a rift, but to make sure you and the kids aren’t responsible for it; not in his eyes, of course, but in your own. Make the best of the tentative, fragile, potentially explosive relationship that you have, and that means putting caution ahead of sentimentality.

Stay calm, don’t bring up the past, and remind your brother that Christmas with just the two of you isn’t so bad. Just don’t get carried away by your fucking Christmas spirit, and hopefully he won’t get carried away, either.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement in response to his Christmas expectations (and yours). “It’s nice to get together, forget about past conflict, and share Christmas as brothers. Life is complicated now that the kids are grown and have lives of their own and we can seldom get everyone together at once, and they probably expected me to tell you that they wouldn’t be able to join us because they consider me responsible for brother-to-brother communication. I don’t pressure them because I respect their other priorities. I look forward to seeing you.”

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.”