Sometimes the best thing you can do is to stop seeing a therapist and switch to another. It’s a tough thing to do as you may have a lot of time, money and emotion invested in your therapy but in my case, it proved to be the right move.
I had been seeing a therapist that only came to town on the weekends so I could only see her on Saturdays. I had originally picked this counselor because she was one of two psychologist that were covered by my insurance. She was good but I was beginning to think that it wasn’t the best fit and I was growing tired of having a chunk taken out of my Saturdays. So I made the decision to switch to the other psychologist covered by insurance.
As I said in an earlier post, it took 2 sessions just to do the intake interview, so right away I knew he was being very thorough. He’s also had a lot of experience with Parental Alienation and has done work for the courts dealing with divorces and custody issues - determining what’s going on with the parents and their children. From what he’s told me it sounds like he’s seen it all.
In last week’s session we were going over the situation surrounding my daughter. How it’s been 10 years since she broke down and cut off all contact with me for no apparent reason. How that has been extended to everyone on my side of the family and how we reunited briefly when she came to a Halloween party at my sister’s house but then almost immediately she did a 180 and cut off all contact again.
After listening to all this, my counselor gave several generic examples of dysfunctional parent/child relationships. In all of these, no matter what the parent had or hadn’t done, their child always wanted to have some kind of a relationship with them.
In one case there was a woman with several children who was prostituting herself for drug money. The courts usually try to maintain families but in this case they didn’t after listening to the older children and realizing they knew this was not a good situation for them & they didn’t want to be with their mom, so they severed parental rights. Yet despite all of this when the woman ended up in the hospital with a life threatening infection from drug use, all of her kids visited her and stayed there until she was well enough to leave. In other words the love for their mother overrode their desire to be free of her parenting.
“I’m concerned,” he said, “that your daughter’s extreme behavior might be indicating that she has some underlying mental health issues. The fact that it’s been so long and so complete & has grown to include everyone in your family indicates that it’s more than just being pissed off at her dad.”
That’s when it dawned on me that just like my father’s day visit with my dad and his Alzheimers, I had been buying into the craziness of my daughter and her mom.
I’d always worried that my little girl had some depression as my niece (who had lived with her for a year) shared with me that she saw signs of depression like excessive sleeping, down moods that lasted a long time, no social life, etc. but it never dawned on me that I might be letting myself be a part of her illness. I was taking the estrangement personally which is hard not to do when you’re rejected by anyone, but especially so when it’s your own child. Taking it personally also made it easy for guilt to grow and grow along with a huge amount of confusion as I really had no idea of what it was I did to deserve it.
When I look at other issues in my life I can see where I also bought in to other’s craziness. Like when my best friend was dying of cancer. He acted in ways that were very hurtful to me and his family. Now I can see it wasn’t so much me, as him and what he was going through.
When my ex kicked our son out of her house and then dumped his belongings in trash bags on my doorstep was another moment of craziness injecting itself into my life. I felt terrible for my boy and somewhat guilty too but it really was more about my ex and her issues than anything my son or I did. It’s hard to see that when you’re in the middle of things and emotions are swirling around you.
It hasn’t made everything all better as I am still very concerned for my daughter’s welfare, but it has eased the pain in living with it and offered me a way out of the downward spiral of guilt, anger and confusion. Sometimes things are completely out of our control. A good therapist can help you see that. With 3 visits under my belt to a new therapist I’ve gotten a new perspective.
I had been seeing a therapist that only came to town on the weekends so I could only see her on Saturdays. I had originally picked this counselor because she was one of two psychologist that were covered by my insurance. She was good but I was beginning to think that it wasn’t the best fit and I was growing tired of having a chunk taken out of my Saturdays. So I made the decision to switch to the other psychologist covered by insurance.
As I said in an earlier post, it took 2 sessions just to do the intake interview, so right away I knew he was being very thorough. He’s also had a lot of experience with Parental Alienation and has done work for the courts dealing with divorces and custody issues - determining what’s going on with the parents and their children. From what he’s told me it sounds like he’s seen it all.
In last week’s session we were going over the situation surrounding my daughter. How it’s been 10 years since she broke down and cut off all contact with me for no apparent reason. How that has been extended to everyone on my side of the family and how we reunited briefly when she came to a Halloween party at my sister’s house but then almost immediately she did a 180 and cut off all contact again.
After listening to all this, my counselor gave several generic examples of dysfunctional parent/child relationships. In all of these, no matter what the parent had or hadn’t done, their child always wanted to have some kind of a relationship with them.
In one case there was a woman with several children who was prostituting herself for drug money. The courts usually try to maintain families but in this case they didn’t after listening to the older children and realizing they knew this was not a good situation for them & they didn’t want to be with their mom, so they severed parental rights. Yet despite all of this when the woman ended up in the hospital with a life threatening infection from drug use, all of her kids visited her and stayed there until she was well enough to leave. In other words the love for their mother overrode their desire to be free of her parenting.
“I’m concerned,” he said, “that your daughter’s extreme behavior might be indicating that she has some underlying mental health issues. The fact that it’s been so long and so complete & has grown to include everyone in your family indicates that it’s more than just being pissed off at her dad.”
That’s when it dawned on me that just like my father’s day visit with my dad and his Alzheimers, I had been buying into the craziness of my daughter and her mom.
I’d always worried that my little girl had some depression as my niece (who had lived with her for a year) shared with me that she saw signs of depression like excessive sleeping, down moods that lasted a long time, no social life, etc. but it never dawned on me that I might be letting myself be a part of her illness. I was taking the estrangement personally which is hard not to do when you’re rejected by anyone, but especially so when it’s your own child. Taking it personally also made it easy for guilt to grow and grow along with a huge amount of confusion as I really had no idea of what it was I did to deserve it.
When I look at other issues in my life I can see where I also bought in to other’s craziness. Like when my best friend was dying of cancer. He acted in ways that were very hurtful to me and his family. Now I can see it wasn’t so much me, as him and what he was going through.
When my ex kicked our son out of her house and then dumped his belongings in trash bags on my doorstep was another moment of craziness injecting itself into my life. I felt terrible for my boy and somewhat guilty too but it really was more about my ex and her issues than anything my son or I did. It’s hard to see that when you’re in the middle of things and emotions are swirling around you.
It hasn’t made everything all better as I am still very concerned for my daughter’s welfare, but it has eased the pain in living with it and offered me a way out of the downward spiral of guilt, anger and confusion. Sometimes things are completely out of our control. A good therapist can help you see that. With 3 visits under my belt to a new therapist I’ve gotten a new perspective.