My 15-year-old son needs treatment for his irritability. He gets unbelievably angry over small things, to the point that he ups and goes to his room. He agrees that things are basically OK and he’s sorry afterwards, but it happens at least once a week. We have a happy home and he has friends in school and gets good grades. I think it’s his mood that’s the problem and it causes him and our family a lot of pain. My goal is to figure out how to get him some help with psychotherapy and/or medication.

Just because someone’s in pain doesn’t mean he needs help. Pain is just part of the complete life package, along with joy, hunger, death, etc.

Of course, you’ve got less to lose and more to gain from treatment if his irritability has caused bruised knuckles, broken sheetrock, and a growing familiarity with your local police. Pain is a normal part of life, but serving life in prison isn’t.

What you’re saying, however, is that, aside from his verbal explosions, he remains in physical control, does self-motivated time-outs, retains good relationships, and has no trouble focusing on work and getting it done. No pill could improve upon that.

So, if he’s handling his pain well, getting things done, and engaging in life, then making him get treatment for his irritability may make a bigger deal of his problem without necessarily providing relief. It’s a sad fact, but neither talk therapy nor psychiatric medication reliably improves irritability—just sometimes and more often than placebo.

It’s always possible that his irritability foreshadows a mood disorder that will eventually get worse and might be prevented or disarmed by beginning medication early. The trouble is, we have no way of telling whether he’s at high risk, and the medication has risks of its own, as well as being costly. The risks from antidepressants aren’t great, as far as we know, but there’s always the risk of what we don’t know because our tools for examining the long-term effects of medication on the brain are limited. If you try an antidepressant, ask yourself whether it’s helpful enough to be worth that risk.

As for most mood stabilizers, like Lithium, Depakote, and Abilify, the risk is much higher than for antidepressants (although you wouldn’t think so if you didn’t listen carefully to the end of Abilify commercials). Sometimes, pain treatment is worse than pain, and shouldn’t be considered without a careful assessment of the risk and rewards. From what you’ve said, the risks of most mood stabilizers dwarf the rewards by a mile.

Psychotherapy can be harmful if his shrink doesn’t accept the fact that treatment has limits. Find someone who can accept the possibility that your son’s irritable outbursts are unavoidable and coach him on managing them if they can’t be cured—though, clearly, your son is already a good manager himself.

In the end, the decision is yours, and various treatments might be helpful. If you accept the possibility, however, that treatment for painful conditions is not always better than no treatment, then you will weigh risk against benefit, regardless of how you feel, and make a good decision. After all, it’s risky to overestimate the power of medication and treatment, but it’s riskier to underestimate your son.

STATEMENT:
“It breaks my heart to watch my son have a meltdown and I’m terrified of what can happen to a teenage boy with an anger problem. I know he’s a good kid, however, and he’s showed an amazing ability to keep it together socially and academically. If a treatment seems to help him and be worth the risk, I’ll support it. If it doesn’t, I’ll support the many good ways he’s dealing with his temper and help him develop even stronger anger-management skills.”

My son is a nice kid, but his ADD makes him completely irresponsible. He seems motivated about getting his college degree, but, even when he takes his medication, he always comes late to lectures, leaves assignments to the last minute, and doesn’t get problem sets finished. He was asked to take a semester off because his grades slipped and he seemed out of control. Now that he’s back at home, he pays no attention to his bank balance and has bounced a lot of checks. When I confront him, he’s sincerely apologetic, but then he does the same thing the next day. I just wish I could get him to stop lying and care about what he’s doing.

If you can’t help someone with love and medication (see above), it’s normal to assume that he doesn’t really want to get better and your goal is to find the key to motivate him. The trouble is, some people who are motivated (and medicated) are nevertheless unable to perform.

They feel ashamed, apologize, avoid, feel more ashamed, and so on. They seem sleazy and unmotivated. The problem is that, if you treat them as if they’re sleazy and unmotivated, you make them worse.

The sad fact here is that medication can usually sharpen attention and make learning easier, but it can’t correct the executive function problems that make it hard for many people with ADD (and others) to get things done and deal with unpleasant priorities. Yes, you need character and willpower, but you also need some help from your brain, and some brains are too “in the moment” to be pushed into planned, prioritized activities, even when the will is willing and the attention razor sharp.

In that case, your goal isn’t to get your son to stop lying—he’s not purposefully dishonest, just permanently flakey—but to disarm his shame while helping him face the full extent of his disability. Forget about his lying, insincerity and apologies. Make it clear you’re not interested in the merry-go-round of avoidance and remorse and instead want to examine the power of whatever makes him fuck up in spite of the fact that he doesn’t really want to. That said, your goal is to help him find ways to manage himself.

Don’t let him present himself as a bad guy who could do better if he’d just try harder, because the evidence says otherwise. In reality, he’s a good guy with a permanent impairment, and it will take him a lot of work to get a handle on it.

Ask him if he’d like a wake-up call in the morning, or whether he should compose a daily log of his lateness to see when it’s better or worse and whether it’s responding to interventions, including medication changes. The more you talk about his lack of control as a fact, the more you challenge the shame that reinforces avoidance. Too bad he’s fucked, but there’s lots to be done. Most of us have weaknesses we have to work hard to manage, but most involve food and don’t involve bank fees.

Once you limit his responsibility and yours for what he doesn’t control, you’re free to bear down on the one part that he does have some power over. You don’t expect him to change his disability or understand why he has it—it is what it is—but you’re confident he can work on managing it, and that, with hard work and discipline, he can gain the control he needs and lose the shame that’s holding him back.

STATEMENT:
“It’s hard to watch my son’s overly sincere apology for behavior that cost us half a year’s tuition, knowing that, if he hadn’t lied about what was happening, we could have helped him, and that he’ll do the same thing again. Nevertheless, he wants good things for himself and has a legitimate problem that is worse than a poor attention span. I will talk to him about the good things he can do with a bad problem, and urge him to seek coaching rather than moral reform or absolution.”

I think my girlfriend is basically committed to me (after 4 years of our having a steady relationship, despite living in different cities). After much backing-and-filling and hemming-and-hawing, she introduced me to her 3 kids and her ex. The problem, I think, is that her ex-husband is an evil drama-monster who bludgeoned her with tantrums, legal threats, and ultimatums until she would do anything to appease him. It makes her a total wuss with the kids and interferes with her availability for our relationship. That makes me push her sometimes, which makes her jump like she’s been scalded and trapped between two powerful, demanding masters. I don’t think she’s into dominant men any more (at least, I don’t see myself as one), but my goal is to help her resist her evil ex without making her feel she’s doing it to appease me.

