Posted 3/29/2017 7:24 PM (GMT -5)
Thank you for your nice reply.
And thank you for writing back and letting us know what is going on.
In your first post You said, 1. “My adult son (he is 26) suffers from depression.”
2. “We have recently gotten him on medication to help”
3. “he quit college before that to move in an area where his girlfriend could be close to her job.”
4. “She pressured him to get an apartment with her and him having no job of his own, no college degree, no friends in the area, finances were falling on me”
5. “Fast forward 3 years later and he just now got a job which he will probably lose due to always calling in sick”
(You said, he went for 3 years without a job, and you paid his finances for those 3 years? Was he looking for a job those 3 years?
(He was sitting home doing nothing for 3 years, while his girlfriend was working? Did he get depressed during those 3 years, or only after the girlfriend left?)
6. “His girlfriend is living with her mom now and has left him in the apartment to himself (they still speak but she is unsure if she wants to go back).”
7. “He doesn't really talk to much about his feelings and is on his medication and trying to makes things better for himself but now he is depressed over his girlfriend not living with him and he is alone”
8. “(We do not live close to him) He has no real friends to hang with, she was his best friend.”
9. “ We had a great relationship with her and I am extremely worried this is going to spiral him downward.”
10. “ I really don't know what to do for him.”
11. “I can't support him financially anymore and it is detrimental that he keep this job, but with her gone he doesn't seem to feel the need to keep working there.”
12. “I am lost and how to parent him and worried we are making him keep a job he hates for the insurance, rent etc.”
13. “Do I:
A. “stay out of this and let him work things out on his own?”
B. “Do I talk him into moving home?”
C. “Do I reach out to her or leave her be?”
“Please give me something to go on.”
(I don’t know. What does he want to do?)
Your second and latest post of 3-29 said:
1. “He is still living alone and his girlfriend is making him wait around in apartment by himself until she decides if he is the one for her or if she wants to break up.
2. “She blames his depression for her anxiety so now he is blaming himself for that as well.
3. “I am so distraught over what to do for him but I am just trying to take one day at a time.
4. “If he misses one more day of work he loses his job and I only see it spiraling downward from there.
5. “He's paying rent for an apartment he never wanted and everything he has ever done and worries about is for her.
6. “I'm trying to get him to think of himself first and his health first which is a hard task since this is not his nature but all I can do is try.
7. “He is such a handsome, loving, generous, smart person and everyone sees this about him EXCEPT him.
8. “My next step is trying to get him to a counselor other than psychiatrist.
9. “He wants so bad just to be a happy person and he is struggling everyday to fight this unhappiness.”
You said in your first post: “but now he is depressed over his girlfriend not living with him and he is alone”
I got experience with that situation when I was a junior/senior in high school.
When I was a junior, I had a “psychotic episode” in class when the teacher wanting us to read orally going around the room.
There was tense situation prior to the teacher saying that, and when it came my turn to read, I had an emotional collapse and could not get more than a few words out at a time, I was breathing so hard. My girlfriend was sitting right beside me.
After that, she didn’t want to have anything to do with me.
OK, what we got here is, a huge emotional problem, followed by about one second your girlfriend not wanting to have anything to do with you, followed by loss of self-confidence that you have any worth.
Followed by loss of standing with everybody you know, in that you had a public mental collapse and your girlfriend dropped you for it. And all of those things are tied together.
How do you explain that to your parents, for instance?
“Yeah, Mom and Dad, uh, I won’t be going out with `Jane’ this Saturday night like I have for the past 6 months, and, right, this follows by just a few days my having a collapse in class.
"Well, she was sitting right beside me. And well, yeah, she dumped me. OK. So, I’ll just be in my room Saturday night. Right, I won’t need to borrow the car, cause, we’re not dating anymore.”
Same with trying to explain it to your friends.
I’m talking complete wipeout. Nothing left if your life.
OK, so how did I handle it? At the end of each date, I just asked her for another date. She was dropping clues all over the place, I didn’t pick up on any of them. Then when it came time for us to go to different schools, she dropped me. OK, fine, I could accept that.
So, I have an idea of what your son is going through. It’s bad enough to have emotional problems (psychotic episode, depression, you name it) but what is unbearable is for you to have such a condition, and then your girlfriend drops you soon after that.
No way to recover from that. Your girlfriend is supposed to be the one who is by your side. And the moment trouble strikes, the one you can count on most, says, “John, I’m leaving.” Way too much. The psychic can’t handle that.
It’s like the lifeguard when you start drowning, turns his back. It’s like the doctor when you’re sick, doesn’t want to have anything to do with you. It’s like, is this what life is about? Right when you really need somebody, they leave? At your weakest moment?
So, I have an idea what he is going through. It’s like the Rock and Roll song from many years ago, “Only the lonely, know the way I feel tonight.”
That is, if you’ve never been lonely, don try to figure out what this is like. It is gosh awful.
You said, “He is such a handsome, loving, generous, smart person and everyone sees this about him EXCEPT him.”
Oh, my. Are you saying, he’s never had a lot of confidence?
Depression, does he have a parent or grandparent who had that? It can skip a generation, in that, a grandparent may have had that, skip the parents, and yet he can end up inheriting depression. Did he show signs of this as a child?
You say, “My next step is trying to get him to a counselor other than psychiatrist.”
Whoa! You don’t want him to see a psychiatrist?
You say, “he quit college before that to move in an area where his girlfriend could be close to her job.”
There’s a song, “Getting lost in her loving is your first mistake.”
I don’t know what to say about that.
And the stay positive thing. Because what, in its purest form this is a problem. Nothing more, nothing less.
And, “One problem at a time, and be positive about that problem.”
We all have them.
So, do let us know what is going on.