COMPLICATED CO-PARENTING SERIES – Part 3

Blog 3 – How to Relate to and Work with a Compromised Co-Parent 

This is a tough topic.  We all want to consider ourselves as functional and capable parents.  Yet, sometimes illness or trauma impacts us or our parenting partner to such a severe degree that the relationship can’t be salvaged.  As a couples therapist, I’ve worked with many couples to help them work their way through major issues or mental illness and save their marriage.  

First, we need to discern if you or your parenting partner is dealing with depression (or another mental health problem). See my prior Blog Post on How to Evaluate if You or Your Partner is Depressed [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZSGX7ohmMcWqad-IKg9Jg1UAIw54fsFzSeqUuPcdxWk/edit]. 

Second, you will need to consider if you can work your way through the illness together to reconnect or whether you will need to separate or divorce one or both of you to try to heal on your own. Skim this excerpt for any further ideas. [Loving Your Way Through Depression https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c58Wz9CG0u4AZRb3tyIKudHJIP0SXsioBDS-9PGuDAE/edit].  

Third, if you decide to separate, you will need to assess how healthy your parenting skills are and that of your partner.   Take a minute to do a self-assessment of your Parent Functions and Parent Capacities. This assessment should help you target areas to work on for yourself and perhaps consider how seriously your co-parent’s parenting is impacted by their health issue. 

It’s important to note that when dealing with a physical or mental health illness, you essentially will use the same general psychological processes and strategies.  Beyond that, you will learn about your or your parenting partner’s specific condition to try to understand how to help and interact with them best.  

Prolonged or Chronic Illness

When a co-parent or partner is ill, you should follow certain steps of care for them.  You would help them understand and accept their illness mostly by listening and educating yourself.  You might prop them up better with the help that they need related to their illness and how it specifically impacts their daily functioning.  You would help them get to doctors’ appointments and manage their medical care within reason.  You would have faith in their recovery and accept the reality of their pain and hurts related to being sick.  This process holds true when our partner has a chronic physical illness or a chronic mental illness. 

Yet what happens if your partner doesn’t accept help or go to the doctor for their cancer diagnosis?  Or if they don’t care for themselves well in order to get better or be as healthy as possible for you or your children?  Also, how do you cope with their decision that they won’t take treatment or can’t find their way toward helpful healing solutions when they are still responsible for caring for your children when you need them to parent together with you in some way?  And to add an even heavier layer of complication, what about when you aren’t actually partnered anymore, or you are in active conflict and have broken your commitment to each other, or are divorced?  Difficult right?  

I think this path seems clearer even while divorced when your co-parent is physically ill. You’d try to ease their suffering, get them medications, or offer support for daily activities when necessary, and if you were on good enough terms with your ex-spouse, right? You’d want to relieve them of some burdens, parenting tasks included, yet you’d still want to include them in some parenting experiences and decisions.   Yet, when someone is dealing with a mental health problem, all of these paths forward seem murkier. 

Mental Health Problems

A mental health problem is an illness that plays out vividly in someone’s mind, feelings, and body,  which impacts their behavior and functioning at times.  Yet, it is more difficult to diagnose what mental illness is occurring, and it is also often obscured in a family, especially when relationships are strained by the impact of the mental illness.  Many couples don’t know what they are dealing with, and they struggle to find help that helps them look beyond typical couples’ treatment for relationship problems (as evidenced by fighting and unhappiness) into the specific impact of a mental health problem on their partnering relationship. For instance, many couples therapists don’t know how to pinpoint what mental illness is co-occurring with relationship struggles.  Some specialists have focused on how to ID and help couples with certain conditions—-The Impact of ADHD on Marriage, and  Couples Teaming Up Against Depression [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qVMQ26089vH4iQ8AYbBlzhfp4gj45OJaUIB0WtV7OE0/edit]

We know that many couples who are dealing with mental health problems in one or both partners will end their relationship and decide to divorce. Then, they are left to try to co-parent together while coping with an often unresolved, interfering, or sometimes untreated mental health condition.  Here are some questions to consider if you’re trying to co-parent with someone who might be suffering from mental health problems:

