November 19, 2024 • 55 mins
Hey, Fellow Travelers. This week we’re in session with Nicole, whose parents are getting divorced after nearly 40 years of marriage and is surprised to find that she has a lot of feelings about this, despite being an adult with a husband and kids of her own. We help her to see that her role as the unofficial family mediator is holding her back--and has been for many years.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey, fellow travelers. I'm Larie Gottlieb. I'm the author of
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, and I write the
Dear Therapist advice column for The Atlantic.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And I'm Guy Wench. I'm the author of Emotional First Aid,
and I write the Dear Guy advice column for TED.
And this is Dear Therapists.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Each week we invite you into a session so you
can learn more about yourself by hearing how we help
other people come to understand themselves better and make changes
in their lives.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
So sit back and welcome to today's session. This week,
a woman feels the burden of being caught in the
middle when her parents divorce after almost forty years.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
She was basically saying, I can't be with him anymore.
I don't even like him anymore. I don't think I'm
in love with him. I don't even want to have
sex with him anymore.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Way too much information, Yeah, yeah, First A quick note,
Dear Therapist is for informational purposes only. It does not
constitute medical or psychological advice and is not a substitute
for a professional health care advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always
seek the advice of your physician. Mental health professional or
other qualified health provider with any questions you may have
regarding a medical or psychological condition. By submitting a letter,
(01:12):
you are agreeing to let iHeartMedia use it in partworn full,
and we may edit it for length and clarity. In
the sessions you'll hear. All names have been changed for
the privacy of our fellow travelers. Hey Laurie, Hi guy.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
So we have an interesting letter today because you know,
divorce is tough on kids, but in this case, the
kid's an adult and it's still tough. So here it
is deotherapists. I'm an adult and my parents are separating
after thirty nine years of marriage. I'm the youngest child
and an excellent sympathetic ear. I listen to my mom's
problems about my dad, my mom's problems about my sister,
(01:48):
who is definitely not on board. My sister's issue is
about not being on board, my dad's problems about my mom,
and my dad trying to tell me my mom needs
more support. I don't know how to deal with all
of my own emotion related to my parents divorcing as
an adult, much less everyone else's feelings about it. I
need help, Sincerely, Nicole.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
That is a really tough one because I think that
a lot of people think that when you're an adult
in your parents divorce that somehow the divorce is going
to be relatively easy. In fact, I think that's the
reason that so many parents wait until their children are
out of the house to split up. But in fact,
when you're older, there are certain problems that you have
(02:30):
that might not show up if your parents divorced when
you were younger, such as what she's experiencing, which is
being thrust into the role of mediator armchair therapists, to
the parents, being pulled in all different directions, and also
probably learning more about the details of the divorce that
she would have been shielded from if she were younger.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
So there are plenty of people who get divorced and
are aware that they should shield the kids when the
kids are young, and when their kids are adults, there's
just a little less imperative on their rent to shield them,
and they actually go, oh great, they're adults, so I
can really lean on them now for my rebuilding, for support,
And it puts such a burden on those adult children.
(03:13):
So I totally understand the trap she's in.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, I do too, So let's go find out what's
going on with her.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
You're listening to Deo Therapists from iHeartRadio. We'll be back
after a quick break.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
I'm Lori Gottlieb and I'm.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Guy Wench and this is Dear Therapist. Hey Nicole, welcome
to the show.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Thanks, I'm excited to be here, Henchole, Hi, Sonicole.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
We'd love to hear a little bit more about what's
happening right now with your parents and in what way
they're putting you in the middle.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I definitely don't think it's exclusive to my parents. It's
kind of always been my role in life has been
the listener. So it's my parents, my mom, my dad,
and then my sister. I do have a brother as well,
but he is just not that involved with our family life.
He's kind of often doing his own thing. But everybody
(04:14):
always comes to me when they have a problem with
somebody else in the family, and then I kind of
carry the burden of everybody's and try to give advice
where possible. And at this point though, it's kind of
like everybody's coming to me, and then everybody's problem is
with the other.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
Person, which is a little more difficult.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
How did that play out when you were younger with
everybody coming to What kinds of things would they come
to you with when you were a child.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Generally, it's always been family stuff, like my mom's mad
at my sister, and then I would play the mediator,
or my mom is mad at my dad, and I
would try to mediate or help.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
How young were you when this kind of thing started?
Speaker 3 (04:58):
I would say young teenager, like my sister and my
mom always had more conflict. I avoid conflict in at
all the costs. So my mom and my sister had conflict.
So there's definitely some there, but it's definitely progressed.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
As I've become more of an adult.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
I had my own child pretty young, and once I
did that, I was like, Okay, you're an adult now,
and we're going to give you all these problems. I
was only like twenty two.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
I imagine that as any new parent, you probably needed
help yourself. Who did you go to for advice or
for help?
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Primarily my mom, just because my sister had her child
like a couple of years after me, so it was
primarily my mom. And I have one living grandparent who's
not involved in my life, and then one passed away grandparent,
so there was really not a lot of other female figures,
will say that were available.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Can you paint the picture for us of the different
relationships in your family when you were growing up.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
So, my mom and I have always been really tight,
and I haven't been as close as my dad up
until recently with this divorced stuff. I've gotten closer now.
My sister and my dad were tight. I wasn't close
with my sister until after she moved to college.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
We fought really, like really bad.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
And what's the age difference?
Speaker 3 (06:24):
We're five years apart, so separate lives anyways, up until
we became a little more like adult. And my brother
and I were close when we were younger, but we're
not close now. And I wouldn't say he's particularly close
with either of my parents.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
And what's the age difference with your brother? Just a
year and a half he's older.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
So the people who would come to you for advice
were your mom when she would get into conflict with
your sister, your sister when she would get into conflict
with your mom.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
And my dad when he would be in conflict with
my mom.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Even though you weren't close, he would come to you
when you were younger.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yes, because he recognized that the key to finding what
was going to help him fix whatever was wrong with
my mom was often through me because I knew her
and our personalities are similar, so he felt like I
could help him find the answer.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
So really it was full on family therapy for you
at a very young age, and you are getting paid
for it and you're actually a member of the family,
So that was awkward all around.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's kind of always been my role.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Do you have a sense of why your dad came
to you instead of your mom? Since you said you
and your mom are similar, So what's your sense of
why he didn't just go straight to your mom to
try to work it out?
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Because when my mom is mad at you, she will
not listen to reason, she will not talk it out.
She will just be mad at you and she will
hold on to it for the next forever. And so
he didn't feel like he had a space to talk
to her and say what will happen to make this better?
Speaker 4 (08:08):
Or like what can I do to fix this?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
But you could? I mean, are you the mom whisperer
in the family too? In other words, were you able
to get through to her.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Sometimes I could, or sometimes I could suggest. I mean,
I would say I'm way better at it than anybody else.
It's not been as easy for me because it's coming
from so many angles.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
But a lot of.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Times I am the one that can be like, okay,
you should, you know, start by apologizing.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
Then maybe you want to like buy or a little.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Present, or maybe you want to say, this is what's
wrong here, and this is how I feel about it,
and it doesn't have anything to do with how you
feel about it, you know, like to lay out what
plan needs to happen. I guess, because sometimes she can
be really irrational.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
What happens when she's mad at you? It's not good
because there's no one to mediate that, right.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
My dad will try sometimes, and often his attempt is
something like, can I give an example of a story?
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Can I tell you a story?
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Absolutely?
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
So my son loves hockey and he wants to be
a goalie, which is every parent's first nightmare.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
How old your son?
Speaker 3 (09:24):
He just turned six, So he's loved this for many years.
I mean, he's just absolutely bonkers for hockey. And we
had said we didn't want to buy him any goalie
gear because we didn't want to encourage the goalie part
of it.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
It's so expensive and it's dangerous.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
So we my mom helped a cousin of ours buy
him some goalie pads, which really upset me because she
knew that we didn't.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Want that in the house. We didn't want to encourage
that aspect.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
We were fine with him wanting to play hockey, but
encouraging the goalie thing was like past what.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
We wanted to do. So he got the pads and
I was upset.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
And my dad called me and he's like, I know
you're upset about this, but please just don't bring it up.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
Please, just don't say anything.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Say the bare minimum that you need to say to
make yourself feel better, and then quit.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Is he worried that if you say something, he has
to live with your mom? And yeah, she's going to
take it out on him.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yes, yes, So what happened to you did end up
saying something.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
I did because that was a line that we had
drawn prior as parents.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
You know, I'd love to hear what exactly you said
to her and what her reaction was. I want to
hear how that conversation went.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
She was with the guy shopping and they did it together.
You know, even though he paid for him, she was
definitely there and could have stopped him and knew how
we felt about it. I said, this is an issue
for us. We don't want these in our house and
I don't want.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
People shooting pucks at my kid's head.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
I just said, you know, you crossed this line and
you don't listen to what I say. And what's important
to me is that you didn't listen, and I'm upset
about it. And she was incredibly upset and would didn't
talk to me for several days.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
What does her upset and this look like? How did
she actually respond in the moment to you?
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Usually when she's upset is she will say something like
I just can't talk about this anymore, and she'll you
can tell like she's crying on the phone or is
mad or angry, you know that there's kind of a
tone of voice, and then she'll just hang up on
you and she won't talk to you anymore.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
So you told her how you felt and she said,
I don't want to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Did she try to defend herself? This is why I
did it? That kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
She kind of tried to play it off like he
did it on his own, the cousin that actually purchased him.
But I know she was there with him. She didn't
say well, I tried to stop him or anything.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
She just did it.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
And then when she was there when he presented the
pads as well, so she knew what was coming and
did not warn me.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
There's many factors that were upsetting.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
So, Nicole, you said that you really avoided confrontation at
all costs, and clearly though here for the well being
of your son and his face and teeth, you were
actually willing to have the confrontation. It sounds like you
expressed that as assertively, simply and clearly as one can,
so you actually did a very good job in doing that.
(12:21):
My question to you is that now you have a
clear idea of that you don't like being put in
the middle, But when you're doing that as a child,
as an adolescent, there are a lot of rewards in
it in that a you get to know what's going on.
