Dad's depressed, how much do I visit?

Q:  I am supposed to spend a week at my Mom's and a week at my Dad's but in the summer things get fuzzy and I find it really hard to go over to my Dad's.  He has been out of work for about 9 months and he just sits around moping or complaining to me about my Mom or how I don't spend enough time with him.  I feel terrible for him but I'm only 16 and I'm not sure what I can really do for him.  Am I a terrible person for not spending more time with him and avoiding him?

A:  It is the job of the parent to care for the child, not the job of the child to care for the parent.  No matter how good a daughter or son you are at the end of your days God is not going to reward you with another chance to relive your childhood because you sacrificed it caring for him.  The debt that you owe is to your own future children, to survive high school and and to have as much healthy normal teen aged fun along the way so that you are not resentful when it it time for you to make them your first priority.

That is not to say that you should ignore your Father or the custody arrangement that your parents have set up.  Just remember that your father is dealing with a serious mental health issue and until he gets help for that no matter how much energy you steal from your own life and pour on his it is not going to be enough.

You could try writing him a letter and leaving it at his house laying out how you feel and your hope that he will seek help to improve his functioning and your relationship.  While a move like this is always scary as we fear the defensive reaction that is likely to result, how much worse could that be than the current state of things.

Other things to try are to try to catch him doing something good.  So often we can list all the negative things a person has done but we fail to catch them in their good moments and really reinforce those.  In the times when you do have a good interaction with your Dad be sure to mention what you liked about dinner or that trip for ice cream.

You absolutely have the right to call him out when he makes comments about your mother by simply saying, "Dad I want to have a good relationship with you but when you bring Mom up it makes it hard to be around you.  Let's talk about..."

If you have siblings and they are being similarly impacted sometimes writing a joint letter or even staging an intervention if he is not getting help for his depression can make a greater impact as you show a united front.

At the end of the day whether a parent has a mental health disorder, an addiction, or just an unfortunate personality you give to them what you hope your own child will give to you some day.  While your parents are major figures in your life there are other people (including yourself) who need your energy and you cannot give away all your reserves and still be healthy.

When dealing with people who are truly draining, (sometimes we refer to these people as toxic as just being exposed to them can make us unhealthy) for every hour you spend with them you need to spend 3 hours with people who fill you.  Do that and you will keep things in a healthy balance.

what if they just drink? friendship and sobriety

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Question:  I just got out of a drug rehab center and they made me make a list of my sober friends.  I realized that I didn't have any.  I do have a few friends who don't use any drugs they just drink, and I know they would try to keep me clean because they helped to push me to do the rehab in the first place.  Is it okay if I hang out with my friends who drink because if I don't hang out with them I will literally be alone every weekend and I don't think I can handle that for my senior year of high school.  To be honest drinking was also one  of the problems that got me into rehab but it is the drugs that scared me and my parents and I think if I can stay away from them I will be ok.  

Answer:  30% of people who go through a rehab program maintain sobriety.  That is an amazingly positive number because staying clean is incredibly hard.  The top threat to a person like you, who has gone through a program and who really wants to stay clean is the slippery slope of rationalization.  

Every young person I have ever worked with in the arena of addictions wants to believe that eventually they will be able to truly master the issue and they will be a normal person again who can drink/smoke/gamble/etc.. in moderation without the issue taking over their life.  I have never met anyone who was able to pull it off.  I'm not saying it is impossible, I am saying you shouldn't plan on being the  exception to the rule.

Realistically I don't think you are going to avoid all of your friends who drink and use drugs, but if you are serious about maintaining your sobriety you must avoid them while they are using.  If they are your real friends they will participate in sober activities that they can do with you.

Your primary enemy is boredom.  You need to fill your time, particularly your weekend nights, with activities you cannot do while using, ex.) working, babysitting, church groups, AA, family time, going to see movies...

What you cannot do is be the designated driver for your friends!  You need one year sober before you can sign on for that job and even then you are playing with fire.

