Yes, I agree that it is hard to figure out and it does seem wrong. I can only speak from my own experience and also to what I've read here or listened to in my support group. My difficult child has some severe issues which she has not been willing to acknowledge nor get help for. I have done everything for her and I've done all I know how to do to get her help. After years of that,......... the suffering, disappointment, resentments, angers, sorrow, grief, guilt, all of it.........for me, even though my difficult child has mental issues, I recognized that she has to decide to help herself and I had to stop enabling her. I've read on this site where folks with bi-polar, borderline personality disorder, depression, some pretty severe mental issues have said, "mental illness doesn't give you a pass on personal responsibility."
I think many of us here struggle with that question. And, we all have to examine within ourselves, what we can live with, what we are willing to do, what we are not willing to do, and to get very clear about that. It takes time, it takes a lot of self searching, it takes love and patience and in my opinion, a lot of support. I sought answers to that question in as many places as I could. In my therapy support group there are a number of us who have adult kids who are mentally ill. It's a heart-breaker for sure. As one woman in my support group earnestly said to the group. "do I take care of my adult son (who is mentally ill) for the rest of my life and give up my life?" I don't know the answer to that for her. I only know what I went through and the choices I made. She's on her own journey of detachment.
The hardest thing I've ever done, without exception, was to detach from my only child. Nothing ever caused me that much pain. But, over time, I had to look at what her presence, her drama, her world of insanity was doing to me, to my SO, to my granddaughter, to all of us. At what cost do you succumb to the relentless call of the mentally ill? I had to keep asking myself that question. It was slowly draining my life force.
I read many books, put myself into therapy, attended lots of groups, especially groups which addressed this very thing, where other parents of adult kids were dealing with their various levels of mental illness. I could see and hear the devastation in the parents voices and faces. Each of us made different decisions, there is no right or wrong here. You have to follow your heart, set your own boundaries, live your life with the choices you make. So do I. So does everyone here.
My brother is a paranoid schizophrenic, my sister is bi-polar with a series of other mental issues, my niece was so violent and did so much damage to my other sister and her other children she had to distance herself from her own child to save her other children. I've lived in this world my whole life and I can tell you there are no answers, no brilliant solutions brought to you by experts or Doctors or anyone. It all rests on you and what you can deal with, what you can live with, what you're willing to do and what you are not willing to do. And once you make those choices, then you have to live with them.
I think that's why detachment and acceptance takes us so long to wade through, we have to address all of these really hard questions; we have to look deep inside ourselves and ponder very difficult issues. When you're faced with something like a mentally ill adult child, when do you let them go into their own life when they continually make bad choices? What is the distinction between love and enabling when your child is mentally ill? When is the right moment to let go? What if they go to jail? Should you try to gain legal control of their lives to protect them? Do you set them up financially? Do you allow them to live in your home? Do you pick up the pieces of their lives when they make those bad choices? If they refuse medication and continue to act out, do you then continue picking up the pieces of their lives when they have made a choice to stay in the mental state they're in? Are they really responsible for themselves when their brains don't work like yours and mine do? Do you maintain contact when all contact is disrespectful, damaging and perhaps dangerous to you? Do you continue to forgive and enable when they steal and lie and manipulate? These are the questions and many, many more which come up for most of us.
When you say, "they can't do for themselves" I think you have to define what it means that someone can't do for themselves. Is it bad choices, or are they in a psychotic state where they are perhaps hearing voices and incapable of coherent thinking? There is a vast distance between those two poles and each would require a different outlook and solution and a different detachment path.
Another issue I think is important to acknowledge is what level of possible codependency on the part of the parent might play an important role in keeping a negative connection thriving. I had to look at that within myself, take apart some old beliefs that no longer worked and heal parts of me that had nothing to do with my difficult child, but were ways I kept the unhealthy connection with her in place. As I began understanding my own issues, not only did my relationship with my difficult child change, but I was simply not willing to put up with the way she treated me, regardless of mental illness, I deserved better than that. I learned how to set strict boundaries around her behavior.
It was complicated and required me to really show up and address many hard issue about myself, my own needs and desires and what love, parenting, letting go, acceptance, judgment, control, being 'right', forgiveness and autonomy all meant to me. It's certainly a journey not one of us would choose, it's filled with many mine fields which blow up when you least expect them to and it hurts like the dickens too.
BUT, you can get to the other side, you really can. And, then you can breathe once again. The choices are behind you, the most difficult stuff has been decided and you move on and live..............and occasionally fall down...................and go forward again.............and find your own life.