It's a very powerful position to be in. At what
point did you start to realize, you know, this is
(12:41):
not as fun as it seemed at first. At what
point did you realize, wait, what happens to my own
feelings about these things.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
About four to five years ago, my brother was getting
married in Ireland and my parents were going on. They
were having like a huge issue. They were fighting with
each other. They couldn't get along for five seconds. I mean,
it was awful, and they were coming to me and
(13:10):
I was trying to do it.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
You mean, you're ruining my vacation.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
I'm there with my husband, trying to enjoy Ireland and
trying to enjoy my brother's wedding and trying to keep
my brother and his soon to be wife out of
it so that they wedding is not ruined by the drama.
That's really when I realized that it was like maybe
(13:33):
more than I can handle it. I mean, my mom
was even sharing like sex details and things, and that
was past what I needed.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
How did sex details come up? And what was she
trying to tell you?
Speaker 3 (13:47):
She was basically saying, I can't be with him anymore.
I don't even like him anymore. I don't think I'm
in love with him, I don't even want to have
sex with him anymore.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Way too much information? Yeah, yeah, And what were you
doing when she was talking about all this? Did you
say to her, Hey, mom, I think this is something
you need to figure out with dad. How did you
respond to her.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
I just tried to solve the immediate problem.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
It was the night before my brother's wedding, so it
was just like trying to hear her out, trying to
get her calm enough so that tomorrow we could do
the wedding and it not be a total disaster.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Was this the first that you had heard of talk
of separation the night before your brother's wedding?
Speaker 4 (14:30):
That trip?
Speaker 3 (14:32):
It was definitely the first time I had ever heard
of them, like even having issues. I don't personally really
remember them fighting when I was like a kid or anything.
They did separate one time when I was really really young,
maybe like two or three years old, and I vaguely
remember that, but my dad came back, and I don't
(14:54):
remember them fighting or anything after that.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
But your dad did come to you with issues, so
you knew that they did fight. They just fought through you.
Is that what you mean when you say you don't
remember them fighting directly?
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Yeah, Like I don't remember them yelling at each other.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Like when you see that the thing of the divorce
parent and they're like, oh.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
They're yelling, and everybody's yelling and there's chaos everywhere. I
don't remember that at all.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
It was more like they'd have an issue, they'd come
to me, I'd try to solve the issue, then they
go back and then it would be fine again.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
So you're saying that it was an Ireland over the
week of your brother's wedding that you started to realize
this is a bit much for me. Yeah, but I'm
curious about at what point, if you have yet, did
you look back on all these years of mediating and realize, Wow,
it might have been a little hard for me to
figure out how I feel about things when I'm so
(15:44):
busy trying to fix other people's problems before I can
even get my finger on my own pulse.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
I don't know that I have until recently.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
There were other things going on with me that I
was silently suffering with, like anxiety and some DEPRESSI and
stuff that I just took on other people's problems because
I could maybe fix them and that would make me
feel better.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
And you wouldn't have to think about your own.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Right, you know, And so it was not really a
problem because it solved my problems.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
It was a distraction from your problems in a way.
How bad was the depression and the anxiety.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
There was points in my life, especially when I first
had my daughter, when it was pretty bad. So my
daughter suffers from anxiety and she wasn't diagnosed until probably
it's been probably eight.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
Or nine months now.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
But I didn't realize that that was me, that that
was my problem until I listened to the doctor tell
her in a kid way what anxiety was, and I
was like, that's me. And then I went to my
own doctor and got some medication and it's helped a lot.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
What is the munication like between you and your husband?
Speaker 3 (17:02):
He does not understand we grew up very differently. His
family does not talk about anything, like if they have
a problem with each other, they don't say it at all.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
They just continue on like nothing happened. Well, I want
to say, Nicole, so did yours. Yeah, so when you
say it's very different, A lot of times we marry
people who maybe on the surface they seem a little
bit different, but there's some underlying familiarity. An they think
that you both grew up in families where things were
not talked about directly.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Yeah, that does make sense.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Because like it came through me, but it never probably
was actually spoken about to each other.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Right, So tell us how he is when it comes
to communication with you. Since you say you avoid conflict,
I don't know what he does. Tell us about that interaction.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
In terms of our marriage, it can sometimes be a
struggle because I feel like I want to talk about
things with him and bring whatever is the issue, but
I'm kind of yeller, and he will try to avoid
talking about things until it makes him.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
So bad that he's like yell.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
So oftentimes it's just a screaming match of no communication.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
It sounds a lot like you are in the rule
of your dad, which is he wanted to talk about
things at least to resolve things. Maybe he wasn't a
huge talker, but he certainly wanted to resolve something by
talking about it. And your mom, you said, will say
things like I don't want to talk about it, and
it sounds a little bit like what your husband does,
(18:42):
and it goes to the place of yelling. Because people
yell when they feel like they're not being heard in
a normal voice. So if they can't be heard by
having a calm conversation, often what people do is they
yell like, now you have to pay attention, except people
can't hear you when you're yelling. That's the problem. Louder
you get, the less audible you become to people because
(19:03):
people don't respond to yelling and they start to tune
you out right.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
I hear that for sure, and I think that that's
definitely what happens, because he does often say, well, I'm
just going to go in the other room and I
don't want to fight with you anymore, is a common refrain.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
So that's about the fighting. But what about the support?
In other words, you're distressed about the situation with your family.
Is he someone you can talk to about that? Does
he off the support to you about that?
Speaker 3 (19:30):
He will sometimes he'll be like, oh, I can't believe
your mom, or I can't believe your dad. But a
lot of the times he's like, I just don't understand.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
But do you tell him here's what happened, or do
you say to him, here's what happened, and here's how
I feel.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
I think it's a combination of both.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
I definitely say like, this is what happened, and try
to let sometimes inform his own opinion. And then sometimes
I'm like no, this is making me upset or I
can't believe mom's doing this being so crazy, which would obviously.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Be like my opinion, I think what Guy is saying
is that there's a difference between reporting the events and
talking about what's going on with you. So if you're
reporting the events, you're talking about them, But if you're
telling your husband this is making me so stressed out,
this is making me so anxious, this is feeling overwhelming
(20:22):
to me. Do you ever say anything like that to him?
So it becomes about you and your experience, not about
the specific incident that happened with your parents.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yeah, not very often, to be honest, Every once in
a while, if I'm super stressed or like, especially during
all this divorced stuff, A couple times I was like,
I just don't know how I can handle all this.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
I'm stressed out.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
And at that time too, I just started a new job,
probably like six weeks ago, and then my daughter had
COVID four weeks before that, so it was really all
at once, and there was a.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
Couple times where I just said, I don't know if
I can handle all this.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
How did he respond when you told him I don't
know if I can handle this.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
He would say something like, go take a bath, like
that's kind of my thing is to take a bath.
Or he would say go upstairs because our bedroom is upstairs,
so just like, go upstairs and be alone is the intent.
Or go lay down if you need. But I just
don't say it very often.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
I guess I think, Nicole, that you're replicating this dynamic
from childhood, where this conflict around you served as a
distraction so that you didn't have to deal with whatever
distress or pain you were having. And this is a
little bit the way you communicate with your husband today.
You tell them about the conflict around you, and you
(21:36):
emphasize very little the emotional impact on how you feel
or the distress it might raise in you. Now when
you do, he seems to respond and say, hey, go
do the things you find soothing and comforting. But you
tend to defaulte to the narrative of his is what happened?
Isn't it shocking? Isn't it upsetting? And that doesn't really
(21:56):
put you in touch or him in touch with the
emotion an impact on you.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Yeah, when he tells you go take a bath or
go upstairs and rest, does that make you feel better
or do you feel more alone. I'm wondering what you're
wanting in those moments, because it sounds like what he's
saying is I hear that you're upset and then kind
(22:22):
of go deal with it, as opposed to how can
I help? How can I be there for you? What
can I do to help you through this?
Speaker 4 (22:31):
Can I say that it's like fifty to fifty.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Sometimes I feel like I'm definitely alone in it and
not like I'm the only one who has to deal
with all this. Yeah, you know, and sometimes I'm just like, Okay,
I'm so stressed out that I do need a break
from my family and my husband, and I need time
to just digest everything alone.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
You know, it does even if you need that time.
Though you mentioned feeling alone in this, I imagine that at
some point you'd want some connection that even if in
that moment you need to digest it or go take
a bath or calm down a little bit in a
way that feels good to you, I imagine that's not enough.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
I would agree.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
I think that's part of the reason why I wrote
the letter initially too, is because I don't know how
to deal with all this stuff.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
That's coming at me.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
I feel like, now as an adult, I'm learning things
about myself, you know, and then I don't know how
it'll sort out my own feelings to separate them from
everybody else's.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
Like, prior to.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
This, I would definitely be like the kind of person
who was like, Mom's mad at my sister.
Speaker 4 (23:37):
So I'm going to be like, Mom's gonna come to
me and say.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Well, I can't believe she did this and that, and
I'd be like, yeah, that's crazy, you know, maybe you
should say X y Z. And then my sister would
come to me and she'd be like, well, during that
same fight, mom did X y Z, and I'd be like, yeah,
that's crazy, you know, Like agreeing with all.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Sides, I think you're really craving some support, some connections understanding.
When you play that role in the family, there's always
a fantasy that maybe someone can do that for me too,
Maybe someone can be my therapist, maybe somebody could be
my support. And I'm saying that the habit you've gotten
into is that the shiny object of the conflict or
(24:18):
the other person's needs distracts you, takes your eye off
the ball of your feelings and so you don't lead
with your feelings. You're saying now you're getting more in
touch with them yourself good. It's a necessary step, But
the second, equally important one is to be able to
communicate that to a person who can hear it and
who can make you feel heard. And perhaps your husband
(24:42):
can do some of that. It doesn't sound like he's
the best at it, he might be able to learn.
I'm curious if there's anyone else in your life with
whom you can actually just talk about how you feel
without having to surround it by the conflicts of others.
Is there someone like that in your life.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
One really good female friend who I feel like I
can tell everything to in our lives. My husband and
her husband went to kindergarten together and have been friends since,
but we always say we feel like we would have
been friends on our own without having met through them.
And I definitely feel like I can tell her almost
(25:22):
everything unfiltered, even with my husband and I's relationships. Sometimes
I need somebody to talk to you about that, and
she's definitely there for me whenever I need.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
How does she respond to you that's different from the
way that your own family members respond to you?
Speaker 3 (25:38):
She'll say like like, yeah, I totally get it, I
totally understand, or she'll come back with an example from
her own family.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
Whenever I have the.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Opportunity to spend time with her, and it's just like
her and I I always feel better leaving.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
I think what you're saying is that you feel seen
and you feel understood.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
Yeah, yeah, sure.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Heard, seen, understood all of that, right, Heard for sure.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
Heard is a big one.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Yeah, herd is a big one.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah, And emotionally validated, which is a very important term here.
