A Parent's Guide for Suicidal and Depressed Teens (32 page)

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Authors: Kate Williams

Tags: #Family & Relationships, #Life Stages, #Teenagers, #Self-Help, #Depression, #test

BOOK: A Parent's Guide for Suicidal and Depressed Teens
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If you can't let go of your anger and rage, you must seek professional help. If three years have gone by and you still get into a rage over your ex-spouse,
 
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you must get help or your children will be hurt. When you feel angry, ask yourself, "Is hanging on to my anger more important than my child's life?" If you want your child to live, you must do your own work about letting go of your divorce.
To defuse immediate situations that stir up anger in your heart, you might try some of the mottoes that AA and Al-Anon offer. Saying out loud, over and over, "This too will pass," helps dispel the immediate rage, fear, or anxiety at the other parent's behaviors.
For me, one motto wasn't ever enough. So one of my friends who works a Twelve Step program suggests saying five in a row, fast. She has written her own mottoes:
So what?
Who cares?
Forget it.
Don't dwell on it.
It'll all work out.
or:
It'll all come out in the wash.
I have had and still have much anger at my ex-husband. I have also been angry at the courts and at therapists. Three therapists told him he needed to go to counseling due to his physical violence, but the court would not force him to do this. I was angry that I had no support from the system, no protection. I am still angry that the courts don't
 
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take battering into account when they award visitation to fathers. I was told I had to be able to prove that he was insanecommittablein order to have visitation denied.
I have been divorced from him for fifteen years. He has never gone to therapy out of his own desire to get healthy, or to deal with the severe physical abuse he experienced in his childhood. He's only gone to therapy for a few sessions when there's been a crisiswhen I said I was leaving him and when Rachel was in the hospital. I am still angry that every time he goes to see Rachel I am vulnerable to his potential for violence. I am angry that I have found it necessary to arrange for third party protection for every occasion he has had visitation. Last year a woman was murdered by her ex-husband when she was in the process of dropping off her daughter for court-ordered visitation. So the anger continues to be a part of my life, and it is a feeling I have to consciously release. I choose to let go of the negative feelings I have had and continue to have.
What this has meant for me is that whenever possible I've walked away from potential conflicts. I decided not to go to court to collect the support he has not paid. I choose not to go to court to try to get Rachel's therapy bills paid. Throughout the past five years, I decided to think of the time when she would be eighteen and there would no longer

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