His therapist tells him to try to make small goals for himself, consider even minor “wins” if he can, rather than focusing on the global catastrophe that he perceives is his life that he can’t dig himself out of. It appears very difficult to do because he desperately wants to “feel” better and whatever minute joys he tries to conjure up don’t seem to provide him that. He was in residential for a month six years ago after a major breakdown and then in an IOP and he intellectually knows the strategies but emotionally has great difficulty effectively using them. As for me and my therapist, he asks for me to face my feelings and not try to push them away and encourages me to stop trying to fix this - because I can’t - to break that dynamic of listening to my son and then trying to reassure him when in reality I’m trying also to soothe myself. Not that there is anything “wrong” with that - to steal a line from Seinfeld the old TV show - but as my therapist he is concerned with the effect that pattern has on me. My son’s guilt and shame stem
primarily from his sense that he grew up with “every” advantage - a sharp intellect, an intact family, a great education, a comfortable life - and he “should” not be in this shape. My therapist has pointed out that perhaps in reality my son did not have every advantage, that is, for whatever reason the resilience to conquer disappointments and cope effectively with failures somehow didn’t develop in him, whether or not that was due to anything my husband and I did or didn’t do.