I get a lot of clients who come to see me because they’re in a transitional phase in life where their parents are older and may be struggling with mental illness. If you, like so many others, either want or feel the need to take care of your aging parents, but have a tenuous or complicated relationship with them, I know how difficult it can be, especially if your parents are struggling with mental illness.
Do you feel conflicted by your relationship with your parents?
As our parents get older, our roles are reversed. Aging parents often depend on their adult children to care for them, but that can offer many challenges. This new role we take on as a caregiver of our parent(s) forces us to reflect on the life we had growing up with them. We now have to heal from and deal with all of the empty or difficult aspects of the relationship that have been there all along, but as adults we are just beginning to realize it now.
When you reach adulthood, you start to reflect on the life you had with your parents and the absence of love and support from them throughout your life. It’s important to heal from that, but that’s not easy when you also have to care of your parents at the same time. I often hear clients say things like,
“I don’t know how to deal with my mother/father,”
“I love my parents, I just don’t like them,”
or “I feel like a bad daughter/son for not helping enough.”
When you have a complicated or difficult relationship with your parents, it’s common to feel overwhelmed and guilty.
When you feel overwhelmed, do you find ways to avoid taking care of them? Then do you feel guilty for not doing enough? Are you tired of society, friends, or other family members judging you for not doing enough and saying things like, “Just be nice – after all it’s your mom/dad,” “You owe it to them to take care of them,” or “you should treat them nicer”? This added guilt and pressure to be a better son or daughter doesn’t help anyone, including your parents. It doesn’t give you space to heal, grow, and find compassion for your parents or yourself.
Finding Compassion for Your Parents
If you had a difficult upbringing or never felt loved, accepted, or supported, therapy can help you make sense of it and learn how to cope with it now as an adult. Having a parent or parents who struggled with mental illness, anger management, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, low income, can all be something you dealt with as a child that shaped the relationship with your parent today. That can make it difficult to take care of your parent or feel good about your relationship with them when you grew up with that lack of stability or love.
Everything you may be feeling towards your parents – anger, sadness, frustration – are valid, but it’s important to remember that your parent(s) may not have had love, help, or support themselves. Back in the day, mental health wasn’t addressed. Although mental health stigma still exists today, it used to be much worse and access to care was limited. Having empathy and compassion for your parents doesn’t make what they did OK (lack of support or love), but it does allow you to begin to heal and make space for you to take care of yourself. Of course this process of healing, coping, and finding compassion is easier said than done and takes work and commitment. One of the benefits of therapy is learning to understand and deepen the relationship with your parents.
How Therapy Can Help You Find Compassion for Yourself
It’s not only important to improve the relationship with your parents, but it’s important to improve the way you treat yourself.
Do you feel like you’re walking on eggshells around your parents?
Are you tired of the ups and downs?
Do you feel guilty if you don’t put everyone else’s needs before your own?
Is that guilt getting in the way of your happiness?
Therapy can help you sort through all of your feelings. Your emotions serve a purpose – feel them and listen to what they are telling you. Understanding your discomfort can give you relief. You’ll be able to understand the difference between guilt and sadness. Guilt is the medicine we take to not feel and deal with the pain. Therapy provides you with the tools to fully understand your feelings, set boundaries, and communicate more clearly so you can take care of yourself and your needs and emotionally heal.
Accepting the Relationship for What It Is & Loving Yourself
At the end of the day, you want to have a good relationship with your parents. But the goal isn’t to like them or magically make your childhood OK. The goal is to understand what it the relationship was and is, and then you can begin heal from it. After you accept what is, you can start to love them with acceptance and forgiveness, and with care and kindness – and the same goes for yourself.
Everyone wants a quick solution for improving the relationship. Knowing you have limited time left with your parents makes you feel like you shouldn’t feel angry, sad, or like you want to run away. You feel like you shouldn’t feel like that and feel bad about it. But the truth is it’s OK to feel like that. It’s a difficult situation that brings back all of those issues that were never addressed throughout your life. Accepting your feelings, accepting your parents for who they are, and accepting the relationship for what it is can help reduce the amount of guilt you feel so you can focus on your own life and well-being. I know it’s easier said than done, but therapy can help. I offer in-person therapy to those living near Palm Beach Garden, or remotely in Florida and Delaware. Contact me today and start prioritizing your emotional well-being.
