No Fixing Other People’s Problems
It is not your responsibility to fix someone else’s mental health issue. It is not your responsibility to compromise your own boundaries just to make someone else’s life easier.
That doesn’t mean you can’t be compassionate and empathize with their struggle, but taking over and doing things for them is only ever going to be a temporary band-aid.
Here is one example:
As usual, my mom and my brother are having drama. Mom is understandably exhausted because she’s the one who deals with paperwork and bureaucracy and does so so much to get my brother the support that he needs, and she’s also the one he has the most triggering relationship with. So Mom (and her therapist) want Dad to do more of the things so that Mom can be less stressed. However, the stress doesn’t actually come from doing the things, it comes from the relationship dynamic between her and my brother. So it doesn’t really matter how much Dad does, it won’t fix the problem.
Furthermore, Dad taking over and doing all the parently things just makes Mom feel silenced, sidelined, and ignored, which she hates just as much as she hates having difficult interactions with my brother.
The only way for mom to be less stressed is if she processes the triggers that she experiences when my brother is activated/agitated/anxious. I can’t…
