Difficult living with parents
Q: I suffer from agoraphobia and anxiety attacks, so am housebound. I also live with my parents. My father is an alcoholic and in the early stages of dementia, and my mother is verbally abusive and domineering.
I am unable to work. I have no money and no friends. I don’t have a driver’s licence. I can’t even open a bank account. My parents insisted I put what little money I did have into their account. My mother does all the banking but also gambles heavily. My father is concerned about how she spends his pension money.
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I want to take a correspondence course so I might be able to start a business at home. My mother wouldn’t even look at the course material. She would rather have me living on welfare than working. She says I don’t do enough outside work or farming chores. She doesn’t give me anything for it yet she talks about hiring other people to do the same work.
I help with housework, but my mother is never pleased with it. She is a perfectionist. Nobody else in the family wants to help out whenever she and my dad are working together. She usually screams at him and throws things around.
Mother has mood swings. She is often abusive toward my dad and threatens to throw his stuff away whenever he misplaces things, as he often does. His behavior is becoming more bizarre. He’s suspicious, can’t recognize family members at times and tends to wander.
I’m frustrated, depressed and under tremendous stress. What should I do?
A: You need to get help for yourself. You took the first step in writing to me. Your next step is to talk to the right people about yourself, your father’s deteriorating health and your mother’s unhealthy response to the stress around her.
First, talk to your social services worker. Explore if he can help you move to a larger community, perhaps initially in a room and board situation, where you can focus on your health and explore some job training that is in line with your interests and abilities. Even if you can’t get into training or a job right away, doing some volunteer work will help you feel better about yourself.
Second, talk to the home care co-ordinator for the health district in which you live. If she isn’t already working with your father’s doctor to assess his care needs and plan appropriately for the future, it needs to be done.
Seek counseling
Third, talk to your family doctor about the situation. He or she may be able to refer you to a mental health counselor and/or an addictions counselor. There may not be a clinic in your town, but mental health workers often travel to small communities to see people.
Also, your doctor may be able to assess what you need for your physical and emotional health. And if travel money is needed in order to get help, he could give you a medical certificate to give to your financial services worker.
Fourth, find an Al-Anon group and get involved.
Fifth, put some emotional distance (and physical distance, if necessary) between you and your mother.
It will take effort to set up a way to get out of your home, but it’s the only way you will get your way out of the emotional maze of alcohol, power, anxiety and control that your parents are caught up in.