Emotional validation means that the person makes you feel that
they really get how you're feeling, They really understand the
emotional component. And that emotional validation I think is so
sweet for you because you get so little of it.
So I imagine that's a very important relationship in that way.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. You said that your parents are
in the middle of a separation. So how long has
this been going on?
Speaker 4 (26:35):
Like three months?
Speaker 1 (26:37):
It's been about three months before this, your father would
come to you sometimes with conflict with your mom. Would
your mom come to you before this with conflict that
she was having with your dad or only since the separation?
Speaker 3 (26:51):
I would say, since we went back to that trip
in Ireland. That's really when she felt comfortable enough to
talk to me about my dad, which I found really
hard because even though I wasn't as close with my dad,
he's still my dad, you know, and I still love
him and I still have feelings about him, and I
(27:11):
don't want to look upon him a certain way because
that's how she feels.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
But that what you said would have been the perfect
thing to say when she comes to you, Youma, I
want to still be able to have a relationship with him.
But actually it leads me to a question. Since you
do get some satisfaction from being in that mediative therapist role,
is that something you're interested in giving up in the family. Yeah,
quitting the therapy job.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
I think that my own family now.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
So I have an eleven year old she's got ADHD
and she's got anxiety, and she's got other things going on.
And then I have my husband and my own relationship
with him that sometimes I feel like struggles. I would
like to be able to focus on us and our
little unit versus focusing on the wider unit of my
(28:05):
immediate family.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Okay, because you know, when therapists want to resign, they
have to find substitute therapists to transfer their client tell to.
And if you do resign from your role, you might
need to do some referring.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
I've tried to refer.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
You are such a good therapist.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
I have been laying on my parents to go to
marriage counseling for since the whole Ireland thing. I was like,
you guys need to go to counseling. You need to
go to counseling, You need to go to counseling, go
to a therapist.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
What do they say?
Speaker 2 (28:36):
They said, we have a therapist? Why would we A
lot of.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Times they would be like, oh, yeah, we're going to
and then never make the appointment. Then I kind of
pushed my dad and I was like, okay, obviously Mom's
not going to make the appointment.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
You need to make it.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
They finally did start, but they went to five sessions
and then they're done.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Now what does that mean? They're done? Since they confide
in you, which one of them wanted to stop or
did they both.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
And want Apparently the therapist was like, how do you
guys feel? And my dad and mom agreed that they
were fine with quitting. They keep saying that they have
this amicable divorce or whatever. But I know there are
still issues in it and they haven't solved them.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
They didn't like the fact that the therapist asked them
to kind of go inside and figure out how they feel.
Is that what happened.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
I think they just felt like they solved all their
problems in their five sessions.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
So if they solved all their problems, why are they
coming to you with problems?
Speaker 4 (29:39):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
I mean, have you ever asked them that question? If
you solved all your problems in counseling, then why are
you coming to me with these problems?
Speaker 3 (29:48):
I think they are still looking for the agreement that
the other person is wrong.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
That's coming from me, right, and that will not come
from the therapist, And that is why that did not
work out for them.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
If you did quit as a therapist for your family,
who might be upset with you most if you did that.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
I think it would be my mom by far, by far, Yeah,
she is the most upset person in the household or
the family.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
I think that they come to you for two reasons, Nicole.
I think the first reason is that they are so
invested in their respective positions and you are so invested
in avoiding conflict and people pleasing that they know that
whatever they say you will agree with them. You will
say you're right, you're right, that other person was completely
(30:39):
off base. You are right, And that feels really good
in the moment, But it doesn't help people to reflect
on their role in what happened. It doesn't help them
to perspective take which is really important for any kind
of communication, what might the other person have been thinking
or feeling, And in that way, you're not actually helping them.
(31:04):
And then you do offer them something concrete, like hey,
here's how you can approach the other person, But you see,
it doesn't get very far because they keep coming back
to you. The one part of the puzzle THATITY don't
understand as well is your sister. You said in your
letter your sister isn't quite on board with this. I
don't know what you meant by that, and also how
your sister comes to you. Has that been a thing
(31:25):
your whole life too, or is that related to the separation.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
It's not necessarily related to the separation. I think it
definitely started to occur once she needed more advice after
she had her child, because I had already done it first.
She does not think that they have tried hard enough,
that they have put in the work, that they have
done everything they could ever possibly do before they walk
the aisle to divorce.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
What comes to mind when you talk about your sister's
feelings about this is how invested she is in keeping
your parents together. And a lot of people don't talk
about what it's like when you're adult and your parents
are getting divorced. People talk a lot about what it's
like when there are kids in the house and the
parents are getting divorced, And so she's not able to
(32:11):
really articulate her feelings. She has a lot of grief
and loss around this. She's really struggling with it. And
I wonder about you, what are your feelings as an
adult whose parents are getting divorced. How are you feeling
about this change in your family.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
I'd like to say that my study line has always
been what will make them happy will make me happy.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
But that's pretty much a lie, and I know that
when I.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
Say it, when it comes out of my mouth, I'm like,
I know I'm lying to whoever's asking me or talking
to me about it. I feel similar to her in
that I don't feel like they've put in the work
or done the things that are required to get a divorce.
It's not like one cheated on the other, and it's
some egregious offense.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Talk about your feelings, not about them. You go to
them so automatically. You how you feel about it.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
I'm upset about it. I think the reality is that
I'm upset.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Tell us what upset means.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
I feel a lot of anger, to be honest, anger
towards them, like I said, for not having tried.
Speaker 4 (33:17):
They've been married for thirty nine years.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
And I don't know how to say, like get it
together and work on this, but you are.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Having some feelings around this, so you keep going back
to them, like guys said, And so anger is kind
of the go to feeling for a lot of us.
It's the most accessible one. It's right there in front
of us. But underneath the anger is usually a more
tender feeling, like hurt or sadness or loss.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
I think that there's definitely some sadness and loss. It's
hard to imagine how things will be. Like our family union,
I would like to say, we're really close in general,
you know, and so like we take vacations together in
all of my years, even as an adult. This is
the first Christmas we haven't been together as a group.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
You know.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
I talk to my sister daily. I talk to my
parents daily or every other day, and so I'm going
to lose that. That's what it feels like, like that's
not the same. That's sad for me.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
It is, and as adults, a lot of times people
feel like I can't really talk about that or I
shouldn't be feeling this because it's not like I'm ten
and I have to go between houses. You have your
own family, you have your own life, and at the
same time, you are losing your family as you knew it.
You're losing all of the things that go along with
(34:41):
your parents being together.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
It's so hard to I don't understand how to say
that to people and then not have them look at
me like I'm not ten, you know, like I'm an adult.
You should understand because you're old enough to understand why
they're getting divorced.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Well, the understanding doesn't change how you feel about it,
because the irony is that for adults when their parents
get divorced, one of the things they often feel is like, Wow,
I'm kind of losing the security of the family unit,
even if it was a conflictual one, even if it
was one that they didn't turn to for security. But
(35:19):
there's something about just knowing it's there, that knowing mom
and dad are there. There's something about the security and
the historicness of it that when you lose it, it
can feel like it really shakes the foundations in some way.
And again adults feel like, well, it shouldn't do that,
but of course it should, because adults have all the
same feelings that children do about that unit getting disrupted.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
I definitely think you're right about the security too, And like,
there's something about our house that we live in. My
grandma lived there, that was where we had Christmas every year,
and now it's like, is that my home anymore?
Speaker 1 (36:00):
That sense of home is so important. A lot of
adults say, you know, even if one parent stays in
that home, it doesn't feel the same. It feels very
different when it's only one parent living there, or when
that house is sold and neither parent is living there.
You lose that peace of your childhood, that piece of
your history, and that sense of security of that's where
(36:22):
we go for the holidays, that's where our gatherings are
that's where my room was.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yeah, it's a hugely significant loss in that way, because
you lose the traditions and the rituals that define the
family unit and define your childhood and your early adulthood
and your adolescents. So it's a big loss for adults,
it's a big loss for you, you know. When that happens,
and always completely right. Sometimes the house can be the same,
but with only one of them in it, it can actually
feel sad to be in that house rather than comforting.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Yeah, and I think it's definitely like I've been over
there since my mom has moved out, and it's different.
Even talking about it is different, like I would say
something like, oh, I'm going to my house or I'm
going you know whatever.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Yeah, it's a big change. Even the way you talk
about it changes.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Yeah, I think that you're starting to see that when
you're really thinking about how you feel that you have
a lot of feelings about them getting separated and divorced,
and when you spend time with your feelings and give
yourself a chance to figure them out, then it might
actually take you to a point where you are even
(37:28):
less willing to be that mediator because no, no, actually
I have very strong feelings here. I want to focus
on mine. I don't want to have to ignore mine
to focus on theirs.
Speaker 4 (37:38):
Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
I think you're right, and I think in the last
couple of years, and this is where it's really become
like too much, you know, because I don't deal with
what I'm feeling with And.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Yeah, it's almost like you're trying to talk your sister
out of the very feelings that you have about your parents'
divorce so that neither of you has to feel them.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
My sister as a person is very upfront and very like,
this is how I feel. And there's been some of
that with my mom back because my mom initially left
the house and got an apartment and so there was
definitely some initial tension there.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
Like she told her upfront how she felt.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
When you say she told her upfront how she felt,
she might have said, I feel like you're not really
giving this marriage a try. That's different from I feel
so sad that the family is coming apart in this way.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
You're right.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
She said something similar to, I don't think you've tried
everything you can try, and I think you're giving up.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
But that's not talking about how she feels.
Speaker 4 (38:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
The other part of what happens when the children are
adults when their parents divorce is the parents don't think
it's that important to worry about the kids. Well, our
kids are adults. We can just be concerned about us
and get them to help us. We don't need to
be concerned about their feelings. Sounds like both your parents
are not.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
I agree.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
Like my mom when she moved out, she said something
to the effect of, I'll be fine, It'll be okay,
I'll be fine. What I told her was, we have
feelings too, you know, like we're allowed to have feelings
too about this. This is a big thing for us too.
And she was like, oh, I know, I know, or something.
