A Parent's Guide for Suicidal and Depressed Teens (12 page)

Read A Parent's Guide for Suicidal and Depressed Teens Online

Authors: Kate Williams

Tags: #Family & Relationships, #Life Stages, #Teenagers, #Self-Help, #Depression, #test

 
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affirmations for your child's recovery. Here is one mother's affirmation:
Infinite intelligence within Michelle will always lead her to do the right thing.
 
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11
Honest Eyes: Making A Commitment to Family Therapy
If our kids have lived with parents who have been in pain, then our children are probably in pain too.
MELODY BEATTIE
When our children are in such pain that they want to die, we must acknowledge that something has to change in their lives. Something in our family life has to change. But what? There are so many possibilities. The thought of suicide fills us with fear and terror, and it's difficult to look at the situation objectively. The possibilities of what we could be doing wrong are endless. We may feel defensive and say, "I'm about averagehow come my kid is in so much pain and my friends' kids are soaring?" We may be so overwhelmed with shame and guilt and despair that we can't do anything to change.
 
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We may also retreat into denial and announce that it's all the fault of society, rock music, or our ex-spouse. We may be willing to send the child to therapy but refuse to take part ourselves.
During the last few years I've had all these feelings. I've gone through fear and blaming and feeling average and dumping on myself. I've gone through the regrets, thinking things would be different ''If only I had realized sooner that I was an alcoholic.'' I felt my life was falling to pieces. I had that desperate feeling that so much had gone wrong that I couldn't ever have a happy life, and that I had hurt my daughter beyond repair. Then I simply started working on the issues at hand.
Doing Whatever It Takes
If we want our children to get better, we have to be willing to go to family therapy. We need to be willing to go without knowing what's wrong. Once in therapy, we can ask the fearful questions: What's wrong? What has to change?
We will eventually discover something we can do to make the family situation healthier. Just as we only live one day at a time, we work on one issue at a time. Out of the huge fog of fear and terror and confusion, we will discover answers. I am not the perfect therapy candidate; I've often been defensive. But I've learned to say, "Yes, I'm
 
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feeling defensive about what you're saying. Give me a minute and I'll let it sink in."
My daughter has ultimate responsibility for her own life. In therapy, she learned some skills for building her self-esteem, for dealing with depression and mood swings. She also worked on issues about expressing anger to both her parents. She talked to the therapist about her feelings for her dad, the divorce, and about being adopted.
In family therapy, I learned I had to change some of my attitudes and behaviors. The most immediate things the therapist asked me to work on were
·
Don't fix, don't explain.
·
Make a truce with Rachel's dad, my ex-husband.
·
Listen to her anger and pain about her stepfather.
·
Spend more time talking and state my feelings more often.
·
Stop using humor as a defense during serious discussions.
Some of these items seem to contradict each other. For example,
don't explain
may seem like a contradiction to
spend more time talking.
Much of recovery is paradoxical. I needed to stop explaining in a codependent way and talk more in a conversational way.
I could not have made these changes by myself. Nor could I have made them with the help of family

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