In the ongoing effort to broker some sort of peace with my parents we have been meeting with a counselor; these meetings, as you might imagine, are gut-wrenchingly painful and leave me as unable to function as if I’d run a marathon. While fighting off the flu. And at the same time writing a thesis.
So exhausting are they that the second each appointment is over a sort of protective amnesia sets in. My friends check in on me those nights, which I appreciate more than I can adequately express, but if they press for details I can supply none. The conversation and revelations from that office are one big swirl of awful. To recount them would be as excruciating as lighting oneself on fire after narrowly escaping drowning.
It would be nice to be able to forget it all entirely until the next appointment arrives to drown me once again but even the best-buried things have a habit of bubbling back up to the surface1, and what’s becoming impossible not to acknowledge is the fact that my parents and I have entirely different memories of the time I spent living in their house. Some of this is understandable. Both time and self-preservation mute the most shameful, and I have no doubt that thirty years hence I’ll also have forgotten each time I yelled, or ignored, or sent to the corner. Or worse.
Not that this makes their historical amendments any less infuriating. Did they brush off the pleas of your teenage narrator for deliverance from her father’s intolerable roaming hands? Not at all; that child petitioned for help not even once. Did they force her at seventeen to break up with her boyfriend? Oh no! They only suggested — gently! — that she wait ’til the end of college to get serious with anyone. At twenty-one did they deride the sluttishness that caused birth-control to be stashed deep beneath piles of old letters in a never-cleaned drawer, and did they force their owner to stop taking them and immediately throw them out? Of course not! They never knew! If they had, they would have applauded such prophylactic wisdom! And these are but the least egregious of the inaccuracies, the combined weight of which make me wonder if my psychological issues have moved well past a rapid cycling between mania and depression to extend all the way into psychosis.
“I think we’re wasting our time arguing over whose recollection is the best,” said the counselor before launching into an abstract of the most current research on memory. It was agreed that we should concentrate only on the most recent past, a time frame roughly encompassing the end of my marriage, their intrusions on my privacy, and my intractable adherence to rules prohibiting them unsupervised contact with my children. Relief poured through the crowded room from the direction of the couch my parents perpetually occupy. I’m sure this edict makes things nine-thousand times easier for them; given that their participation in this process must be unfathomably painful to begin with, I suppose I can’t grudge them this limitation on the discussion.
I only wish that I could forget as easily as they have.
I think I understand protective amnesia all to well. *hugs*
The counselor is trying a normal tactic for relationship counseling, in which people legitimately remember things in different ways. This tactic was not developed for relationships in which someone is an abuser, and is not useful for it, as it only allows the abuser/s to continue the abuse and the crazy-making for abuse victims.
I’ve been there, and I recognize exactly how you’re feeling. Family counseling with an abuser is hell. You don’t “owe” anything to your parents here. You just owe it to yourself and your children to do what’s necessary for your own psychological health.
You have my parents. I’ve not kept contact as you have… I’m not as forgiving. I wrote a long letter to my mother trying to understand her unwillingness to protect me and her only defenses were that I did well in school so how bad could the abuse have been and we would have had to have lived in an apartment.
Sigh.
Forgive me if I’m missing parts of the story because I only started following your blog recently and I may be a little out of the loop. I know you said the goal was to “resolve enough of our differences that we can face life in a civilized fashion.” That’s actually a pretty abstract goal because there are lots of parts that may be defined differently by the parties – your idea of “enough” might be different than theirs; their definition of “civilized” might not match yours. A more concrete goal you parents have is getting you to relax your visitation rules. It seems like if nothing other than this was accomplished they’d be happy as clams and if everything short of this is accomplished they will consider the therapy a failed effort. So far in this blog I’ve read about your abusive childhood, I’ve read that they don’t condone your lifestyle which is kind of a big deal since your feelings about sexuality, gender, and love are probably central to your parenting style, and I’ve read about your mother ignoring/forgetting about a pretty significant peanut allergy.
With those things in mind what would have to happen for you to feel comfortable enough to relax your rules? Now, considering all you know about your parents, is it even possible for them to do the things you need? If the answer is no, then you really don’t have to torture yourself like this every week. You don’t owe your parents anything and you are entitled to protect your children. If the answer is yes or maybe, then you could keep up with the sessions but focus specifically on these definable goals rather than just trying to fix everything. I might be over simplifying a little (or a lot) but going through this over and over again can’t be healthy for you.
