It’s a scene from any Lifetime movie. Two
voices off-screen, muffled behind a wall or echoing down a staircase. His
slurred and belligerent, hurling accusations, any one of which could precede a push
or slap. Hers there to parry each lunge, beseeching him to sleep it off or, if
nothing else to “think of the children” and lower his voice.
An audience of one, Lillian continued to
play out that scene in her mind even when she wasn’t home — even when she was
no longer living in a house with her dad. Without commercial breaks or a mute
button, let alone a way to escape the narrative she created that pulled her in
diametric directions, it became preposterous that she could please both her
parents and presumptive that she would see herself as the source of the
problem.
So she would hold onto whatever else she
could with both hands. Specifically, one manifestation of her anxiety — a
common issue, along with depression, for a child of an alcoholic parent —
involved a habit where “I would touch things with both hands because I would be
afraid that if I touched things with only one hand, something bad would happen
to me.”
Feeling a gravitational pull in different
directions would strain even the fully developed psyche of an adult. For
Lillian, it salted the very earth where her soul was trying to take root: “I
think — when I was younger, more than now — I definitely did not know where I
fit into this world. I didn’t know who to trust. I didn’t know who I should be
to please my father and my mom at the same time. I didn’t know what I could do
to help and I think it really just stressed me out a lot and caused me a lot of
anxiety.”
Lillian had a natural reaction (to cry,
feeling “alone and lost”) and a courageous response: asking for help. Sharing
her anxiety with her mom was the first step, with the support of a mental
health professional, to hear and eventually believe that she was not the
problem. And she could pursue solutions to problems that weren’t beyond her
reach.
With a therapist she trusted, Lillian made
a statistical leap. Rather than run the risks associated with an alcoholic
parent and undiagnosed issues, she joined the 81% of teens with anxiety and 71%
of teens with depression who get better with treatment.
As hard as it was to get distance from her
father’s disease — “”It’s not my problem to deal with; I can’t help him
unless he’s willing to help himself” — Lillian realized first-hand the
benefits of focusing on her wellness.
Incrementally and with positive
reinforcement from the community around her, Lillian shifted the frame. Instead
of being a captive character — a casualty of her father’s alcoholism and
abuse, internalizing the venom of every text message — she put herself front
and center with a sense of herself strong enough to avoid playing the victim.
Or falling victim to her urge to play the hero.
