20 year old brother, refuses all help or to do anything. Advice?

Erielle · ‎09-11-2016

Hi I just joined these forums to see if anyone has any advice. Few things to know first:

1) Strong family history of depression. I myself am permanently on meds because I have a long history of major depression with a focus on suicidal ideation. Basically our family tends towards extreme levels of depression. And anxiety.

2) Everyone in my fam is morbidly obese.

3) My parents raised us fundamentalist. Some seriously crazy beliefs. It made us outcasts in our youth and I'm the only one who escaped the brainwashing.

The Problem:

My brother left high school 3 years ago. He didn't work through high school and went straight into a Chef's course post high school. After the course he started job hunting only to find that in the field, his qualification is basically useless because everyone wants experience. He doesn't have (and has never had) a job to this day. He has been following a keto diet for over a year and has not been losing weight on it. Recently confronted with this (doctors have recommended he stop) he states weight loss wasn't the point he just wants to do it 'because he can'. He lives with our parents and does cooking but little cleaning. He repeatedly says he's trying to find a job but when I send him jobs in his field that might take him he says 'that's not what I'm looking for'. I've offered to help him get a job - I either get ignored or refused. He refuses to go back to school. He has all the signs of depression but doesn't believe he's depressed. He refuses to see doctor's or psychiatrists. The last time he saw a doctor he got put on blood pressure tabs but he refuses to take them and he's aware that could lead to serious consequences. He won't even take a multivitamin. And there's no preexisting prejudice he has against medication.

My parents, my sister and I have all been trying to tackle this. Get him out of his funk and working, but we don't know where his head is. We've asked him what his plan is but he shrugs and ignores us. The last contact I had with him I told him straight out that he had choices to either let us help him or go back to school and a list of jobs which are desperate for people so he knew he had options. He ignored it. He won't talk about it, he refuses external and internal help. He won't hit rock bottom. He's there. And even when I was suicidal it didn't magically make me change. I could have ended up on the street and not cared. He seems to be in a similar zone. We're constantly worried. What do we do?

white knight · ‎09-11-2016

Hi E, welcome

In short, by you, back away to concentrate on managing your own depression and enjoy life.

The reasons are- he is an adult perhaps not in your eyes but men younger than him fought in world wars.

He has parents if he needs motivation, siblings add to his stress

He is correct that bosses want experienced workers. With do much unemployment the opposition is too good. That doesn't mean I'm negative, its fact. And it wears people down.

My guess is he lacks confidence. He needs family members to praise his cooking efforts so he feels he can rub shoulders with chefs out there.

He might need a few years to develop more, guys are like that until about 30 yo.

Dont compare anyone with him especially yourself. It would be annoying and not productive.

Tony WK

LunarBlue · ‎09-11-2016

Hey Erielle

I was raised in a religious household under a strict religion that some people consider a cult. Only now have I backed away from it but I was the outcast too at school. Sorry you had to go through the fundamentalist lifestyle.

It is true that employers want experience, but have you looked up a skills-based resume? Google it, it focuses on stating his transferable skills he has from his studying, rather than work experience alone. I just finished uni and that is what students who finish a degree are told to do, compile a skills-based resume instead of the usual work experience one. I have job experience but it's not relevant to my career. It's super hard for young people to get somewhere, employers want work experience but they have to give us a chance to actually work and gain some experience. If you go to school you've got the education but not the work experience. It's tough.

Has your brother thought of a chef's apprenticeship? It can be hard to find these opportunities, especially in a rural town where I live. He has time on his side, leaving high school three years ago he must be young. As far as not wanting to work, he sounds like he has this idea in his head of how he wants to be and what job he wants and won't take any less. It sounds like me when I had depression. You did the right thing telling him straight up, tough love is needed to snap people out of funks they are in. It may be something he needs to work through and come to a conclusion about himself. There's no helping people who don't want help, I know as I use to be an alcoholic.

I would say he needs to set short and long-term goals. I think maybe he doesn't know where he is going and or his purpose, so he's just letting time pass by. Maybe he goes to work and saves money to undertake more training. Maybe he works until he can find that special job. He doesn't work for work but he works so he can enjoy other things. It also pays to practice mindfulness I think. The hesitance about starting a new job might be based on him not wanting to be stuck in that job forever; but all he needs to focus on is now. Setting goals is very underestimated, I think it's super effective in creating purpose in someone's life. It will be hard with his lack of motivation though. Maybe catch him on a good day. Sorry I can't help more.

Erielle · ‎17-11-2016

Thanks the skills resume idea is a great idea. I'll pass it on to my sister who can tell him in person. I know that the job network is hard out there. I had to retrain in order to get a job years ago because breaking into basic fields once you're past your teens is very difficult. But I also know that being out of work for a long time is a big problem since the boss is often from a generation where that thing is considered lazy rather than a result of the bad economy.

Honestly, I looked around for ages before putting down a specific post. A lot of people struggle with this kind of event and the only advice going around is kicking him out, which nobody wants to do.

As far as an apprenticeship goes, he has the qualification so he's not entitled to an apprenticeship. Even if he was he was though, he's at the higher end of the spectrum at 20. At that age the workplace has to pay him more. But he doesn't want to do one anyway. I guess I'll just have to accept that there's nothing possible that I can do and wash my hands of it. If I'll just have to keep telling myself that until all the worry goes away. Thanks for the reply.

Erielle · ‎17-11-2016

Hi white knight. Thanks for your post. I agree that he likely lacks confidence. I think you've got it backwards with the siblings add stress thing though. My parents are an extremely stressful presence in everyone's life. He's very comfortable with me exactly because I give everything he says consideration and believe fully in making decisions for yourself. But I also know depression intimately, intellectually and externally (I'm a nurse). Depression makes it easy to ignore your responsibilities. You become more forgetful. You become inactive. Your mind clouds. You can see a beautiful world around you but no beauty in you.

So when I talk about this, I don't say 'look at everything you're doing wrong!' or 'you have to do this'. I say 'how's the job search going', 'I found this job today I sent it through to your inbox', ' what do you want to do', 'what kind of a job are you looking for'.

You're absolutely right that I shouldn't discount the option that he could potentially hit rock-bottom and change. I do have to say I'm reluctant to leave things there though because the kind of depression our family gets is the kind where rock-bottom is either institutionalization or suicide. I can hope that it's the first and not the second. But if he's institutionalized it will be against his will and I don't know what kind of effect that will have. We are very similar in a lot of ways. So I feel not comparing us completely would be remiss of me, since we react to certain things the same way and I've got a heavy level of experience to draw on.

(I don't compare him to me in person of course.)

But maybe you're also right here too because where we differ is our ability to tolerate bullshit in others and ourselves. I'm a no bullshit kind of person and that played a large role in how I bounced back. It's possible that difference makes me the wrong person to help him here.

On soldiers and war, I have to get a little rationalist here. Every living thing in this world dies. And even a dog can kill a man. You can choose to go to war but you're still a boy until you've been in one. You only really make a decision to go to war after you've come back from the first and chosen to go into the second. And I certainly hope that he doesn't come back from this internal war as damaged as my Vietnam veterans!