It Can Be Hard to Help People Who Experience Failure to Launch

One of the core truths of the therapeutic process, as described by therapists who see it over and over, is the client who just can’t seem to get out of his or her own way. These clients are recognizable to clinicians because they seem to have a black cloud hanging over their heads. Their day is always worse than everyone else’s, and they bring a collection of sagas, failures, and long stories to their therapists’ offices. They emit an air of constant victimhood, which, once explained, is deeply layered and hard to fix, at least without immediate money, a willing ear, and a helping hand. Even those three things—dollars, empathy, and support—may not get them out of their doldrums. Sadly, this client is often an adult who has reached a certain age where the rest of their friends and family seems to have figured things out—the whole “adulting” thing—but they have not.

A colleague tells the story of his son, a late-30s-something man who doesn’t have much of a career, and stays stuck in the Land of No Can Do. Follow this frustrating conversation between father and son and note the victimology and the increasing depth of one problem after another, after another.

Dad: “Why aren’t you working? Aren’t your unemployment benefits getting ready to run out? Are you looking for a job? Have you had any interviews?

Son: “I can’t look for a job because I can’t drive my car.”

Dad: “Why not? What’s wrong with it?”

Son: “All the tires are flat because I haven’t driven it for a long time.”

Dad: “Why haven’t you driven it?”

Son: “Because my license plate tags are expired over one year, and if I park it on the street, it will get towed away. So I just leave it in the parking space in my apartment building.”

Dad: “Why don’t you go down to the DMV and pay for new tags?”

Son: “I can’t register it because I don’t have insurance.”

Dad (growing more alarmed): “If your car doesn’t work, how are you getting groceries?”

Son: “I mostly just use DoorDash and GrubHub to get my meals delivered. But I won't be able to do that much longer.”

Dad: “Why not?”

Son: “I’ve maxed out all my cards and I’m overdrawn on my checking account.”

Dad: “What would it cost to fix your car and get it insured and registered?”

Son: “Well, about $680 for the insurance and $135 for the expired tags, and I’m probably gonna need new tires too, so that’s about $1000.”

Dad: “I see. And how much are your credit card balances?”

Son: “I’d say about $5800.”

Dad: “And how much are you overdrawn at the bank?”

Son: “Probably about $300.”

Dad: “So if I pay for all the repairs on your car and get your credit card balances down and make you whole at the bank, would you be able to look for a job?”

Son: “I don’t think so.”

Dad: “Why not?”

Son: “I think my car battery is dead.”

At this point, in this circular conversation, which keeps adding another version of “...and then...”, you may think back to an old song you probably were taught in grade school that went, “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.” If you recall it, this silly song, penned from a book in the 1940s, tells the tale of an old woman who accidentally swallows a fly and to catch the fly, she swallows a spider, a bird, a cat, a dog, and a horse. (It ends with her death, of course.) One problem in her digestive tract leads to yet another. Like the father speaking to his son, there appears to be no end in sight, as one problem begets another, and the solutions mount up in expensive ways as each domino falls and knocks the next one down.

"Failure to launch" is the term of art for these adults, meaning they have just enough intelligence, resources, and energy to get by for another month, but the sum total of their existence seems bleak upon deeper inspection. A job that doesn’t pay well or offer any chance for advancement, a series of friendships that consist of either other stuck people or those who have made it and keep trying to offer advice and energy to try and pull this person out of their decades-long funk. Not much history of love relationships, since they tend to scare off potential mates because of their lethargy and lack of motivation. They tend to spiral, from one problem to another, often manipulating others to rescue them—with money loans, couches to surf on, rides when their car is broken, and boxes, packing tape, and a pickup truck when they need to move, again.

People who are in this highly passive-aggressive mode become skilled at seeing those in their orbit as either Rescuers or Harassers (not unlike, sadly, people trapped in domestic violence relationships). When you are helping them, you are their Rescuer (which they may secretly hate you for, because it reminds them of their various weaknesses). When you are telling them to get their collective act together (as said by an exasperated parent, a friend at wit’s end, or a therapist), you become the Harasser, which they may hate you for as much as the Rescuer, but in a different way.

To best deal with these people in our lives, we need to take our guidance from the therapists, who say two things: Don’t play the Rescuer-Harasser game, and realize that while they may talk a good story about how their life is one disaster after another, in reality, they may actually be skilled survivors. They are not speaking to us from homelessness or a brain disorder or an alcohol or drug addiction. If that was the case, we would get them immediate mental health and/or substance abuse care. No, they are having these Help-Me conversations with us on their cell phones, sitting in furnished apartments.

In other words, they have figured out how to survive up to this point. And while it may feel to us that their walls are finally closing in for the last time, they will figure out a way to get by, again. They may have depression and feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, but they are not despondent or suicidal. They have made it through life by following this pattern. Why? Because it works for them, and probably since childhood.

The dual therapeutic concepts of “care-fronting” and “tough love” suggest that therapists, family members, and friends care enough to confront these issues with them, but without riding to the rescue. We can help them be “tough on the problems” by offering only the advice they can tolerate and only as much as we are willing to give (e.g., “That sounds rough. What’s your plan to deal with those issues?”).

To do more is to spend our time picking up even more dominoes. It is their responsibility to remove those dominoes before they fall. Rescuing them each time only continues the problem.