I have to be brutally honest here about this issue. I am ashamed to say that somehow, somewhere along the way I became emotionally dependent on how he feels or acts towards me. He is in many ways all I truly have, which is pitiful because I certainly do not have him. "Helping" him has become my life. My self worth is somehow wrapped up here in some twisted way.
There is no shame for you karisma, in loving your child. It isn't twisted to love them and expect them to love, and not hate, us. There is no shame for either you or your child in what is happening to him ~ or in what is happening to you, to your life, because of it. None of us set out to create the situation that now exists. Not us, and not our kids. If your son could change what is happening now, he would. That's the thing, here. The kids are ashamed and embarrassed, too.
It's the situation that is bad. Not us. Not our children. There is no villain, here. If we are going to help our kids, we need to stop seeing them, or teaching them to see themselves, as victims.
This is where forgiveness comes in, for ourselves, and for them.
It is what it is.
Compassion, for ourselves and for our children and for the horrible hurt in the paths we walk with them, can come from accepting that: It is what it is. They call that Radical Acceptance. It is very hard to choose Radical Acceptance. We have to start somewhere though, and that is a good beginning. Here on this site, what we learn how to do is help our kids respect themselves enough to cope, on their own, with their illnesses or their differences. For our children, this will be what adulthood looks like.
Gahhh. It's been like a nightmare.
Most parents have never had to know what we know.
***
There was a time, here on this site, when we named our difficult children Gifts From God. That terminology named for us not only the challenge our children present, but its answer: Love. Whatever this is, whyever it happened, the answer is love. And that includes our loving ourselves.
Or we will not be able to help our children. The importance of any diagnosis is that we have a place to begin. So much is being learned now, about the brain and how it works. One day, there may be some way to help our kids. Today, there is nothing but what we can learn about helping them self-manage. What kind of parent must we become to help the kids be strong enough to believe in themselves and to live their best lives. That is the question, here. It doesn't matter how or why this happened. So, we can let go of that, then. What matters is how we respond to what is, now.
The kids are not doing this on purpose. They wanted those lives we envisioned for them, too.
How awful for them, and for us.
Nonetheless, here we are.
We can make a conscious decision to let go of guilt. We can learn how to most successfully help our children and ourselves to be strong enough to live out their best lives despite whatever challenges they face.
Love him where he is, and love yourself karisma, and never be ashamed that you love him; be amazed instead at your strength, and your bravery, and the depth of your love for your child.
His world would be so much colder, without your love in it.
***
You posted, karisma, that you felt shame at your emotional dependence on your son's response to you. Every parent is emotionally dependent on how his or her children feel and act toward them, karisma. This is love, this give and take of emotion and liking them and them liking us and us knowing what their favorite foods are and loving them, so much, when we cook those favorite things for them. It is the pleasure and pride both feel when they draw us pictures when they are little and we put them on the fridge and swear to our friends they will be great artists, one day.
But for some parents ~ and we are those parents, karisma ~ loving our children in those ways other parents can love their children will not help our children. Our kids are in trouble. If helping worked, if loving them more worked, if putting them first worked, if sifting through their childhoods for where we went wrong worked...the kids would be okay, today. It was the hardest thing, for me to get that. I was so sure I could fix this. That the next thing I discovered would be what I'd missed.
But that wasn't true, karisma.
One of my children has some diagnoses I don't much care for. The other of my children lived the kind of life people who are addicted to really bad things live.
Well, huh.
So, I had to cry about that for awhile. Then, I had to go into denial (again) about those things for awhile. But one day, thank heaven for this site, I decided that whatever was going on with my kids, what I needed to do was be the strongest and best mother I knew to be
for them. I could look like, and believe myself to be, the best Mom in the world, but if it wasn't working
for them, then I would need to do something different.
For them. So, I changed how I responded. I learned to name what every other freaking parent in the world gets to name loving and believing in their kids...I had to learn to name my loving and believing in them enabling.
Man, that sucked.
Then, I had to learn to act on what I now understood about how my helping was hurting the kids.
That was even worse.
But I did it. That is how much I love them. It was awful. They felt betrayed. And I felt I was betraying them
and myself. But I did it, anyway. I stopped enabling. I didn't know much, but I knew I could not enable. I learned to cope with the rotten way I felt because I'd changed my response to the kids with detachment parenting theory: Not to detach from my kids. To detach from my emotions. Just to let those nightmarish emotions be, and do the right thing as I believed it to be. Which was not to enable. It was so awful, karisma. But my kids began to believe they could. Whatever it was, they began to believe they could, because that is what I told them. I had been here long enough to know that this kind of parenting had helped other kids. That is why I could hold faith with myself that detachment theory parenting could work for mine, too. Because I had read the posts of parents who changed their parenting techniques from teaching the kids that if only the story was bad enough, we would save them to teaching the kids that they were smart, and strong, and that they would find their own way and did not need me.
And it worked.
Long road. Really tough. But the kids are better. I tell them things like: You are not a beggar. You can do this.
So, that's my story. I know of one mom, who was here when I first came here, who made her son leave. And he was killed, karisma. (!) And then, her other son fell into the same kinds of problems. And she made him leave, too.
But this son, she saved.
That is the kind of courage it takes.
Just awful.
And that is what I mean when I post that other parents do not know ~ they don't even suspect ~ the things parents like us know. So, they still tell me of course they do, how proud they are of their children, how pleased they are with themselves and their parenting and their lives. All I can do, once I vomit into my purse, is be happy for them, and for their children, that they do not know what I know.
Here are words and phrases for you, karisma. Other moms here on this site did the same for me, when I did not yet have my own words to say. And could hardly speak English anymore because I was so traumatized a basket case.
"I believe in you." "You are strong and bright and I know you will come through this." "I don't know what to do, either. What do you think you will do." "I'm so sorry this is happening to you. What do you think you will do?" "I love you." "No, you cannot come home." "No money."
I learned to say: "No. But I will think about this. I will call you back."
We need to give ourselves time. We need to learn that. We need to learn FOG. That is: Fear/Obligation/Guilt. We need to recognize that place when we are in it and take time. So we do not enable. Very hard, not to enable.
Well, that's all I know, karisma.
This site is a wonderful place. I am so glad you are here with us.
This stuff is so hard. How awful for you and your child too, that these terrible things are happening to you both.
Cedar