(39:24):
But I don't think that she actually took it on board.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Well, right, what a lot of people do with their
adult children is they treat them as mediators, friends, confidants. Yeah,
as opposed to Wait a minute, what is your experience
of this. I don't know that anybody who's actually asked
you that.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
No, I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
So, Nicole.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
We have some advice for you that we'd like you
to try. And what we'd like you to do is
we would like you to resign as the family therapist, okay,
because it's not really your role. And here's how we'd
like you to do that. We'd like you to start
with your sister. It sounds like the two of you
(40:09):
are actually experiencing much of the same thing, and so
instead of becoming her therapist, you can go to her
and say, listen, I've been thinking about all of the
things you've been coming to me with and I realized
that I've been trying to talk you out of the
way that you're feeling, but in fact I feel exactly
the same way. And maybe the two of us can
(40:32):
be a support for each other as we talk about
not how to save mom and Dad's marriage, but how
we're actually feeling about whatever they decide to do. And
we haven't really had that, and I think it would
bring us closer, and I think it would help us
through this really difficult time in our family. And then
ask her how she feels about that and see what
(40:56):
happens between you. I have a feeling she's going to
feel very relieved. Yeah, And you can tell her every
time you come to me with a plan about how
we can get mom and dad to do more to
save their marriage. I'm not going to be on board
with that because I think that it's not our role
to decide what they should do in their marriage. But
(41:16):
we can be together as the kids in the family
right to talk about how we're feeling about what's going
on in our family and all the different ways that
this does impact us. And I'd like to be there
to support how you're feeling, and I hope you can
be there to support how I'm feeling.
Speaker 4 (41:33):
Yeah, makes sense, and it sounds good like I can
do it.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
That will create a new dynamic for you and your
sister to really be those people for each other and
learn how to do that for each other.
Speaker 4 (41:45):
Yeah, yeah, I need that.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
That's the resignation, as it goes with your sister, as
it goes with your mother. When you resign, it's going
to be a little trickier.
Speaker 4 (41:56):
Yeah, you can.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Say, Mom, I know that you're going through a really
hard time right now, and I know that sometimes you
come to me because you need some support. But I
want to let you know that this is a hard
time for everybody in the family and that one of
the things that will help all of us through this
is if we can feel like there's some stability in
(42:22):
our family and for our relationship. That stability is that
you're still my mom and I'm still your daughter, And
in order for us to preserve that mother daughter relationship
and for it to be really strong, I can't be
a part of what happens in your divorce. That that
has to be between you and Dad, and so I
(42:46):
can support you in other ways we can have our relationship,
but once you start talking about what's going on with
you and Dad, I'm going to graciously decline continuing the
conversation because I'm not qualified to help you with that.
But a therapist would be. But it can't come to
(43:06):
me because that will weaken our family and it will
weaken the relationship that you and I have. And maybe
there will be room for you to hear how I
feel about this, or maybe not. But I want us
to have a relationship where I am the daughter and
you work out what you need to work out with
Dad separate from me.
Speaker 4 (43:29):
Yeah, I mean it definitely makes sense. It's going to
be hard.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
It's going to be hard, and it will need a
lot of reinforcement because she will either withdraw in anger
and say, well, you're not there for me, You're not
supporting me, and she'll lash out in that way, and
you have to be able to withstand that and stand
your ground in a very loving way. I know this
is hard. I know it's different. I really want you
to find someone you can talk to about this, and
(43:54):
then she may come back to you and try in
different ways to kind of sneak it in the conversation, right,
And every time she does that, you have to say
mom again, and you can joke with her Mom. I
want to resign as a therapist, right right, And you
keep using that as a catchphrase, I'm resigning as the
family therapist. I can't do it because I need to
(44:15):
take care of myself too, and I want to preserve
our relationship. Yeah, okay, so those are the first two resignations.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
Well, the next one is your dad. And the conversation
with your dad should be a simpler version, perhaps of
the one with your mom, because the relationship is a
little less complex. I think you need to lead with
the fact that you know, Dad, I've tried to be
supportive to you and to Mom through this separation and divorce,
but I'd realized that when I do that, I don't
(44:46):
pay attention to how I feel about it. And when
I do start paying attention to how I feel about it,
it turns out I have a lot of feelings about it.
It turns out that I am sad about it, and
so it's very important for me that I pay attention
to how I feel. And I can't do that if
I'm supporting you. It distracts me from it. And I
(45:09):
want to be there for you, but as a daughter,
and I can't be there for you as a divorce mediator.
So I'm letting you know that because I want us
to be able to chat and we can hang out
and we can talk about anything but the divorce, right
So that would be the messaging to him. The last
(45:30):
person is your husband, because I'm going to tell you this.
When you resign as the family therapist, it is going
to feel like a big emotional brick has just been
dropped on you. You're thinking it might be like relief,
but it will be after, But at first it's going
(45:51):
to feel like a real loss, like you're betraying them,
you're abandoning them. You'll feel guilty, you'll feel resentful, A
swirl will come up.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
And in addition, all of those feelings that you were
distracting yourself from by being the family therapist, are going
to be much more accessible to you now.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Right, and therefore you will need support. And so we
would also like you to talk to your husband and
let him know that this is coming, and let him
know that he might find you really emotional when you're
having these conversations and that you could use his help
and support. And so what you're going to ask him
(46:31):
to do in those moments is I want to feel
that if I'm very upset, I can come to you
and tell you about how I'm feeling, because I think
because of his background, he might not know what to
do with all those big feelings you're having. So I'll
give me a tip, and I would say to him,
and when you see me upset and when I'm talking
about those things, really, what I need from you most
(46:54):
is just listen and then when I'm finished, just put
your arms around me, give me a hug, Let me
know that you understand that I'm upset. Let me know
that you get that this is very very difficult, and
that you're there for me. You don't have to solve anything,
you don't have to do anything. I don't want you
(47:14):
to suggest a bath or something like that, because I
can think of that myself. What I want is your
arms around me, and if you had any feelings about
what it feels like for me to be upset and
for you to listen to it, I'm happy to hear
them if you can share them. They might be difficult
for you, but if you have feelings about it, please
do share them with me, because I want us to
(47:35):
be able to talk a little bit more about our feelings.
We both need that practice. We both didn't do much
of it growing up, but it's important for us to
do so we can model it for our kids. So
we can have that kind of emotional dialogue with our
kids and we can practice with one another.
Speaker 4 (47:52):
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
So those are the things we'd like you to do.
And start with your husband because we want him to
be ready for the fallout from the others. So you
want to start with.
Speaker 4 (48:04):
Him, right, Yeah? I agree.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
I think it.
Speaker 4 (48:08):
I know I need to do it. It's just going
to be hard.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
It is.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
It will be hard in the short term, as these
things are, but it will make things so much easier
in the long term. Yeah, okay, Well, let us know
how it goes.
Speaker 4 (48:22):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (48:27):
I think Nicole was really ripe for this. I really
think she was at the place where she realized, I
need to start thinking about myself and my own feelings
and not just cater to everyone else's. So I'm actually
quite hopeful that this will be a change that is
not just about her relationship with her parents, but her
relationship with her emotions and her access to them all around.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
Yeah, when people come to therapy, I'm always asking not
just why are you here, but why now? Why this month,
this week? Did you just to call me? And I
think that she wrote to us at the time that
she was ready for change. I'm always assessing for readiness
for change, and a lot of times people come in
(49:11):
and they're wanting someone else to change, and I think
what she's realizing is, wait a minute, I need to
resign from this position. This is overwhelming for me. And
so I'm very hopeful that this is going to open
up all kinds of doors for her in terms of
accessing her own feelings, getting her needs met in different ways,
(49:32):
and taking her out of that incredibly stressful situation that
she has been in for a lot of her life.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
Right really untenable. So I'm very hopeful for her and
look forward to hearing what's going to happen. You're listening
to deotherapists from iHeartRadio. We'll be back after a quick break. So, Laurie,
(50:05):
we heard back from Nicole, our honorary family therapist. Let's
see how things went for her.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
So I ripped the band aid off as soon as
I got done talking to you guys pretty much. I
talked to my husband right away, and I'm not sure
he was totally on board or knew what to think,
but I feel like we definitely covered the part where
I need more emotional support and he understood that. So
(50:35):
next I called my sister and talked to her, and
she was completely supportive and agreed that I needed to
step down as the family therapist. She was happy to
have somebody there to support her feelings too as well,
and to understand that I felt the same way as
she did. Next, I talked to my mom because I
(50:56):
knew that that was going to be the toughest conversation.
It didn't go exactly as I thought I would go.
Instead of her being angry, I felt like she was
more annoyed. I would say, is a good term, and
she kind of just said you can do whatever you
(51:17):
need to do, and I'm going to do whatever I
need to do for myself, which is not really what
I thought either. After that happened, then my dad ended
up calling me and he said he was worried about
me and was wondering what was going on. My mom
had called him, and he was very supportive. He's like,
(51:39):
I totally understand. I know why you need to do this,
I know why this is affecting you and how it's
affecting you, and I'm proud of you, and I will
be there however you need me to be there. You
just tell me what you need me to do. He
said that I've been there for him a lot and
that whatever I need, he'll be there for Overall, I
(52:01):
feel relieved in some respects. Other respects, I don't feel like,
especially with my mom, that I know what to talk about.
In the last couple of days, it's been a little
more difficult that way, without having the family therapist conversations.
Speaker 4 (52:18):
We'll see how it goes. I'm still feeling it out.
I feel like.
Speaker 1 (52:25):
So what we're seeing here is very common where sometimes
when we try to redefine our roles in the family,
some people don't like it. And I think what's going
on here is that her mom is not happy about
losing her own personal family therapist, and she went so
far as to call the father to say, something's wrong
(52:47):
with Nicole. She's gone crazy. She's not going to be
my therapist anymore.
Speaker 2 (52:55):
I agree, But you know what, Nicole is right, it's
going to be tense for a while with her mom
because when all the conversations have been the family therapy stuff. Yes,
you're going to have to figure out what else you
can talk about. Indeed, both of you will have to
do that, and that's part of the deal. There's nothing
wrong with that. It does take time to figure out
what do we talk about, and hopefully, Nicole, you'll prevent
your mom from dragging you back to therapy territory as
(53:16):
she will try to.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
Do, and that will involve constant reminders because it sounds
like she's not going to let go of this very easily.
But I think the positive thing here is that you
will have a different kind of relationship with your mother.
