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<blockquote data-quote="Copabanana" data-source="post: 764022" data-attributes="member: 18958"><p>One painful thing I have had to accept is that not everybody lives the way I do or I believe is the right way. Even family members. Even the person I love most in the world. My son.</p><p></p><p>I can only choose how I want to live, and work towards those goals. My son is responsible to make the life he can. If my efforts to give him a leg up end up in chaos or conflict or my being ill (all of which have happened) I can't help him. I can't even begin to describe how long it took me to accept this simple truth.</p><p></p><p>For the longest time I could not bear the pain of turning my son away and preferred to suffer myself. I finally saw that taking on all of this suffering was killing me, and not helping my son at all. And still, I didn't stop. Until something terrible happened. And I realized my life was at stake. Only when I was forced to change, did I do so.</p><p></p><p>And so, I changed. It required a great deal of distance from my son. I was only able to change if I limited contact. He is too triggering to me. And as I said, I saw it was life or death, for me. Had I gone on I would no longer be the person I was. And so, I changed.</p><p></p><p>The reason that our help does not help our children is because all it does is change their circumstances. We give. We give a job. We give a home. We give money. They take. There is no changing they are required to do. It's same old, same old.</p><p></p><p>What changes a person is their free choice, the voluntary changing of behavior step by step, moment by moment, one day at a time. There is no other way.</p><p></p><p>You mention an inpatient facility for your son. Unless your son has a severe psychotic illness, he has some degree of free choice. He can choose to get therapy. He can choose to take medication. He can choose to go to 12-step groups. He can choose to go to an outpatient program for people who lie and steal. There are many of these.</p><p></p><p>There are so many things that people can decide to do, if they want. What we learn on this site is to give our children the respect to allow them the opportunity to be self-determining and to take responsibility for their lives. This is the only thing that gives them a chance to change, in my view. Nothing at all comes for free.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Copabanana, post: 764022, member: 18958"] One painful thing I have had to accept is that not everybody lives the way I do or I believe is the right way. Even family members. Even the person I love most in the world. My son. I can only choose how I want to live, and work towards those goals. My son is responsible to make the life he can. If my efforts to give him a leg up end up in chaos or conflict or my being ill (all of which have happened) I can't help him. I can't even begin to describe how long it took me to accept this simple truth. For the longest time I could not bear the pain of turning my son away and preferred to suffer myself. I finally saw that taking on all of this suffering was killing me, and not helping my son at all. And still, I didn't stop. Until something terrible happened. And I realized my life was at stake. Only when I was forced to change, did I do so. And so, I changed. It required a great deal of distance from my son. I was only able to change if I limited contact. He is too triggering to me. And as I said, I saw it was life or death, for me. Had I gone on I would no longer be the person I was. And so, I changed. The reason that our help does not help our children is because all it does is change their circumstances. We give. We give a job. We give a home. We give money. They take. There is no changing they are required to do. It's same old, same old. What changes a person is their free choice, the voluntary changing of behavior step by step, moment by moment, one day at a time. There is no other way. You mention an inpatient facility for your son. Unless your son has a severe psychotic illness, he has some degree of free choice. He can choose to get therapy. He can choose to take medication. He can choose to go to 12-step groups. He can choose to go to an outpatient program for people who lie and steal. There are many of these. There are so many things that people can decide to do, if they want. What we learn on this site is to give our children the respect to allow them the opportunity to be self-determining and to take responsibility for their lives. This is the only thing that gives them a chance to change, in my view. Nothing at all comes for free. [/QUOTE]
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