You Need Help to Help Her

0:00What you are about to hear is a classic session of Where Should We Begin with Esther Perel. None of the voices in this series are ongoing patients of Esther Perel's, and each episode is a one-time counseling session. For the purposes of maintaining confidentiality, names and some identifiable characteristics have been removed, but their voices and their stories are real.

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1:49You deserve to feel great. Book your virtual visit today at joinmidi.com. That's joinmidi.com. We don't understand what's happened or how to help her and what parts we even can help her with and what parts she just has to figure out. The specific things of this happened or this happened or this is going on, it's not as important as we need to get a better. I mean, whether that's next week, next month, next year, we just need to get a better. In a family, there are various couples. One, the intimate couple, the spousal couple. But the other is also the parental couple. This couple came in not for marital issues, but for difficulties and challenges that they were having between them and their daughter.

2:47She was diagnosed with bipolar and anxiety and depression, PTSD, all of the above in the last two years. We haven't told, we don't talk about it with our family. There's maybe two people who know. Like, I can't keep lying. I feel like I'm lying to everybody. I'm lying to family. I'm lying to friends. I couldn't even imagine not doing this with somebody. I could imagine it tearing people apart. Easy. Very easy. Yeah. The parents have sought help, but they received help as a couple. And it seemed to me that this couple doesn't need help as a couple. This couple needs help as parents speaking to their daughter.

3:46This is Where Should We Begin with Esther Perel.

3:56She's gone from a successful, motivated college student on a scholarship to spending 22 hours a day in her room on the computer, talking with friends, but not interacting in the real world. She's really contained herself, maybe partly for preservation. It's a comfortable place for her. She's not going to school. She's not working. She's not interacting with family. She interacts a little bit with us. She's eating, but there's been days when she doesn't eat very well. She's taking medication. She sees a therapist. You know, we went from her taking credits and being on the dean's list and, you know, traveling internationally with school to this 180 degree change in what she's able to do.

5:11As I listened to them describe the voluntary confinement of the daughter in her room for such an extended period of time, two years, I'm reminded of the Japanese phenomenon of hikikomori, where young people withdraw into their rooms, become recluse, disconnect from society, except through the internet, of which they are in utter control over the curation of every detail of the story that they live.

5:43We want her to be passionate about something, to be happy and healthy in whatever her future holds. And we're trying to work with her, but we don't understand what's happened or how to help her and what parts we even can help her with and what parts she just has to figure out. And, you know, we have a really strong marriage. I think every day about the people or doing this alone, I don't know how anybody could do that. And I'm really fortunate to be doing it with somebody that I could talk to and cry to. Who cries more? I do. Are you sure? He started before you here. It's something I've always done.

6:38I'm a very talented crier. Tell me something. What support do you both get? Besides each other? Yeah. We recently, like in the last month, we started to see a couples counselor who was suggested by our daughter's counselor. What's helpful actually has been able to be in a place where we can talk with somebody who is besides the two of us, who's not a friend or family member, somebody who is outside of the situation and can listen and make some suggestions, although she doesn't have answers. Right. But do you have a group of parents? No, we're not. No. I mean, we have parents. No, but a group of parents who have situations around their children, their adult children, that are challenging.

7:39No. No. And honestly, we haven't been talking about it a lot. So I'm not talking to somebody and somebody says, you know, I know somebody, a friend of mine or my sister-in-law or something like that. We haven't been talking about it.

7:57Whenever I work with a family where there is an acute crisis like that, and they have not gotten the help they need, I think that for many therapists, there can be a trigger of wanting to have the Savior in us, that maybe I'll be able to offer something because I experience their disappointment, their depletion, their despair, and I want to jump in. But that's actually the moment where I have to hold back a little. bit. Okay, here's what I'm going to suggest. We're going to talk together. I'm going to think out loud, but that doesn't mean I'm right. Okay, the last thing I want to do is barge in as if I have answers.

8:45I don't, but I have some ideas sometimes of, or at least I ask questions out loud, and then we can kind of, like for example, this idea that you think you are protecting her by colluding with her in the withdrawal from the world. Because you are withdrawing from the world as well.

9:10You're doing a parallel process. She's not talking, you're not talking. She's hiding, you're hiding. So you're trapped in her approach and there is no help that can come in.

9:27I understand. I think that pretty well sums it up. You need help to help her. You understand? You need the input so that you can then help her. The idea that you are protecting her by colluding in the same silence as her and by withdrawing from the world like her is creating shame for you isolation and I'm not sure it's helping her isolation only works when you have contagious disease for pneumonia she does not have a contagious disease you need the presence of others and if you go into the silence it only adds to the shame and to the lying and to the feeling that you are more and more removed from the world and so now it's happening to her and now it's happening to the parents too.

