Mark E. Williams, M.A. Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor
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Counseling for Life Skills and Decision Making

Mark's Counseling Blog

Blogging our way to mental health.

Complicated Grief, 2

1/21/2019

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How do I deal with my son? Since the death of his dad he has become prone to violent outbursts and is very uncommunicative. Therapy and doctors have not helped in the last 4 years amd I no longer know what to do. Do you have any advice?

Hi Cameron,
You must be exhausted!
Thirty years ago I was teaching a teen class. Two of the boys in the class had lost their fathers to black lung disease from coal mining. I asked them what it felt like to lose their fathers, and one of them said, “I felt like nothing. I was nothing.” The other boy agreed. The boy who agreed with him started drinking and never recovered from alcoholism.
Your son is ten years old now. Part of him is still stuck at being abandoned by his father at 5 years old.
I would say something like: “So, now that your father is gone, you feel worthless now?” Then just wait silently.
This is the difference between a counselor and a family member. A counselor will go ahead and say the painful thing that they are feeling, and sit with it. The family member will contradict the painful thing they are feeling. When you contradict the painful feeling, then the child has to argue with you to get his point across. And then the family member won’t listen, they just keep negating what he is feeling. And he ends up feeling more worthless.
It is very very difficult to listen without arguing. That’s what play therapy is all about. A child will play a game where someone gets killed or eaten or jailed. The professional therapist will join right in and gleefully enjoy the maiming or annihilation of the villain. The family member will want to rush in with forgiveness and gentleness for the villain. Not therapeutic for the child. Once the villain is completely dead and destroyed and dismembered, then sometimes I ask, “Shall we put him back together? Take him to the hospital? Call an ambulance?” If they say No, then it is No.
At the heart of play therapy is putting yourself in the child’s shoes. What is the child feeling? Angry, scared and abandoned.
You might say one day: “When your father died, I was worried that no man would ever love me again. I would be alone for the rest of my life. Do you feel that way? That nobody like your dad is ever going to see you as important again?”
When you suggest things to him, he’s going to get sarcastic with you. “Mom, that’s stupid! Why would you say that? That’s stupid!” Because he is ashamed for his feelings. Then is your chance to say in his voice, “Yeah, Mom, you’re so ignorant. You don’t know anything. You’re so stupid that maybe they should just come and take you away next time they pick up the trash!” Keep going until he laughs. “I’ve never met a Mom as stupid as you are. If you look up the definition of Stupid on the internet, they have a picture of you, Mom.” Taking his viewpoint, and voicing it for him, especially when it disagrees with your viewpoint, is hugely gratifying to an angry child.
You could also play the game: What if Dad were still alive? If Dad were still alive what activities would he do with you? Would he sit and eat dinner with you? Would he tell his favorite joke? Would he play football with you? Wrestle with you?
You could watch movies about children dealing with parents who have died. My favorite is Millions.
Take him to the cemetery to put something on the grave. Ask him if he wants to take something to leave on the grave. Give him some time to think. Your son will pick out his favorite possession, very expensive, irreplaceable, or something he made himself, and leave it on the grave. Don’t argue with him. Let him leave his favorite possession on the grave. Or maybe he doesn’t like that idea. Maybe he doesn’t want to visit the grave. Instead pick out something that Dad liked to do, and suggest that the two of you do that thing in memory of Dad. If Dad liked to make pancakes, then every Sunday morning, it’s Dad-pancake time.
In the same vein, ask your son to think of a project to do in memory of his Dad. Let’s say Dad liked to put up shelves. We’re going to learn how to put up shelves. We’re going to watch YouTube videos, and we’re going to use Dad’s tools to put up a couple of sets of shelves. Let your son do the fun parts of putting up the shelves. If he says it's not as good as Dad's shelves, then say, "Well, when your dad was ten years old, this is what his shelves looked like." You are reassuring him that he is going to be as competent and as strong as his dad was.
Create a memory shelf of his dad. Maybe it is in his room, maybe it is in the living room. Photo of Dad hugging his son. A couple of Dad’s things. A photo book of Dad and son together.
The suggestion is to help him express the verboten aspects of grief: fear of abandonment, anger at abandonment, fear of loss of identity, fear of loss of power. And then structure the grief in constructive ways: good memories of a loving father who treated his son as important.


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Complicated Grief

1/20/2019

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How do I deal with a severely grieving mother? We lost my brother to horrific circumstances 6 years ago. As time goes by, she has become progressively worse. She has violent outbursts towards me and my dad is her weapon of choice now. What do I do?