Many people will surround themselves with friends who are also in recovery.  This is also a very dangerous strategy unless those friends all have over a year clean.  A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link and often when a bunch of teens in recovery bond, when one slips into relapse the others follow.

Dating someone who is in recovery is also very challenging.  We all want to be surrounded by people who can really understand us, and who could understand better than someone who is going through the same things.  The problem is when the other baggage of life which led to their substance abuse issue threatens to overwhelm them are you going to be strong enough to prop them up without falling yourself?

At the end of the day you are going to test what I say and you are going to continue to spend time with your friends if you are a normal teen.  My strongest advice is get a sponsor and talk to your sponsor every day.  If you lose your sponsor (they are abducted by aliens, or they move to Guam, whatever) get a new one with in 10 days or you will relapse.

Working the program is important, working with a therapist is important, going to AA and avoiding people who will not support your sobriety are important things, but nothing is more important than having a sponsor who you can really trust and you can call 24/7/365.

I wish you luck and just remember.  30% of people make it!  When you think about how much change sobriety requires it always shocks me that anyone makes it.  You can be one of the 30% and I hope you are.

Internet love? Be Wary

(Sorry friends it has been a very long time since I posted.  My son is too wonderful to pull myself away from when he is awake and when he is asleep I get lazy.  I will do better.)

Question:  I am on the tail end of relationship that isn’t going anywhere and so I began exploring online dating sites.  I met a man on a Christian site and we have been trading emails for a couple of months.  He lives one state away from me, which is annoying but not impossible.  Recently we have been talking about plans to meet.  I am little concerned though because he has already told me that he is in love with me and has sent me flowers.  I am flattered by his emails but am I wrong to think this is too much too fast? 

Answer:  You are wise to be wary.  Anyone who professes their love for someone they have never met in person should arouse suspicion.  In the best case scenario he is a hopeless romantic and is in love with the idea of being in love.  In the worst case scenario this is some sort of scam artist who might try to take advantage of you. 

This is not to say that internet dating is not a wonderful thing.  For centuries people were limited in who they could date by their geography.  The internet has opened up the opportunity for people to find partners who really share their interests and might be a great fit than anyone who they could have naturally encountered throughout the course of their day.

I think that any person who does not regularly find themselves in an environment where they are encountering dozens of attractive available people (so virtually everyone who is beyond college age), should consider creating a profile on an internet site if they are not finding what they are looking for in dating. 

That being said, never trust that anyone is who they claim to be online.  It is not until you have seen a person interacting with their friends, family, co-workers, waiters at restaurants, etc… that you have any idea who that person is. 

Hopefully you would do a bit of research before you selected a new doctor or a contractor to do a repair on your home.  Bring the same level of diligence before you invite someone into your life.  If this person lives far away try and check out their profile online and try to find a way to interact with some of their other friends, even if it is only in a virtual way.

If you are enjoying this connection and he is coming on a little too strong but you don’t want to push him away be direct.  You might try saying, “It feels great to read those words but I find it to be a bit overwhelming.  If you are interested in this going forward, and I hope you are, I need you to tone it down a little until we know each other a little better.” 

If he can’t tone it down then this is a person who you need to avoid.  He lacks social skills and empathy and that will not get better over time.  If he can bring himself to a level you are comfortable with I would still recommend connecting with someone else he knows before you meet in person. 

Keep safety in mind for a first meeting.  Let others know where you are going and how to reach you.  If possible meet in a setting where some of your friends can be there as well, like a concert.  Any person who refuses to meet with you in a public place and who refuses to let you communicate with their friends should send up some big red flags.

In this millennium there is no excuse for not going out and finding the person who can make you happy.  There is a fit out there for everyone and it has never been easier to search.  Just search safely using common sense and feedback from people you trust. 

where are the black male therapists?

(readers, I'm sorry I have not posted recently.  5 month old Ryan is sleeping right now so we will see if I can finish a blog before he wakes).  

