Answered questions(5)
Mom Needs to Go to a Nursing Home
Is an intervention the right thing to do to help a parent see that she needs to get into a nursing home? My mom has dementia and she is starting to be a danger to herself and to her neighbors. I am not sure if I could get her declared incompetent or whatever but I don’t want it to come to this if it doesn’t have to. Everyone in the family agrees that she needs to be in a safer place and everyone has stories to tell of her dementia. I am just not sure if it will be overwhelming for her because of her disease. She is still able to carry on a conversation but she repeats herself constantly.
Read answer →Body Building as a Lifestyle
For my brother, the most important thing in the world is having big muscles and a good body. And he is totally huge. He doesn’t compete or anything, he just wants to look good. I think he has gone beyond good and is starting to look weird, but I will concede that this is a matter of personal perspective but I am a little bit worried about how his gym needs have taken over his life. I know that he has uses steroids and growth. I give him a hard time about it but he says they’re not that harmful anymore and that he doesn’t drink or smoke like I do so why should I get to lecture him? He has a chemistry degree and could get a great job but instead he delivers pizzas and still lives at home so he can spend all day everyday in the gym. He is totally rigid about what he will and won’t eat and most of what he eats seems to come as powders out supplement vats. It’s like working out and looking ‘good’ is the only thing that matters to him anymore …He used to have lots of friends, and now he doesn’t. He used to have a girlfriend and now he hasn’t for a couple of years… Am I wrong to think that something is wrong with the way he is living? My parents say that if it makes him happy then I shouldn’t worry about it. But I think there is something sick about the way he is living. It’s like muscles are his drug of choice and he has lost control over himself. I want to get him out of the gym and I want him to be like the person he used to be. Can I have an intervention or something? No one else seems to get that there is something really wrong here like I do?!!!
Read answer →Sister Refuses Help
My sister is depressed. Actually, she has not been clinically diagnosed with anything because she won’t admit that anything is wrong with her and so she won’t go to see a doctor or a psychiatrist about the way she is feeling. I can see however that she has really changed a lot in the last few years and she is so far different from the bubbly person she used to be you would swear these were two different people. She went through a very tough breakup and a few years ago and she just never seemed to bounce back from it. Now she mostly just wants to stay at home and do nothing. She used to be such a neat freak and now her apartment is a dark and dirty mess. She used to be the life of the party and now she won’t pick up when her friends call and unless I go over and basically force myself in the house I don’t get to see her either. She says she doesn’t want help but it’s so obvious that she needs something. How can intervene effectively to get her to take some action so she can get back to the person she was and back to enjoying life. It’s killing me to see her like this but I just don’t know what I can do to make the situation better?
Read answer →Clutter House
My 64 year old uncle lives alone and his house is just totally out of control. There is stuff everywhere. Once you open the porch door you can walk straight ahead into the main living room, but if you look to the left you can’t see anything of the 15 feet of porch that used to be there, it’s now just a mountain of useless junk. Once you get in the house there are some rooms that you can no longer even enter. I don’t know how to put into words how crazy the situation is but it is a bad scene. The stuff is piled from the floor to pretty much the ceiling. It’s incredible but it is also sad and I think it’s got to be a major fire hazard. I have tried on many occasions to get my uncle to throw out some of the stuff. He will generally go along with the idea but as soon as we start sorting through anything he always has a million reasons why he can’t get rid of whatever piece of garbage I happen to have in my hand. If you try to force the issue he gets upset and angry and it just seems to get counterproductive. He obviously has a problem but he will not admit that there is anything really wrong. What can I do to get him to clean out some of the stuff. I worry that in addition to it all being a fire hazard, the house just feels so stuffy and dusty and probably moldy, it cannot be good for his health at all. I feel like he needs some sort of intervention like you see on TV, but I don’t have any idea how or what to do to make him see the light.
Read answer →Stopping son from dangerous drinking
My 15 year old son Roger has been caught drinking beer with his friends on two occasions in the last 3 months. This is not acceptable behavior and he knows it, and he has been punished for what he did. There is a history of alcoholism in the family and I am very worried that Roger may be going down a path that will lead to a very unhappy ending (I know because my dad and brother are both alcoholics and I can see what damage it does.) How can I get him to see the danger of what he is doing by starting to drink at such a young age, especially with his family history. When I try to talk to him about it, it always starts to sound like a lecture and I can see that I am not getting through to him in a meaningful way.
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