This is April now and you have probably given all the exams. Sometimes when we with hold the truth it may be ok as we are giving ourselves time to face our own mistakes without the added anger and anxiety of the ones who love us.

If this is a pattern you succumb to always or too often, then this is a problem and your mother would feel betrayed. If you act irritable, stay distracted and fool around with time wasters of TV, chatting with friends etc it would feel to her like lies and that she cannot trust you.

Instead stop worrying that you have not told her everything. Focus on turning over a new leaf in day to day discipline and then share with her how you kept it a secret and why you did that.

If she knows you kept it private, and then got your act together and are being disciplined now she will accept your hiding the truth, forgive you and not see it as lies. Your behaviours of discipline are most important. After that even if you fail, she can understand that you have some difficulty in learning and need additional tuitions or help.

When one person in a family behaves in destructively dependent ways the rest of the family gets pulled into managing that person. This is like an endless tunnel. This is called co-dependency. The dependent is your son and all of you become consumed with improving him so you become co-dependent instead of becoming independent to achieve your life needs. You get tunnelled into thinking only his improvement can solve the family’s issues. That may be true to some extent but going against what is only one possibility to do other smaller looking solutions to improve life can be good. So instead of nagging him to switch off computer and pay the bill, you would let him be and go meet your friends, finish the bill payments yourself with other family members’ help. That is more work but more peaceful.

One needs to stop trying to change such a person though they definitely need to change. Basically you stop making it your responsibility to change them, worry for them etc as they only draw you into their drama more and more. Responsibilities of that person would overload others. Instead of banking on the person improving, the rest of the family needs to put their energies into their own goals and activities as much as is possible. The family needs to teamwork to manage extra work brought in by such a person – of managing business, income etc. Instead of getting after him you need to put energies into any small steps from your own abilities to finish chores and get more income. The family needs to act like a better team around the unfair destructive person realizing he has gone into addiction and irrationality.

Most of the times families with such a person, get caught into blaming each other. This is what actually creates too many losses, lot of conflict and hurt feelings.

Rather accept we have such a person in our midst and share the extra workload and accept that it is nobody’s fault. The attitude to that person needs to be one of tough love. Convey limits to the person but do not get into power struggles with the person to become responsible and better. They are in a place of their own destructive comfort where they do not want to get better. Letting them be, but team up to protect yourselves from this person. Convey the message that they can choose to do what they wish to do with themselves for their negative behaviours with themselves such as smoking, TV, computers etc. but that they are being unfair. Leave this as a statement with no arguments about it. Agree to disagree in fact but do not argue with a person who is in destructive mode. You can also team work (you, your husband and his wife) to say ‘no’ to him to make him stop his negative behaviour to others that are not tolerable. Convey that “We care for you but we cannot accept this behaviour. This is not ok.” Find things about him that are positive like small behaviours and appreciate these. Do not flatter.

Do relaxation training for yourselves so you can ignore his negative talk, get your self esteem back and not get into believing it or taking it personally. Everything the person says and thinks is not rational and he is in a state of exaggerating all negativity.

Also medication alone is not the answer for your son. A good therapist may be able to engage your son to take psychotherapy or healing or ‘alternate therapy’ sessions and slowly reduce medication. If your son does not agree for therapy, let it go avoid making this into a heated argument. In this way getting your life back instead of focussing on him can actually paradoxically allow him to get his life back.

Yes hypnotherapy could help, but there is no guarantee. Relaxation does open up our memory banks and stress closes our memories.

Additionally relieving your stress of not being able to find it is another alternative. You can use EFT or desensitization therapies to desensitize yourself and help you in releasement of worry from not finding the pistol. Instead you can then work having a calm acceptance about it.

Alternatively you can assess real worries of not finding the weapon and register the loss with necessary authorities who may require their own process about this.

Your past life memories are trying to get your attention for healing. You can contact a past life therapist to assist.

Alternatively you can use EFT on the issues that come to your mind from your past life memories.

Another way would be to close your eyes, and revisit your past life memories as if watching them from a distance, then check if you get any new insights about what qualities or thoughts could have helped you, or what qualities, thoughts the others in that scene were limited from not having. You can next step in and try out the scene having those qualities for yourself and see how this works. Creating this new experience gives us new understanding of what happened back then. Also you can experience that you are stepping in and soothing, giving support and insights to the past life person to handle the distress. Done carefully, this can relieve you of the disturbance from the memories. There are many ways to heal past life memories and it requires being trained so it can be best to visit a trained person.

Since no medical problem is detected, you could go in for healing the body through the mind by using imageries of healing taking place inside your body – all toxicities being cleansed and removed and healing energies coming in and soothing all tissues. You can seek Emotional Freedom therapy, past life therapy and regression therapy to heal these. Using imagination and intention is very powerful in healing and at the same time balancing our lifestyle and our emotional life. Taking responsibility of our emotional life is a way of cleansing oneself of blaming others, of holding on to resentments, regrets and guilts that are unnecessary. Emotional management requires we take responsibility to exercise our powers to heal irrespective of who caused the stress to us in our lives, acquiring skills to deal with achieving our potentials and skills for dealing with our relationships. Unmanaged emotions cause a lot of our illnesses.