No matter how nice your girlfriend is, if she’s over-reactive to an evil ex, you can find yourself getting irritated, worried, and sometimes outraged. You’re sorry she has trouble setting limits with the guy, but you sure don’t want him to control your life.

If she doesn’t learn how to manage him and the feelings he stirs up in her, however, that’s what will happen, and your relationship will be riddled with the drama you’re both trying to avoid (and also become very crowded).

That doesn’t mean, of course, that she loves him more than you; he just has the power to make her more frightened or guilty than you do, because he isn’t as “nice”, and she doesn’t know what to do with those feelings other than appease him.

Of course, that may tempt you to fight back by showing her that you’re just as good at making her feel bad, which would turn you into a chair-slinger in someone else’s soap opera (as well as something of a jerk), and it’s clear you’re not letting that happen. That doesn’t mean you’re doomed to a relationship with him if you want a relationship with her.

Your best weapon is the same one we use as shrinks (and the one you seem to be using now); coach her to see a better, though not comfortable, alternative, urging her to use a lawyer to figure out when she can say “no” and what to say to her ex and kids if they attack her for being mean or unreasonable. Support her in doing what she believes is right and what will work out better, rather than in doing what will make you happy or her less stressed. Odds are, if an action is right and reasonable, it’s guaranteed to make her ex pounce.

Continue to offer her your positive perspective; she’s a good woman who has done her job as a mother and can do a better job by learning to say no. In doing so, her best therapist is her lawyer (used not for venting feelings, but for information about standards and consequences).

If she can’t make progress with that approach, then the package is what it is, and you’ll need to take it or leave it. What seems to be happening, however, is that she’s getting tougher, in part because you know how to keep a lid on your negative feelings while giving good advice. Her ex puts a burden on your life, but he doesn’t control it, and he doesn’t have to ruin the life you and your girlfriend share.

STATEMENT:
“My girlfriend’s wussiness about her ex drives me crazy, but I know she’s a good, responsible person who’s come a long way in learning how to take a stand. It’s been frustrating, and often feels like work, but I’ve done a good job managing my anger, she’s doing better at managing her fear, and we both continue to feel the relationship is worth it.”

My ex-husband has the divorce court judge in his pocket and it’s driving me crazy. Regardless of our divorce agreement, he takes me back to court every year for additional money for our daughter’s residential treatment (she has as addiction problems), and the judge buys his story in spite of its being full of lies and bullshit. He says I have money I don’t have—I can no longer afford a lawyer. He wants me to pay for a fancy, private facility that won’t take our insurance when there’s a good one in our insurance company’s network. As a recovering alcoholic myself, I want my daughter to get treatment as much as my husband does, but what I really want is for that judge to know how wrong he is to think I’m a skinflint and allow my ex to torture me year after year.

Unless you grew up with parents who were always fair and unbiased, you know there’s a real danger in expecting justice. The more justified you are in feeling screwed by the judge/parent, the bigger the danger.

Yes, you’d hope that expressions of injured innocence would get him/her to reconsider and, in a fair world, that’s what would happen. In this world, however, expressing negative feelings about a judge’s judgment usually makes the judge feel attacked and insecure, particularly if you’re angry and right. Not only does justice does not ensue, your hole gets deeper, as does your injury, anger, and tendency to make more trouble for yourself.

If your ex-husband is an Asshole (readers of this blog understand that I use this term diagnostically, and not pejoratively), he truly believes he’s a righteous defender of the weak, so it’s not hard to see why a judge who doesn’t know him would be taken in. If you then attack him, you’ll look like the angry girl your ex says you are.

So put the same lid on venting outrage as you do on alcohol; stay sober, and stay quiet. Remember, keeping negative feelings inside is not nearly as bad as letting them out in front of the wrong audience.

Now that you’re ready to eat your shit sandwich—cry if you must, but please don’t bring it up again—you’re ready to say something positive about your own plan for your daughter. Namely, that you want her to get help as much as your ex does, but you expect her to need help for a long time and you’re trying to save money now, because she’ll need it later. That’s why you’re trying to save on legal bills and don’t want to pay for the best intervention program when the difference between best and good is not worth it.

Don’t get distracted by the judge’s willingness to believe you’re a bad, stingy parent and don’t defend yourself by attacking his judgment or the unfairness of being dragged back into court. Stay on message: talk about your concern for your daughter and your belief in the advantages of your plan.

Given time and no attacks from you, the judge will probably catch on to your Asshole husband’s bullshit, particularly if you stick to your agenda and don’t push his buttons. You might not get perfect justice, but you’ll get a good feeling of pride for having expressed yourself as a caring mother, without getting screwed by him and your old negative feelings.

STATEMENT:
“It’s horrible to feel I can be dragged back into court at any time, to be judged by someone who believes I’m an asshole no matter what I say or do, but that’s life. I know I’m ready to do right by my daughter and that I’ve got a good plan. Beyond that, I don’t control.”

My ex-wife became the victim from hell after our divorce, which she and the kids blamed on my messing around with another woman. The truth is, I’d been eager to get divorced for the past 10 years, particularly because my ex was so good at messing up and then acting like a victim. I didn’t have that or any affair until I had almost put the divorce in motion and the youngest was about ready for college, and my not-mistress has subsequently become my wife. I felt guilty, however, and the kids see me as guilty, so they punish me with silence, or worse, extend an invitation to have a talk so they can hit me with a blast of endless recrimination before returning to silence again. Needless to say, explaining doesn’t help—their anger is endless—so when they call me up, I wonder what to say. My goal is to help them with their pain and restore a normal relationship.

Most good people feel guilty about leaving a marriage, whether or not they’ve done anything wrong. Guilt the emotion, as opposed to guilt the legal state, is never necessarily caused by bad behavior.

You feel guilty because those you love are hurt and disappointed, and happen to blame you. Given the fact that one of the most important reasons that people marry—perhaps the most important—is to have someone to blame, guilt is an unavoidable part of both marriage and divorce that should never, ever be considered proof of criminality.

As natural as your guilt is, it’s dangerous to let it guide you when you’re managing seriously angry kids (or adults, especially when they’re acting like kids). It’s like showing fear to a tiger, or blood to a vampire, or low-hanging comedic fruit to Ricky Gervais. They’ll just keep coming.