I so agree with this wholeheartedly. Also the person above who said that the whole idea of moving on from the distant past and whose memory is correct is not, IMO, appropriate here: “it only allows the abuser/s to continue the abuse and the crazy-making for abuse victims.” Amen. While in other situations allowing your parents to live out their little fantasy of the past might be ok, in this one it’s not. Can you really really come to a resolution when them when they are unwilling to accept even the most basic responsibility for anything that happened when you were a child? And more importantly, what do you owe to people who are so completely unconcerned about YOU???
Ok I left out a crucial clause in that 2nd sentence. Please correct as follows:
Also the person above who said that the whole idea of moving on from the distant past and whose memory is correct is not appropriate here, is spot on. “… it only allows the abuser/s to continue the abuse and the crazy-making for abuse victims.” Amen.
Purely my personal experience through two sets of marital counseling sessions…it is in the counselors interest for the talks to continue.
Try thinking of someone who was told by a therapist, “We’re done. You no longer need to see me.” That doesn’t even happen in the movies.
If she had rendered an opinion on the past – with one of you or the other version being approved as Gospel – that would have been it. Better to keep the money coming in by switching the conversation to a new topic “closer to the present”…and as those issues become closer to being resolved, watch for her to revert to “history to see what caused this in the first place” and so on and so on.
I am not a therapist, nor would I play one on TV.
Just my 2 cents. Be yourself, love yourself, stand up for yourself.
*smooch*
pj
[b]Try thinking of someone who was told by a therapist, “We’re done. You no longer need to see me.” [/b]
Actually, I was. I saw a therapist every other week for 9 months after my husband and I split. She helped me through some really hard times and the 2nd to last time I saw her she said point blank that she felt I’d developed some “resiliency” and that unless I had any real concerns, she’d like to cut down our visits to once a month for 3 months, and then reassess after that. After those 3 visits, I quit seeing her, although the option is always there for me to return.
A good therapist is not there to make money off of you – they’re there to help you. A good one won’t draw out the therapy just to earn a paycheck.
Thanks for slandering all counsellors PJ as money hungry parasites, getting fat on their clients’ pain. I, for one, always ask my client if our sessions are useful & helpful, and in particular in what way are they helpful. If someone is not experiencing any positive change, then it’s time to stop, refer, or do something different.
You have protective amnesia, they have selective amnesia or rather shame-bane-amnesia. You feel like you’ll get to a point in the counseling where they’ll stop forcing themselves on you? Maybe finally say, “Hey, you’re right, we’re so sorry, please forgive us for {insert list of atrocities here}, and let us make amends.”
I know you have boundaries aag. I think we’ve seen you come about new boundaries with each experience your life has brought you that requires them. I’ve seen you express the desire for them, and I’ve seen you question some new ones you put up to maybe tweak them and help them better fit your life.
I feel like boundaries are the quintessential compnent for sanity. Abusers, of any type, have no use for them. So I see you saying something like this: “When I was eight years old you did {bad thing here}, it hurt me and I don’t understand why you did it. But because you did it, I can’t let you have this {insert trust} unless you can acknowledge what you did, and help me understand why you did it. Finally I’d like you to apologize for it, and if you want a continued relationship with me here are {insert list of new boundaries} you can practice to regain my respect, and trust.”
They have two choices for response as far as I’m concerned: “I don’t remember ever doing that to be quite honest. I would personally never violate your {insert boundary}. I really don’t understand why you think I did such a thing. I’m not going to apologize for something I didn’t do. Well, fine. I’m {insert insincere apology here}.” (This sounds like what they are doing already).
OR
“I never meant to cause you harm. I had these {insert intentions} at heart when I did {insert actions}. I do not remember the times exactly as you do, and have to admit I may have forgotten certain situations. But understand, I’m really here to repair our relationship, and rebuild our trust in each other. So even if I don’t remember the events exactly as you do, recognize the desire of my heart is to not make those same mistakes again. I want a relationship with you, and if accepting your new boundaries will bring that about, I’m willing to do that. All I ask is that you’re willing to forgive me, have grace with me, and accept that I will still make some mistakes (minus any entitlement clause).”
I have had to say something like this to a couple people before. It hurts like hell to have to say it, but what happened to necessitate it was equally painful if not more so. So if they do say something like this, understand how big it is that they got to this point. Also recognize that if you want them to say something like this, and you only want this so you can walk away feeling better about you (just saying this b/c I don’t know your motivations) then accept that you will probably not get it. That up there is a bared soul, and it requires hope and trust that you’re going to let the healing happen for them to even consider doing it.