Ultimately that I think will be a much more fulfilling
relationship for both of you and certainly take that pressure
off of you. And I think that it went well
(53:37):
with Nicole's sister, and I think her husband when she
says you didn't really know what to do with it,
he won't know what to do with it yet. But
this is again a redefining and it will certainly help
the communication in their marriage.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
There is a learning curve when you change a dynamic
with someone. There is a learning curve in figuring out
the new dynamic. Everyone gets to have one. Her husband included,
and I.
Speaker 1 (53:59):
Thought that the response was great, and I hope that
that was very reassuring for Nicole because I think that
ultimately he's the one who gets it right now, and
I think the others will eventually start to get it too.
Speaker 2 (54:11):
Nicole, you might have some time on your hands now
that you're not busy with all the family therapy, so
hopefully you'll get to discover some new passion that keeps
too happy.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
Next week. A mother and daughter find it difficult to
reconnect after the mother's years long struggle with severe depression.
Speaker 3 (54:32):
My body is so full of her triggers that even now,
at thirty five, I'll see something that I know she
can't handle and.
Speaker 4 (54:41):
I will have a reaction to it.
Speaker 1 (54:43):
I think for a lot of my life. I deluded
myself into thinking that my depression wasn't impacting you. Hey,
fellow travelers, if you're enjoying our podcast each week, don't
forget to subscribe for free so that you don't miss
any episodes, and please help support Dear Therapists by telling
your friends about it and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.
(55:06):
Your reviews really help people to find the show.
Speaker 2 (55:08):
If you have a dilemma you'd like to discuss with us,
Bigo Smooth, email us at Lorian Guy at iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 1 (55:16):
Our executive producer is Noel Brown. We're produced and edited
by Mike Johns, Josh Fisher, and Chris Childs. Our interns
are Dorit Corwin and Silver Lifton. Special thanks to Alison
Wright and to our podcast fairy Godmother Katie Kuric.
Speaker 2 (55:32):
We can't wait to see you at next week's session.
Speaker 1 (55:34):
Dear Therapist is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, fellow travelers. I'm Larie Gottlieb. I'm the author of
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, and I write the
Dear Therapist advice column for The Atlantic.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And I'm Guy Wench. I'm the author of Emotional First Aid,
and I write the Dear Guy advice column for TED.
And this is Dear Therapists.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Each week we invite you into a session so you
can learn more about yourself by hearing how we help
other people come to understand themselves better and make changes
in their lives.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
So sit back and welcome to today's session. This week,
a woman feels the burden of being caught in the
middle when her parents divorce after almost forty years.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
She was basically saying, I can't be with him anymore.
I don't even like him anymore. I don't think I'm
in love with him. I don't even want to have
sex with him anymore.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Way too much information, Yeah, yeah, First A quick note,
Dear Therapist is for informational purposes only. It does not
constitute medical or psychological advice and is not a substitute
for a professional health care advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always
seek the advice of your physician. Mental health professional or
other qualified health provider with any questions you may have
regarding a medical or psychological condition. By submitting a letter,
(01:12):
you are agreeing to let iHeartMedia use it in partworn full,
and we may edit it for length and clarity. In
the sessions you'll hear. All names have been changed for
the privacy of our fellow travelers. Hey Laurie, Hi guy.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
So we have an interesting letter today because you know,
divorce is tough on kids, but in this case, the
kid's an adult and it's still tough. So here it
is deotherapists. I'm an adult and my parents are separating
after thirty nine years of marriage. I'm the youngest child
and an excellent sympathetic ear. I listen to my mom's
problems about my dad, my mom's problems about my sister,
(01:48):
who is definitely not on board. My sister's issue is
about not being on board, my dad's problems about my mom,
and my dad trying to tell me my mom needs
more support. I don't know how to deal with all
of my own emotion related to my parents divorcing as
an adult, much less everyone else's feelings about it. I
need help, Sincerely, Nicole.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
That is a really tough one because I think that
a lot of people think that when you're an adult
in your parents divorce that somehow the divorce is going
to be relatively easy. In fact, I think that's the
reason that so many parents wait until their children are
out of the house to split up. But in fact,
when you're older, there are certain problems that you have
(02:30):
that might not show up if your parents divorced when
you were younger, such as what she's experiencing, which is
being thrust into the role of mediator armchair therapists, to
the parents, being pulled in all different directions, and also
probably learning more about the details of the divorce that
she would have been shielded from if she were younger.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
So there are plenty of people who get divorced and
are aware that they should shield the kids when the
kids are young, and when their kids are adults, there's
just a little less imperative on their rent to shield them,
and they actually go, oh great, they're adults, so I
can really lean on them now for my rebuilding, for support,
And it puts such a burden on those adult children.
(03:13):
So I totally understand the trap she's in.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, I do too, So let's go find out what's
going on with her.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
You're listening to Deo Therapists from iHeartRadio. We'll be back
after a quick break.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
I'm Lori Gottlieb and I'm.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Guy Wench and this is Dear Therapist. Hey Nicole, welcome
to the show.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Thanks, I'm excited to be here, Henchole, Hi, Sonicole.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
We'd love to hear a little bit more about what's
happening right now with your parents and in what way
they're putting you in the middle.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I definitely don't think it's exclusive to my parents. It's
kind of always been my role in life has been
the listener. So it's my parents, my mom, my dad,
and then my sister. I do have a brother as well,
but he is just not that involved with our family life.
He's kind of often doing his own thing. But everybody
(04:14):
always comes to me when they have a problem with
somebody else in the family, and then I kind of
carry the burden of everybody's and try to give advice
where possible. And at this point though, it's kind of
like everybody's coming to me, and then everybody's problem is
with the other.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
Person, which is a little more difficult.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
How did that play out when you were younger with
everybody coming to What kinds of things would they come
to you with when you were a child.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Generally, it's always been family stuff, like my mom's mad
at my sister, and then I would play the mediator,
or my mom is mad at my dad, and I
would try to mediate or help.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
How young were you when this kind of thing started?
Speaker 3 (04:58):
I would say young teenager, like my sister and my
mom always had more conflict. I avoid conflict in at
all the costs. So my mom and my sister had conflict.
So there's definitely some there, but it's definitely progressed.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
As I've become more of an adult.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
I had my own child pretty young, and once I
did that, I was like, Okay, you're an adult now,
and we're going to give you all these problems. I
was only like twenty two.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
I imagine that as any new parent, you probably needed
help yourself. Who did you go to for advice or
for help?
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Primarily my mom, just because my sister had her child
like a couple of years after me, so it was
primarily my mom. And I have one living grandparent who's
not involved in my life, and then one passed away grandparent,
so there was really not a lot of other female figures,
will say that were available.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Can you paint the picture for us of the different
relationships in your family when you were growing up.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
So, my mom and I have always been really tight,
and I haven't been as close as my dad up
until recently with this divorced stuff. I've gotten closer now.
My sister and my dad were tight. I wasn't close
with my sister until after she moved to college.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
We fought really, like really bad.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
And what's the age difference?
Speaker 3 (06:24):
We're five years apart, so separate lives anyways, up until
we became a little more like adult. And my brother
and I were close when we were younger, but we're
not close now. And I wouldn't say he's particularly close
with either of my parents.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
And what's the age difference with your brother? Just a
year and a half he's older.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
So the people who would come to you for advice
were your mom when she would get into conflict with
your sister, your sister when she would get into conflict
with your mom.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
And my dad when he would be in conflict with
my mom.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Even though you weren't close, he would come to you
when you were younger.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yes, because he recognized that the key to finding what
was going to help him fix whatever was wrong with
my mom was often through me because I knew her
and our personalities are similar, so he felt like I
could help him find the answer.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
So really it was full on family therapy for you
at a very young age, and you are getting paid
for it and you're actually a member of the family,
So that was awkward all around.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's kind of always been my role.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Do you have a sense of why your dad came
to you instead of your mom? Since you said you
and your mom are similar, So what's your sense of
why he didn't just go straight to your mom to
try to work it out?
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Because when my mom is mad at you, she will
not listen to reason, she will not talk it out.
She will just be mad at you and she will
hold on to it for the next forever. And so
he didn't feel like he had a space to talk
to her and say what will happen to make this better?
Speaker 4 (08:08):
Or like what can I do to fix this?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
But you could? I mean, are you the mom whisperer
in the family too? In other words, were you able
to get through to her.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Sometimes I could, or sometimes I could suggest. I mean,
I would say I'm way better at it than anybody else.
It's not been as easy for me because it's coming
from so many angles.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
But a lot of.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Times I am the one that can be like, okay,
you should, you know, start by apologizing.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
Then maybe you want to like buy or a little.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Present, or maybe you want to say, this is what's
wrong here, and this is how I feel about it,
and it doesn't have anything to do with how you
feel about it, you know, like to lay out what
plan needs to happen. I guess, because sometimes she can
be really irrational.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
What happens when she's mad at you? It's not good
because there's no one to mediate that, right.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
My dad will try sometimes, and often his attempt is
something like, can I give an example of a story?
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Can I tell you a story?
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Absolutely?
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
So my son loves hockey and he wants to be
a goalie, which is every parent's first nightmare.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
How old your son?
Speaker 3 (09:24):
He just turned six, So he's loved this for many years.
I mean, he's just absolutely bonkers for hockey. And we
had said we didn't want to buy him any goalie
gear because we didn't want to encourage the goalie part
of it.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
It's so expensive and it's dangerous.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
So we my mom helped a cousin of ours buy
him some goalie pads, which really upset me because she
knew that we didn't.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Want that in the house. We didn't want to encourage
that aspect.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
We were fine with him wanting to play hockey, but
encouraging the goalie thing was like past what.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
We wanted to do. So he got the pads and
I was upset.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
And my dad called me and he's like, I know
you're upset about this, but please just don't bring it up.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
Please, just don't say anything.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Say the bare minimum that you need to say to
make yourself feel better, and then quit.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Is he worried that if you say something, he has
to live with your mom? And yeah, she's going to
take it out on him.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yes, yes, So what happened to you did end up
saying something.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
I did because that was a line that we had
drawn prior as parents.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
You know, I'd love to hear what exactly you said
to her and what her reaction was. I want to
hear how that conversation went.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
She was with the guy shopping and they did it together.
You know, even though he paid for him, she was
definitely there and could have stopped him and knew how
we felt about it. I said, this is an issue
for us. We don't want these in our house and
I don't want.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
People shooting pucks at my kid's head.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
I just said, you know, you crossed this line and
you don't listen to what I say. And what's important
to me is that you didn't listen, and I'm upset
about it. And she was incredibly upset and would didn't
talk to me for several days.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
What does her upset and this look like? How did
she actually respond in the moment to you?