Your first job is not to respond to the kids before you’ve decided for yourself whether you’re guilty, and what for. Begin by listing your standards, which should probably include trying hard to make marriage work, giving priority to the needs of the kids, and behaving well in a difficult situation.

They should probably not include being happy or keeping your family happy, because life is often unavoidably unhappy, and looking for marriage to make you happy, though nice when it does happen, is ridiculous.

The question is how dysfunctional your wife’s behavior was and how badly it affected your partnership, as well as your mood and behavior. My guess, from what you say, is that you tried hard, put great importance on raising the kids, but found yourself hating your marriage. If you believe that’s reasonable grounds for divorce (if you were judging a friend), then it’s time to stop apologizing. If not, then figure out what you did wrong (excluding everything that you didn’t control), apologize, and then don’t apologize anymore.

Once you’ve prepared your statement (see sample below), you’re ready to draw the line on receiving punishment you don’t deserve. You and the kids deserve a better relationship, and from your point of view, their anger is the main obstacle. You hope they can stop it, and the first step is allowing yourself to stop feeling perpetually guilty for doing what you believe was necessary.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like I failed my first marriage since I’m the one who was unhappy and broke it up, and my kids blame me. After thinking it through, I see my responsibility as limited. If this response doesn’t satisfy the kids, I’m sorry, but I’ve heard their views and accepted their feelings and it’s no good for negative conversations to continue indefinitely. I love them and believe we can have a positive relationship, if and when they’re ready.”

The main thing wrong with my marriage is that we lost the incredible love and closeness we had for the first few years, and a major reason is that my husband keeps his distance. No, I don’t think he’s having affairs, and we still get along very well as partners and parents, but he says he just hasn’t felt comfortable with me since I went through a depressed, nasty period, so he avoids kissing and sex. I’ve told him I can’t go on like this, but I’m not going to beg for sex if he’s not going to give it to me. I don’t mention it most of the time, but it hurts. My goal is to figure out how to get the old love back or decide whether the current situation is good enough for me to want to stay married.

The trouble with mixing sex and love in a marriage is that sexual withholding feels like a loss of love, and a loss of love causes deep pain, which causes sexual withholding, and around it goes, flushed down the marital toilet.

If you think sex might bridge the gulf between you, then don’t request it as evidence of his love, or as satisfaction of your needs. To do so is to make the issue more wrought, personal and emotionally explosive. Of course you have those feelings, but expressing them won’t clear them up—it will make them worse.

Instead, propose sex as an activity that might reduce the distance between you by having a positive effect on your emotions. Now that your nasty period is over, you’re confident it will be a good experience, and, if repeated, it might build trust, as well as reducing an issue between you. As long as you don’t emotionalize sex in terms of love and intimacy, you reduce the risk of failure. Market it as nerve tonic, not as proof of his dedication or your personal worth.

If he doesn’t respond, then you know you haven’t scared him away; he’s simply stuck. You haven’t let your hurt feelings make you passive; you’ve done what you can, and your actions haven’t added to your pain by expressing it.

I assume you’ve apologized for the past (see above) to the extent that you could have controlled your nasty behavior, so it’s time to stop apologizing. Propose a better way forward and see if your husband can join you. Having sex, if he can do it, is a way of putting negative feelings to one side. The love issue will have to wait.

STATEMENT:
“The lack of a sex life leaves me feeling guilty, sad, and punished, as well as horny and needy, but I know I’ve been a good partner for a long time and don’t deserve punishment. I believe it would help my husband, and our relationship, if he could put a lid on his anxieties and just do it. It’s his job to try. What he does with it will tell me whether he can.”

While most mental health clinicians would feel guilty admitting this, I’ve been in the biz for long enough that I don’t give a shit and I need to vent. Most of the crisis calls I get from my psychotherapy practice are senseless and irritating; they’re from patients who feel bad because they forgot to take their medications, or drank too much or when they shouldn’t, or allowed their demons to wreak vengeance on their enemies, the nearer the better, self best of all. A few call me because they’re feeling suicidal (but won’t go to the hospital) and just want me to make them feel better, which is hard when it’s late and I’m tired, and often impossible just because I don’t have that kind of power. I try to be civil, but their calls leave me feeling helpless and wondering whether I’m doing any good. Discussing their responsibility for their behavior is useless, because it usually makes them mad or apologetic. My goal is to figure out what to do with crisis calls that are really a useless pain in the ass.

Many crisis calls you receive as a shrink do a good job of showing off a patient’s worst behavior. It’s like having partial custody of a colicky child.

It’s not that their distress isn’t real and severe—it is, almost always—it’s that it causes self-defeating behavior, like drinking or mouthing off or retreating from the world, which creates a jam that is extra hard to get out of.

Bad feelings cause bad behavior, bad listening skills and bad regrets about going into the therapy business instead of owning a Toyota dealership.

You’re right to wonder whether your response to crisis calls is helpful. Whether you realize it or not—and you seem to realize it—your words sound moralistic and angry, though for good reason. The more you care about your patients’ welfare, the more upset you get about what they’re doing to themselves and how it undoes all those good talks (and/or medications) that seemed to help. As you say, their negative feelings become contagious as you wrestle with your own fatigue, doubts, and fears about more calls to come.

Unfortunately, a moralistic tone usually makes people who’ve messed up feel more messed up. You judge them as having made bad choices, whereas they experience a rush of emotions and habits that sweep all choice away. Your intentions are good, but labeling your bad-behaving patients as irresponsible bad-choosers will usually make them feel like losers talking to their dads.

The good side is that you’ve given them a focus for their anger and disappointment that isn’t themselves. The bad side is that you may get an honorable mention in a suicide note.

If you truly believe in your observations, however, assure yourself that you’re not responsible for making the crisis caller less destructive. The threat to you isn’t the intrusion on your time, it’s feeling responsible for the mess they’re in, which you’re not. Their mess is out of your control, and theirs. Your only responsibility is to give them good advice and do what you can if they’re not safe.

Tell them what you think they eventually need to be able to tell themselves; it will pass, there are good things to do meanwhile, and they’ll sort out the cleanup when they’re better rested. If they’re not safe, they should take themselves to an emergency room.

Assure them you’ll work with them on increasing their self-control over anything they think they’re doing wrong, but it can’t happen now. Good night and good luck to them, and I hope it felt good for you to vent.

