An Attempt at Magic

There can be many reasons. The primary one is that parents were probably not involved in the treatment process and an empowering strategy was not learned. Treatment may have reduced distress without sufficiently addressing avoidance, dependence, family dynamics, emotional patterns, or real-world functioning. Parents should consider not only whether the adult child feels better, but whether treatment is producing meaningful changes in work, education, relationships, independence, and everyday life.

The Berent Method. Effective treatment needs to address specific factors preventing the adult child from functioning independently. These may include social anxiety, avoidance, fear of failure, perfectionism, depression, emotional regulation, relationships, dependence, and family dynamics. Treatment should ultimately produce meaningful changes in everyday functioning, as well as reducing anxiety symptoms. It is common that therapists do not know how to, and will not work with, parents of adults over eighteen years of age.

Yes. The clinical interviews at www.social-anxiety.com are evidence of this. Long-standing social anxiety and avoidance can become deeply ingrained, but meaningful change is still possible. It takes hard work. When adult children are phobic and avoidant they lack initiative for their mental health. Parents need to learn a therapeutic strategy to compensate for this. Treatment needs to address the individual’s specific patterns of anxiety, avoidance, emotional regulation, dependence, relationships, and functioning rather than assuming that the problem is permanent because it began in childhood.

Because if they do not learn and implement an empowering game plan the pathology of avoidance-dependence can be permanent. Parents can play an important role because their responses may influence the adult child’s patterns of dependence and avoidance. Learning when to support, when to establish boundaries, when to stop rescuing, and how to encourage greater responsibility is an important part of changing the overall family dynamic.

Yes. Parents naturally want to protect their children from emotional pain, but repeatedly accommodating avoidance can unintentionally strengthen it. Providing excessive reassurance, solving every problem, or allowing an adult child to withdraw from responsibilities without a plan for change may reinforce dependence. Learning how to encourage healthy independence is often an important part of the recovery process.