What's a Parent's Role?

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When your own anxiety takes over, it's hard to distinguish your adult child's struggles from true danger.

Slowing down to ask a crucial question can help you tell the difference between distress and danger.

Empathy helps you calm yourself and your adult child and supports them in learning how to self-advocate.

You hear the tone or see your phone light up as you get a text or a call from your struggling adult child. Either way, alarms go off in your head, and I'm talking really loud alarms. Many parents in this situation wrestle with what to think and how to react.

Just the other day, I conducted a parent coaching session with Lisa, who has a daughter, Casey, age 29 (names changed to protect privacy). They are a perfect example of that hypervigilant state of mind so present in parents of struggling adult children, and they're the focus of this post. To continue with this example, feeling an inner sensation of her blood pressure rising, Lisa tells herself to "just listen" when her phone lights up with Casey's call.

During that hair-raising call to Lisa, Casey right away starts pouring out, "I hate my friggin' job." (The f-word that was actually spoken is changed here to maintain a level of written decorum.) Casey........

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