STATEMENT:
“It’s hard to stay calm when I see my patients fucking up their lives and then wanting me to make them feel better during my spare time, but my feelings are just a reflection of their feelings, and don’t have to get in my way. When I can’t help them, it’s too bad, but it doesn’t help to blame them, and we can make good use of the experience later, when we talk during work hours.”

As a therapist, I assume that my strongest weapons are kindness and empathy, but sometimes the process is exhausting and my family does not appreciate the amount of time I spend fielding patient phone calls off-hours. When I get desperate calls at dinnertime or late at night, they interfere with my family life, but I don’t believe in hanging up until my patients feel better. Many have been traumatized and go through terrible periods of emptiness and they need to know that someone cares. My family jokes, somewhat bitterly, that my patients have more access to me than they do. I feel unappreciated, tired, and torn in many directions. At least my patients feel that I care. My goal is to help my family see that I also care about them.

If empathy and kindness were as powerful as some therapists and Christians believe, the world would be a lot better than it is. As your family correctly observes, however, the calls keep coming, there are no cures, and What About Bob is coming down the road.

Ask yourself whether your patients are actually getting better, or just feel better because they’ve found someone nice to take their calls. If they are feeling better, figure out if it’s because they’re better at managing their own crises, or because you’ve confirmed their right to have a nice response whenever they need it. If it’s the latter, heaven help them when you’re not there (and help your family when you are).

It’s good that you’re kind and empathic; that’s why your family and patients like to spend time with you. What’s wrong, however, is that, in over-valuing the therapeutic impact of those qualities, you’re putting too much responsibility on yourself for your patients’ problems (see above). Realistic experience should tell you that kindness doesn’t cure. Neither (see above) does moralistic confrontation.

That is sad, and limits your powers considerably, but it also means you should keep calls short and treat them as evidence of your patients’ need for better self-management. If a patient is willing to try improving his/her self-management, that’s a great focus for treatment and the calls are grist for the mill.

If, on the other hand, a patient can’t see any possibilities for better self-regulation and wants nothing other than better treatment from others, your therapy won’t do any good other than providing him/her with a short-term fix and your family with an empty seat at the table. In that case, Forget Bob and return to the family fold.

STATEMENT:
“It feels right to soothe those who are in despair, and to help them carry their load, but I know that I can’t really carry anyone else’s load and that responding to repeated off-hours calls doesn’t help patients appreciate and make best use of their own resources. Without sacrificing my kindness, I will offer them ideas about how to manage their moments of disorganization and despair, and I will do that most effectively during treatment hours and not at other times.”

I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and anorexia nervosa purging type a few years ago. Both of these issues had pretty much consumed my life during the years leading up to that diagnosis and have continued to be impairing ever since. I started cutting myself two years ago (it has become more frequent this past year), and I’ve had several panic attacks in the past several months. Fortunately, my overwhelming desire to commit suicide has subsided, although I still think of suicide and my death in general fairly often. In addition to my own issues, I have watched my mom slip into a state of psychosis during the past two years, triggered by the death of her father. She has become so depressed, delusional, and violent that my parents separated and sometimes I don’t even feel safe staying in the house with her—a few weeks ago my dad and I had to stop her from going through with a suicide attempt. The police were called, and I had to hold her arms down while she was clearly in a psychotic rage. At one point, she tried to stab my hand to make me let go. She was taken to a mental health facility where she stayed for a week, and now she’s furious at us for making her go there and hasn’t been much better since then. I feel like I never get anywhere with therapists because they just prescribe medicines that make me feel numb to any emotions or focus on my eating disorder so much that I never get to work through these other issues. I feel like my life is unraveling and it’s gotten so bad that, honestly, I don’t feel like I even want to fix it. My goal in telling you this is to figure out a way to help my mom and how to get through school while I’m dealing with this.

It may seem strange to hear this, for someone who suffers as much as you do from depression, anorexia, and the burdens of taking care of a very sick mother, but I think you’re doing an amazing job.

Yes, you’re chin-deep in shit, but you haven’t drowned, and that’s a remarkable accomplishment.

Your depression hasn’t made you hate people or blame them, and your anorexia hasn’t caused you to pretend you’re not sick, so you must have a solid hold on reality. There you are, with all your pain, finding the love to help your mother and the energy to go on with your studies. You’ve got good values and a big soul.

So you feel hopeless because treatment hasn’t done you much good, or, I should say, hasn’t done your symptoms much good. It sucks, but that’s the way it usually is when symptoms are as severe as yours. That doesn’t mean they won’t get better by themselves, or that a better treatment won’t come along. It does mean that, at least for the time being, you’re stuck with heavy-duty pain.

That’s not important, however, or at least not nearly as important as what you’re doing with that pain, which is, as I said, amazing, and there’s treatment that can help you distinguish between you and your symptoms. Any good cognitive treatment will help, whether it comes from a cognitive therapist, a good coach, or a friend with a positive attitude. One treatment that is aimed specifically at helping people with this much pain keep a positive attitude is Dialectic Behavioral Therapy, or DBT.

The inventor of this treatment, Marsha Linehan [link: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/health/23lives.html], suffered similar symptoms and, like you, managed to stay focused on the value of helping people and improving her own skills. She wound up inventing a kind of treatment that helps others do what she did for herself, and, like you, she found that helping others was a great way to keep her own demons in check.

It’s normal for you to feel that your life is unraveling, but trust me, it isn’t; your pain is a mess, but you’re doing a good job of bearing it and doing good things with it.

You are not your pain; you’re dealing with a lot of shit, but you are anything but. You’re the person who’s managing it while leading a good and meaningful life, and that’s not someone you should give up on.

STATEMENT:
“I may feel like a hopeless, deteriorating mess, but I love my mother and care about my education and I’m doing good things about both. I may not be able to stop my symptoms or save my mother, but life sucks and that’s not a personal failure. I haven’t let my symptoms stop me, however, and that’s why I’m doing well, even if my pain and my mother are doing badly.”

I have a great life and there’s nothing I care about more than my family, so I became really worried when, out of nowhere, I started to have horrible thoughts about murdering my children. I’m too ashamed to tell my husband. I’m not an angry person, and I love my kids and get along well with them, and I’ve never needed a shrink, but the thoughts keep me up at night. If there’s the slightest chance I could hurt my kids, I’ve got to do something about it, but I don’t know what to do. Please help.

Before you get crazy about having crazy, murderous thoughts, check out the risk factors for crazy murders. It’s not hard to do. What you’ll find out is that crazy murderers don’t just have intrusive murderous thoughts; they’re crazy as well.

