Posted by Dinah on July 25, 2008, at 14:08:36
In reply to Help!!!!, posted by Phillipa on July 25, 2008, at 12:32:40
I wish I could help. That's a scary situation.
If it helps any, in my experience with a similar situation, the person did show up. My mother had managed to track his credit card purchases. I'm not sure how. But if your daughter's husband shares credit cards with her, she can probably contact the credit card companies to find out when and if the the cards were used. If they don't share cards, she probably can't get that information. I'm not sure how my mother managed it.
Through those cards we got a pretty good picture that it was probably him using them (because the charges were of the normal sort, not the sort that someone stealing a card would use), and that he was running away in a particular direction. He eventually did get in touch, and everything was sorted out.
In a few unfortunately similar situations, I discovered a few things.
No matter what you tell yourself, it's still a scary situation. But it can be scarier if you dwell on worst case scenarios. Thinking of the not worst case can help. There are usually noncatastrophic possibilities.
It helps to feel like you're doing something. It doesn't even have to be something useful. Just doing something gives one the feeling that control has not totally slipped away.
I'm not sure if there's any concrete help you can give your daughter, but maybe you could think of some emotional help you can give? Or some symbolic help? Even something really out there, like knitting a blanket for him to use when he gets home, can be oddly helpful.
Can you make a list of noncatastrophic reasons he might have disappeared?
Can you think of ways that you can *do* something? Whether or not those things are sensible? As long as they aren't harmful, they don't need to be sensible.
poster:Dinah
thread:841982
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20080709/msgs/842002.html