Anybody have experiences with support groups?

I co-chair a roundtable for families of disabled students. We are working to create groups at each school site within the district.

Rather than coming in with a cookie-cutter approach, we are trying to feel out what each school site needs and respond to that.

Some groups have organically grown into parent support groups.

I’ve found them to be incredibly helpful and supportive spaces.

Also, I’ve been debating joining a local chapter of NAMI Family Support Group. Mostly to learn more about independent living resources.

I went for a while to a support group for people going through a divorce. It had a facilitator and was discussion based. What was more useful to me though was a walking group I found on meetup.com in which I made new single friends and found other activities.

In 1988, with a friend, I started a support group for women who wanted to become Single Mothers By Choice. It was designed to help with information about resources, how to deal with families and disapproving medical and professional folks, and generally supporting each other because it was a rare thing at that time and very few people thought it was a reasonable concept.

I am still friends with some of these women over 30 years later.

Other people who understand make a huge difference in processing difficult and complex life circumstances, I hope this helps you get through stuff.

I am personally not a fan, but I have known people who have done them and have gotten a lot out of them.

I’ve been to a number of them, both outpatient and inpatient, for depression, bipolar disorder, alcohol/drugs, suicide prevention, the suicide of my brother, animal loss. The animal loss one took place at the humane society and was by far the hardest. I also felt closer to those strangers than in any of the other groups, even though I only went for a couple of months. Some helped, some not, and some were required by a therapist. Even the ones you’re forced to go to can be productive if you are open to listening.

I joined an online support group for parents with transgender children back in 2017 when my son came out. It was very helpful to be able to speak to others who are experiencing the same situation and I still belong to the group. I’ve made some good friends through the group.

@jonsblond Two of my friends with trans children also joined online groups and are grateful for them. Both said that finding in-person support was difficult.

The wife and I went to a few Nar-Anon meetings (meetings for the families of drug users). I never felt close to any of the people in the groups but we did get to hear stories that were just like the one we were going through with my daughter. I started noticing that all the stories were the same until the end. Child gets hooked on drugs, family tries to help, child gets deeper into drugs and starts stealing from the family, family tries harder to help. Eventually the family can’t do it anymore so they tell the child to move out of the house…they can no longer live there. After that the stories had one of two endings….the child realizes how far down the rabbit hole they are and they seriously seek the help they need and the family is reunited or the child dies. It was a very sad and depressing group. But it did open our eyes as to what the cycle of addiction looked like. I had the “get clean or get out” conversation with my daughter (after we had her arrested, she spent 50+ days in jail, got out and started up with the drugs again). I gave her the choices and said she had to choose now…not tonight, not tomorrow…right now. And I told her that if she chose to go with her friends and the drugs I just wanted to know if she wanted to be cremated or buried since that was the end of that story. She chose to get clean.

So the support group was sad and depressing, but informative and ultimately gave us the path to helping our daughter.

I’ve been in a few. They were helpful for the time that I needed them. I can’t give you a big takeaway, but they provided support when I had none anywhere else.

@seawulf575 Our family lived through the same sad Choose Your Own Adventure. My brother chose the other option.

I chose not to join a support group for this. Because I figured it would be exactly as you described.

My takeaway is that support groups are unique to the problem they’re addressing and what you’re hoping to get from it. Would hearing people going through the same thing help?

One road diverged into two.

Would hearing people going through the same thing help?

They helped me. I didn’t feel as alone, learned a lot, and talked about my experiences – and more importantly, my feelings. It helps when there’s a therapist as moderator. In the case of my animals it helped me to mourn and talk about them. People love their animals and it really helped by giving me a sympathetic group to talk to about their life and death. It’s hard to describe, but I felt almost like the people were instant friends. I haven’t had a pet for quite a few years, but even today I could talk about them for hours. It’s healing.

@raum I think it may depend on who’s in the group. After treatment for cancer I joined a local group to try to learn how best to cope with recovery. The local group wasn’t a good fit, I felt a bit guilty for not having had a much worse cancer. So I joined a different group at another hospital, and it was very helpful, and I was happy to have their support. My family was useless, these nice people did a good job for me, especially understanding how tired I was and how necessary it was to learn to ask for help.

I’m so sorry you have to go through all that, I hope you can find solace.

@raum support groups are for people all going through the same crap, having the same problems. We went to the group hoping to find some way of getting through to my daughter. And that’s what we did…found the way. But it was a risk. She could have chosen the other path and I wouldn’t have a daughter or a grand-daughter now and, since I was the one giving her the ultimatum, I’d have had a butt load of guilt to go with it.

@canidmajor It’s a little complicated. Because if I had had any ability to affect change, I would have probably attended a support group for this.

But my family has repeatedly ignored anything that I have suggested. Their go-to solution for when things get hard is to cover their eyes and ears. Pretend the problem doesn’t exist and hope it goes away on its own.

I’m currently struggling over a different iteration of this as my oldest sister and I butt heads over what to do with my aging parents.

Family.
Yay.

@seawulf575 The ultimatum is a gamble with high stakes.

We gave my brother more of a roundabout ultimatum. I called the cops for a wellness check when my mother called while huddled inside of a locked bathroom (with my niece) while my brother and his friends ransacked the house looking for things to steal and sell for drugs.

This prompted him getting kicked out of the house. Which led to him ODing on the side of the road the next day.

Sometimes when my dad is angry he says that I killed my own brother. But making that phone call was a decision I can live with. And I would do it again.

My family has a wonderful habit of saying the cruelest things when they’re angry. But that’s more about them. And I refuse to accept their guilt.

@raum Sorry you got put in the middle, making the adult decisions. Been there, done that. In our case, we tried letting my daughter and her douchey boyfriend move in rather than living on the street. They did nothing but sponge off us for a week or so and we told them they had to go get jobs so they could move out. While they were out, we found drugs in their room (yes, we knew they were doing drugs even though they swore they were getting clean). I was at work at this particular moment and I called my wife and told her to take all her jewelry and put it in the safe. She called me back about 3 minutes later and told me all her jewelry was gone, including her mom’s wedding ring (her mom had just died a month before). About $10,000 worth of jewelry sold for $700 at a disreputable place. My wife called and told her daughter not to bother coming back. We had a discussion about calling the police. I felt we should, all her other kids thought we should, but she was hesitant to get her daughter in trouble. Eventually I told her I would swear out the complaint so the daughter would hate me. So we had her arrested not for drugs, but for grand larceny (a felony). She got to spend a little over 50 days in jail because we wouldn’t bail her out. When she finally got bailed out, her bail bondsman started selling her drugs. Nice, huh? When I found that was when I laid out the ultimatum. She had just been clean for 50+ days and now was rushing right back to that crap. There really was no other options at that point. By the time her trial came around, she had been clean for a year or more and I talked to the DA about dropping the felony back to a misdemeanor. So she was let off with time served. Since then she has been clean and that was something like 8 years ago. Her life has done a complete 180 and is not going great.

No, I am an adult.

^^^^^Are you responding to a different question, or am I missing something here?