[confused43]

My mom doesn't know i am in Therapy. she emails me and i talk to her on the phone and sometimes i go see her. but i can't handle seeing her as much as she would like me to. she doesn't approve of me being in therapy. ( i dont think) she told me once she doesn't want the dirty laundry hung out so everyone can see it. So now i am uncomfortable and dont know what to do. I dont want to stop seeing her from time to time because we just started building a realtionship after 8yrs of not talking. Does anyone have suggestions or has anyone been in this situation. If she new what my stepfather did to me i think she would call me a lier and never forgive me. He is dead now and she worships him till this day. even though i told her what was going on when i was in high school and she said why are you causing problems?

my family doesn't like the fact that I am in therapy either. in past years I got comments of what are you going to a shrink for anyway? Are you done with with that nonsense yet. Why do you want to air our laundry in public for anyway, famlily stuff belongs in the family.

so I hid for many years that I was in therapy. and at times I dropped out of therapy when I knew I should stay in therapy partly because of family attitudes about therapy and "shrinks".

Now I don't get those comments. 5 years ago I started going over the suicidal edge and after entering therapy a DHS caseworker had my therapy court mandated after she got my medical records and found out I had a habit of dropping out because of fear of hospitals and because of family attitudes about therapy and therapy professionals. She had the judge set it up that my therapist was in charge of my therapy decisions of when I could stop seeing her and how often I had to see her.

so then when people found out I was "back into that nonsense again" I had the perfect reply - hey its not me this time Im court mandated through DHS. you can complain all you want to me but I cant drop out without losing parental rights and being arrested or committed to a mental health unit for not complying with a court order.

those that didn't like the idea of my being in therapy stopped asking "when will you be done with that nonsense" The court order has been closed and I am no longer court ordered to remain in therapy but I do so because I know that I need to continue what SKR and I began when the court order was in effect. Occasionally the question of what do you talk about in therapy comes up and I tell the person flat out - my depression, DID, flashbacks, nightmares, the party I went to (which always lightens the mood because everyone knows Im not a party hardy / bar hop type person.)

Hang in there.

[FaithisAlive]

I think when people are afraid of " airing the dirty laundry" of the family it is because they can't face the truth themselves. Your mom probably knows what happened to you because you brought it to her attention once before and she shrugged it off.Now she doesn't want to have to admit it.She may feel guilty for not doing something about it then.
If you are working on healing, then she might find herself being held accountable for not protecting you, and that part probably scares her.

My mom still wants to believe my father was perfect. .he is dead too.. and she does all she can to deflect any memories I might try to talk to her about. I think it is so she can avoid taking responsibility for her role in the abuse.

People that want to keep family secrets have something to hide.Dirty laundry and family secrets are the same thing aren't they?No mom wants to have to admit that she failed to protect her child from a predator.

I think you have to focus on yourself and your own healing process. Do whatever you must do to facilitate that. And if you are beginning to build a relationship with your mom, then be honest with her and tell her again what happened to you and how you felt when she ignored you then.If she doesn't believe you.. so what.. you know the truth.

I think you have to build a relationship being as authentic as possible, so telling her how you feel, even if only in a letter, is important.

I hope things work out for you.. stay strong.. you can find healing.. and peace...

yup at one point my mom was like that - afriad and so on. but one thing I have learned in building a new relationship with my mom is that I could confront til I was blue in the face. The bottom line is that I cant control my mother and her thoughts on the situation just like she cannot control my thoughts and actions on the situation.

