The Intervention that Failed
I have a friend who is going through a tough time. Her sister is an alcoholic, and she and the rest of the family are trying to get the sister into treatment. I am very fortunate that I have never experienced alcoholism or addiction in my family or friends, so I have no direct experience of what my friend is going through. But in listening to my friend talk about the difficulties she and her family were having, I was struck by the parallels with something that I have experience with--mental illness. The biggest difficulty in talking with people who are in the grip of mental illness is that you can't rationally convince them that what they are doing is illogical or self-destructive. That's because, as I have said before , the nature of mental illness is that it creates a filter through which everything is seen and experienced. You can't convince people that what they are doing is illogical, because as seen through their distorted lens, everything they are ...