Why, Ms. Therapist?
On top of none of us knowing WHY we're in family therapy, everyone in my family leaves sessions with Ms. Therapist feeling hurt and targeted and unheard. She paints this picture of us as two manipulative children who prey on our spineless mother, who doesn't know how to cope with her own emotions and lashes out at us unpredictably, and then tries to buy our affections back with material items which in turn enables our manipulative ways. Today was all about how we're two kids trying to take over in the family hierarchy and she needs to 'challenge' what we feel 'entitled to' by taking away privileges, which, um, as my brother pointed out is basic parenting and probably worked, sure. When we were, you know, five. Now when we act badly, my mother has a conversation with us about it. Maturely. And we both respect her enough not to act out because, um, we're self-aware and have impulse control.
Stating these things explicitly got us nowhere. I also got a lecture about how it is impossible for me to not understand how others perceive me and my actions, because that's 'just a part of being human'. Um, I'm sorry. I guess I didn't get the memo.
She described it as how if you're sitting in a room and imagined looking at the room if you were standing at the other end, looking at yourself. I said I can visualize that and enumerate multiple possibilities about how others might perceive my actions but I can't just pick one and say it's the most likely, or that x person ascribes to it. I literally do not know how to do that. I have always struggled with it. But no, apparently I'm lying, and she's very disappointed that I feel the need to 'pretend' and 'deny' that I can make these judgments. Okay. Sure thing. Thank you for your helpful assessment of what I can keenly remember struggling with since grade school. Fuck off, please and thank you.
Half of the session was spent subtly hinting that my brother has no self-control or discipline, and when he was joking around a little bit during a 'visualization experiment' she took him completely seriously, as she takes all his jokes, and kept admonishing him. I wanted to bite her face off. We got back in the car at the end of the hour and spent the whole ride home talking about how a) completely dense and closed-minded she is and b) how these sessions are harmful, not helpful, to all of us. She can keep her fucking family hierarchy and its dictatorship and 'this is how it should be'. We're happy with how we are.
Stating these things explicitly got us nowhere. I also got a lecture about how it is impossible for me to not understand how others perceive me and my actions, because that's 'just a part of being human'. Um, I'm sorry. I guess I didn't get the memo.
She described it as how if you're sitting in a room and imagined looking at the room if you were standing at the other end, looking at yourself. I said I can visualize that and enumerate multiple possibilities about how others might perceive my actions but I can't just pick one and say it's the most likely, or that x person ascribes to it. I literally do not know how to do that. I have always struggled with it. But no, apparently I'm lying, and she's very disappointed that I feel the need to 'pretend' and 'deny' that I can make these judgments. Okay. Sure thing. Thank you for your helpful assessment of what I can keenly remember struggling with since grade school. Fuck off, please and thank you.
Half of the session was spent subtly hinting that my brother has no self-control or discipline, and when he was joking around a little bit during a 'visualization experiment' she took him completely seriously, as she takes all his jokes, and kept admonishing him. I wanted to bite her face off. We got back in the car at the end of the hour and spent the whole ride home talking about how a) completely dense and closed-minded she is and b) how these sessions are harmful, not helpful, to all of us. She can keep her fucking family hierarchy and its dictatorship and 'this is how it should be'. We're happy with how we are.