The other day, I was talking to the parents of a client I work with (with the client’s consent of course).
The client is a young man in his 20s. A wonderful young man, with an open spirit, and a good heart. He’s struggled with depression. Struggled with cannabis. Struggled with unemployment. He’s not found ways to meet his potential yet.
But his parents’ hovering, and worrying, and questioning, and suggesting ‘solutions’ at every turn-of-the-way, is crippling this young man.
I was offended in my conversation with these parents. I offered to set them up with a counsellor–to help them manage their own anxieties (and perhaps their own feelings of failure or inadequacy). They replied that they would appreciate that, because they’re grieving. Grieving. For their son. Who is still alive.
So what is it they’re grieving, exactly?
This young man isn’t in prison. He doesn’t hurt people. He’s not smoking crack under a bridge. He is struggling and not living up to his potential.
But, more to the point, he’s not living up to their expectations.
So, I was offended because it’s hard for me to escape the impression that they are actually grieving their own unmet expectations. And their unmet expectations shouldn’t be this young man’s problem.
But it IS his problem. They are making it his problem by drawing every conversation back to questions: what are you doing? Why don’t you do this? When will you do that? Through their questioning and worrying, they are crushing his last remaining, tattered shreds of his confidence and self-efficacy. They are tacitly telling him he’s incapable, and by telling him that they are making him believe that he’s incapable. You know how the rest of that goes.
Think of it this way: if you tell someone they have to do something, and then convey to them that they can’t do that thing, they’re going to get all f’ed up.
It is, to some measure, sad, that this young man isn’t living up to his potential. But not sad enough to justify a uniquely human process as grandiose as grief. Grief is a big deal.
There is only one thing to grieve, on behalf of this young man. That one thing is: his own suffering. His painful insecurity. His fear and his self-doubt. Which his parents cultivated.
On their own behalf, there is something to grieve too: their failure. Their failure to instill a sense of self-worth in their son.
The sense that no matter what he does (or doesn’t do), he is still their son, and they accept and love him as he is.