Delaware family in need of intervention

Dear Mar­i­ann: Can you help with a sit­u­a­tion involv­ing a trou­bled teenage child with a poten­tial addic­tion issue, a father who is emo­tion­ally absent, and a mother who has quit her job and is giv­ing 100 per­cent to the sit­u­a­tion? Your thoughts please, Mariann …”

MARIANN’S RESPONSE: Wow, there are so many lev­els of dys­func­tion within the sit­u­a­tion, an entire col­umn could be devoted to just this ques­tion. The “iden­ti­fied patient” (IP), is the “trou­bled” teenager. How­ever, he or she is just a symp­tom of much larger prob­lems within the “fam­ily sys­tem.” An inter­ven­tion is nec­es­sary on many lev­els, which mer­its find­ing a com­pe­tent coun­selor trained in both addic­tion and fam­ily dynam­ics. The urgent issue is the per­ceived addic­tion of the teenager. Is there a school inter­ven­tion spe­cial­ist within that school dis­trict whom the mother can con­tact for assess­ment of the child?

Once com­pleted, there are other issues need­ing atten­tion within the fam­ily before it can once again be healthy. Why has the father “checked out?” Is he depressed, a worka­holic, hav­ing an affair, deal­ing with his own addic­tions, phys­i­cally ill, finan­cially bur­dened, or just truly “emo­tion­ally absent” from his own fam­ily? How did the mother become the mar­tyr? Con­sid­er­ing that she has “quit her job and giv­ing 100 per­cent” is equally unhealthy in com­par­i­son to not par­tic­i­pat­ing at all, per the descrip­tion of the father. Lack of parental bal­ance is a glar­ing issue, since the mother seem­ingly is “car­ry­ing all of the weight” for the family.

As for the san­ity of the mother, run do not walk straight to a trained counselor’s office. If the father does not want to par­tic­i­pate, that is his choice, and no one can force him. Any sib­lings should be involved in coun­sel­ing since chances are they feel ignored due to the atten­tion being received by the “IP,” and might be har­bor­ing their own issues or addictions.

The mother must estab­lish health­ier bound­aries and care for her­self, ver­sus sac­ri­fic­ing “100 per­cent” for her trou­bled child and absen­tee spouse.

Atten­dance at Al-ANON meet­ings will give her strength by hear­ing the expe­ri­ences of other fam­i­lies who are deal­ing with the same addic­tion issues of loved ones.

Dear Mar­i­ann: I am very both­ered by the trend of women being friv­o­lously referred to as “crazy.” For instance, if a woman gets the wrong meal at a restau­rant and she com­plains, the server would be more apt to tell her cowork­ers that the woman at table four is crazy, while a male diner with the same demeanor as a female diner who com­plains would just be referred to as a jerk. Why do you think this hap­pens, and what do you think we can do about it?

MARIANN’S RESPONSE: “Crazy” IS an offen­sive term that should be “ousted” if over­heard. Much of our ver­biage con­cern­ing female emo­tions evolved from Sig­mund Freud, espe­cially “hys­te­ria” or terms spe­cific to repro­duc­tion. Even though Freud con­tributed might­ily to the stud­ies of human behav­ior, his prin­ci­ples con­cern­ing the men­tal and phys­i­cal frailty of women have been prob­lem­atic for many sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions of females.

Women have made incred­i­ble strides from that repres­sive Freudian age of being second-class cit­i­zens to “com­ing of age.” Females are now grad­u­at­ing from col­lege at a rate of 25 per­cent more than their male coun­ter­parts, while also fill­ing the class­rooms of such pro­fes­sional pur­suits as law and med­i­cine at a much higher rate than men. And finally per a July 16, 2012, story reported by ABC News, James Flynn, a New Zealand IQ researcher, has deter­mined that, for the first time, women are now out­per­form­ing men on those tests.

My point being, seem­ingly women are evolv­ing for­ward faster than their male coun­ter­parts and this is poten­tially a threat to the male species that became too com­fort­able as the dom­i­nat­ing soci­etal force. When the “sta­tus quo” is threat­ened, a per­son often resorts to demean­ing com­ments, which leads us back to your anger toward the casual use of “crazy,” espe­cially since it has been thought of more in a female con­text ver­sus describ­ing male actions. Remem­ber, be tact­ful, not offen­sive when speak­ing up and your com­men­tary will have greater merit in delet­ing this inap­pro­pri­ate and out­dated word from our lexicon.

Mar­i­ann Main is a Licensed Coun­selor and a Delaware native. Her col­umn appears weekly on Sat­ur­days. To sub­mit a ques­tion and have Mar­i­ann answer it, visit delgazette.com/life-questions-with-local-answers or send mail to the Delaware Gazette office, 40 N. San­dusky St., suite 203, Delaware, OH 43015.

Posted by Mariann Main on Sep 14 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.