1. Can you ID what the mental health condition is? This can be done by getting a mental health assessment or seeing a therapist or a psychiatrist.  
2. Has counseling or treatment been tried?  If so, then hopefully, you and your co-parent will have a diagnosis or at least some understanding of what you are working with and how to cope with the condition. If not, then don’t give up!  Keep trying to find answers by going to different therapists, trying a different doctor, pursuing psychological testing to hone in on the diagnosis, and trying as many treatments as possible until there is relief.
3. Does the mental health problem interfere with parenting communication and parenting capacities/functioning? If so, what support can you obtain to boost those skills (i.e., education, coaching, therapy, medication, other caregiving help, tutors, household help, communication skills training, etc)? If you find little or no success, then you might be dealing with a situation of not having the right treatment/help or having a more serious condition that is treatment-resistant or more chronic. 
4. Is your co-parent trying to get better, function better at least for the sake of the children?  If your co-parent is “well enough,” they likely will be trying all that they can (even if it is extremely difficult) to feel better and get better day by day.  If they are getting worse or severely depressed or ill, then you might consider if they are safe enough to engage or parent your children actively.  
5. Are you seeing at least steady, even if incremental, progress in your co-parent who is dealing with a mental health problem? Progress in mental illness is sometimes tricky and obscure.  You might see gains and then notice things getting worse or backsliding.  If the slope of progress is generally up and forward, then keep encouraging them to do what they are doing. If there appears to be a stalled period or steady loss of progress, then it is time for a new approach. 
6. Will your co-parent talk “openly enough” with you and your children about their mental health condition?  Ideally, the kids would receive a general explanation of the illness so that they can depersonalize the problem from themselves. (i.e., Dad is depressed. That’s sad, yet he’s not sad and mad because of me.) If not, you might need to craft a kind yet real explanation to give to the kids about why your co-parent isn’t feeling well or acting right so that your kids don’t take their parent’s symptoms personally. 
7. Can you add coping and/or mental health status to your update with each other when you update the other parent at times of transition?  Ideally, you’d be able to do this without judgment and criticism and the co-parent with the mental illness, which goes best if you can offer what you are doing about the problem and what support you’re getting or would like. 
8. Remember, being candid and open about mental health concerns in one or both co-parents only helps your kids prevent or detect any future mental health concerns of their own–Use simple, benign language when talking about these issues. (i.e. Focus issue, Anxious day,  Worry problem,  Down feeling).   Things like depression, anxiety, ADHD, etc, are highly genetic.  These conditions are very prevalent in children of divorce, either due to disruptions, the trauma of divorce, or their own genetic loading.  When children know about these issues, they are better able to self-monitor and ask for support. 
9. Is your co-parent’s chronic mental health issue harming your child’s own mental health or development?  When a co-parent won’t get help or is stuck in their symptoms, sometimes their behaviors become very problematic and harmful to the family dynamic and the children.  When this chronic conflict and “stuckness’ ‘ persists intensely or chronically, then consider if your co-parent is struggling with issues beyond being compromised by their mental illness.
10. Has your co-parent developed a negative or toxic pattern that is both entrenched with how they parent your children and causes your children harm on a regular basis?   Humans are highly adaptive. When we have a problem, we grow skills and traits (both positive and negative) to cope with this issue.  These adaptations happen physically for us, as well as mentally, emotionally, and relationally. For instance, when we have a leg injury or defect, we learn to walk with a crooked gait–We develop muscles to help us maintain movement. We also experience pain and consequences from this adapted walking pattern.  When we’ve experienced serious trauma or chronic harm in our early or closest relationships, we learn to “do relationships” in a way that is often toxic or harmful. When we have disturbed thoughts or emotions due to a mental health problem(persistent, treatment-resistant, or chronic), we struggle to live outside of that state of mind and set of feelings and may co-parent from that perspective, which harms our children or prevent them from growing into their full potential.  Sometimes these co-parents are labeled Toxic, which is only helpful to help us employ protective strategies in our parenting to protect our children from harmful patterns and behaviors as is possible.