Woman founds self-help group
When dad denies covid
01/30/2022, 09:44 am
What can you do when friends and relatives get caught up in Corona conspiracy myths and drift away more and more? An affected couple is now founding a self-help group and states: “Everyone’s suffering has increased over time.”
Families break up, spouses are strangers to each other, close parent-child bonds are broken. When relatives or friends become followers of conspiracy myths during the pandemic and develop into corona deniers, the stress tests are severe and destroy even the most intimate relationships. Student Sarah, who can hardly bear her father’s drifting away but definitely doesn’t want to give up on him, founded a self-help group with her boyfriend. In Bochum, she has now met 15 participants for the first time.
“There are very different characters, young and old. They are all about a person in the family who is incredibly important to them,” says 30-year-old Sarah. “And everyone’s suffering has increased over time.” Her friend Tim says after the online round: “Everyone has already taken a lot.” It’s about parents, children, siblings, partners that you don’t want to lose. “You stand in front of a person you love and don’t know what to do anymore. The topic connects us.” Even the feeling of not being the “only person seeking help” strengthens and can motivate.
“Everyone is aware that there is no panacea,” emphasizes 32-year-old Tim. But one could give one another tips – for example on how controversial issues can be circumnavigated so that the thread of the conversation does not break off completely. And where to get support from specialist advice centers. “Everyone in the group wants to keep in touch with the difficult person in their family circle, even if it is super exhausting. There are fates where the rift runs right through the family,” reports Sarah.
“Cried for Hours”
She knows what desperation feels like. “When my dad kept saying stranger things and then suddenly said on the phone that as he wasn’t vaccinated he would soon have to wear the Star of David, I broke down.” It wasn’t her father, who studied, worked in many countries and is open to all cultures. “In terms of feeling, it was no longer my dad, nor his choice of words. I cried for hours.” His entire thought construct narrowed to Corona, vaccination refusal and conspiracy myths.
“When the belief in conspiracies creates identity, it affects life as a whole,” explains social psychologist Pia Lamberty. This destroys marriages and families, leads to desperation and shame – and to pain when people close to you die because they dismissed the vaccination as a conspiracy. “That’s why it’s so important to exchange ideas with others who are experiencing something similar,” says the managing director of the organization CeMAS, which deals extensively with conspiracy theorists. Self-help groups are just beginning. At the same time as the Bochum initiative, a new group started in Erlangen. In the digital space there is an exchange, adds Lamberty. “The offers should not by far cover the demand.”
The problem affects many, the need for advice has grown enormously, reports Christoph Grotepass from Sekten-Info NRW. It’s about doubts about political measures, about diffuse fears of vaccination, up to the idea that the population should be lied to, decimated or exchanged. The basis of trust in the families is dwindling, alienation, speechlessness, fears of one another and even the endangerment of third parties – including children – due to the refusal of protective measures.
Grotepass assumes that a self-help group is not the right path for everyone. “Some need stabilization through an advisory context, some do not want to reveal themselves to others.” Counseling centers could help individually to find an intervention that is as tailored as possible.
More self-help groups expected
The self-help contact point of the Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband believes that other groups will be set up in many places. Even if the Corona crisis is over, the issue will remain if the problems within the families do not simply resolve themselves. The contact point supported the founding in Bochum, and a consultant accompanied the first meeting. The aim, however, is for such groups to be able to work autonomously quickly. According to a spokeswoman, many contact points are available for start-up requests.
After difficult months, Sarah has a strategy, also thanks to intensive consultations with the sect info. In conversations with her father, she is now primarily looking for things that connect, things that they have in common. “And I’m no longer trying to use arguments to talk him out of his, in my opinion, funny views.” In any case, this is hopeless. “But I tell him clearly that I’m not in the mood for his topics and that I don’t agree with him.” She shows him that she cares for him and tries to understand his motives emotionally. “I see fear and insecurity.”
Tim says: “No one likes to admit that they have gotten lost. You have to give those affected time and not block their way out.” Both are happy to have started the group. You have already supported a second foundation: “In order to cope with the great onslaught.”