Ask Amy: A new diagnosis inspires important questions
The downside to experiencing an exciting epiphany as an adult is the tendency to press your own experience – and the positive insight that flows from it – onto others with an urgent enthusiasm that can actually deter people from following your lead. (This is also a common occurrence with people who enter therapy.)
You want for your family members to experience the same insight as you’ve had, but you should be aware that a diagnosis for them also serves your purposes, because it confirms your theories and suspicions about them.
You should share your insight with your mother and sister the way your friend did with you, using “I statements,” and describing your own experience.
Ask them if they are interested in receiving information about the evaluation process, and then leave the rest up to them.
Dear Amy: My parents divorced – more or less amicably – many years ago.
My father remarried a few years ago, and his wife is nice enough, but given that my siblings and I are all adults, we don’t think of her as our stepmother but more as “our dad’s wife.” I do concede that my father seems very happy with her and they seem to have a nice relationship.
Every year when Mother’s Day comes around, I think about sending her a card, and then I decide not to. I think this is something that would make her happy, but I honestly don’t want her to make too much out of it. She has adult children of her own and I assume that they recognize her on this day, just as I recognize my own mother.
What do you think I should do?
– On the Fence
Dear On the Fence: Send her a card.
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