Nothing special: debt to parents, like a hidden drain of resources Client story: Nikolai is about 40. By this time he has acquired housing, a car and a stable job with good earnings. He had several attempts to build a family, which ended before marriage and the birth of children. Nikolai doubts that he will ever be able to enter into a strong relationship. The client has a very strong and close relationship with his parents. But Nikolai himself does not consider this a plus for himself; in his words, he simply: “Stuck in the role of a son and an employee. There is nothing else in life.” He came to me for therapy with a desire to deal with depression, constant irritation, and a feeling of hopelessness. He also wanted to find and eliminate the cause of loneliness in the love sphere. Psychological reasons When elderly parents openly manipulate health, try to get an adult child out of work or a date, everything is more or less clear to the child himself - they are trying to take away his precious time. A person needs build his own destiny, but instead he lives the life of his elderly parents. But what to do if this does not manifest itself so clearly? No one shouts “you owe me to your death, I gave birth to you, I raised you, I didn’t sleep at night?” What to do if parental messages that the child should not live his own life are presented very subtly, almost imperceptibly, in the form instructive stories from his life, in the form of abstract phrases deftly thrown at the right moment, in the form of requests that cannot be refused? He will not even think of suspecting manipulation in these messages! But in the end we have what we have: apathy, constant irritation, a feeling of hopelessness and doubt about our own future. On the one hand, Nikolai was lucky - there were no nightmarish scandalous scenes in his life where he had to choose between his parents and his life, and at the same time his heart was bleeding. No, everything somehow turned out this way BY ITSELF: he doesn’t get along with girls, but his mother will always feed and drink, surround him with care and affection. And Nikolai did not notice how there were fewer and fewer girls and interests in life, but his mother was taking over more and more space. While he was still a teenager, he was full of energy and had a lot of things to do. But closer to maturity, all his talents were used in their world by his parents: he needed to take his old grandmother to the hospital, go to the pharmacy at the other end of the city for medicine, take everyone to the dacha, dig up the soil for the beds, fix the TV... And now a mature man is almost exactly like his father, the only difference is that he has not yet fully come to terms with the state of things. On the other hand, hidden problems are the most dangerous. They are not visible, it is not clear what to fight with. In Nikolai’s case, the topic of duty to his parents was so neatly put into his head that he practically merged with it, considers it his own. Parents need to be helped, right? Necessarily. Is it possible to refuse help to an old granny? Well, how is it possible? Moreover, there are still no affairs of their own... However, there is still a clear violation of boundaries in the relationship between parents and son (even with his tacit consent), separation from parents that has not been fully completed, a bias towards filial duty along with renunciation of one’s interests. All this caused the client the unpleasant states he listed. To get rid of them, the balance of his life needs to be leveled. Solution In a sense, the client is really lucky with his parents - they really love him. He won’t have to live with resentment that his parents didn’t give him love and never will. He won’t have to spend years healing his traumas from his parents’ cruelty. No, he just needs to very carefully restore balance in his life. What is needed for this: Describe the current situation briefly, explain what exactly you don’t like. Describe the desired situation, without temporarily including your fears and concerns. If you want a family, you need to describe the family. Make a list of typical situations,where parents fill the space and time that would be worth spending on their lives. Make a plan for gradually reducing this time. Make a plan for finding activities that are interesting to Nikolai himself. Do not forget to include in the plan the search for a girl and a future wife. Strictly follow the plan. In order to cope with the feeling of guilt that will certainly arise, it is necessary to strictly define the boundaries of filial duty and not go beyond them. There is still no way to repay life, it can be just pass it on to the children. But gratitude can and should be shown. And it is much better and easier to do this if you agree with yourself in advance about the acceptable amount of this gratitude. What happened in the end: Nikolai determined that he would like to build a strong family. He feels that he is ready for this in every sense. He also added that he would like to live a more interesting life than now. Therefore, he decided to look for “masculine” hobbies that would give him an adrenaline rush that would emphasize his masculinity. He described the current situation metaphorically as a “rotten swamp.” That is: complete stagnation in the sphere of emotions, relationships, hobbies, communication. His time is completely occupied by work and the problems of his elderly parents. He compiled a list of situations in which he decided to reclaim his time: When you need to go to a pharmacy on the other side of the city, although you can order the same medications with delivery When you need to take everyone to the dacha every weekend, although your father knows how to drive a car when you need to dig up endless beds because the parents themselves can’t cope with such volumes when you need to listen in the evenings to stories about your grandmother’s illnesses and retellings of programs about traditional medicine When you need to spend evenings with your parents, fulfilling some of their small requests, for which time flies unnoticed: “stop by for 10 minutes” turns into “well, now just go home and go straight to bed.” The situations seem to be insignificant - that’s what it seemed to Nikolai. But the obsession passed when he simply estimated how much time it took to complete each of them in a week, a month, a year. They repeat themselves so often that they simply eat up all their free time. The client decided that he would reduce the number of such situations very slowly, literally by 5%. One time he will leave the dacha earlier, hang up earlier under a plausible pretext. Next time he will refuse the trip. Gradually, you need to reduce trips to the dacha to once a month, conversations to once every 3 days, and no longer than 10 minutes. And all medications need to be ordered via the Internet - this takes 15 minutes. For himself, he decided that first he would visit all the “male” sports sections of the city for a test, and then decide what to choose. He also plans to go camping with a tent for 2 weeks, winter fishing and hunting. He made a schedule for searching for a hobby so that these searches alternated with the search for a potential girlfriend. Nikolay promised himself to try a variety of ways to meet people and date. The most difficult thing was not to fall into a feeling of guilt when he needed to regain a little more of his time. The guilt, of course, came and at first it was quite strong. And Nikolai didn’t even have a defense against her, in the form of accusations against the parents that are usual in such cases. Therefore, he compiled his list of necessary things to do in order to feel that he had taken care of his parents sufficiently. On this list: The obligation to order medications for his grandmother through Internet, Flowers for mom and grandma once a month Help for dad in the garage once a month Trip to the dacha once a month Financial assistance in the amount of 20% of Nikolai’s income - just enough to make it pleasant and not make parents helpless at their vigorous age. Calls to learn about health and mood once every 3 days for no longer than 10 minutes. This is enough to find out how you are doing and say “I love you.” Family evening on weekdays once a month. Possible help in truly emergency cases. And it doesn’t always require personal presence. Having this route map in hand, he quickly began to cope with the guilt. All because he drew a mental line between.