And lets be sure, you’re going to be capable of trusting again. If there is a space in your relationship with them where you feel trust will never be rebuilt, make that clear. “I want you to know I appreciate all you’ve done. I love you, and I’m so happy that we’re doing this. In light of that, I feel like I need to be honest with you and let you know ahead of time, that this {insert specific situation} will not ever be possible in our lives. Not because I don’t love you, or that we haven’t already rebuilt a lot of trust into our relationship, but simply because I never want either of us to have to worry that this could or would ever happen again.”
That’s the final boundary. If they ask why, after all this time, we could simply use this metaphor: When you cut something, no matter what you do to repair it, even if you remake it, you will never make it as it was. You can make it better, you can make it worse, but never ever the same.
To me, rules and boundaries aren’t the same things. They seem to be, but they aren’t. Boundaries are generalized, bigger, and have profound reason foundations. Rules are transient; they change with situations, ages, new behaviors. Not that boundaries can’t change or shouldn’t change, but they cannot have the same brevity that rules do. Rules are like filters helping situations navigate the boundary or alerting you to the need for holding fast the boundary in the face of approaching crisis.
I hope this is as helpful to someone as it has been to me. I have to have boundaries, and I have to teach their importance to my children. I leave with a quote I read that really helps me when I need to put up new boundaries or compose a new set of rules for my boundaries. “If you know why, you try what you try, the truth behind effort serves you.” You need to know why you do everything you do. So that when someone asks you why, or what, or who or how, the answer is the same today, as it was yesterday, and as it will be tomorrow. (My son did not like my response in our car today. After asking the same question he’s asked three days in a row. He is testing my boundary, and qualifying my rules. And so I replied. “Let me assure you, this answer is the same as it was yesterday, and as it will be tomorrow. I’m not going to get upset that you keep challenging, so long as you understand, I will not change my mind.” I figure he has his own boundaries too. )
Finally, we don’t go through life bumping into people’s boundaries as though they were rubber walls everywhere. I can’t read your boundaries, especially if I don’t know you well enough to assess you probably have some in a certain area, so tell me. Tell me what your boundaries are. I’m clumsy, I might fall the hell all over them, but it wont be for lack of concern or desire to help. I know you have some grammar boundaries *grins* and sadly I am and always will be grammatically challenged. It takes every ounce of will power I have to not type like I type in some media. Or as I am want to do, typing “you probably do, no hate, I’m just sayin,” at the end of every line of advice to insure my tone does not offend. If you’ve ever seen the comedian Kat Williams, imagine him saying the line above. He is hilarious. I’m matter of fact, I don’t have an affinity for grey, but all I say is said with humor, compassion and hope. Even if it seems hardly so.
Addend: You have to decide what happens if your boundaries are crossed, and/or unacceptable to the parties involved. The consequences for rejection here have to be as resolute as the boundaries themselves. After the two hours it took me to write that abomination of a response up there–I read through other responses to see that a health issue was ignored by people in question. I’m fairly certain, ignoring real and present danger when it comes to children is the surest way to see the permanent end to any relationship. You can and should forgive, for your own sake, but do not forget, and do not put your trust in the flame of no hope.
I heard on Oprah the following: Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been different.
Think about that.
A similar quote attributed to Lily Tomlin is: Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.
In instances of abuse between a parent and child where the minor child is the victim I think forgiveness is quite impossible. What abused child doesn’t dream of a different past? Is hopeful that the next generation will be not go through more of the same?
Whatever you decide to do in the long run, I am praying for you.
I’m thankful that only my mother has been crazy-making, but she is someone who continually denies things have happened to the point where I started truly worrying if I was insane and remembering things that didn’t happen. Thankfully, I found out from my cousin that my Aunt (mom’s sister) is an expert at denial in the same way (and my mother has pulled the same bullshit with my brother). I’m not crazy, my mother just lies/denies things. Do you have any siblings to back up your version of events? (Just for putting your own mind at rest. Your parents will never stop doing that crazy shit they do.) Please know that other people deal with this shit, and personally I think the best thing is for me to keep a distance from my mother. I see her about once (maybe twice) a year and that’s it. We don’t talk on the phone. The less I talk to her, the more stable I become. She only knows about what goes on in the surface of my life.
Best of luck to you dealing with this. The effects can last for so very long.
