[Mahai]

How do you know when you should be shoving gently to keep your depresses/anxiety ridden son moving forward and when should you pull back and just let things be? When should you be saying, " You said you would do this and so you are going to do it" or instead try to understand why they cannot do it and let it slide.

We are so afraid of making things worse with our son but he keeps persisting in having contact with his ex and every time, it sends him into a tailspin. And that is both hard and frustrating to see as we have made huge personal sacrifices bot emotionally, physically and economically so that he can live here with us and not have to worry about a roof over his head.

He has begun drinking at night and he thinks we do not know as that was one of the agreements we made when he moved home. I know he is doing it to avoid the mental pain and to get to sleep but we do not have alcohol in this house for good reason and he should not be drinking with anti depressants and anti anxiety drugs in his system.

If we ask him to leave, he has nowhere to go and he will just spiral down. If we ignore his drinking, it will be a huge toll on us and we are not young any more. The whole situation is beginning to affect our health also.

Help us find a balance somewhere please. The therapist I went to just told me to 'take care of myself'. That is rather difficult when there is this stress in our house.

[Poppy Princess]

I would let him go. If he really wants to survive he'll find his way. It won't help either of you to just let him stay.

[lizardlady]

Mahai, is your son an adult? If so, it is kind of you to offer him a place to stay. At the same time you have the right to set limits on what you'll allow in your home. How about sitting down with him and telling him what you expect ie - no alcohol in the home. Then tell him if he can't live with those limits he will have to move out. It might feel as if you are being cruel, but you said his behavior has caused sacrifices on your part. It's OK to say "no more."

[Rose76]

Instead of focusing on his drinking and on his depression and anxiety, focus on what it is about him that makes him emotionally, physically, and financially a burden. His anxiety and his depression are his business. So is his drinking, for that matter. Seeing his ex is really his business, and not yours. When you say that you you are tempted to tell him that he needs to do what he said he was going to do, you are talking about him, as if he were a teenager.

He probably doesn't have much more maturity than a teenager. There is probably a whole long history behind that. The question is what to do now? Your therapist is reluctant to touch the issue, outside of uttering banalities. There is no easy answer.

It sounds like he is an alcoholic. I would recommend Al-Anon to you. It helped me. It sounds like you need to be able to say that there are health consequences to you and your spouse to be able to have the right to set limits to what you will put up with. That may be a clue to where the whole problem started. I lived with an alcoholic. It wasn't the drinking that was the main problem. It is the behavior that goes with it. Your son probably had behavior issues in the home before he even got heavily into alcohol. Think about starting there.

It's your home. You decide what behavior is not okay. And it doesn't have to be actually affecting your blood pressure, or whatever, to not be okay. That's the problem. Unacceptable behavior is just that. You decide it's unacceptable not on the basis of how it affects your health. A kid can't possibly grow up to internalize good norms of behavior based on your blood pressure, or whatever.

That doesn't give you an easy answer to how to find balance. It might be a place to start. Unfortunately, it may get down to where it's a case of you having to choose between him and yourselves. That's got to be the saddest choice a parent ever has to make. I think you're deluded, if you think that keeping him away from his ex is what will avoid that.

My parents faced a situation not entirely unlike your own. My bother kept moving back home and was a cross to bear. It kept winding up in blow outs between him and my parents. Eventually, he left for good . . . to live mostly on the street. Now he shows up at the door of my sister, or me, from time to time. After my last experience with him, I won't open the door to him anymore. It's sad. Sometimes a person truly becomes a "lost cause." My deepest convictions fight against acknowledging that. I can't imagine how tough it must be when the "cause" is your own child. I don't know what the answer is. I guess I'm more acquainted with what the answer is not. Tolerating what should not be allowed is not the answer. What you have to set limits on is what behavior he may, or may not display toward you. I'ld strongly advise you to unconfuse yourselves by focusing on that, and don't worry about who he has "contact" with. That truly is his business. I know you think you are heading off the problem - at the pass, so to speak - by concerning yourselves with his seeing the ex. You can't micro-manage an adult like that. That strategy won't work.

[goldiemom]

This post helps me, I like what Rose76 says. For most parents, turning your back on a son or daughter who needs your help, whatever the age, is very very hard. Trying to be straight up hardline about it usually backfires, in my experience, because you are not coming from the heart and the child knows it. Then you have lost all credibility. Honestly, you sound like you want to help him so you need to follow your heart in that. Al-Anon can be great. Micromanaging, something I tried, doesn't work, no matter how right you are and how clear the case seems to be, even if they agree to it. My grandparents could care without micromanaging. It is really hard, I cannot seem to do it very well.

What I want to try for my son is to get him a camper and put it on my property, he can have some privacy and responsibility and at the same time I can help him out and there is a clear boundary. Its hard to live in the same house because it is right in your face. And you are right in his. Sometimes people need to feel like they have their own spot. Another thing was to put up a door and let him have the guest room and his room and the bathroom as a separate little apartment. It was easier for me to separate myself from his personal business that way. Sure, he did bad stuff in there, but it would have been a whole lot worse if I'd tried to manage the whole thing. He couldn't blame stuff on me either.

As a child I was told by my parents "not in MY house" and they decorated the whole house and made all the rules. I never felt at home in my own house. I had a ton of anxiety as a child and didn't like being at home much. It wasn't my home. I always felt that I didn't fit in, there was none of "me" there. That is very unhealthy.

My son always harps on hating to live with his mother at his age. Having a place for him on the property will help, if it comes to that.