Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'll repost something I commented on the other failure to launch thread:

I am a therapist who specializes in "failure to launch" young adults. Most of the clients on my caseload have a Cluster B personality disorder (either BPD or NPD), or become very close to meeting diagnostic criteria for one of them. One of the key components to raising a failure to launch young adult is that they have very little sense of self and self-direction because their own desires, emotions, and wants have been railroaded by their parents during their childhood and adolescence.

A very common scenario in my therapy practice (in an UMC neighborhood not unsimilar to, say, Mclean or Bethesda in the DMV) is that the parents pushed their (temperamentally sensitive) kid to elite private schools or public schools in competitive, wealthy school districts so that their kid attends a T20 college. The innately sensitive kid is then pushed to a high-paying career path such as tech, medicine, or finance, and when they can't hack it, they move back home as a 22 year old (or a 26, or sometimes 30 year old), and the failure to launch spiral begins.

The parents usually alternate between intense pride and shame for their kid (this is called "splitting" by clinicians, and I see a lot of this black-and-white thinking on DCUM). On one hand, they are filled with intense pride that their kid is an elite college grad and feel as if it reflects on them as parents. OTOH, the parents have intense shame for their kid because he/she failed to live up to the high expectations that they placed on their kid.

But wait, you might be wondering, why weren't these parents able to pick up on the fact that their kids are characterologically more sensitive and thus not well-suited for a path of Harvard and then McKinsey? These parents are unable to notice their kid's sensitive nature because they lack emotional attunement (which, to be fair, many first-gen UMC people who had to "pull themselves by their bootstraps" are deficient in).

One of the first things I do as a therapist is to ask my clients to describe themselves, and ask my client's parents to describe their kid. Oftentimes I'll notice that both the failure to launch young adult and the parents are unable to provide an accurate, fully-fleshed out description of their kid to me because all parties lack the ability to "mentalize" -- in other words, be attuned to the emotional states of themselves and others.

It's actually quite sad when I ask parents to describe their adult child to me, and they'll say some version of "Oh, you know, she's smart and hard working." I'll ask if there are any other traits, and they'll just give me a blank stare. The parents are unable to mentalize any other personality traits besides "smart and conscientious."

And I really feel for these parents. It's difficult being in this situation. But I think even the most loyal and well-adjusted of children would admit that they would rather be understood than be loved but misunderstood.

Bingo!

“One of the key components to raising a failure to launch young adult is that they have very little sense of self and self-direction because their own desires, emotions, and wants have been railroaded by their parents during their childhood and adolescence.”


My mother would have allowed me not to launch and used to ask me to return home because it was “one way she could help me.”

She did a lot of mental sabotaging but I became very stubborn and ignored her efforts to keep me close.

No, thanks! Thank god I got out of there!

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Fascinating!! Know 50+ adults in the DMV who fit this bill.

My father was incredibly abusive and violent. My mother responded by being a full blown addict, unemployed in my teen years and for fifteen years thereafter. I “launched” at age 17. No financial assistance from anyone. Undergrad at a Top 10 school athletic scholarship, thereafter did a T10 law school. Really did well academically, about as good as one could do. My parents were uneducated with every vice and bad habit under the sun.

I suffered from depression and trauma. I won a national championship at the end of high school, and was so depressed and suicidal right thereafter I went into the stadium figuring out how to end it all. The West Point coach recruiting there saw me and with a heart of gold coaxed me back to the podium to accept my award. I made it out on dumb luck like this.

Again, lucky as can be. Yes, I was tough and competitive, but that came with the sport. It never ceased to amaze me the good people sent into my life. I was very sick and my medical care was the athletic trainer. A well known guy actually. He was good at orthopedic type injuries (I never was injured), but not so much with a severe infection. I went to the hospital- one of the best in the nation - student health was at the edge of campus with a long wait. A nurse practitioner agreed to see me (I couldn’t pay) and she diagnosed and treated the strep throat I picked up. But she also noted I was depressed. She saw I had the weight of the world on my shoulders and asked me to come to her office for ten minutes every week. No charge. No record of treatment for a scared kid on scholarship. She made me go from being miserable to feeling resilient. She also made me feel grateful. I didn’t drink or do drugs (no money for that and I was only so talented athletically). She made me realize I had terrific freedom, with no one setting conditions on me. I made my own decisions and while difficult liked the guy in the mirror. I collected lots of free Hardee’s chicken sandwich coupons and on travel for competitions felt like a million bucks eating those free sandwiches. Yes their was per diem but I was always hungry. It was freedom for me.

I write this because the so-called failure to launch types may be in situations where they don’t get enough freedom to actualize. I am not sure it is their “fault”. Who in the heck would recommend what I did? The insanity of it all. The freedom saved me. If young people could get some freedoms it could go a long way.