Oh, I know that pain. What’s worse is that one parent shows serious signs of schizophrenia. Since that’s somewhat hereditary, I worry about how many of my own memories are real. I’m not even sure there is a real.
I’m sorry this is so hard on you, but I admire you for at least making the effort, as futile as it may seem.
However, isn’t “my intractable adherence to rules prohibiting them unsupervised contact with my children” a direct reaction to what happened to you as a child? I don’t understand how those things can be separated.
My perception is that these “counseling” sessions only perpetuate the abuse enacted upon you by your parents. The therapeutic technique of the counselor in effect absolves them of all responsibility, sending the message that the truth does not matter and all realities and recollections are equal and valid, blah blah bullshit. I hate the there-is-no-right-and-wrong form of philosophy, psychiatry, international diplomacy, et cetera. There’s almost always a right and wrong and almost never a fuzzy gray line. You are right and your parents are fucked up — this is both history and the bottom line. Your parents, in my perspective, have initiated this so-called counseling both to absolve themselves of accountability and shift guilt/shame/blame onto you and to perpetuate their abuse upon your children without your present measures of restraint. Your parents want the professional permission of this counselor in continuing their unchanging methodology of silencing you, disempowering you, and abusing you. It’s bullshit, AAG. In my opinion.
“Your parents want the professional permission of this counselor in continuing their unchanging methodology of silencing you, disempowering you, and abusing you.”
Agreed.
I don’t know what your therapy goals are, but if one of the goals of these therapy sessions is to get to a place where you will allow your children unsupervised visits with your parents, I’d stop the therapy immediately.
You just can’t go there.
You can’t risk your babies suffering through what you did. You just can’t take that risk.
You can’t.
Especially as they get older, as they get closer to the age you were when your father abused you.
I had only boys, but my father was never, not once, alone with them and had only two visits with them ever. That was only to assuage any guilt I might have if they were sad for never having met him after he died. I did it for me, not for him.
You do whatever you need to do. While it is true that some people remember things differently, it does not make your memories inaccurate. You don’t need validation of what you remember.
Why are you doing this, AAG?
And quite frankly, is it doing anyone any good?
That is most emphatically not one of the goals. Never fear. :)
Parents love to forget childhood pain they inflicted on us. Its our cross to bear while rearing our next generation. Your posting makes my heart hurt.
Kudos for you in trying to bridge this gap thru therapy. You are a strong soul for doing this. I myself have no strength nor will to even attempt this route with my parents. I can easily forget the pain of my childhood, its the recent pain that hurts more and is unforgivable. “I am not going to help you with your wedding”, changing locations of my baby shower due to travel constraints by doctor ” You didn’t expect me to come, did you?” conversations of diagnosing my autistic child “What did you do to him?”, and many more hurtful words from my parents that could go on endlessly here. Worst part is my mother would address these issues with a lame excuse and then consider it “water under the bridge” expecting it all to be ok again. In her mind she made it right and all is good. Sadly, there is only one sibling out of four that is close with our parents. They don’t find that odd. They find us faulty.
Pain from my childhood rises up during moments of disciplining my children. I cry and let my heart bleed the pain in hopes that my babies learn of my parents imperfections and how I do not want to repeat these crimes. My hopes is to help them achieve empathy and consideration.
You are definitely a better person then I, and they should be thankful for that.
“Parents love to forget childhood pain they inflicted on us. Its our cross to bear while rearing our next generation.”
As a parent this is my fear. Even without abuse the childhood mantra of, “You just don’t understand me; you violated my privacy. You yelled at me, and you spanked me, all because of your stupid rules or your backwards thinking.” There was a time back when my grandmother was raising my aunt that society thought you could beat some sense into someone. We look back and say that was abuse, but the previous generation would deny it, or worse say they didn’t know any other way of handling certain situations.
In my fear of what I might be because of how I was raised, I set up goals and expectations of myself that I couldn’t live up to. Sometimes in doing what we feel is best for our children we over look better options or better solutions to our problems. Child psychology has made leaps and bounds over what it was just 25 years ago, and even further forward from 50 years. I don’t want to justify abuse or decisions that left people in the pit of abusive situations. We can make better choices now than your parents did, and far better than the generation before.
