Dear Therapist:

Thank you to the Yated for this excellent column which I read weekly. I am writing regarding my father. My father is an extremely bright person and a professional who has been working the same job for many years. As he has recently entered his 60’s I notice that he just seems to be very down. My youngest sister recently got married and there is no one living at home any more. I also see that the younger people seem to be advancing in his company while his career seems to be stalled. I am not sure exactly what is going on or what I can do about it but there is clearly a real change in his mood over the last few months and I would appreciate your insight and direction. Thank you.

Response:

For most people, life changes can be disconcerting.  For many, major changes can cause feelings of anxiety and sadness.  Reasons for these feelings are varied.  When our emotions are a direct reaction to an event and its overt impact, we generally deal with them gradually.  For example, to the extent that your father’s depressive feelings are related to missing his daughter and feeling lonely, he will likely deal with these over time. 

Practically speaking, your father may begin to visit your sister more often, or otherwise adjust his relationship with her to address his feelings of sadness.  Or he might change other relationships to help him feel more connected to others.  Emotionally speaking, he may be experiencing the classic stages of grief and loss.  The “official” stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance…but not everyone experiences them all or does so in this order.  Your father might be emotionally working his way through a normal reaction to loss.

Often, however, normal reactions to life circumstances are exacerbated by unconscious factors.  Most prominent among these is the effect of the situation on a person’s sense of self.  If your father always defined himself primarily as a father, provider, and professional, recent events may have shaken his sense of self to the core.  It can be harder for him to feel like a father (whose children need him) when there are no children at home.  The lack of promotion might make him feel that he isn’t as good a provider as he wants to be, and his sense of being a professional may not be as dominant as it once was.

Of course there are other factors.  The human mind is impossibly complicated, and we will never understand all of its facets.  Your father may have other needs, issues, and insecurities (as do we all) that are impacting on his current mood.  Nonetheless, I have found that the most compelling factor tends to be the underlying need for self-esteem. 

Ideally, the goal should be to build a sense of self based on intrinsic qualities rather than basing it on external factors.  However, most of us do focus on our achievements, roles, and other external factors to feel good about ourselves.  When we identify many factors and spread our focus pretty evenly, we tend to transfer from one to the other—or identify new ones—as needed.  For example, your father may begin to identify more strongly as a grandfather or as a religious person to compensate for a perceived loss in self-esteem.  If you notice something like this occurring, this may be a sign that your father is beginning to adjust his sense of self to fit the new circumstances.

If, however, your father’ depressive feelings increase or continue unchanged for an extended period of time, a therapist can help him to recognize and deal with his feelings and their causes. 

-Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW

  psychotherapist in private practice

 Brooklyn, NY

 author of Self-Esteem: A Primer

 www.ylcsw.com / 718-258-5317

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