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Usually when she's upset is she will say something like
I just can't talk about this anymore, and she'll you
can tell like she's crying on the phone or is
mad or angry, you know that there's kind of a
tone of voice, and then she'll just hang up on
you and she won't talk to you anymore.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
So you told her how you felt and she said,
I don't want to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Did she try to defend herself? This is why I
did it? That kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
She kind of tried to play it off like he
did it on his own, the cousin that actually purchased him.
But I know she was there with him. She didn't
say well, I tried to stop him or anything.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
She just did it.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
And then when she was there when he presented the
pads as well, so she knew what was coming and
did not warn me.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
There's many factors that were upsetting.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
So, Nicole, you said that you really avoided confrontation at
all costs, and clearly though here for the well being
of your son and his face and teeth, you were
actually willing to have the confrontation. It sounds like you
expressed that as assertively, simply and clearly as one can,
so you actually did a very good job in doing that.
(12:21):
My question to you is that now you have a
clear idea of that you don't like being put in
the middle, But when you're doing that as a child,
as an adolescent, there are a lot of rewards in
it in that a you get to know what's going on.
It's a very powerful position to be in. At what
point did you start to realize, you know, this is
(12:41):
not as fun as it seemed at first. At what
point did you realize, wait, what happens to my own
feelings about these things.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
About four to five years ago, my brother was getting
married in Ireland and my parents were going on. They
were having like a huge issue. They were fighting with
each other. They couldn't get along for five seconds. I mean,
it was awful, and they were coming to me and
(13:10):
I was trying to do it.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
You mean, you're ruining my vacation.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
I'm there with my husband, trying to enjoy Ireland and
trying to enjoy my brother's wedding and trying to keep
my brother and his soon to be wife out of
it so that they wedding is not ruined by the drama.
That's really when I realized that it was like maybe
(13:33):
more than I can handle it. I mean, my mom
was even sharing like sex details and things, and that
was past what I needed.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
How did sex details come up? And what was she
trying to tell you?
Speaker 3 (13:47):
She was basically saying, I can't be with him anymore.
I don't even like him anymore. I don't think I'm
in love with him, I don't even want to have
sex with him anymore.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Way too much information? Yeah, yeah, And what were you
doing when she was talking about all this? Did you
say to her, Hey, mom, I think this is something
you need to figure out with dad. How did you
respond to her.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
I just tried to solve the immediate problem.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
It was the night before my brother's wedding, so it
was just like trying to hear her out, trying to
get her calm enough so that tomorrow we could do
the wedding and it not be a total disaster.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Was this the first that you had heard of talk
of separation the night before your brother's wedding?
Speaker 4 (14:30):
That trip?
Speaker 3 (14:32):
It was definitely the first time I had ever heard
of them, like even having issues. I don't personally really
remember them fighting when I was like a kid or anything.
They did separate one time when I was really really young,
maybe like two or three years old, and I vaguely
remember that, but my dad came back, and I don't
(14:54):
remember them fighting or anything after that.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
But your dad did come to you with issues, so
you knew that they did fight. They just fought through you.
Is that what you mean when you say you don't
remember them fighting directly?
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Yeah, Like I don't remember them yelling at each other.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Like when you see that the thing of the divorce
parent and they're like, oh.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
They're yelling, and everybody's yelling and there's chaos everywhere. I
don't remember that at all.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
It was more like they'd have an issue, they'd come
to me, I'd try to solve the issue, then they
go back and then it would be fine again.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
So you're saying that it was an Ireland over the
week of your brother's wedding that you started to realize
this is a bit much for me. Yeah, but I'm
curious about at what point, if you have yet, did
you look back on all these years of mediating and realize, Wow,
it might have been a little hard for me to
figure out how I feel about things when I'm so
(15:44):
busy trying to fix other people's problems before I can
even get my finger on my own pulse.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
I don't know that I have until recently.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
There were other things going on with me that I
was silently suffering with, like anxiety and some DEPRESSI and
stuff that I just took on other people's problems because
I could maybe fix them and that would make me
feel better.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
And you wouldn't have to think about your own.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Right, you know, And so it was not really a
problem because it solved my problems.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
It was a distraction from your problems in a way.
How bad was the depression and the anxiety.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
There was points in my life, especially when I first
had my daughter, when it was pretty bad. So my
daughter suffers from anxiety and she wasn't diagnosed until probably
it's been probably eight.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
Or nine months now.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
But I didn't realize that that was me, that that
was my problem until I listened to the doctor tell
her in a kid way what anxiety was, and I
was like, that's me. And then I went to my
own doctor and got some medication and it's helped a lot.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
What is the munication like between you and your husband?
Speaker 3 (17:02):
He does not understand we grew up very differently. His
family does not talk about anything, like if they have
a problem with each other, they don't say it at all.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
They just continue on like nothing happened. Well, I want
to say, Nicole, so did yours. Yeah, so when you
say it's very different, A lot of times we marry
people who maybe on the surface they seem a little
bit different, but there's some underlying familiarity. An they think
that you both grew up in families where things were
not talked about directly.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Yeah, that does make sense.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Because like it came through me, but it never probably
was actually spoken about to each other.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Right, So tell us how he is when it comes
to communication with you. Since you say you avoid conflict,
I don't know what he does. Tell us about that interaction.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
In terms of our marriage, it can sometimes be a
struggle because I feel like I want to talk about
things with him and bring whatever is the issue, but
I'm kind of yeller, and he will try to avoid
talking about things until it makes him.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
So bad that he's like yell.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
So oftentimes it's just a screaming match of no communication.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
It sounds a lot like you are in the rule
of your dad, which is he wanted to talk about
things at least to resolve things. Maybe he wasn't a
huge talker, but he certainly wanted to resolve something by
talking about it. And your mom, you said, will say
things like I don't want to talk about it, and
it sounds a little bit like what your husband does,
(18:42):
and it goes to the place of yelling. Because people
yell when they feel like they're not being heard in
a normal voice. So if they can't be heard by
having a calm conversation, often what people do is they
yell like, now you have to pay attention, except people
can't hear you when you're yelling. That's the problem. Louder
you get, the less audible you become to people because
(19:03):
people don't respond to yelling and they start to tune
you out right.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
I hear that for sure, and I think that that's
definitely what happens, because he does often say, well, I'm
just going to go in the other room and I
don't want to fight with you anymore, is a common refrain.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
So that's about the fighting. But what about the support?
In other words, you're distressed about the situation with your family.
Is he someone you can talk to about that? Does
he off the support to you about that?
Speaker 3 (19:30):
He will sometimes he'll be like, oh, I can't believe
your mom, or I can't believe your dad. But a
lot of the times he's like, I just don't understand.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
But do you tell him here's what happened, or do
you say to him, here's what happened, and here's how
I feel.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
I think it's a combination of both.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
I definitely say like, this is what happened, and try
to let sometimes inform his own opinion. And then sometimes
I'm like no, this is making me upset or I
can't believe mom's doing this being so crazy, which would obviously.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Be like my opinion, I think what Guy is saying
is that there's a difference between reporting the events and
talking about what's going on with you. So if you're
reporting the events, you're talking about them, But if you're
telling your husband this is making me so stressed out,
this is making me so anxious, this is feeling overwhelming
(20:22):
to me. Do you ever say anything like that to him?
So it becomes about you and your experience, not about
the specific incident that happened with your parents.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yeah, not very often, to be honest, Every once in
a while, if I'm super stressed or like, especially during
all this divorced stuff, A couple times I was like,
I just don't know how I can handle all this.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
I'm stressed out.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
And at that time too, I just started a new job,
probably like six weeks ago, and then my daughter had
COVID four weeks before that, so it was really all
at once, and there was a.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
Couple times where I just said, I don't know if
I can handle all this.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
How did he respond when you told him I don't
know if I can handle this.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
He would say something like, go take a bath, like
that's kind of my thing is to take a bath.
Or he would say go upstairs because our bedroom is upstairs,
so just like, go upstairs and be alone is the intent.
Or go lay down if you need. But I just
don't say it very often.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
I guess I think, Nicole, that you're replicating this dynamic
from childhood, where this conflict around you served as a
distraction so that you didn't have to deal with whatever
distress or pain you were having. And this is a
little bit the way you communicate with your husband today.
You tell them about the conflict around you, and you
(21:36):
emphasize very little the emotional impact on how you feel
or the distress it might raise in you. Now when
you do, he seems to respond and say, hey, go
do the things you find soothing and comforting. But you
tend to defaulte to the narrative of his is what happened?
Isn't it shocking? Isn't it upsetting? And that doesn't really
(21:56):
put you in touch or him in touch with the
emotion an impact on you.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Yeah, when he tells you go take a bath or
go upstairs and rest, does that make you feel better
or do you feel more alone. I'm wondering what you're
wanting in those moments, because it sounds like what he's
saying is I hear that you're upset and then kind
(22:22):
of go deal with it, as opposed to how can
I help? How can I be there for you? What
can I do to help you through this?
Speaker 4 (22:31):
Can I say that it's like fifty to fifty.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Sometimes I feel like I'm definitely alone in it and
not like I'm the only one who has to deal
with all this. Yeah, you know, and sometimes I'm just like, Okay,
I'm so stressed out that I do need a break
from my family and my husband, and I need time
to just digest everything alone.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
You know, it does even if you need that time.
Though you mentioned feeling alone in this, I imagine that at
some point you'd want some connection that even if in
that moment you need to digest it or go take
a bath or calm down a little bit in a
way that feels good to you, I imagine that's not enough.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
I would agree.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
I think that's part of the reason why I wrote
the letter initially too, is because I don't know how
to deal with all this stuff.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
That's coming at me.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
I feel like, now as an adult, I'm learning things
about myself, you know, and then I don't know how
it'll sort out my own feelings to separate them from
everybody else's.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
Like, prior to.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
This, I would definitely be like the kind of person
who was like, Mom's mad at my sister.
Speaker 4 (23:37):
So I'm going to be like, Mom's gonna come to
me and say.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Well, I can't believe she did this and that, and
I'd be like, yeah, that's crazy, you know, maybe you
should say X y Z. And then my sister would
come to me and she'd be like, well, during that
same fight, mom did X y Z, and I'd be like, yeah,
that's crazy, you know, Like agreeing with all.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Sides, I think you're really craving some support, some connections understanding.
