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A member of the Sandwich Generation struggles with feeling overwhelmed, sad, and stuck.

Dear Christine,

My mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s two years ago, just before I got pregnant with my second daughter. I was fortunate to have a stellar short-term therapist available through a pregnancy program at work to help me come to grips with my mom’s diagnosis.

When the pregnancy program ended, my therapist suggested that I find a long-term therapist to help me deal with my mother’s inevitable deterioration while trying to raise two very young children. Since then, I have been ignoring “find another therapist” on my to-do list. I’ve been telling myself that it’s not urgent compared to my career goals, my children, and the big wonderful life that I’m trying to live.

My mom’s disease has progressed very rapidly. She went from having repetitive conversations and needing some reminders to being really upset about not recognizing me. She cries and says she left me somewhere (like I am still a baby) and then looks at me suspiciously as if I am an intruder. It’s a lot to take, and I’m not coping with it well.

I don’t have clinical depression or anxiety, but I know I should probably still find a therapist. But I feel stuck and exhausted, and I don’t want to go through opening up to a new person. So, I have sat on my old therapist’s recommendation to find someone new for nearly a year now.

I really hate feeling like I’m behind in the game. I know I have to get a therapist, but I keep having thoughts about how I can maybe just handle this if I return to journaling more, or to so-and-so thing that has helped me before.

Christine Carter, I’m certain you have a worksheet for me on this. I’m flying in circles here. What will it take to get me to start therapy or figure out my next step? Maybe it’s not the kind of therapy I’m fixated on?

Please give me a little direction.

Sad and Circling

Dear Sad and Circling,

Your email reminded me of a favorite Mary Oliver poem, Wild Geese:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You don’t have to do everything well right now. You certainly don’t have to do this thing perfectly. You don’t even have to be happy during this hard—and amazing—life stage. You are not “behind” at anything; you are not losing the game. As you said yourself, you are living a big wonderful life.

You certainly don’t have to find a therapist right now, so please stop “shoulding” on yourself. Things are hard enough; don’t make it harder by thinking you are falling short. You are showing up for your family and your job and yourself. That’s enough.

Having babies is hard. Finding a balance between work and a young family is hard. And having a parent with Alzheimer’s is so, so, so hard.

Things are hard enough; don’t make it harder by thinking you are falling short. You are showing up for your family and your job and yourself. That’s enough. Click To Tweet

Suddenly, the mother you knew and loved is mostly gone, and in her place is someone who doesn’t recognize the most important facets of her own life. You’ve been sucker-punched in the gut. Of course you are surprised. You got the wind knocked out of you.

It’s normal to feel sad in the face of such loss. That’s grief. In addition to feeling sad, you’re probably experiencing a cornucopia of hard feelings, like yearning, anger, and regret. These challenging emotions are not to be confused with mental illness, or a depression that will require treatment for you to heal.

One “treatment” for grieving is to feel sad, and to feel safe feeling sad. To feel connected and held in your sadness. This takes time and will often be very inconvenient.

But it’s so important. You mention that journaling has helped you in the past. Why not start there? Like therapy, expressive writing is a science-backed way to cope with difficulty. Research has long shown that people who journal about difficult or traumatic experiences tend to report greater happiness months later. (I love this Science of Happiness podcast episode about expressive writing.)

You might also, at some point, choose to find a new therapist to help you find your way through this, but you don’t have to do that right now. Research shows that therapy tends to help us for three reasons; knowing what those things are might help you decide on your next move.

Therapists provide us with emotional support. Like a trusted friend, they provide us with empathy, reassurance, and a decreased sense of isolation. “Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine,” writes Oliver in Wild Geese.
A wise therapist can help us learn about ourselves, providing insight, advice, feedback and ways to reframe what is distressing for us.
Finally, therapists can engage us in what the researchers call “action factors”—basically exercises and plans that help us feel better.

When all three of these factors are present for someone in therapy, people tend to feel more safe and secure, and their anxiety tends to recede. Being less stressed, in turn, allows for greater self-awareness, and promotes their ability to confront fears and implement desired behavior changes.

It’s going to be very hard for you to do emotionally difficult things right now, like open up to a new therapist, on top of all the emotionally difficult stuff you are already dealing with. But you can do hard things. Especially if you want to do them.

Whether you decide to find a therapist or not, you will likely continue to feel sad. But maybe you can experience that feeling of “flying in circles” differently. I don’t think you are stuck; you probably aren’t even circling. But you are in flight.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

It’s not going to be easy, but you’ve got this thing.

Yours,

Dear Christine is Greater Good’s advice column, where sociologist and coach Christine Carter responds to your questions about marriage, parenting, happiness, work, family, and, well, life. Want to submit a question? Email advice@christinecarter.flywheelsites.com.

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How do you deal with a partner who doesn’t seem to appreciate all you do?

Dear Christine,

I’ve been happily married for over 15 years, and we have four beautiful children. We’re both flawed in our own special ways, but I keep coming back to the same issue with my husband: He doesn’t appreciate all I do for him.

I know running a household is a thankless job, but I could use a little thanks every once in a while. I work part-time and run the show at home for the whole gang, including for my husband. I often find myself doing things to help him feel happier and healthier—and anticipating and mitigating situations that have made him feel unhappy in the past. He has his strengths, and his charms, but he is not a low-maintenance guy.

My husband recently started a ketogenic diet as a way to feel better physically and improve his mood. Since I know it’s a big change for him, I decided I’d do it along with him so that I could help identify and prepare the foods that he can eat. I’ve been lovingly researching, shopping for, and cooking very low-carb foods so that he can achieve his goals. Last night, I even baked a loaf of no-carb bread.

