Hello Everyone,

I am a 24 year old male, with a 26 year old brother. Our mom has a dissociative disorder. She has had it for years, worked with many different doctors and been to various clinics. She regularly goes to therapy and takes meds. Her disorder was discovered while recovering from bulemia and annorexia.

My questions is how hard to push my mom to recover. The whole family has been very hands off with my mom. We listen to her and engadge in constructive dialogue when she wants to speak more detailed about it. Otherwise, we just treat her regularly and respect her privacy.

For years she has required a lot of time alone and has always been extrememly sensitive and emotionally fragile. She has missed many occasions due to her illness including missing her own fathers funeral. Now my big brother is getting married and she has been avoiding meeting his fiances parents. This has been ongoing and has frustrated my brother and soon to be wife, though they generally keep it to themselves in order not to set off my mom. My mom is very sweet and loving.

About one month ago, mom commited to a lunch in, where the parents would finally meet after many failed attempts. Now it is two days away and my mom is trying to pull out. She wrote a very heartfelt and sad letter about her guilt with not going. Except this time, rather then knod are heads, bite our tounges and say we understand I came back at her. I explained via a response e-mail, the importance of this lunch to my brother/her son and how skipping this also increases the odds that she might skip out on the wedding as well. In my e-mail, I somewhat forcefully encouraged that she go to this lunch. I told her that I think she is strong enough to stick it ou jsut for a lunch but that she'll have to try hard. I placed an emphasis on it's importance and how it will hurt my brother and her in the long run if she doesn't go. It was long, so that's a basic summary.

I love my mother and we've always been very very close. This e-mail was the first time I can remember where I really challenged her disability as an excuse to bail on anything. She hasn't responded yet and I'm sure she is very upset, possibly mad at me. The problem is that for years, we could never respond that way because we don't know what is like to be her and because we don't want to further upset her. I don't know if that had been the right thing to do, or if this new way is. Does anyone with this illness have an idea of how to handle this? Is the dissociation and the depression that comes with it, so bad that you must constantly leave yourself out of things...even those occasions of high family importance? How would you want to be convinced to do something you don't want to do?

Thank you,

Dgutes