Emotional help for those living with parents

 

                   Woman-Shaped building in Tijuana, Mexico. Source: SLATE MAGAZINE

For those living at home, it can often feel like being with your parents is an experience too close for comfort. This is the case with most of us, if not all of us, and that's why we prefer to move out. 

But what if you can't? What if all your best efforts to move out have landed you in exactly the same place as where you are? 

Sometimes it's best to live with your parents, especially if you're a creative and especially if you're trying to carve out a life better for yourself than simply working at the local convenience store at the ripe age of 28. 

There comes a certain age when you can't handle working as a casual or a job you hate without the horrible stigma of being a live-at-home failure. 

So then, what do you do if you're stuck with your parents? 

The first thing I'd recommend is, to stop taking no board what's not yours, emotionally. You also need to find something that you identify with your passions. For me its writing. For you, it might be art or photography. It could be coding or starting a YouTube channel. Whatever it is, you need an outlet.

But the trouble with a lot of us creatives, especially when we come from a single-parent up-bringing, is that we suffer from a severe lack of personal emotional space. For instance, my mother has still got my teddies on the shelves and pictures of me lining the TV cabinet. I can't heal her problematic treatment of my space, but I can heal myself.

She used to watch TV in my room, and the house is small, so honestly, no matter where I am in the house, I hear the TV anyway. But the worst part of all was that she, my mother would sit on my bed and watch television until it was just about my time to sleep. 

Things have changed slightly now that YouTube and streaming services like Netflix came on the scene. She doesn't do that anymore. But she does still make a lot of noise and couldn't care less of I just want peace and quiet. She also deals with her issues through noisy media. She wants to drown out her own pain so she uses noise to accomplish that.

Often  this is highly negative, crazymaking material like news about corruption in my home country of South Africa. Everything gets bogged down in horrible negativity and this exacerbates her already poor mental state for which she blames me quite often. She's 68 and has to feed 2 mouths so can I blame her?

The realization that helped me was knowing that I'm living inside he mental space. This is not just  house I'm living in. This is a house in the shape of her. I am practically able to kick her organs from within the womb again.

So yes , like your situation, it'st oo close for comfort. Like your situation, it's unliveable.But I deal with it by writing. I deal with it by cycling great numbers of yards. I deal with it through healthy and sometimes unhealthy release. Addiction is the crucial factor here. And that can keep you back many years. 

And for you, your healthy obsession or unhealthy addiction it might be something completely different. It might be art that's too provocative to show your parents, like a porn addiction. It might be architecture or online counseling of others. It might be something that your parents would belittle if they saw you doing it. And because of the circumstances, because you're living inside of a building in the emotional shape of them, that's not completely wrong of them either. 

Don't HATE them. Whatever you do.

Because you've taken  a lot of your mother or fathers' emotional issues, you need to let some of it go. That often means you feel like you need them to feel what you do. That means wanting to attack them. Channel this urge. If you do the morning pages by Julia Cameron for instance, you can write out all the things that frustrate  you about your parents. 

Just don't tell them about those feelings. 

CONCLUSION:

The key is healthy release in an environment that they can't touch. 

Hope this helps you!