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My husband blames himself! How do I help him with guilt--re: future in-laws, and moving away?

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Question - (7 January 2007) 2 Answers - (Newest, 8 January 2007)
A female age 41-50, anonymous writes:

How do I help with guilt, future in-laws, and moving away?

My better half blames himself for everything. He also comes from a large family who treat him like the family scapegoat.

Guilty that all of his siblings are moving away and that he would like to do this as well but feels that he would be abandoning his parents. He feels that everyone else has left them and now he is going to be the ultra-bad guy for leaving if he goes. I am sure that they don't feel this way but he brings these thoughts on to himself. How do I help him get a clue that some of his other siblings should pick up the slack when the time comes to care for aging parents? If he is always around to pick up the slack, they will expect him to pick up the slack. How do I help him stop this self guilt maddness?

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A male reader, idoneitagain Australia +, writes (8 January 2007):

This is a tricky one, because people can become stuck in guilt, it can become a way of life. to be an outsider trying to do something positive in the situation can be difficult and can in some cases one can merely make the person feel more guilty!

If he is truely someone who blames himself a lot, I would recommend that he seek councelling to make his life better and less caught up with guilt. You can try and help, and may have some success, maybe not, but if it is long term guilt developed through the family, guilt is part of his personality and he would have to want to put some work in to change himself for the better.

Maybe the best you can do is try and sell him the benefits of what it would be like to not feel guilty in his life, and that it would be a good idea to change this aspect of himself. It may also not be a severe problem in his case, he might just need some clarity on how to deal better with his family and the family dynamic, but he would still benefit from the advice that a councellor could give him in changing these established patterns of behaiviour.

Good luck.

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A reader, anonymous, writes (8 January 2007):

Well I can very much relate to your husband as my role in my family of origin is the same....you can't really help him with his guilt, but you can support him when and if his family is mean to him, by saying things like you don't appreciate them speaking to him that way and that you hope they know how much he cares for them....

The way I handle my own guilt is I went to two years of therapy and it did me a world of good and helped me to realize that my family was best off for me to have limited contact with them because I can't change them, especially aging parents, I just tell them I love them and if things get ugly, I have to leave and go elsewhere....my only sibling does not pick up the slack, but my parents are well off and in relatively good health, so they don't need a lot, it is just that my sibling tends to take advantage of them and I had to sort of let her know that she needed to cool that a little as she me not be aware but that our parents are getting too old to do some of the same things for her that she had gotten used to....sometimes when you are the sibling that is there all of the time you forget that the others are not as aware of the changes going on in your parents so you have to be the one to tell them what is changing and what they need to expect and give them time to process the information....

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