The violent death of a family member is devastating to all the members of the family. It takes years to get your life back to a manageable place. Trust is one of the biggest things that gets lost in a violent death of a loved one.
  • Your mother is saying she doesn’t trust the world anymore. She views the world as cruel and evil now. It is weighing her down, and she is probably wishing that she was dead right now.
  • She is also saying that the love she received as an infant and child is not enough to carry her through this grief. When she is grieving she doesn’t have enough warm memories of her mother or father or grandmother comforting her.
It might be helpful to you to:
  • view her as a bereft hopeless child. What would you do if a neighbor child felt totally unloved and hopeless? How would you comfort that child?
  • In addition, I would say to her: “I want to go out to eat with you to a special place that you choose. I want to have mother/child time with you.” What that says to her is that she has a child who is alive right now, who wants to love her.
  • I would also phrase the grief for her: “You loved my brother for years. He knows that, wherever he is now. He knows you love him.” (This helps her focus on continuing to love him, instead of being devastated he is gone.) “Let’s go put flowers on his grave.” (or wherever the ashes were scattered, etc) Give her something concrete and beautiful to do that helps her focus her grief: Flowers on a grave, plant a tree in his honor, give a small scholarship to a needy boy who struggles with the same handicaps your brother struggles with, etc.
The reason doing something concrete, beautiful and constructive is so important, is because she has driven her grief into a dead end street: “I have to make sense of my son’s horrific death. I can’t. I’m stuck.” She replays the horror over and over a hundred times a day. If she had something beautiful and concrete to do that focused her grief, then she would be thinking about beautiful things all day long. Her grief energy would be building her and everyone else up, instead of taking her down into a black hole of hopelessness.
Be patient with her. View her as a hopeless child right now.
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Question: How would someone tell their parents that they are toxic and you want them out of their life?

1/7/2019

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PictureSeries: Shameless, on Netflix

Answer: I wouldn’t tell them they are toxic. That invites a discussion that will be toxic to you. So just focus on getting them out of your life. I would just say I need a 3 month break from them. Don’t give a reason. Don’t argue. Don’t answer questions. Send it as an email. Ignore their replies to your email. Don’t answer the phone, don’t reply to texts. Nothing.

The question is very interesting, because it is clear you are entangled in their lives. And you want an argument with them. That is normal for a toxic relationship. We want to either heal our parents or get revenge on our parents, but seldom to just walk away from our parents, which is the healthiest choice.

Having a discussion about wanting a break from your parents hinders you from getting what you want.
A toxic person I had kicked out of a singing quartet I direct, wanted to rejoin. He said that if I didn’t let him rejoin our quartet, he would have to tell our next gig that we were woefully under prepared, and not to rely on his good word that we were ready to perform. I wrote a lengthy email reply, but before I sent it, I showed it to some trusted friends.
My brother asked, “What is your goal?”
“To get him out of my life, but still be reasonably amicable so if I see him at a singing club we both attend, we can be polite.”
My brother said, “This email won’t get you that. Don’t reply.”
He was right. A lengthy email invites a discussion or an argument. Was I ever going to convince him he was toxic? No! One of my mentors used to advise: “Don’t feed the fire.”

If you encounter your parents at a family event, then just listen, and ask for more info. Don’t reply, don’t argue, don’t get drawn into a discussion. Half agree with everything they say. Soothe them.
  • “I can see your point.”
  • “I can understand you saying that.”
  • “I will think about that.”
  • “I can understand your point of view.”
  • “Interesting!”
This is called “fogging”. It doesn’t give them anything to argue with. There is no toe hold to climb with. They cannot escalate the argument and create drama. All they can do is keep throwing out the baited hook. You have to not take the bait.
This takes lots of practice. Practice with a friend who can imitate your parents. Your parents will say insulting things that are half true or completely untrue:
  • “We raised you and now look how you repay us. You’re ungrateful.”
  • “You’re just so dramatic! Nobody can deal with you!”
  • “You think we are toxic? You’re the toxic one.”
  • “You’re just bitter. You never forgive anyone.”
  • “It’s always somebody else’s fault. Never your fault.”
Don’t take the bait. Just say, “Well, I’m aware that’s your opinion. I can understand your point of view.” And leave it at that. They will think they have won, but they haven’t. You won, because you didn’t give them a toe hold to escalate it into a nasty drama scene. You won because you get to not have contact with them at all until the next family gathering.
Another way they will bait you is to send you messages through your relatives. The messages with have assumptions behind them that accuse you of untrue or half true things that they may have convinced your relatives of. This is bigger bait, and more toxic drama, than a face to face encounter. Again, stay out of it. Say, “Well, I can understand my parents’ viewpoint. That’s the kind of accusation I expect from them. You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know. You will feel much better if you stay out of it, and ask them to just communicate with me directly. Otherwise you’re going to get swept up into a painful conflict. Or I could avoid you, too. It’s your choice.”
Focus on older people who have breathed life into you. Focus on them instead of on your parents. This takes a long time. Don’t give up.

Picture
Arnold Arboretum Fog Sculpture
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    Mark Williams is a Mental Health Counselor in Vermont. 

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