Question:  My boyfriend and I have been growing apart and when we examined why he told me he feels the race thing is overwhelming him.  I'm white and he is black and while we love each other and our kids get along great, he is tired of the people staring at us when we are in public and the constant reminders of subtle racism exhaust him.  He is willing to go into couples counseling with me to try to overcome this issue but we cannot seem to find a black male therapist.  We are willing to try with someone else if we have to but I know if he doesn't feel like the therapist can really understand where he is coming from it is not going to work.  Any ideas?  

Answer:  Finding a therapist your boyfriend feels comfortable with is absolutely crucial, and while it might take a great deal of effort to find that person do not stop searching until you do. 

The fact is there are thousands of therapists who are skilled in couples counseling and who are culturally competent enough to help bring you and your boyfriend some clarity about the future of your relationship.

Just because a therapist does not share the experience of the client does not mean they cannot help.  I regularly work with clients who have been sexually assaulted, grew up in a divorced house hold, immigrated from another country, or who have had a day with really bad menstrual cramps.  I have never had to deal with any of these problems in my own life, and yet I seem to be able to help.

That being said, I never try to force it.  If a female student comes into my office and states they would rather work with a female I refer them right away.  It doesn't hurt my feelings, I just want them to start off with someone who will make them feel comfortable.

The experience of being judged and discriminated against based on the color of your skin is destructive in a way that can scarcely be comprehended by those who have not experienced it.  In addition, the experience of an African American male in our society is very different than that of an African American woman, so I can see why he would feel that any one not in that group would have difficulty understanding his level of discomfort in the relationship.  Since the race issue is central to the presenting problem, if you do not find someone who your boyfriend feels really gets it, therapy will be a waste of time.

The field of therapy is dominated by white females.  In my grad school cohort of over 100 social workers I was one of two hetero-sexual white males.  There were several African American men in my program but none of them were going into clinical social work.  The few African American male therapists I have met in my career have been in very high demand, but they are out there.

I would suggest utilizing websites like helppro.com, and if you are in an area with some universities contacting some of the clinical faculty and asking them for referrals.  The longer a person has been in the profession the more likely it is that they will have a contact and any good therapist is happy to help you find a good fit even if it isn't going to help them profit in anyway.

Another place to look is the spiritual community.  Many churches offer some pastoral counseling and if there is a church in your community that you believe would be supportive of your relationship and they have African American male ministers you may inquire to see if they provide counseling.  The added bonus is churches will often provide counseling as a free service.  

Once you have gathered some recommendations of effective therapists see if your boyfriend can do a phone interview with them to find out if he feels like it will be a good fit.  After a couple phone calls he may discover that finding a person who has a sense of humor that matches his is more important than finding someone who matches his race and gender.

Can't keep up with college

(Forgive me loyal readers, I always intend to blog but my 3 month old leaves little time or energy for writing.  I promise I will try to be more consistent in the future.   Have a question?  Email me and I will answer.)


I just transferred into a new university and absolutely love it.  One problem though is I set some goals too high and it kills me a little bit when I can't reach them.  Before coming in I expected great grades, playing time in my sport, pledging a fraternity and a significant increase in my romantic life.  Since being here I've struggled with grades even though I study a lot, I had to fight hard to get a spot on the team, the pledge process is wearing me out, and haven't had much luck with the ladies.  Is there a strategy I can take to not set my standards so high so I don't build up the stress of not achieving what I can't do all the time?


The problem is not having high standards it is with viewing failure as a bad thing.  I was once asked the question "what would you do if you weren't afraid?"  What if you did not have to fear failing out of school, not getting PT on the team, not getting a position in the fraternity, getting rejected by women.  How much lighter would you feel if all of these things were still possible but if they happened they would not make you question yourself anymore?  

The goal for you is to begin to view failure as feedback.  For example when lifting weights we are often told to continue going until our muscles give out.  This tells us when we have reached our maximum.  In your case you are putting too much on your plate and setting unrealistic standards of achievement.  Then when your time gives out instead of using that information to lighten your load, you blame yourself.  Not fair, not smart.  