I am all for confrontation and bring abuse out in the open so that it is no longer a dirty rotten secret. But i have also learned that talking over and over with family members about what happened doesn't always do any good.

so the way I handle my being in therapy and why now is flat out, and remember some good tips from Laura Davis's work about surviving abuse and reconciliation and so on - I can't control them and they can't control me. there is such a thing as agreeing to disagree and locating the common ground for building a new and better relationship. finding the common ground does not mean being dishonest and hiding what is going on. It just means that sometimes there is no compromising so the people involved need to approach their relationship from the common grounds instead of the confilct - in this case the conflict is different views on thereapy. My mom and I disagree with therapy. she thinks it is airing dirty laundry that should remain in the family and I see it asgetting the help that I need. so instead of focusing on the therapy disagreement we have found other areas that we share common ground.

my mom accepting that I am in therapy is not something I need to force her into just like her forcing me to stop therapy isn't something she is interested in doing. So instead we focus on the common ground issues that we have instead.

we have an honest relationship we just have agreed to disagree and move on.

Moving on and getting better doesn't depend on if people agree with my being in therapy or not kind of thing.

Your mother has no need to know about your therapy, its your business, not hers. you have to do what is best for you to get over the trauma you suffered years ago. and if she is frightened of that, well then that isnt your problem.

and you're not airing your dirty laundry to everyone,t hat would be if you told every person you ever met. which you're not. she'd rather forget the situation and continue to worship him. it doesnt mean you are not allowed to heal from this.

so continue to build that relationship, but just dont tell her yet about the therapy, she has no need to know. thats all you need to remember.

take care and i hope to speak soon

simon

[Peanuts]

You don't need to tell your mom that you are in therapy. It is a private and personal thing that you are doing for yourself. While it is always nice to have a parent's approval even when your a grown adult, when that approval is absent then you have to just do what is right for you. If your not comfortable discussing the topic, just don't bring it up. You don't have to lie or hide it, just don't mention. If your asked point blank, you can say that this is something you are doing for your own well being and you wouldn't be doing it if you didn't think it was helping. It is helping and that is the end of it. No further explainations are needed.

[Perna]

I was in the position you are and gradually realized I was grown and gone and living my own life and therapy was important to me so I at least mentioned it to my stepmother (who was the cause of my being in therapy in the first place!). I didn't go into detail but realized that I approved of my therapy so her dislike of it didn't make very much difference anymore; I was taking responsibility for myself and that was that. It reminded me a bit of when I went out to start my own business, quit my job first and she was extremely negative, flat out told me, "don't come asking us for money!" and was sure I would fail. She'd been raised in the Depression and the idea of quitting a "perfectly good" job was foreign and frightening to her. But I had to (and did) live my own life and the bottom line was whether I alone approved of it. I found it quite freeing to realize what my stepmother thought was literally of no more use to me; I couldn't make her love me more and if she loved me less that too didn't have much effect.

[(JD)]

Family, especially older adults from "that" generation are very suspicious and secretive. They also don't understand the concept of going to someone who is trained in helping with emotions. They see the emotional aspect of our lives as controllable and separate from the physical. I think ignorance plays a big part of this, unfortunately.

I'm sorry you can't confide in her, as you would like to be able to. The definition of "mom" seems to imply you should be able to do that. However, you are NOT alone by any stretch of the imagination.

You have to just treat her like you would any other person in your life, and not share your therapy efforts and sessions. You wouldn't share much with a coworker would you? Except how your T helped you realize this and that...

If you tried to share with her, then you would be trying to perform therapy with her, too, as you would have to begin to explain why you feel the way you do and why the family did such and such and why SHE didn't do what you needed her to do. Oh my! So involved! And few of us are up to that effort, especially when we ourselves are in therapy!

How could she understand? She won't. She is responsible in some ways, I'm sure, for you needing therapy. Why should YOU be the one to lower the boom? Nah, don't do it.

You just have to avoid the topic. If something should be said by you by accident, then attribute it to a good friend who is having trouble with her family??? You are you own best friend, btw

It's heartbreaking to not be able to share your turmoil. I think everyone with family dynamics such as yours WISH they could open their hearts and be understood and finally "accepted" and apologized to and all that. Unfortunately, if you try that, usually you only come away more hurt than ever, and angry with yourself for believing it would happen.

Don't beat yourself up over it. Fortunately, by the time you have worked through the family issues in therapy and ready to confront, you might not need to, as you will be so far beyond their understanding! Take care.