When you play that role in the family, there's always
a fantasy that maybe someone can do that for me too,
Maybe someone can be my therapist, maybe somebody could be
my support. And I'm saying that the habit you've gotten
into is that the shiny object of the conflict or
(24:18):
the other person's needs distracts you, takes your eye off
the ball of your feelings and so you don't lead
with your feelings. You're saying now you're getting more in
touch with them yourself good. It's a necessary step, But
the second, equally important one is to be able to
communicate that to a person who can hear it and
who can make you feel heard. And perhaps your husband
(24:42):
can do some of that. It doesn't sound like he's
the best at it, he might be able to learn.
I'm curious if there's anyone else in your life with
whom you can actually just talk about how you feel
without having to surround it by the conflicts of others.
Is there someone like that in your life.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
One really good female friend who I feel like I
can tell everything to in our lives. My husband and
her husband went to kindergarten together and have been friends since,
but we always say we feel like we would have
been friends on our own without having met through them.
And I definitely feel like I can tell her almost
(25:22):
everything unfiltered, even with my husband and I's relationships. Sometimes
I need somebody to talk to you about that, and
she's definitely there for me whenever I need.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
How does she respond to you that's different from the
way that your own family members respond to you?
Speaker 3 (25:38):
She'll say like like, yeah, I totally get it, I
totally understand, or she'll come back with an example from
her own family.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
Whenever I have the.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Opportunity to spend time with her, and it's just like
her and I I always feel better leaving.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
I think what you're saying is that you feel seen
and you feel understood.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
Yeah, yeah, sure.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Heard, seen, understood all of that, right, Heard for sure.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
Heard is a big one.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Yeah, herd is a big one.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah, And emotionally validated, which is a very important term here.
Emotional validation means that the person makes you feel that
they really get how you're feeling, They really understand the
emotional component. And that emotional validation I think is so
sweet for you because you get so little of it.
So I imagine that's a very important relationship in that way.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. You said that your parents are
in the middle of a separation. So how long has
this been going on?
Speaker 4 (26:35):
Like three months?
Speaker 1 (26:37):
It's been about three months before this, your father would
come to you sometimes with conflict with your mom. Would
your mom come to you before this with conflict that
she was having with your dad or only since the separation?
Speaker 3 (26:51):
I would say, since we went back to that trip
in Ireland. That's really when she felt comfortable enough to
talk to me about my dad, which I found really
hard because even though I wasn't as close with my dad,
he's still my dad, you know, and I still love
him and I still have feelings about him, and I
(27:11):
don't want to look upon him a certain way because
that's how she feels.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
But that what you said would have been the perfect
thing to say when she comes to you, Youma, I
want to still be able to have a relationship with him.
But actually it leads me to a question. Since you
do get some satisfaction from being in that mediative therapist role,
is that something you're interested in giving up in the family. Yeah,
quitting the therapy job.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
I think that my own family now.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
So I have an eleven year old she's got ADHD
and she's got anxiety, and she's got other things going on.
And then I have my husband and my own relationship
with him that sometimes I feel like struggles. I would
like to be able to focus on us and our
little unit versus focusing on the wider unit of my
(28:05):
immediate family.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Okay, because you know, when therapists want to resign, they
have to find substitute therapists to transfer their client tell to.
And if you do resign from your role, you might
need to do some referring.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
I've tried to refer.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
You are such a good therapist.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
I have been laying on my parents to go to
marriage counseling for since the whole Ireland thing. I was like,
you guys need to go to counseling. You need to
go to counseling, You need to go to counseling, go
to a therapist.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
What do they say?
Speaker 2 (28:36):
They said, we have a therapist? Why would we A
lot of.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Times they would be like, oh, yeah, we're going to
and then never make the appointment. Then I kind of
pushed my dad and I was like, okay, obviously Mom's
not going to make the appointment.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
You need to make it.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
They finally did start, but they went to five sessions
and then they're done.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Now what does that mean? They're done? Since they confide
in you, which one of them wanted to stop or
did they both.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
And want Apparently the therapist was like, how do you
guys feel? And my dad and mom agreed that they
were fine with quitting. They keep saying that they have
this amicable divorce or whatever. But I know there are
still issues in it and they haven't solved them.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
They didn't like the fact that the therapist asked them
to kind of go inside and figure out how they feel.
Is that what happened.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
I think they just felt like they solved all their
problems in their five sessions.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
So if they solved all their problems, why are they
coming to you with problems?
Speaker 4 (29:39):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
I mean, have you ever asked them that question? If
you solved all your problems in counseling, then why are
you coming to me with these problems?
Speaker 3 (29:48):
I think they are still looking for the agreement that
the other person is wrong.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
That's coming from me, right, and that will not come
from the therapist, And that is why that did not
work out for them.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
If you did quit as a therapist for your family,
who might be upset with you most if you did that.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
I think it would be my mom by far, by far, Yeah,
she is the most upset person in the household or
the family.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
I think that they come to you for two reasons, Nicole.
I think the first reason is that they are so
invested in their respective positions and you are so invested
in avoiding conflict and people pleasing that they know that
whatever they say you will agree with them. You will
say you're right, you're right, that other person was completely
(30:39):
off base. You are right, And that feels really good
in the moment, But it doesn't help people to reflect
on their role in what happened. It doesn't help them
to perspective take which is really important for any kind
of communication, what might the other person have been thinking
or feeling, And in that way, you're not actually helping them.
(31:04):
And then you do offer them something concrete, like hey,
here's how you can approach the other person, But you see,
it doesn't get very far because they keep coming back
to you. The one part of the puzzle THATITY don't
understand as well is your sister. You said in your
letter your sister isn't quite on board with this. I
don't know what you meant by that, and also how
your sister comes to you. Has that been a thing
(31:25):
your whole life too, or is that related to the separation.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
It's not necessarily related to the separation. I think it
definitely started to occur once she needed more advice after
she had her child, because I had already done it first.
She does not think that they have tried hard enough,
that they have put in the work, that they have
done everything they could ever possibly do before they walk
the aisle to divorce.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
What comes to mind when you talk about your sister's
feelings about this is how invested she is in keeping
your parents together. And a lot of people don't talk
about what it's like when you're adult and your parents
are getting divorced. People talk a lot about what it's
like when there are kids in the house and the
parents are getting divorced, And so she's not able to
(32:11):
really articulate her feelings. She has a lot of grief
and loss around this. She's really struggling with it. And
I wonder about you, what are your feelings as an
adult whose parents are getting divorced. How are you feeling
about this change in your family.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
I'd like to say that my study line has always
been what will make them happy will make me happy.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
But that's pretty much a lie, and I know that
when I.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
Say it, when it comes out of my mouth, I'm like,
I know I'm lying to whoever's asking me or talking
to me about it. I feel similar to her in
that I don't feel like they've put in the work
or done the things that are required to get a divorce.
It's not like one cheated on the other, and it's
some egregious offense.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Talk about your feelings, not about them. You go to
them so automatically. You how you feel about it.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
I'm upset about it. I think the reality is that
I'm upset.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Tell us what upset means.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
I feel a lot of anger, to be honest, anger
towards them, like I said, for not having tried.
Speaker 4 (33:17):
They've been married for thirty nine years.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
And I don't know how to say, like get it
together and work on this, but you are.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Having some feelings around this, so you keep going back
to them, like guys said, And so anger is kind
of the go to feeling for a lot of us.
It's the most accessible one. It's right there in front
of us. But underneath the anger is usually a more
tender feeling, like hurt or sadness or loss.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
I think that there's definitely some sadness and loss. It's
hard to imagine how things will be. Like our family union,
I would like to say, we're really close in general,
you know, and so like we take vacations together in
all of my years, even as an adult. This is
the first Christmas we haven't been together as a group.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
You know.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
I talk to my sister daily. I talk to my
parents daily or every other day, and so I'm going
to lose that. That's what it feels like, like that's
not the same. That's sad for me.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
It is, and as adults, a lot of times people
feel like I can't really talk about that or I
shouldn't be feeling this because it's not like I'm ten
and I have to go between houses. You have your
own family, you have your own life, and at the
same time, you are losing your family as you knew it.
You're losing all of the things that go along with
(34:41):
your parents being together.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
It's so hard to I don't understand how to say
that to people and then not have them look at
me like I'm not ten, you know, like I'm an adult.
You should understand because you're old enough to understand why
they're getting divorced.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Well, the understanding doesn't change how you feel about it,
because the irony is that for adults when their parents
get divorced, one of the things they often feel is like, Wow,
I'm kind of losing the security of the family unit,
even if it was a conflictual one, even if it
was one that they didn't turn to for security. But
(35:19):
there's something about just knowing it's there, that knowing mom
and dad are there. There's something about the security and
the historicness of it that when you lose it, it
can feel like it really shakes the foundations in some way.
And again adults feel like, well, it shouldn't do that,
but of course it should, because adults have all the
same feelings that children do about that unit getting disrupted.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
I definitely think you're right about the security too, And like,
there's something about our house that we live in. My
grandma lived there, that was where we had Christmas every year,
and now it's like, is that my home anymore?
Speaker 1 (36:00):
That sense of home is so important. A lot of
adults say, you know, even if one parent stays in
that home, it doesn't feel the same. It feels very
different when it's only one parent living there, or when
that house is sold and neither parent is living there.
You lose that peace of your childhood, that piece of
your history, and that sense of security of that's where
(36:22):
we go for the holidays, that's where our gatherings are
that's where my room was.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yeah, it's a hugely significant loss in that way, because
you lose the traditions and the rituals that define the
family unit and define your childhood and your early adulthood
and your adolescents. So it's a big loss for adults,
it's a big loss for you, you know. When that happens,
and always completely right. Sometimes the house can be the same,
but with only one of them in it, it can actually
feel sad to be in that house rather than comforting.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Yeah, and I think it's definitely like I've been over
there since my mom has moved out, and it's different.
Even talking about it is different, like I would say
something like, oh, I'm going to my house or I'm
going you know whatever.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Yeah, it's a big change. Even the way you talk
about it changes.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Yeah, I think that you're starting to see that when
you're really thinking about how you feel that you have
a lot of feelings about them getting separated and divorced,
and when you spend time with your feelings and give
yourself a chance to figure them out, then it might
actually take you to a point where you are even
(37:28):
less willing to be that mediator because no, no, actually
I have very strong feelings here. I want to focus
on mine. I don't want to have to ignore mine
to focus on theirs.