By that, I mean they’re very detached, or they have strange ideas about their kids that they actually believe in, or they’re hearing voices, or going through extreme mood swings.

Ask yourself whether you fit the picture of people who really run amok. While I don’t know you, of course, my guess is that you don’t fit the picture at all, which means you run the same finite-but-small risk as your average Joe.

Trouble is, everyone who has intrusive, horrible thoughts without other symptoms of craziness is nevertheless terrified of losing control, so reassuring yourself is hard to do. What you want, of course, is total reassurance that the horrible thoughts will go away and that you’ll never, ever lose control; as you say, if there’s the slightest chance that you might hurt your family, you feel obliged to take definitive action. Unfortunately, you can’t. No one controls such thoughts, and trying to control them will just add to your helplessness.

Your goal then isn’t total reassurance or freedom from fear, but reasonable self-control and an ability to go ahead with your life in spite of fear. Assess the real risk you pose to your family and take steps to protect them if you think it’s necessary. Having done that (and realizing that your family is better off with you just the way you are, crazy thoughts and all), learn to bear your fear and go about your business, which isn’t easy to do.

If you want to tell your family about your symptoms, that’s the story you’d tell. You’ve got these crazy thoughts, but you’ve checked on the internet, and probably seen a shrink, and discovered you’re at no particular risk of doing harm, you’re just at risk of suffering from creepy thoughts. Reassure them that you have no intention of letting the crazy thoughts interfere with your normal activities and that, if you thought you were dangerous, you’d do whatever’s necessary to protect them.

As with the woman above, you are not your symptoms; a good mom can have crazy thoughts, and a great mom can carry on despite them.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like I’ve got crazy thoughts and might lose my mind but the truth is that I’ve checked out my symptoms and the part of my mind I’m losing is pretty small and insubstantial (although the process is scary and painful). Whether or not I can make my symptoms go away, I’m competent to manage them, keep everyone safe, and go on with my life, and that’s all I need to do.”

I have suffered from anxiety and depression much of my life. My most recent (and most devastating) bout was a couple of years ago, when I worked with a therapist and managed to heave myself out of it without the use of antidepressants (which I had been on in the past and want to learn to live without.) Now I find myself slipping back in. My biggest issue seems to be that I put too much stock in what others think of me or might think of me (I’m really good at fabricating things people might be saying about me.) I also had a baby last year, which has prevented me from pursuing my career fully, so when I hear of the successes of others (or see them on Facebook) I get very anxious and feel that the universe is unjust. I want to be a good mom, and I want to be good at my job, but I feel I am failing at both and resenting others who are great at either. I was made fun of a lot when I was a kid and I think I still carry some of this baggage around, like whatever decision I make is the wrong one because I’m basically a loser. How can I focus on myself and my own life without worrying about what everyone else is up to or what they may think about me?

While you already have a good idea of what to do about your negative thinking, you still need to protect yourself from two bad ideas that you express here. Unfortunately, those two ideas are also your “goals.”

First, disavow yourself of the notions that you should be able to stop depression without using medication and that you should find a way to be less, for lack of a better word, insecure. In doing so, you won’t be giving up—you’ll be giving yourself some relief.

The good idea, and better goal, is to train yourself to fight negative thinking, and there are lots of ways to do that. A therapist can help, but so can the right kind of friends, readings, church, and/or spouse. Though you can’t make the negative thoughts go away, you can assemble a strategy (and maybe team) to help you handle them.

Develop a routine for reminding yourself that you’re the one who’s managing your life and working with your unique gifts and disabilities, and that you’re the only one who can judge whether you’re doing your best. Then, when you start to compare yourself to the better gifted, give yourself a dose of positive reality. Nobody else can judge you, not even Facebook.

The sad truth is that depression could sweep you away, regardless of what treatment you use and how motivated you are in pursuing it. It’s scary, but it’s also liberating; you’re responsible for doing your best with depression, not making it go away. Cancer patients don’t set performance goals, and neither should you.

Instead, set your goals in terms of the process of managing, rather than the outcome, of recovery, using non-medical and other minimal risk treatments whenever possible. Then go ahead and choose riskier treatments if and only if you think they’re necessary. Don’t let fear or guilt prevent you from choosing what’s best for you.

Don’t always listen to your doctor, because your doctor doesn’t know how much pain your depression is causing or how much it has disrupted your work and relationships, so it’s your tough decision. All the doctor can do is tell you the relative risk of the treatment, compared to your symptoms, and what he or she would do in your place.

Embrace the fact that every parent with a career has to contend with bad feelings about difficult compromises. The challenge for you is to accept those bad feelings and the fact that there’s always someone out there who can do things better than you, then learn how to manage yourself positively and tell Facebook to go fuck itself.

STATEMENT:
“I don’t often feel good about my performance at home or at work, but that’s my nature. I’m proud I’ve taken on parenthood and that I’m doing OK, whatever my insecurities tell me. I know I try hard and that I’ve made good decisions and I will use those facts to lift myself up when depression tries to tear me down.”

I shouldn’t be writing you about my depression because I have no reason to be depressed. I’m a lucky person with a good job and great boyfriend. I eat a healthy diet, exercise every day, and work hard to stay healthy, mentally as much as physically. I had a severe depression as a teenager but I worked hard in therapy (and still do all I can to keep those negative thoughts at bay), took my medications as directed, and have been much better since. So now, 10 years later, there’s no reason I should be unhappy, tearful, and unmotivated to do anything but go back to bed, but no matter how much I exercise or try to stay positive, I can’t get ahead of this thing. I must have missed something. My goal is to figure out what.

The one big thing you’ve failed to understand is that depression, like most illnesses, can’t be controlled. You can be careful, do everything right, avoid giving into negative thoughts and actions, but still feel like shit. It’s not fair, but it’s the nature of the beast.

Just in case this sad fact depresses you, think about how, just like the person above, you’re depressing yourself even more by holding yourself responsible for staying healthy. Maybe you want to assume that awesome responsibility because you wish you had the power to stay healthy, but you don’t, because nobody does. Even those people who follow all the rules and work their butts off.

Luckily, staying healthy is not part of your job description; coping with illness is, so stop telling yourself you shouldn’t be depressed. What you should be doing is reviewing what you need to do to cope with depression, and realizing that you’re probably doing most of those things.

You sound like the kind of person who tries hard to keep working, relating, and parenting regardless of how you feel. If that’s true, you’re doing most of what you need to do already. You’ve probably talked things over and tried to figure out whether something’s getting you down that you don’t know about, which takes care of another basic self-management task.