My efforts have been met with complaints about the “stupid diet” rather than gratitude. My 11-year-old son was so put off by his dad’s behavior that he actually pointed it out to his dad.

In our big moments, my husband shares deep gratitude for me and all that I do, but I can’t help but feel these smaller, more common exchanges as slights and that they are damaging our relationship. I know I can’t change him, and that trying to do so is a fool’s errand. But I can’t help wanting what I think I deserve.

Do you have any advice for me?
Keto Mom and Resenting It

Dear Keto Mom,

Can you feel the legions of hardworking, nurturing, and resentful wives wanting a little gratitude alongside you? I sure can; I’ve been there myself.

We expect that our husbands will not take us for granted, and it hurts when they do. Research shows that when we express gratitude in our relationships, we become more attuned to our spouse’s efforts on our behalf. I understand why you are hoping for a little more attunement to all the work you do to “run the show” in your household, why you expect a little appreciation. Even your 11-year-old son agrees that you are entitled to a little thanks.

But feeling entitled to gratitude is tricky, because entitlement is the opposite of gratitude—and rarely do we attract the opposite of what we feel. Just as your husband isn’t fostering your affection by complaining about the food you’ve worked to prepare for him, your entitlement (and the resulting resentment) won’t likely generate his appreciation.

Since you can’t change your husband—as you note, trying to change a grown man is a fool’s errand, not because they don’t change but because we can’t force change in other people—you’ll have to change yourself.

How? Does that mean just giving up? Well, in a sense—yes. My best advice is to stop doing what puts him in the camp of owing you. Step out of the “If I do X for you, then you owe me Y,” where Y is a certain dose of gratitude. (Or maybe gratitude and a foot rub.)

Specifically, stop mothering him. If he wants to put himself on one of the most restrictive and challenging diets out there, he can do that. You can applaud his desire to be happier and healthier. You can support him emotionally. You can even support him practically, by preparing the right foods—if he asks you for your help, and if you really, really in your heart of hearts want to do it for him, because you will enjoy helping him.

But you can’t do the diet for him in the way that you would with, say, a diabetic toddler. Your husband is old enough to do his own research and make his own grocery lists. If he needs help with the shopping and cooking, let him ask you for specific favors. Decide on an individual basis which tasks you want to help him with. Don’t do any that will make you feel put out or burdened.

If you’d like to join him in taking on a ketogenic diet for your own health, or maybe because you think it would be a bonding thing to do with your strong and charming husband, you can, of course, choose to do that. Let me say that again: You can choose to do the diet, too, and to support him in it—but you don’t have to.

It’s important for you both that you understand that you are not obligated to take on his keto project—a major undertaking—along with your job and being the primary caregiver for your four kids. You are not trapped in a role you didn’t choose. You are not a victim to his dieting whims, or his bad moods, or his health problems. As such, he doesn’t owe you gratitude.

It would be nice if he were grateful, of course. But I suspect he doesn’t feel grateful in part because that would make him feel beholden to you, maybe even a little infantilized. When you take over his diet, it robs him of his sense of control over his own health and his mood. With you at the helm, if he’s successful at the diet, on some level he’ll have to give you credit for it.

This is tricky. Sometimes, when we overhelp people, we unconsciously send them the message that we believe that they can’t do it without us. This can make them feel criticized, or like they need fixing, and that can hurt. People don’t tend to appreciate it when their spouses (or friends or parents or children) don’t accept them as they are.

But to us, it can feel good to help the people around us whom we see as needing help. Supporting others, even when we don’t really want to, makes us feel like good people. Helping, especially when we haven’t really been invited to help, gives us a false sense of power, and it can distract us from our own problems. This is why Annie Lamott says that “help is the sunny side of control.”

Moreover: “Helping” your husband when you expect something in return, even if all you expect is gratitude, makes your marriage more transactional than romantic. Most people today find transactional marriages inherently unsatisfying. They’re the stuff of martyrs, the story of happiness thwarted by involuntary self-sacrifice.

Fortunately, you can still aid Keto Dad in his quest for health and happiness by supporting the three basic psychological needs related to self-motivation: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Support his autonomy by letting him retain control over his diet. Show him that you see him as fully capable of making his own choices and solving his own problems. Ask him questions that help him build a vision for success and that help him focus on what he does want, not what he doesn’t. What does success look like? How is he hoping to feel? And what will he need to do to succeed? Where will he need to ask for the help of others?

You can encourage his competence by helping him build the skills he needs—as I’m sure you’ve discovered, a ketogenic diet requires a high degree of knowledge about macronutrients, and a lot of meal planning and cooking. Does he want you to teach him what you’ve learned? Share the recipes or websites you’ve found helpful? No? Then don’t worry about it.

Finally, you can foster relatedness by getting your kids and other family members involved. How can you make it fun to do together? Maybe your family simply enjoys the food he cooks, or perhaps you set up a cooking “date night” with him. Or maybe you want to start some sort of “keto challenge” in your extended family if there are others who share his goals.

The most loving and constructive thing you can do might simply be to root for Keto Dad from the sidelines. If you do nothing else, don’t forget to celebrate his successes—perhaps with a ketogenic flourless chocolate cake.

Yours,

Tag: Dear Christine

Dear Christine: Should I See a Therapist?

A member of the Sandwich Generation struggles with feeling overwhelmed, sad, and stuck.

Dear Christine,

Dear Sad and Circling,

Things are hard enough; don’t make it harder by thinking you are falling short. You are showing up for your family and your job and yourself. That’s enough. Click To Tweet

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Dear Christine: How to Cope with an Ungrateful Spouse

How do you deal with a partner who doesn’t seem to appreciate all you do?

Dear Christine,

Dear Keto Mom,

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