I appreciate Oprah, but I disagree with her. Even in thinking about that quote, I do not believe forgiveness is about the past. Because we do not forget what is done to us. It is in refusing to forget that we have the opportunity to learn and change thereby preventing cycles of abuse. I rather believe that forgiveness is for the present and the future. Forgiveness is for you the abused, not for the abuser. It gives you the ability to let go of bitterness and rage. We’ve seen bitter people, remember the man from the pervy site with the unrealistic and seemingly bitter outlook on his dismal prospects of finding a date with so many criteria. That man needs to let go of ALOT of bs. Just sayin’ you know.
I like that you agreed with : “Your parents want the professional permission of this counselor in continuing their unchanging methodology of silencing you, disempowering you, and abusing you.”
—Now what will you do about it?— (I don’t even know you, but i have this strong desire to hug you tight, promise you it will get better, make you laugh, and help you move on. I’m such a pain in the ass, you have no idea. *grins* I kinda unleashed on this topic, I really try to restrain when posting here, because this is your place. I’m thinking of you, and hoping you really do get rest from this situation soon.)
This sounds like something out of Kafka’s “The Trial.”
I didn’t read all the comments, my guess is your readers have been with you long enough to offer insights that we might agree or agree to disagree on. What I have stopped to tell you is this: While I applaud your courage, for certainly you have it in spades to sit in a room with those who have invalidated and abused you and/or your trust and might continue to do so out of self preservation; I have to share with you quite honestly, that at the ripe age of 42 ;) (as though that really means anything at all), 13 years of not speaking to, and then 10 years struggling and I mean desperately struggling through a reconciliation that often left me not just sapped, but damned near ready to collapse every time that woman came to see me….this year, I decided that it was time to put me first, and I went to non-communication status. I’m not saying its for everyone, or even for you…but for me, because I was dealing with a woman who refused to acknowledge ANY and I mean ANNNNNY personal responsibility for the past, the present or the for the foreseeable future, for me….telling her why I felt the way I did and telling her I was done, whether she read it or not…has allowed me some blissful measure of peace of mind.
It released me, and I needed out of that prison. I had done all the time I could do, been punished beyond fair, tried too hard, failed too often and realized…crazy might just be that I was still trying. Because SHE was always the same. I had to walk away. I walked away because I wanted a quality of life that I would never have with her in it, that I NEEDED, for my sanity.
Be well….*hugs*
Elle’s comment really struck home with me, though in my case the abusive person was not a parent, but my sister. and we don’t really acknowledge that siblings can be abusive, do we? but my point is, i rarely spoke to my sister for years after i got out of the house. when i started talking to her again (at the request of our father, and after she was in therapy and on medication) we finally had a “heart to heart.” i asked for a public location, and drove seperately to minimize the chance of hysterics on her part, and so i could leave when I wanted. she danced around the decade or so of misery she put me through, and when i began providing specifics, she looked at me blankly. here, in sum was her “apology”: “I don ‘t remember any of that, but those sound like things i might have said during that time in my life.”
that’s all i got. and even that was such a change in her demeanor that i renewed an effort to communicate with her. to no avail. the same old pattern emerged, of her belittling me, blaming me for things done to her by other people, and blaming me for her own perceptions of things. she a master of projection, my sister.
so, i don’t talk to her much. at least not about anything important, and when she starts badmouthing other members of the family i don’t answer and change the subject. and i guess that’s the point of my comment. sometimes, it’s better for everyone involved to limit, or end, communication. my sister gets the villian she occasionally needs to make sense of her life, and i get the peace and reduction in drama that i need. and when we are together, it’s tolerable. i don’t know if something like that is workable in this situation.
it may be futile to try to get the parents to agree that they did anything wrong. the counseling my be futile, and exhausting. the parents may never be pleased until they are capitulated too and obeyed completely. so, what do YOU want out of the counseling?
Wow. Kudos for attempting this — I grew up in an abusive household and there are some things that I simply do not discuss with the parental units. Their selective memory, I have no doubt, is a defense mechanism; there’s simply nothing that will excuse what was done, leaving nothing but denial for them as an option.
The way I have looked at this is: my job is to make sure it stops with me. It would be great if I could go back and fix it somehow, but I can’t. They probably can’t either. What’s done is done. I will always have a damaged relationship with my parents, and it sounds like you will too. I’m sorry.
Though I’ve only posted here once, I’ve read this blog for some few months now, and read back many more months or years in the history (including before the new server). Maybe I missed it in all those old posts. . . but what is it that keeps you pushing this rock up the mountain?
Damn fine question, Cloudchaser. Damn fine question. :)