Decide whether to try any new medications (see above case), using the same procedure you would use for weighing the risks and management of any treatment. Don’t be a sissy about your dislike for treatment—no one likes treatment—so just add up the risks and benefits, and don’t let fear make your decision for you.

Finally, keep working on how to think positively, beginning with the most positive statement of all: you aren’t responsible for your illness, and despite bad results, you’re doing your best. You’ll quickly discover you’re doing a much better job of coping with depression than you realize, and while the situation may still seem unfair, your efforts are all that matter.

STATEMENT:
“I never expected to get depressed again, but I realize now that I didn’t fail to prevent depression, I failed to give myself reasonable expectations and responsibilities. Now that I know what to do, I have little to fault myself for and I can be legitimately hopeful about finding new tools for managing depression.”

Please Note: Our next post will be a week from today. Happy holidays, everyone! As always, we look forward to hearing from you if/when they aren’t.

I’m having a hard time since the death of my father. I was expecting the grief to be rough, but I thought I’d reached the acceptance stage and was starting to feel better. Then I noticed that my two sisters were able to talk and share memories much more easily with one another than they could with me, and suddenly I felt more alone than ever before. My wife is supportive, but I don’t want her to feel I don’t love her by telling her I feel alone. My goal is to get over this grief.

You probably were starting to recover from losing your father, but that’s when you experienced another loss—a broken connection with the people who should be the most understanding.

When you grieve the loss of parents with your siblings, a major source of comfort is knowing that, whatever your differences, you’re the only ones who remember the world of your family home and share the experience of growing up there. With that missing, you’ve got a double source of grief.

Pain always causes vicious circles, so the biggest danger here is that your feeling of isolation will cause you to withdraw, which will confirm your isolation. Your job with grief then is to fight to keep your perspective, rather than letting pain shape it for you.

Currently, your perspective is that there were good, meaningful times growing up with your father and sisters, and there were memories worth sharing and preserving. Instead of letting hurt stop you, figure out what you want to say, interrupt your sisters, and see if they can respond. After all, you’re the only guy who remembers that time and they need you as much as you need them.

If they can’t listen, talk to your wife, and if your wife’s not available, a pet’s always a good captive audience. You have eulogies to compose for yourself about your father’s contributions and values and what you wish to carry on, and delivering them to anyone or thing willing to listen will do you a lot of good. Of course, you’re the most important listener but there are others who would benefit from hearing your words.

You can’t shorten the grief or change your sibling relationships. What you can do, however, is respect the strength it takes to live with pain and not let it push you to the sidelines or shade your memories of your dad. With all the loss in your life, you should never lose your right to grieve.

STATEMENT:
“I wish I could share memories with my sisters, but that’s not the measure of how well I’m dealing with grief or of how much I took away from my relationship with my father. I’ll continue to treasure my memories and look for ways to share them, and not expect the grief to go away until it does.”

After my mother died, there were an amazing number of people who came to her funeral and told wonderful stories about their friendships and how much they loved her. It made me feel bad, however, because she and I never really got along. We loved one another, but we really didn’t understand one another, and now we never will. The more I saw the closeness other people had with her, the more I wondered what was wrong with me. I miss her, but what I feel most sad about is never being able to have a good relationship and not being able to mourn her as well or as much as her friends do.

Don’t assume that you could have or should have improved your relationship with your mother without first looking at the evidence. After all, you know that many close relationships can’t be improved because whatever is bad about them comes from character rather than things you can change. They are what they are, or they were what they were.

If your relationship with your mother was sub-par because you didn’t try hard enough, then yes, you’ve learned a sad lesson about not waiting until it’s too late. For most people, however, the problem isn’t a lack of trying or an overdose of waiting; it’s blaming themselves for a lack of good results after lots of trying and still assuming they could have done better if they’d tried harder.

Don’t assume that, because other people didn’t have your problem with your mother, you shouldn’t have had it either. You’ll probably find evidence that you tried hard and that many, if not all, of the reasons for your distance were not under her control or yours.

Like the person above, you have a double grief. You miss the mother you had and you also grieve the mother you could never have. It’s a grief you can’t share, because others, especially those who really connected with your mother, don’t understand.

Don’t feel bad then about not feeling bad the way they do. Your grief for her, like your relationship, is what it is. Instead of examining what was wrong, try to remember what worked. Hopefully, in spite of her disappointment with you, she did you some good and tried to be a good mother, and, hopefully, in spite of your frustration with her, you kept your life on track and spared her your anger. These are major accomplishments that need to be celebrated, particularly since they lead more often to tooth-grinding than to pleasure.

Celebrate the strength it takes to make the best of a bad relationship. Hopefully, some of that strength was hers, as well as yours.

STATEMENT:
“I often felt like a failure because I didn’t feel as positively about my mother as other people did, but I’ve come to accept that those feelings are not under my control and to respect what I’ve done with them. My job, now that she’s dead, is to do more of the same.”

Helping my daughter pay the rent on a bigger apartment seems to have lifted her out of her depression and she’s much more active at her job, but she’s still not making enough money and I’m running out of cash. If I tell her that she has to take a roommate, I’m afraid she’ll just crawl under the covers again and we’ll be back where we started. It shouldn’t be that hard for her to make enough money, but it is. I’m mad and I’m stuck. My goal is to get her to make more money and/or understand that I can’t keep supporting her like this.

While you may think you’re giving your daughter money out of love, you’re actually doing it out of fear. That’s trouble, because when you give money out of fear, you’re usually being mugged.

Fear makes you forget long-term risks, like what you’ll do after you run out of money and the consequences for you, her, and other people who depend on you. Your love is infinite, but your finances aren’t.

You’ll also forget that your daughter may be able to do more for herself now than she could before. She may be able to tolerate more stress and access other resources if yours are less available.

Finally, your fear amplifies her fear and vice versa, until you both doubt that she’ll be able to survive without your current level of support, without there being any evidence of that, other than fear itself.

If you want to manage her disability, rather than be managed by it, you must continually test out what she’s capable of. If she’s stressed by looking for a roommate, coach her on how to do it or how to find a coach. If the roommate is hard to live with, advise her on ways to protect herself. If you protect her more than absolutely necessary, you’re just stifling her growth in the long run.

After all, you’re not responsible for relieving her stress, but for teaching her how to live with it. You’re trying to ensure her basic safety and security, and while you wish she could be happy, that’s not something you or she control.