Accept that you are only a normal human with 24 hours in your day.  Try listing all the things you wish to do and then rank the items from most to least important.  Then you have to budget your time according to those priorities.  When you "fail" at a task ask yourself "how can I learn from this, how can I 'Fail Forward' and turn this experience into something I want to remember instead of something I feel ashamed of.  

With regard to your sport, instead of measuring your success by how much playing time you got or how well you played ask yourself how alive you felt every time you stepped on the field.  Did you allow yourself in each run that you got to be fully present and in the moment or did you think about trying to impress your coaches and teammates?  Define success as mindfulness, (being fully present in the moment) and you will play much better and enjoy the game more. 

With your fraternity stop focusing on getting a position and instead focus on creating memories.  Whether you stay in that fraternity for two more weeks or two more years the reason to join it is to enhance your college experience not to build your resume.  Every experience in pledge-ship both bad and good (and I had way more bad that good when I was a pledge) is hopefully going to be a memory that you will cherish.  

With class don't worry about your GPA, just try to get as mentally involved as you can in each class that you attend and in each project that you do.  Most of us spent college just jumping through hoops and trying to get grades and if any learning occurred it was a happy accident.  That attitude was a huge waste of my tuition money.  If you are fully present in class when you are in class whether you get a D or an A in the class it won't matter because you will have learned.  Your college GPA will not get you a good job your internships will and if you don't do any internships before you graduate you are really wasting your time.  

With regard to women, if your goal is just to hook up with as many girls as possible that is a great way to get a disease and a lot of regret.  If you want to meet the kind of girl that would be relationship material try becoming a curious conversationalist.  Strike up conversations with any person that seems interesting, regardless of whether or not you have any romantic interest in them.  When the people you are talking to realize that you have interest in them as a person and not just as a potential notch in your bed stand they will tend to have a more positive response and they may end up introducing you to your perfect match.  Or they may just be the other end of a single conversation you will never forget. 

Do you see the theme here?  You are putting so much pressure on yourself because you are surviving your life right now rather than living it.  I have a big sign in my office that says "BE HERE NOW"  to remind me to take a breath and savor the moments.  When we savor our life we may not have as much time for everything but we get far more out of each thing we do.   We stop seeing our activities in terms of success and failure and rather in terms of memories we wish to repeat and memories we wish to learn from.  No failure in that equation.  

gave ex full custody, am I a bad Mom?

(This blog has not been as frequent as it should be as I just had my first child a month ago and moved into a new home 3 weeks ago.  No more excuses, if you write me questions I will answer and post, your job is to follow.)

Question:  After four years of marriage my husband and I divorced and I granted him full custody of our son.  There were a number of issues in our marriage, one of them being I think my husband was using me so he could present a better candidate to adoption agencies.  My husband did all the work to set up the adoption and he is an extremely loving father.  It may sound terrible but while I do love my son I do not feel as connected to him as I think I would be if he was my biological child.  After the divorce I moved to a neighboring state and while I have visitation every other weekend it didn't make sense for me to fight my ex for custody.  I felt like I was doing what was best for my son and I felt no need to use him as leverage to punish my ex.  When I tell people my ex husband has custody that look at me as if I must be a terrible mother or a meth addict.  How do I get people, particularly my son as he gets older, to understand that it's because I love my son that I left him with his Father.  

Answer:  The only opinion that matters is that of your son.  Adopted children are particularly sensitive to feelings of abandonment, as long as you go out of your way to call and remain in his life even when you do not have visitation things there should be fine.  

In society at large there is a bias that children should be with their mothers no matter what.  I know many fathers who have stayed in a loveless marriage because they were petrified that they would lose contact with their children.  You are not being paranoid if you assume that people are pre-judging you when they hear you do not have custody of your child.  People are also pre-judging you when they find out you are divorced, if you have had a home foreclosed on, lost a job, are a white sox fan...

So when you go into a situation with a person who is new in your life and an awkward topic comes up how do you prove you are not a child abuser or meth addict?  Answer:  act like a normal person.

