I was recently talking to the mother of a person who has struggled for a long time. The daughter acknowledges the struggle but her approach to addressing it hasn’t worked. Add to that, they have been at this for years. Attempts to suggest new approaches are sometimes rejected. Sometimes they are accepted but not followed through on. There have even been some times where things seemed to be progressing, only to be derailed by a disrupting event.
It is not clear who is suffering more in this situation. The daughter is clearly stuck and experiences this as daily pain. The mother also is stuck. She has given up a lot to attend to her daughter and over time has grown demoralized and resentful. Their relationship has deteriorated and the time spent in these frustrating and disappointing interactions has thinned out the other relationships in the family. She says, “it feels like we live on two different sides of a deserted island.”
I have had variations of this conversation with people for nearly 20 years. It is a complex situation and usually eclipses the scope of a 15 minute phone call. Most of the time I suggest people come in so we can talk at length about the situation.
I recently did a training in the Family Well-Being Model led by Alec Pollard, PhD, founding director of the Center for OCD & Anxiety-Related Disorders at Saint Louis Behavioral Medicine Institute. He and his team published a book in 2024 titled, When a Loved One Won’t Seek Mental Health Treatment. It is a nicely composed, comprehensive approach. It has room to reflect the complexity of individual situations while also illustrating some of the common dynamics at play.
After going through this training and reading the book, I can confidently say, if you are reading this and it resonates with you, buy the book and read it. Make use of it to the degree that you can. If you get stuck and you need help or if your situation is particularly difficult, call me and we can spend some time working through the details.