If she’s afraid of slipping back into depression, point out the constructive things she’s doing to prevent it. Stress may make her feel overwhelmed, but that doesn’t necessarily cause depression or mean that she’s slipping back. It just that means life is hard.

Don’t let her panic incite yours. Instead, think up an emergency, affordable bail-out plan in case she has a bad relapse. Don’t share it with her, just remind yourself that you know what to do for her safety and that the pain she may experience as you cut her funding is an unavoidable part of her recovery and your solvency.

By giving no more than you think is necessary, you become a strong fear-manager and learn self-defense against an emotional hostage situation. Ultimately, that’s the skill you want to give her.

STATEMENT:
“I’m terrified of the stress my daughter will experience if I cut back on the money I’m giving her, but I’ve thought carefully about what she needs and I’m sure she’ll be stronger if she can cope with the stress and do more with less.”

My 22-year-old daughter is mildly retarded, but she’s pretty well taken care of. She’s not unhappy—she worries about things much less than I do—but I’m unhappy, because I’ve never felt comfortable with her. Most people think she’s sweet and docile, but my daughter very much has a will of her own; she doesn’t like to shower, she doesn’t care about other people’s feelings, and she has no idea of how people are reacting to her, or anyone else. I’ve tried hard to find a point of positive connection, and failed. Other people think I’m a great father, but I can’t get over the feeling that I never met this challenge and that there’s unfinished business between my daughter and me.

Regardless of whether your daughter is retarded, super-powered or “normal,” you can never be sure that you’ll like her. It’s so much easier to be her father if you do, but that’s never a guarantee.

It may be that no one would like her if they really knew her, but that doesn’t matter. It sounds like you’ve tried hard to like her, but you don’t, and it’s not in your control.

Given the lack of good chemistry, however, you should appreciate your achievement all the more. You haven’t punished your daughter or told her she’s a failure; on the contrary, you’ve taken good care of her. You’ve done your job under much tougher conditions than most parents have to deal with, and I don’t mean because she’s retarded, but because of your negative feelings for her.

The test of a good teacher isn’t how well she teaches the kids she likes, but how well she does with the kids she doesn’t like and how well she hides that fact.

If this were the movies, your business wouldn’t be finished until the two of you have a good hug. Since this is real life, it’s never finished, so every day, do your best to treat her with respect and friendliness. If you slip and get nasty, apologize. It’s one day at a time.

It’s certainly sad that you couldn’t like her more, but it’s not a failure. It’s a success that, in spite of that, you treat her right, and one that only a great father could achieve.

STATEMENT:
“I will never feel comfortable with my daughter and I will always suspect that, if I were a better person, I would; but I am who I am and she is who she is and I’ve done the best job possible given that simple fact of life.”

So I’m a 20-something girl who has been faced with a couple big problems in a short period of time, the first being that I am in my last semester of nursing school and I failed. This has been a very long hard stressful experience, and being faced with failure is devastating. I have to wait till September to try to get back into the program and that’s my last chance, so I’m having a hard time accepting that my very laid-out plan for my life is now in jeopardy. Also I am being faced with health issues, with myself and with my family, and finally, I have been in a mind-fuck of a relationship for three years with a person that shows me five different faces. I know all the ways he’s done me wrong but I cannot walk away because I have yet to conquer him, even tough I’m trying to accept the fact I cannot change him and need to stop being a doormat. In summary, I have obvious control issues, over-analyze everything, have anger that is uncontrollable if I don’t get what I want, and really need help to fix it.

Priorities are like dominos, and if you put the wrong one first, you lose your goals one by one. So, while this may look like a chaotic clusterfuck of issues, you probably already know that it’s actually a chain reaction caused by putting school behind this five-faced jerk.

After all, the main source of your strength is your desire to get stronger, pick up skills, and make a living, while the main source of weakness is, as usual for most people, your need for something/someone you can’t have.

Fortunately, you’re smart enough to recognize your effort to change your boyfriend is a compulsion that you just can’t stop, and you have the willpower and determination in your character to take on and pursue difficult goals.

Unfortunately, you’ve focused this strength on changing your boyfriend, thus throwing said smarts and willpower down the shitter.

In addition, you expect to control your school performance and your relationship without bowing to the fact that you don’t have the time or energy for everything, but your school performance won’t improve unless you have more time for it, and your boyfriend, well, we covered that.

Besides, you can’t “conquer” someone; even actual conquerors like Napoleon don’t die happy (or even with their genitals intact).

When you give yourself a reasonable assignment, your control demon helps you do a great job. If you don’t put a limit on your self-assignment, your demon will eat you alive. It’s a tough reality to accept, but if you can—not just admit that you can’t change your boyfriend, but find the strength to stop trying—you can give yourself an assignment you can do, and do well.

You’ll probably do better in school if you stop blaming and scaring yourself, because that can’t do wonders for your ability to focus. Instead, don’t be ashamed to look for help, either from a nice, positive tutor or a study group, and prepare a new study plan that helps you with your weaknesses.

No problem, you’ll have the time, because there’s no reason to continue wasting it with your boyfriend. This is probably not the answer that you want, but it’s the only acceptable one since succeeding in school means more to you (and is more tenable) than putting up with quintface.

Inside, it may feel like a defeat to let him go, but once you do, all the other, better goals in your life will have room to grow. You just need to stay vigilant about your priorities, because it’s amazing how easily a compulsive person can make them all fall down again.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like a total, helpless loser, but my priority is to put my energy into getting ahead, and not into relationships that don’t work. I can’t conquer my boyfriend, but my compulsion can’t conquer me. I’ve learned a valuable, painful lesson that can help me move forward if I stop criticizing myself and start doing what I need to do.”

I had a terrific boyfriend, whom my parents loved, but I just couldn’t see us staying together all our lives, and my feelings for him weren’t as positive as what I see my parents’ having for one another (they have a wonderful marriage). So I left him and broke his heart, and now I’m dating someone I feel closer to, because I think he understands me better. We’re going very slowly, however, because I’m afraid of making the same mistake, and I want to see if I still feel the same way about him in another year. He’s getting impatient, and I wonder if you think I’m right to go slow.

I suppose the traditional reason for going slow in a relationship is to see how you really feel about someone as time goes by. Still, that won’t do you much good if you happen to really love him a lot, and he’s a useless jerk.

