My daughter is 25 + and cannot get her life together. She cant hold down a job or keep a relationship. She doesnt what to take responsibility for her own life. When she quits her job, I have to support her. She was diagnoised wth bipolar disorder in 2004. She takes medication for this. However, not much has changed with her in the past 2yrs. I would dearly love to help her, but she hasnt the motivation to follow through on anything I suggest. Any ideas to console a grieving mother. ( Grieving for her lost daughter. )
This is quite a situation. I’m not sure “we” have the power to help others in the way you might want to help your daughter. It sounds as though you are already doing the things you can to help.
While difficult, we are not to deprive a person of their experiences in this life, this body. The fact that your daughter has a bipolar disorder probably keeps you in the role of suporting her when she loses her job and that’s not a very clean relationship for you to maintain. It must feel as though you are empowering her “untogetherness”.
We are also taught through yoga to be compassionate and that too needs to have safe boundaries.
So what I am going to suggest is to not look at how you can "help
your daughter but rather what balance there is for you in this and what ways you might champion your well being. Yoga is not merely the asana but a way of living. We should look less at our teacher’s poses and more at their lives. You are to be your daughter’s teacher and she should look at how you live so it models boundaries, health, and balance.
quit telling her shes beautiful all the time, she probably needs to lose some weight.
[QUOTE=Anna Lyons;2773]My daughter is 25 + and cannot get her life together. She cant hold down a job or keep a relationship. She doesnt what to take responsibility for her own life. When she quits her job, I have to support her. She was diagnoised wth bipolar disorder in 2004. She takes medication for this. However, not much has changed with her in the past 2yrs. I would dearly love to help her, but she hasnt the motivation to follow through on anything I suggest. Any ideas to console a grieving mother. ( Grieving for her lost daughter. )[/QUOTE]
Read the booklet : Scientific Healing Affirmations by Paramahansa Yogananda
Also read the book: The power of your subconscious mind by Dr. Joseph Murphy. It shows you how to do it, based on the Bible.
Amazon has both of them.
These are simple, practical books.
It is surprising to see how the Western psyhology follows the yoga methods.
Late Dr. Joseph Murphy was one of the best psychologists.
Another book that might be worth something is “Change your brain, Change your Life” by Dr Amen, a neurologist.
There might be more to your daughter’s mental situation that hasn’t been diagnosed yet and that keeps her disconnected from her motivation.
Dear Anna, its heartbreaking to see your kids struggle no matter how old they are. I’m sorry you are hurting.
I think to be truly helpful to her you need to look to yourself first. Some self care and grounding for yourself perhaps? Your daughter is going to have to work on her struggles herself. Bipolar is hard. Hopefully she will stay on her meds and they will be helpful to her. You can’t get her grounded or make her be responsible. You CAN tell her that she is on her own and mean it. No more rescuing her or she will always expect it and never take responsibility for herself.
I’m sorry, that sounds rather harsh. It wasn’t meant to. I hope you find the path you need Anna. Take care.
A significant portion of 25 year old’s would fall into the description you have described.
If it was someone elses daughter, what would you advise the parents?
Just a reminder that this thread is from May 2006.
You know, I wasn’t wearing my contact and read the date as May of '08. Oops. LOL!
That is tough business fixing your daughter.
Sometimes if we cut people loose to fly or crash on their own they can do either. But you can cut down on some of the breast feeding and toughen her up some.
Everyone can be toughen up, but not everyone can be perfected to match one another. We all have different abilities in life.
For people that can’t make it on their own I tell them to seek the religious life in some sort of community. But even here she would have to change her ways to make a go of it.
Make sure she eats a good diet, gets plenty of heart pumping exercise, does lots of sports and healthy activities.
An important thing to remember with recovery is the 3-D’s: Desire, Determination and Diligence.
Desire:
Desire is the foundation for all recovery quests. You cannot help someone without the desire in them to be helped. Desire is what gets us taking that first step in the right direction when all seems hopeless. Have you every tried to give advice or help someone in need and they respond: “I don’t care.” They lack the desire or at least this is what they say. Desire must come from within, you cannot force someone to change, they must change themselves.
To develop a desire to change, we must first recognize there is a problem or sickness in us. Recognition or awareness is the first step leading to desire. After we recognize we are sick or an area of our lives is out of balance, we can start accepting the fact that we need to take action in this area. When we label addicts or people as “in denial,” we are saying the person is not able to recognize there is a problem in their lives that needs addressing.
Now some people recognize there is a problem in their life, but still don’t develop a burning desire for change, but at least they have a somewhat true picture of things and just haven’t made the crossover to developing the desire to change bad enough. Whether their block is out of fear, laziness or staying in a comfortable place, they will have to figure out what is blocking them before they can take the next step. As I said, we cannot force someone to change, they must change themselves and it must be from the inside out.
Determination:
Determination serves two purposes here. When something is “determined” it is accepted as fact. We have determined that we are powerless over our addiction and our lives are unmanageable. We have determined we must abstain from certain people, places or things that we cannot comfortably have in our lives. We are in the process of determining a new set of rules on how to live. We have also determined what injuries we have caused and what needs to be repaired through taking personal inventory.
Determination serves a second purpose and that is it keeps us on the long road to recovery. We cannot keep on this long road without being determined to change our lives day in day out. Whether it is debt recovery, clutter, restructuring our complex lives or losing weight it all takes time and determination to stay on the path of recovery. Many distractions, detours and set backs along the way, but we should always be determined to keep pointed in the direction of recovery.
Diligence:
Diligence keeps us from going backwards once we finally arrive at the recovery place we are aiming for. It takes diligence once we get to where we want to be to maintain that serene spot, otherwise we fall back on our old “natural” ways of living. Once you lose the fat, once you pay off your debts, once you lose the clutter, once you get sober and abstinent from your drug of choice it takes diligence to keep you that way. James Allen calls this watchfulness.
“Victories attained by right thought can only be maintained by watchfulness. Many give way when success is assured and rapidly fall back into failure.”
As A Man Thinketh by James Allen.