10:23Is there an alternative? Yes, the alternative is, I don't have a clue what the diagnosis is, but there's too many labels. What we know is you have a girl who was vivacious, talented, motivated, but with enormous pressure on herself and wanted to do well and may not have known to say this is too much or I don't want to do as much or this is a little too hard for me and fell apart and as a result is retreating but not completely she's the the beautiful internet allows her to type away for 14 hours a day and she's talking about something with somebody and for all we know she may be talking with a group of other kids like her because there are lots of them who are also locked up in their rooms so that's very good and i would continue to encourage her connecting with those people but so do you need to connect with the people because if you don't get support you won't be able to help her and you don't need support so much as a couple.

11:39You need support actually as parents of a child who broke down in the midst of thriving and needs to rebuild herself. Slowly, step, step. And it happens to the brightest of them. And sometimes they saw it coming. They felt something, but they didn't want to say. They don't want to disappoint. They don't want to disappoint the parents. Everybody's riding on them. There is pride of all what she's accomplishing and so there's a sense of I'm letting everybody else down let alone myself am I describing you somewhat yeah the labels to me are important but they don't describe anything they don't describe the experience they just give you a framework I need to know her experience and that means I want to help you have conversations with her Who did you talk to today?

12:40You know, what are you discussing? You know, try to re-engage in a normal conversation that is anything but the we're trying to get you to be better. She talks to both of you or only one of you? She decided recently that she doesn't want to have a mother-daughter relationship. I'm not sure what relationship she wants. but she called me by my first name the other day instead of mom and I didn't I just let it go I didn't react to it if that helps I'll take it yes but inside it was like I yeah well I can think maybe down the road it'll turn around you know I can look forward enough to see that do friends visit her?

13:31Nobody comes to see her. No, she's really, as far as I know, her friends were trying to reach out for quite a while, but I think she just kind of blew them off or whatever over time. So it's been several months since she's seen any friends face to face. Even family friends, who she's friends with the children. And the last time we got together, it was really hard push getting her to come out of her room and join us. And she did?

14:08Well, she told me she would, but she told me she would not speak to me after that. I think to both of us. She was angry because they're literally at our door waiting to go to a restaurant, and she had the covers over her head and just wasn't going to come out. So I think she got mad because I took the covers off her head or something. So she came out and interacted. We went out to eat. We got in the car after dinner. Right after dinner, we got back into our car and said, oh, wasn't your meal good? Or, you know, just a small talk, and she didn't answer. And I thought, oh, she's doing exactly what she said she was going to do.

14:49Did you congratulate her for her determination? No, I started crying.

14:57But that would have been a good answer. That would have been a great answer. I love that you haven't lost your spirit. You always were strong-minded. And that is still there. I'll take it.

15:16Okay. What do you think? I agree. Yeah, we haven't done that. I don't understand the anger that comes out. And I think she will admit that she's just very angry at her. Mom is angry at daughter or daughter is angry at her? No, no, no. I think there's just very deep, the way this whole thing came out with, you know, I really don't want a, really, a mother-daughter relationship. She told me. I said to her, I said, you know, I, you have to, you can't just not, you know, say that and not carry through and tell her and then tell her why. Write it down. You said you told your daughter. Yes. To tell mom why she doesn't want to have a relationship.

16:12Communicate it somehow where there's a continual flow so you get all of it out so that we can understand it. The question is very... You seem to have very strong feelings about mom. And you seem to have given this a lot of thought because you wouldn't be arriving at such a conclusion. What's been on your mind? that way you're not telling her to do anything yet and I wouldn't say talk to mom you wouldn't? no no in this moment if you're the one she's willing to speak this to you can go tell mom or you don't go tell mom that's a separate thing but the first thing I would just say tell me One of the things that emerges is that the father is triangulated.

17:14He's caught in a triangle between his wife and his daughter. And on occasion, the daughter wants to speak to mom by speaking to dad. And at times, that needs to be redirected. And it is accurate for dad to say, this doesn't belong to me, tell mom directly. But other times, when the daughter says, I'm having struggles with my mom. I don't want my mom to be my mom. She's not the mom I want her to be. Those kind of things. I think the opportunity is for him to simply say, how did you get to that conclusion? That's such a painful conclusion. What's going on for you? And not try to direct her. In fact, just offer the ear and offer the opportunity for her to be in conversation with them rather than just in conversation with her inner depression.

18:04You know, the question that often will emerge after that is, is the parent who is having those private conversations with their child meant to keep this for themselves? Or is this actually meant to become a conversation that is then relegated to the other parents? And I think it really varies. In this instance, I don't think there is a secret. The daughter wants the mother to know how she feels. The daughter doesn't feel she can tell the mother directly. The daughter uses the father to be her mouthpiece and her messenger to the mother.

