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Daughter’s boyfriend has Social Anxiety
Asked By: Anonymous Views: 1,165 times
My daughter has a boyfriend who seems to display all the forms of Social Anxiety. He has not worked for 4 years and stays home and watches TV and is extremely over weight. He is 36 years old and my daughter defends him. I am frustrated because I have tried many things to help including me seeing a counselor about this situation. The counselor said if the boy friend is not willing to get help than stay out of the situation. My wife and I always let our daughter that we are there for her but we try not to enable him by offering money or other forms of living assistance to my daughter.
This is a challenging situation;obviously. While there are many manifestations and degrees of social anxiety, your daughter’s boyfriend is at functioning at a very low level. My suggestion is that in a non- critical, non-accusatory, supportive, and loving manner you ask your daughter what her expectations are regarding her boyfriend with such questions as: How do you feel about the state of affairs? Do you think things (with boyfriend’s functioning) will change? If you think things will change, what is your reasoning? If things don’t change how will you feel about that? The key objective here is to get your daughter’s attention. You want her to think about it. The non-critical and loving tone (I believe) is paradoxical. This approach may have more productivity than a critical one which will automatically activate your daughter’s defensive position.
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