therapist/client cultural differences

This has been a thread for me throughout therapy but not something I realistically considered talking about with my therapist until today. This might be kinda subtle so bear with me...

I'm a twenty-something rural southerner who now lives in a progressive southern city. I grew up in a conservative evangelical home and am a generation away from white trash growing tobacco in ditches. My family says things like "warsh" and "wuter." Family loyalty, interdependence and rootedness have always been ingrained in me.

My therapist is fifty-something, (obviously) highly-educated, upper middle class, urban, Jewish, and a yankee. He is a sweetly old-fashioned liberal of the Vietnam generation. He believes in talking about things and I sure as hell don't.

I really like him, and have no problems with any of these things. Sometimes, it makes me feel a little bit insecure...I am not sure whether he quite knows what to do with me (maybe he isn't even aware of this stuff in the same way I am...I'm queer and liberal and feminist and all kinds of things that confuse people when they come up against how paradoxically traditional and southern I am).

I also sometimes I think that he doesn't quite get that my intense family loyalty (in the face of some ****ed-up behavior on my parents' part), feeling of responsibility for my (developmentally disabled) younger brother, and my guilt about not being a dutiful enough daughter is somewhat cultural.

I think that A. thinks all of this is enmeshment, and that it is pathological, but I think he might be taking that a little too far. I'm trying to tow the line between establishing healthy boundaries and protecting myself, and keeping my responsibilities to my family and my identity.

Sorry, this is super long and detailed, but does anybody else have stories or thoughts about cultural differences between you and your therapist? And how that plays out in therapy?

I thought my issues were from being Italian. But in the past several years I've been able to talk to my aunts (also ItalIan) without my mother around, and was able to see it's not about being Italian. Separating from your parents when it involves rejecting certain limitations, shall we call them?, is very guilt-inducing and very difficult. But you can't hold yourself back. Your family won't respect you for it. Only if it were natural for you to do so.

This is a very important question.
Where to draw the line between culture and pathology?

My own T has very similar culture to my own, but there are certain attitudes that I regard as important that she doesn't subscribe to.

One culture clash which can be very awkward is between believers and unbelievers.

It sounds as if you have set up what you call "healthy boundaries"--that before engaging in therapy your top priority is protecting family loyalties, family responsibilities, and what you call your "identity."

I don't know what your issues are or what your therapy goals are, but it seems that you've walled off most of everything that therapy might deal with. I don't think it's a cultural difference ... More a question of what are you hoping to accomplish, when you've limited the "allowed" field of focus?

Like Roadie, I wonder if this might be confusion on your part. It might be somehow comforting to hold onto something from your past. It's known to you?

perhaps though, it's keeping you from exploring exactly who you are.

I think there are things that are culture and there are things that are pathological. I also think that there are some cultures that are pathological.

For me, therapy works best when I put it all on the table for discussion. When I open myself to considering all different points of view. I can then truly chose for myself what I keep and what I don't.

I may end up totally disagreeing with an opinion, but at least it is a considered disagreement and not a reaction based in fear.

It can be very hard to cast off the evil that is known for the potential evil unknown.

Also, FWIW, I would hope that you might consider the phrase "yankee" to be offensive to some.

While I do not inhabit the world of the politically correct, I am from the south and know that it is usually used as an insult rather than to describe a geographic location.

Something to consider maybe.

Athena, my family was from the south, although we lived in the midwest. They used those same excuses to try to keep us captive and under control. It's not about tradition or cultural; it's about control and a lack of healthy boundaries. You can have physical and emotional space and a life of your own and still love them and care for them. If they fight you on that, that will be your BIG red flag that this ISN'T cultural. If they support you in separating and starting your own life, then you can maybe argue this is just a cultural difference and your T just doesn't get your culture. Until you at least try to live your own life, you'll never know.

I have to admit, I liked the yankee reference. I am from the south - it is a descriptive, if not always complimentary, term.

