I've never really reconciled if it's a positive or negative thing to reflect on the past. In psychotherapy, sometimes although it's still your perspective, at least there can be someone who knows you but isn't personally involved. In daily life it can become an obsession, particularly for those who masochistically love to mentally beat up on themselves about mistakes and unfortunate occurrences from their life. There's definitely something to be gained by a third perspective, but when only one of the two conflicting personalities is present, is that a true reflection on whether it really was a fair judgement?
That's the question that my family raised when I called them out on Father's Day and struck out at my father and my sister (of course the fact that my father verbally hit out at my mother gives some credence to how I see things since he did it right there, AGAIN in front of at least all involved parties, if not a third neutral one).
Our family has gone for therapy together in the past, most notably when I was ten and we attended some incredibly rich house where obviously she must have charged an outrageous sum. Mostly it was focused on my mother and father's dysfunctional relationship, my sister's puberty acting out, and I sat and listened for weeks. Until I started crying in the session since I not only had to listen to all of my parents' and sister's issues, I realized I was basically an afterthought. Hell, my parents didn't even realize they hadn't put me in their will until about 4 years ago.
I'm trying not to think about these things since I know it's not a good place to go. Yet almost every time I go home they want to go back to family therapy, convinced that I just haven't had, you know, an hour with a stranger to air all of our grievances which will fix all of our problems! Lately it's been a popular topic with our new styles of dysfunctions. Denial is nothing new to me, there were years when I and my family practiced it actively, but I try not do so anymore, at least with myself. I doubt family therapy is the solution to our exponentially growing issues.
I'm tired of conflict. I'm tired of having to defend why bringing all of this up would REALLY not help without some very serious long-term therapy. Even then, with my parents who have seen at least four marriage counselors and still can't get their shit together over 30 years of marriage, how do they think that this could actually change things?
I'm trying not be angry since too often there's no outlet for years of mental pain except to respond to in some way, which leads back to the family and mental conflicts I'm trying to avoid. I have to hope that having some distance from my family will have a positive effect on me, if not on our family dynamics and especially not on my parents' relationship. I guess that's not terrible.
Tomorrow I want to get out in the sun, enjoy the day, and not worry about any of these things or the other issues taking up my mind. I want to be calm, I want to be at peace, not dealing with any of this before I speak to them again. I want to just focus on the present and for some time just deal without the past.
That's the question that my family raised when I called them out on Father's Day and struck out at my father and my sister (of course the fact that my father verbally hit out at my mother gives some credence to how I see things since he did it right there, AGAIN in front of at least all involved parties, if not a third neutral one).
Our family has gone for therapy together in the past, most notably when I was ten and we attended some incredibly rich house where obviously she must have charged an outrageous sum. Mostly it was focused on my mother and father's dysfunctional relationship, my sister's puberty acting out, and I sat and listened for weeks. Until I started crying in the session since I not only had to listen to all of my parents' and sister's issues, I realized I was basically an afterthought. Hell, my parents didn't even realize they hadn't put me in their will until about 4 years ago.
I'm trying not to think about these things since I know it's not a good place to go. Yet almost every time I go home they want to go back to family therapy, convinced that I just haven't had, you know, an hour with a stranger to air all of our grievances which will fix all of our problems! Lately it's been a popular topic with our new styles of dysfunctions. Denial is nothing new to me, there were years when I and my family practiced it actively, but I try not do so anymore, at least with myself. I doubt family therapy is the solution to our exponentially growing issues.
I'm tired of conflict. I'm tired of having to defend why bringing all of this up would REALLY not help without some very serious long-term therapy. Even then, with my parents who have seen at least four marriage counselors and still can't get their shit together over 30 years of marriage, how do they think that this could actually change things?
I'm trying not be angry since too often there's no outlet for years of mental pain except to respond to in some way, which leads back to the family and mental conflicts I'm trying to avoid. I have to hope that having some distance from my family will have a positive effect on me, if not on our family dynamics and especially not on my parents' relationship. I guess that's not terrible.
Tomorrow I want to get out in the sun, enjoy the day, and not worry about any of these things or the other issues taking up my mind. I want to be calm, I want to be at peace, not dealing with any of this before I speak to them again. I want to just focus on the present and for some time just deal without the past.
posted by AnonymousX at 9:32 PM
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