Yes, it would be nice if you could find someone you love as much as your mom and dad love one another; but many good partnerships are not totally lovey-dovey, and good partners are hard to find. Begin then with the important stuff and consider perfect harmony as the icing on the cake, rather than the filling.

So, instead of hooking yourself up to a love-meter and graphing your progress as time goes by, tthink about the basic qualities you’re looking for. Again, priorities are key, but if a relationship is your main goal, then looking for the right things in a relationship is what you need to be mindful of.

The important stuff that makes a prospective partner eligible for consideration, as you know, begins with a solid character, reliability, common values, and mutual acceptance. He’s got to be able to do his share and share your mission, without your having to change or persuade him. Otherwise, it’s a no-go.

Yes, positive chemistry is necessary, but it can also be dangerous; the guy who connects with you most is not necessarily a solid character, and often the exact opposite. So take your eyes off the love meter long enough to do your due diligence.

If your guy checks out as a good prospect, but the emotional fit is not quite as perfect as your parents’, think carefully about how many good guys you’ve run across and how much mileage you have left on your dating tires before deciding whether he’s worth the compromise.

Don’t wait for the love-meter to make your decision for you while you pick mental daisy petals to see whether you love him or love him not. Add up the reasons you trust him to be good company in hard times, and prepare for a possible compromise.

Yes, you may cry a tear for the loss of romantic dreams; but you’ll have far fewer tears in the future, when the stakes are much higher. As we always say, if you want unconditional love, get a pet. If you want a partner, get your priorities straight.

STATEMENT:
“I don’t want to break another guy’s heart because I don’t love him enough, but t won’t let my worries stop me from checking out his basic strengths and deciding whether we have the makings of a good partnership. When it’s time to decide, I’ll use my wisdom and experience rather than measuring my love against my parents’ romance.”

My brother is really an upbeat, cheerful, friendly guy, but he turns into a viper whenever someone tells him what to do, even when it’s sure to get him into lots of trouble, and afterwards he’s convinced he’s been calm and diplomatic. When he and his wife got divorced, he was so argumentative with the judge that he lost custody of his kid. When his boss asked him to do something stupid, my brother fired off emails to Human Resources declaring he was being unfairly attacked. The funny thing is, he doesn’t mind when I tell him he’s being stupid, and the next time something happens he’s sure he’s done better; but he hasn’t. He’s not nearly as difficult as he seems to be, so my goal is to keep him out of trouble.

God bless the antagonists, for they know not what bile they speak.

Whenever someone is particularly quick to resist being pushed, we assume there’s an emotional reason for his actions, and that understanding why will help him to control himself, or help us shut him up and make him more tolerable.

Truth is, we often can’t explain or control oppositional behavior, which suggests there’s a basic force of nature driving some people to be reflexively, unthinkingly oppositional.

It’s actually on the spectrum of Asshole ™ behavior, but, since it lacks the malice required to actually fulfill the Asshole criteria, it remains a general pain in the ass, especially for those people, like you, who are close to him.

Maybe the Oppositional Instinct springs from a genetic trait that spurs creativity or guarantees that not everyone will follow the leader of the human herd, thus guaranteeing that some will survive if the herd leader is fatally wrong. The Bible’s Abraham certainly wasn’t a get-along kind of guy, Steve Jobs wasn’t a people person, and no shrink with a blog fxckfeelings.com is eager to go with the professional flow. Most of the time, however, instant opposition doesn’t win friends among authority, co-workers, family, and/or most mammals.

Since their actions are often infuriating, we think oppositional people must be furious, but in reality, they’re often just doing their thing, taking courage from the fact that everyone else is getting mad and is therefore the irrational party. You can’t try to change your brother then, or teach him how to protect himself.

Short of averting your eyes, you can help other people who care about him—the victims of his accidental provocation—most of whom will hate and love him in equal measure. Friends will feel he wasted their help and ignored their advice, family will blame him for endangering their security, and they’ll all speculate about the impact of the things they could have or should have said or actually did say.

If you brought them together in a support group (or did individual sessions), they’d discover that everything had been said, more than once, and it did no good. It’s sad, but, on the other hand, no one failed.

While you and those who related can help each other deal with the pain (in your ass), sadly, you can’t stop him from being an ass in the future.

STATEMENT:
“I can’t help feeling that I could save my brother from his worst problems if only I could get him to shut up, but I know better. The best I can do is appreciate his better qualities and accept the fact that it’s probably more painful to watch him than be him, since he’s always doing what he knows is the right thing to do.”

My father is the kind of guy who would always complain about my mother (his ex-wife) to my face, even when I was little, but, if I objected, he would get mad at me for being ungrateful and unsympathetic. He still does it now that I’m an adult, and there’s got to be a better way to deal with him then just avoiding him so I don’t have to hear it. My goal is to set limits on him that will stick.

While you may be in a unique position to know that your father has good reason to be hurting, you also know, from experience, that airing grievances repeatedly is a good definition of whining. It may provide your father with temporary relief, but it also binds him to his role of victim/husband in a relationship that’s long over.

The fact that he attacks you for not being sympathetic is the icing on the cake, as far as proving the unhealthy nature of his kind of venting; he widens his victimhood by sucking his near and dear into the role of villain. OK, I know he can’t help it but still, it’s not good for you to have this kind of conversation.

You’re right to want to stop it, and telling him how unhealthy his father-son venting is is a start, but you need stronger weapons than reasoning with him about his violating a parental boundary. In order to prepare, ask yourself what you’d do if he ignored your wishes and crossed that line, and be ready for when it happens.

List the reasons that you believe it isn’t good to listen, even though he believes, in his heart, that this makes you a hard-hearted kid. You know your listening does no good, brings out nothing good in him, and has you walking on eggshells. You also know that you won’t get him to understand this point of view.

Ironically, once you believe in your own values, over and above whatever your father tells you, you’re an adult, not a kid. It’s as an adult that you tell him it’s not a good subject to get into and you don’t’ want to talk about it. Knowing that he’ll object, and refusing to explain, is what an adult does.

So what’s important is not what you tell him, but what you tell yourself. If you believe that what you’re doing is best for everyone, then your silence speaks louder than words, and distance won’t be necessary.

STATEMENT:
“I’ve always felt trapped by my father’s complaints and confessions, particularly because he jumps on me if I don’t listen, and I can’t help but feel guilty. I’ve thought through the consequences of his actions, however, and my sense of what’s right is stronger than the guilt reflex he can always make me feel. As long as I stick with what I know is right, I’ll never be trapped.”