Athena... I am a "Yankee".... actually they call me a "Damn Yankee" because I have lived in the South for more then 1/2 my life. I am also liberal,lesbian and non denominational at best. My first T was a heterosexual, Jewish lady from Yankee land and my current T is a heterosexual male southerner who went to Baptist seminary. None of their attributes has anything to do with providing good therapy. We are all different on some level, but we are all alike on so many more.

FWIW, I grew up poor and if you grow up poor it seems that most don't really want to see you leave being poor. My family was like that, they don't want me getting a good job or house as they will see it as being "better" then they are. It's really not about my happiness , but more about them not feeling any pressure to do better.

I believe we only have one responsibility when we are born, to become ourselves. When we get old enough to see more clearly, have some experience under our belt, we can choose what to keep of what we have "learned". Just because it comes from our family does not make it right or something of value to us! The real advantage families have is that we're a captive audience for more years than we are to most other things.

Being "Southern" in the way you are now, is a choice. It's a little like being an "artist" or "writer" or identifying with anything else and calling it "mine". Because you have been ingrained to be super close does not mean you necessarily have to stay super close. Your brother is your parents' and his own problem, not yours. You can choose to make him yours or you can choose to walk away or your can choose something in-between, etc.

We pick up good and bad habits from our childhood and those we are raised by/with. But the bulk of what makes them "good" or "bad" is our deciding they do/do not fit with what we want and need, ourselves, in our individual lives.

My therapist was, literally, a whole different nationality, so could not begin to understand my growing up. I was sexually abused by a man of her nationality (made therapy a little dicey for awhile, that did :-) but whether someone "understands" us exactly or not is not really one of the goals of therapy, I don't think. We have to understand ourselves and how we relate to others, not particularly other people's quirks and orientations.

My father's father came from a line of northerners from Minnesota and the northeast and my father's mother was born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, her grandfather fighting on the South's side, his on the North. Their marriage didn't work out very well and sometimes I fantasize about whether their family backgrounds could have contributed to that

Very interesting topic. I'm from Michigan and have lived in Kentucky for 18 years. I really like this family loyalty and interdependence that I see, until I see it holding people back. (So basically if all is well in the family it is good. If all is not well then it doesn't work out so nicely.) People in Kentucky are good natured and very nice and willing to help. Qualities that I didn't see a lot in Michigan so it was really refreshing.

Good luck to you in working this out.

what does Yankee mean anyway? Im from Canada and I dont follow politics very closely. But this all sounds very funny to me. no insult intended. oh and we dont say warsh or wuter but my grandma said "margeen" instead of margarine. and my mom says Thom instead of Tom. and we all call her "Elner" but her name is Eleonore.

to answer your question, i think my T is a divorced mother of two, she is a doctor of pyschology, and she seems smart. She speaks with the same accent the same way i do i guess. No big cultural difference here.

Hey--thanks Perna. I think you and MKAC and others who pointed out that "culture" can be a smokescreen for control are probably right. I feel a lot of guilt for not respecting my "culture" and for embracing values that my family hates, and fights me on, but part of me is willing to consider the idea that this is just another justification for family secrecy and false uniqueness....like, we're not screwed up, we're just Southern!

LolaCabanna, (and anyone else offended by my use of "yankee") I didn't intend anything insulting or pejorative by it--I use it descriptively and with my tongue firmly in my cheek. Nothing insulting was intended and I'm sorry about that. My therapist is also a "damn Yankee," having lived in the south longer than I've been alive, and I think he's awesome. (I'm certainly happy that he's here!)

I also wasn't making a value judgment about therapy with therapists who are different from you. I don't think my therapist being different from me means he isn't providing "good" therapy or that good therapy isn't possible in the context of difference.

My question was not about the quality of therapy but about whether the perception of cultural difference complicates things for people and in what ways. For me, I think the idea of A. being different from me allows me to think exactly what I've been thinking: maybe he's just wrong about me and my family because he doesn't quite get where I'm coming from.

And I think that because it's scary to think he might be right and comforting to hold on to this, as a lot of you pointed out.