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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Copabanana" data-source="post: 742036" data-attributes="member: 18958">This is the case for my son, too. He is 30 now. Ever since he began the weed, he has been stuck. But he has other stuff going on too. He has body dysmorphic disorder and anxiety. And he has not worked for at least a year, and even before that, only sporadically. He gets SSI which permits him to not work. He prefers homelessness to working. That is why I say that your son's working and his independence is positive. I feel the same way.Let me see if I understand what Smithmom is saying. I think she is suggesting that our adult children make their own lives, and that if we remain so psychologically tethered to them, it is hard. Hard for us and hard for them. Some of us have a hard time. I do. I have a very hard time with any vulnerability of my son.I am seeing that I was over-identified with my son. I experienced his vulnerability too intensely as a way to not feel my own. Is this good or optimal or healthy for either me or my son? No. But I am not the lone ranger in this.I think smithmom is suggesting here, that we as humans do not grow up in a linear fashion. There are fits and starts. We fall. And we get up. And sometimes the most together-seeming people crash and burn. Adults that make their share of mistakes and learn to get up and brush themselves off and readjust course, often learn to be more resilient.  I think Smithmom is encouraging us to try to learn to tolerate our kids vulnerability as they learn to mature. And that it is not an on-off switch. I hear her as encouraging me to tolerate his learning to own his life and to live it. But the thing is this. What in the world can we do? You can be like me and try to over-control the situation. But I am here to tell you that it does not work. I am not saying you are doing that. I am saying that I did.Smithmom, I think, is telling us this: We are responsible for our own lives, our own functioning and our own feelings.  To the extent we suffer unbearably because our adult children are floundering can be a message in a bottle about ourselves. That we are the ones that may be floundering. And that we are the ones that may  need help. And that we need to help ourselves. I am only speaking about myself here. This forum is really about us. How we can recover ourselves. The suffering and floundering of our children is the trigger, the catalyst. This can be a wake up call to ourselves. I think that is what Smithmom is telling me.</blockquote>

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