During my first therapy appointment I was really up tight and I was trying to explain why I was there. I had never been in therapy before and it took me over 6 month to even make an appointment. My H was very depressed at the time, I had become depressed too at this point, and our home was in total chaos. H was a raging bull, verbally abusing the kids and me. In his mounting frustration with his world he had moved into the realm of physically abusing our children which FINALLY, finally triggered me enough to act and seek help.

So this first appointment I am trying to vaguely and without risking getting Children and Youth involved, to explain the situation. I was very afraid I would say something wrong and end up having my children taken away. I managed to get out that H and I were in serious conflict with regard to appropriate ways to get our kids to comply with our requests.:-)

At the end of this session my T shared with me her assessment of the situation and recommended course of action. "Well, it sounds like you need to have a calm sitdown with your H to decide on a better discipline plan for your children."

I just remember calmly taking this profound insight in and saying something like,"OK, thank you, hadn't thought about trying that approach!". I left that session and sat in my car breathing for a few moments and thinking..."Did I really just spend $150 dollars to basically hear, "I think you need to talk to your husband about his progessively violent behavior." Luckily I blamed myself for not adequately conveying my situation and decided to go one more time.