Dear Therapist: My adult child is going through a difficult breakup and my attempts to be supportive have not been well received. I’ve been told I’m invalidating and toxically positive. It seems like everything I say is wrong. I don’t know whether to step back or keep trying to help, and I don’t know how to help without being ‘toxically positive’.

Dear How to Help: It can be extremely challenging to see someone you love, especially your own child, in pain and distress. To have your help rejected, and be told you’re doing it wrong, can be even more upsetting. Your child isn’t asking you to stop trying to be supportive, so I don’t think you necessarily need to step back. The question is, how can you and your child connect around this in a healthy way?

First off, if you’re not familiar with the idea of toxic positivity, you can start exploring that concept for yourself. Toxic positivity means trying to jump over the reality of emotional pain or grief by putting a positive spin on things. It can make people feel worse, even if your intention is to help. It can lead to them feeling alone and misunderstood. It can also increase their self-criticism and shame for feeling low and not being able to snap out of it.

If you are repeatedly saying things like ‘everything happens for a reason’, ‘it’s all for the best’ or ‘you have so much to be grateful for’, and showing annoyance or impatience with your child’s feelings, it may be helpful to shift toward a more neutral stance. Allow your child to take the lead. You can ask them, ‘what do you need from me?’ ‘What would be most helpful for you?’ ‘Do you want space to cry on my shoulder or problem solving help?’

The other part of this equation of a healthy connection is your child. They are, as you’ve said, an adult. So it’s reasonable to expect that if you ask what they need and are truly open to hearing what they say, that they are able to tell you what they need. It’s not reasonable for them to expect you to read their mind or reject whatever you do. If they aren’t able to say what they need or seem entrenched in the darkness and unable to receive support, then it is time to encourage them toward professional help and temporarily step back.

Best case scenario, this is an opportunity for your relationship with your child to evolve into a healthy and balanced adult relationship. If you naturally lean more toward the light and they lean more toward the dark, you can actually support each other to balance into wholeness. Not by pushing the other person toward your way of seeing things, which usually just drives both people toward more defending of their own position, but by both of you taking responsibility to balance yourselves internally. They may need more capacity to hold optimism and gratitude and you may need more capacity to hold pain and sadness. You can’t control whether they do this internal work for themselves, but you can lead by example, a powerful way to parent a child of any age.

Danielle B. Grossman, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, has worked with clients in the Truckee/Tahoe community for 20 years. She helps individuals and couples with their relationships, anxiety, grief, and struggles with food and addiction. Reach out at truckeecounseling@gmail.com or learn more at truckeecounseling.com