Update here

[toughlovin]

Hi all.... thought I would do a quick update on my son. He is still living in the same awful place with the drug using parents... however he does seem to be doing things to try and get his life together and I think is pretty depressed by the reality of his situation. He has kept his job. He made an appointment with the psychiatrist and I took him to that appointment... he has been having major panic attacks and is depressed and so started on some medications which I think will help. He decided to buy a bike, finally accepting we are not going to get him a car, and my husband took him today to a used bike shop and he got a bike. They also went to look at a cheap stuido apartment. He didn't like it and my husband thinks the reality of living alone, having no money, no car kind of hit him. My husband thought the apartment wasn't great either... but we liked the idea because it was a month to month rental so we would not have to sign a lease. He is also planning on going for placement testing at the community college. So he is taking some good steps to pull things together but i think is pretty overwhelmed by hard it all is. We have the feeling that livng alone is not a great idea for him... he probably needs more of a community living situation. Again it is something he has to figure out. So I am glad he is taking steps in the right direction.It is really hard not to jump in and rescue him but we are not. We are helping him when he asks if it is reasonable. So I took him to the doctors, but he made the appointment. Same with the bike and the apartment. We are helping but we are not doing it for him. I feel really bad for him and it is hard to sit back and let him hurt and suffer but he got himself where he is and he has to figure things out on his own. He is certainly more sober than he has been in the past but it is just a matter of degree.One epiphany I have had is that anything we do for him cannot have conditions attached to it... if I require him to be sober and he doesn't want to then he will just lie and get around me. As I said to him in a text message his sobriety is between him, his higher power, and probation. I am out of it. It also means that we need to choose what we are willing to do and not do given that we cannot expect a condition. So yes we will help him pay rent because we would like him to have a roof over his head and there is no way for him to afford rent on his own even working. But no we will not help him buy a car or pay for insurance, because if we help him get himself driving then i want to be sure he is sober and i am not going to ask for that condition (because it is pointless because he will lie if he chooses not to be sober). Our relationship seems to be inching, very slowly, to a more positive place. One thing that bugs me is the mother where he is staying calls me and wants me to get him out of her house... I think she wants me to come and rescue him and I am refusing to do so. The last time she called I told her I would not get in the middle that she needed to talk to him directly. I pat myself on the back for that one!!!Meanwhile I decided for various reasons to cut down my work hours... I need a break to keep myself sane given all this stuff.... So that is it from here.

 

[lovemysons]

Hi Toughlovin,

Glad to hear your son is moving in a forward direction right now.
And letting difficult child show the initiative and helping him when reasonable is a great way to go.

Love that you're not putting "conditions" on the help you are willing to give. It will save you alot of resentment if things don't go according to "plan". I know when I have conditions and expectations from my difficult child's that is when I get let down and the anger swells. Right now I am getting there with my young difficult child!

Good for you to put the responsibility of difficult child's relationship with the parents he is living with back onto the parents. It truly is their job to talk to difficult child about the living situation, not yours.

As others have said to me....Stay Strong.
Hugs,
LMS

 

[CrazyinVA]

Good for you! It sounds like you're doing all the right things here, and that difficult child is responding to them and finally thinking about helping himself. I hope things continue to improve, even if slowly.

 

[Nancy]

Thanks for the update. Hopefully he will continue to inch forward. I do agree his housing situation is a big problem and it does sound like he needs a support group around him. I wish he would consider a sober home but I know you been there done that and he isn't interested.

Nancy

 

[toughlovin]

Thanks all. My husband came home yesterday and started talking about how he thought he would have a really hard time living alone and he would do better in a community living situation. Well yeah!!! I think so too but what I realize is that we can't impose that on him... he really doesn't want to go very far, he has his friends (not good ones but they are people he knows) and I imagine his anxiety goes through the roof when he thinks about doing something new... again... and he doesn't want the structure and rules fo a sober house.... but my hope is that as he is in this situation, if we keep offering love and support without enabling that he will realize himself that he needs a more structured supportive environment. So it really is one step at a time, sometimes a minute at a time. We are going on vacation in August and will be out of the country.... I am a little concerned on how to handle that... but we still have a few weeks before we have to face that.