In previous posts of may have discussed the Tabloid Effect.  When we are in the supermarket we all notice the tabloids which claim outrageous, and sometimes true, things about celebrities.  If I see a headline that says, "Angelina Jolie Eats Babies!"  and I like Angelina Jolie I will think, "that's crazy talk".  If I hate Angelina Jolie I will think "I knew that bitch was eating babies."  and if I have never heard of Angelina Jolie I will think "Hmmm guess I wouldn't leave my kids at her house".

No matter what I thought when I read the headline if I were ever to meet Angelina Jolie I would weigh my experience with her much more heavily than any rumors that I had previously heard about.

If you believe that your son is better off with your ex-husband then he is, and you made the right decision.  Never let society scare you out of doing the right thing, especially for your child, just because it isn't the norm. People will pre-judge you when you do something that is not typical but if you have the power to move past that pre-judgement very quickly so do not let it slow you down from meeting people and letting them know your story.

As I said before the most important thing is that you tell your son over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over how much you love him and that you want to maintain a place in his life.  In so doing you can help him to realize that he is not destined to be abandoned and that even when people leave that doesn't mean relationships have to end.

Failed out, now what?!

(Lately I post very irregularly so you are going to want to follow the blog, on this site or on face book so you make sure you don't miss a posting)

Question:  Freshman year did not go so hot and my college has stated I cannot return next year.  My parents and I agree that I should take a year off from school.  I want to take the rest of my life off and just go ski and coach, which are the only two things that really make me happy.  I live in the mid-west and the flatness and the weather here really depress me.  I just don't feel like school is for me, but I know it isn't practical to try to be a ski bum the rest of my life.  The very idea though of trying to return to a campus and study stuff I don't care about makes me feel overwhelmed and trapped.  I don't know where to go from here.  

Answer:  It sounds like you do know what you want, you are just asking for permission to do something you and your parents think is impractical.  Let me tell you what I think is impractical, spending four years and 160,000 on a business degree so you can pray to get a job that you don't really want and maybe save up enough money to go skiing 20 days a year (by the time you are 30).

When I was 22 a man asked me what I really wanted to do.  I told him I wanted to travel around and put on presentations about male socialization and violence.  He asked, "Why don't you?"  I thought no one would take me seriously.  I thought I needed a masters degree.  I still gave it a shot but I didn't go after it very hard because I didn't believe I was "qualified".

12 years later I have two masters degrees and the knowledge that no one is going to take me seriously because of those.  Now I do those presentations but I'm not as good at them as I would have been back then because I'm out of practice.

The best education in life IS LIFE.  If you have a dream job find someone who is actually doing it and offer to work for them for free for as many hours as you can possibly spare.  Someone is getting paid to do something that you would pay to do.  I talk to people and coach lacrosse for a living.  Both are things I would pay to do.  If you are passionate about what you do and there is a market for your service you can make a living.

The purpose of college is a sorting machine where the really rich and the really bright meet and partner up as friends, romantically, and for business.  You don't need college for that, you can skip that step and go meet the people who are already where you want to be and form relationships.  College is a great life experience but it is not essential unless you want to go into certain fields which require a special license or certification. 

Dan Miller, author of the book 48 days to the work you love hosts a free pod cast that you can download from itunes or from his website http://www.48days.net/ which gives people advice about how to pursue their dream using practical steps that you can show to your parents.  Use this year to meet people and soak up experience and you will find you get a lot more useful knowledge out of that than any college could have given you. 

When you are the one who has "failed out" it feels like you are all alone and everybody else has their stuff together.  Most of your peers are just going through the motions of going to college because that is what everyone expected.   Many of them will hit their identity crisis in 3 years as graduation looms and they still have no idea what they really want to do with their lives.

Your mission now is to fail forward.  This experience is an opportunity if you can learn from it and use that information to make a quality plan for your future.  When you are feeling overwhelmed take smaller bites and chew, we don't swallow life a year at a time we do it day by day.