It is like he is defaulting blame to his wife and child when it would be better if he owned it.

My T did something similiar yet different. She made the decision to close her practise, downsize and go online permanently during the pandemic. I obviously logically understood this was the best decision for her and her family. But it also impacted me and my therapy negatively. From my perspective it also all happened quite quickly so there wasn't a lot of time to get used to the idea.

I wanted to talk about my feelings of hurt and anger around i (It is my therapy after all) even though logically I understood. She kept defaulting to blaming the pandemic and how unfortunate it was that this had happened which really bothered me. When she asked why this bothered me so much I said it was because she was not owning her decision. SHE had decided this. She made the decision to downsize and move online permanently so she needed to own it . No one including the forced her to do that. Yes the pandemic had made things change temporarily but not necessarily forever, I felt it was reasonable to be annoyed with her for a bit even if it wasn't rationale. I don't know if she fully agreed with me but being able to verbalize it and be annoyed with her and have her hold that annoyance even momentarily was very helpful to me.

Often as kids many of us weren't allowed or able to share that decisions our parents made hurt us or impacted us in negative ways. There is something healing about being able to do so in therapy.