18:45We have to take a brief break. Stay with us.

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20:38But when you switch to GEICO, you've got claims reps available around the clock. So whenever you need, you'll have people around to help. And let's turn on the washing machine, just for good measure. Well, isn't that soothing? It feels good to have support. It feels good to GEICO. I think there is often a unique power to the same sex between parent and child. Father, son, mother, daughter. There's something about the identification there. Not always, but, you know, she was living out your dream. She was living out her dream too, but it was your dream as well. and the turmoil about letting you down.

21:27I don't want to do it, but I also let you down. Your reaction to her, which is part helplessness and part rage because of how helpless you feel. Rage is often the flip side of helplessness. And if I cut you off, then I cut off my guilt toward you, my feeling of how much I let you down, and my resentment for the pressure that I feel to please you because I always was the great daughter that pleased you. And I don't know how to get from under this whole thing. It's a jumble. Yeah, I could see. I could see how that could be, that there could be something to that. and why why wouldn't she have the same reaction to me because you're a different person because maybe you're not disappointed in the same way because maybe she thinks you would love her no matter what she doesn't have to please you in the same way because i don't know you tell me i have no idea no Mm-mm.

22:43She's adopted, and we thought maybe that she was having a conflict with that and related to self-esteem and who she is. There's been a few things that happened in her high school time that she talked to us about. One, she looks different than most of the other kids in her school. And so I think she had self-esteem issues because kids sometimes teased her. She looked different. Because she was different. She was born in South Korea. And she went to a school that was mostly Caucasian kids. I think at the time it seemed like the right place for us. But you look back on it and go, it's just having no diversity at all just was not good.

23:40Not good at all. You know, and within our family, we accepted and the diversity wasn't even there. Is your son also addicted? No. You know, I've always said our son was born through a pregnancy that I carried. She was born, you know, on the other side of the world. They're both miracles. Like, it's just, and we've always treated both of our children that they're just miracles. And this was how our, this is our family. I mean, it just is. And we forgot that other people don't see that. And also just her being adopted. You know, kids are cruel. She was told she was a mistake. But we didn't know this until afterwards.

24:28where she held this kind of stuff in. And then I don't think either of those two things were the cause of this, but I think she internalized a lot of things over time that we weren't aware of. It's exactly what you say. When things go well, you think it's the right place. When things don't go well, you start to question all kinds of decisions you made. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. With the purest intention, the parents so wanted their daughter to be integrated and not to feel any different, that in the end she couldn't be who she was, which de facto was different, at least racially different. And they now realize that by putting her in an all-white environment, she was isolated, bullied, taunted, and that she couldn't come and talk about it with them.

25:21And so the question that we do have to ask ourselves is when a child doesn't come home to say, I've been bullied at school, we do need to ask, is there something in the dynamic, in the environment at home that silences the child?

25:45It is where it is now and she has been sharing all kinds of difficulty that she had and sometimes there's not much to say but just to hug her and just to say I'm so sorry I didn't know that you were hurting so badly I wish you had been able to come and tell me sooner but I'm here now and I'm so glad I can hear you Tell me. Because what happens now is that you're so scared that you're becoming paralyzed.

26:20And that has the strange effect sometimes of sending the message to the kid, I was right not to tell. Because you can't handle it. Because you become so upset when I tell you something that now I have to deal with the fact that you're upset rather than you deal with the fact that I'm upset. and what she's trying to say when she says i don't want to talk to mom you know does this that would be my question is it because you don't feel that you can legitimately be her child that she thinks that when we are down we have crazy thoughts crazy in the sense that we put ourselves down we don't think we're legitimate we don't think we deserve.

27:09And then I guess maybe because then she's so isolated and she's talking with people who aren't part of our, we don't know, they don't know us. I think possibly she's confirming whatever she's thinking. That I'm a terrible this or that. Or that she doesn't deserve you, that you're not really her mother is what she's trying to say. But not because you haven't been a good mother, but because she doesn't feel legitimate. This is not a statement about you as much as a statement about her. And the hardest thing is to keep that in mind so that you don't feel so upset that you can't be there for her. Right.

27:54And that's why you need support. This is super hard to do. It's easy to say for me, but it's really hard to do. And we need in those moments help, support. But that's what will make it different. Not waiting and hoping that at some point it will get better. That is not exactly how it works. Yeah, I think we've been focusing on that chemistry. You've been focusing on the brain and I'm focusing on the life. Yeah, because I think it seems that her doctor is focusing just on the chemistry. There's no counseling. That's medicine. Then she talks to somebody, you know, to help her work things through.