Speaker 4 (37:38):
Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
I think you're right, and I think in the last
couple of years, and this is where it's really become
like too much, you know, because I don't deal with
what I'm feeling with And.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Yeah, it's almost like you're trying to talk your sister
out of the very feelings that you have about your parents'
divorce so that neither of you has to feel them.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
My sister as a person is very upfront and very like,
this is how I feel. And there's been some of
that with my mom back because my mom initially left
the house and got an apartment and so there was
definitely some initial tension there.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
Like she told her upfront how she felt.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
When you say she told her upfront how she felt,
she might have said, I feel like you're not really
giving this marriage a try. That's different from I feel
so sad that the family is coming apart in this way.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
You're right.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
She said something similar to, I don't think you've tried
everything you can try, and I think you're giving up.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
But that's not talking about how she feels.
Speaker 4 (38:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
The other part of what happens when the children are
adults when their parents divorce is the parents don't think
it's that important to worry about the kids. Well, our
kids are adults. We can just be concerned about us
and get them to help us. We don't need to
be concerned about their feelings. Sounds like both your parents
are not.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
I agree.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
Like my mom when she moved out, she said something
to the effect of, I'll be fine, It'll be okay,
I'll be fine. What I told her was, we have
feelings too, you know, like we're allowed to have feelings
too about this. This is a big thing for us too.
And she was like, oh, I know, I know, or something.
(39:24):
But I don't think that she actually took it on board.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Well, right, what a lot of people do with their
adult children is they treat them as mediators, friends, confidants. Yeah,
as opposed to Wait a minute, what is your experience
of this. I don't know that anybody who's actually asked
you that.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
No, I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
So, Nicole.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
We have some advice for you that we'd like you
to try. And what we'd like you to do is
we would like you to resign as the family therapist, okay,
because it's not really your role. And here's how we'd
like you to do that. We'd like you to start
with your sister. It sounds like the two of you
(40:09):
are actually experiencing much of the same thing, and so
instead of becoming her therapist, you can go to her
and say, listen, I've been thinking about all of the
things you've been coming to me with and I realized
that I've been trying to talk you out of the
way that you're feeling, but in fact I feel exactly
the same way. And maybe the two of us can
(40:32):
be a support for each other as we talk about
not how to save mom and Dad's marriage, but how
we're actually feeling about whatever they decide to do. And
we haven't really had that, and I think it would
bring us closer, and I think it would help us
through this really difficult time in our family. And then
ask her how she feels about that and see what
(40:56):
happens between you. I have a feeling she's going to
feel very relieved. Yeah, And you can tell her every
time you come to me with a plan about how
we can get mom and dad to do more to
save their marriage. I'm not going to be on board
with that because I think that it's not our role
to decide what they should do in their marriage. But
(41:16):
we can be together as the kids in the family
right to talk about how we're feeling about what's going
on in our family and all the different ways that
this does impact us. And I'd like to be there
to support how you're feeling, and I hope you can
be there to support how I'm feeling.
Speaker 4 (41:33):
Yeah, makes sense, and it sounds good like I can
do it.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
That will create a new dynamic for you and your
sister to really be those people for each other and
learn how to do that for each other.
Speaker 4 (41:45):
Yeah, yeah, I need that.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
That's the resignation, as it goes with your sister, as
it goes with your mother. When you resign, it's going
to be a little trickier.
Speaker 4 (41:56):
Yeah, you can.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Say, Mom, I know that you're going through a really
hard time right now, and I know that sometimes you
come to me because you need some support. But I
want to let you know that this is a hard
time for everybody in the family and that one of
the things that will help all of us through this
is if we can feel like there's some stability in
(42:22):
our family and for our relationship. That stability is that
you're still my mom and I'm still your daughter, And
in order for us to preserve that mother daughter relationship
and for it to be really strong, I can't be
a part of what happens in your divorce. That that
has to be between you and Dad, and so I
(42:46):
can support you in other ways we can have our relationship,
but once you start talking about what's going on with
you and Dad, I'm going to graciously decline continuing the
conversation because I'm not qualified to help you with that.
But a therapist would be. But it can't come to
(43:06):
me because that will weaken our family and it will
weaken the relationship that you and I have. And maybe
there will be room for you to hear how I
feel about this, or maybe not. But I want us
to have a relationship where I am the daughter and
you work out what you need to work out with
Dad separate from me.
Speaker 4 (43:29):
Yeah, I mean it definitely makes sense. It's going to
be hard.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
It's going to be hard, and it will need a
lot of reinforcement because she will either withdraw in anger
and say, well, you're not there for me, You're not
supporting me, and she'll lash out in that way, and
you have to be able to withstand that and stand
your ground in a very loving way. I know this
is hard. I know it's different. I really want you
to find someone you can talk to about this, and
(43:54):
then she may come back to you and try in
different ways to kind of sneak it in the conversation, right,
And every time she does that, you have to say
mom again, and you can joke with her Mom. I
want to resign as a therapist, right right, And you
keep using that as a catchphrase, I'm resigning as the
family therapist. I can't do it because I need to
(44:15):
take care of myself too, and I want to preserve
our relationship. Yeah, okay, so those are the first two resignations.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
Well, the next one is your dad. And the conversation
with your dad should be a simpler version, perhaps of
the one with your mom, because the relationship is a
little less complex. I think you need to lead with
the fact that you know, Dad, I've tried to be
supportive to you and to Mom through this separation and divorce,
but I'd realized that when I do that, I don't
(44:46):
pay attention to how I feel about it. And when
I do start paying attention to how I feel about it,
it turns out I have a lot of feelings about it.
It turns out that I am sad about it, and
so it's very important for me that I pay attention
to how I feel. And I can't do that if
I'm supporting you. It distracts me from it. And I
(45:09):
want to be there for you, but as a daughter,
and I can't be there for you as a divorce mediator.
So I'm letting you know that because I want us
to be able to chat and we can hang out
and we can talk about anything but the divorce, right
So that would be the messaging to him. The last
(45:30):
person is your husband, because I'm going to tell you this.
When you resign as the family therapist, it is going
to feel like a big emotional brick has just been
dropped on you. You're thinking it might be like relief,
but it will be after, But at first it's going
(45:51):
to feel like a real loss, like you're betraying them,
you're abandoning them. You'll feel guilty, you'll feel resentful, A
swirl will come up.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
And in addition, all of those feelings that you were
distracting yourself from by being the family therapist, are going
to be much more accessible to you now.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Right, and therefore you will need support. And so we
would also like you to talk to your husband and
let him know that this is coming, and let him
know that he might find you really emotional when you're
having these conversations and that you could use his help
and support. And so what you're going to ask him
(46:31):
to do in those moments is I want to feel
that if I'm very upset, I can come to you
and tell you about how I'm feeling, because I think
because of his background, he might not know what to
do with all those big feelings you're having. So I'll
give me a tip, and I would say to him,
and when you see me upset and when I'm talking
about those things, really, what I need from you most
(46:54):
is just listen and then when I'm finished, just put
your arms around me, give me a hug, Let me
know that you understand that I'm upset. Let me know
that you get that this is very very difficult, and
that you're there for me. You don't have to solve anything,
you don't have to do anything. I don't want you
(47:14):
to suggest a bath or something like that, because I
can think of that myself. What I want is your
arms around me, and if you had any feelings about
what it feels like for me to be upset and
for you to listen to it, I'm happy to hear
them if you can share them. They might be difficult
for you, but if you have feelings about it, please
do share them with me, because I want us to
(47:35):
be able to talk a little bit more about our feelings.
We both need that practice. We both didn't do much
of it growing up, but it's important for us to
do so we can model it for our kids. So
we can have that kind of emotional dialogue with our
kids and we can practice with one another.
Speaker 4 (47:52):
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
So those are the things we'd like you to do.
And start with your husband because we want him to
be ready for the fallout from the others. So you
want to start with.
Speaker 4 (48:04):
Him, right, Yeah? I agree.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
I think it.
Speaker 4 (48:08):
I know I need to do it. It's just going
to be hard.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
It is.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
It will be hard in the short term, as these
things are, but it will make things so much easier
in the long term. Yeah, okay, Well, let us know
how it goes.
Speaker 4 (48:22):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (48:27):
I think Nicole was really ripe for this. I really
think she was at the place where she realized, I
need to start thinking about myself and my own feelings
and not just cater to everyone else's. So I'm actually
quite hopeful that this will be a change that is
not just about her relationship with her parents, but her
relationship with her emotions and her access to them all around.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
Yeah, when people come to therapy, I'm always asking not
just why are you here, but why now? Why this month,
this week? Did you just to call me? And I
think that she wrote to us at the time that
she was ready for change. I'm always assessing for readiness
for change, and a lot of times people come in
(49:11):
and they're wanting someone else to change, and I think
what she's realizing is, wait a minute, I need to
resign from this position. This is overwhelming for me. And
so I'm very hopeful that this is going to open
up all kinds of doors for her in terms of
accessing her own feelings, getting her needs met in different ways,
(49:32):
and taking her out of that incredibly stressful situation that
she has been in for a lot of her life.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
Right really untenable. So I'm very hopeful for her and
look forward to hearing what's going to happen. You're listening
to deotherapists from iHeartRadio. We'll be back after a quick break. So, Laurie,
(50:05):
we heard back from Nicole, our honorary family therapist. Let's
see how things went for her.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
So I ripped the band aid off as soon as
I got done talking to you guys pretty much. I
talked to my husband right away, and I'm not sure
he was totally on board or knew what to think,
but I feel like we definitely covered the part where
I need more emotional support and he understood that. So
(50:35):
next I called my sister and talked to her, and
she was completely supportive and agreed that I needed to
step down as the family therapist. She was happy to
have somebody there to support her feelings too as well,
and to understand that I felt the same way as
she did. Next, I talked to my mom because I
(50:56):
knew that that was going to be the toughest conversation.
It didn't go exactly as I thought I would go.
Instead of her being angry, I felt like she was
more annoyed. I would say, is a good term, and
she kind of just said you can do whatever you
(51:17):
need to do, and I'm going to do whatever I
need to do for myself, which is not really what
I thought either. After that happened, then my dad ended
up calling me and he said he was worried about
me and was wondering what was going on. My mom
had called him, and he was very supportive. He's like,
(51:39):
I totally understand. I know why you need to do this,
I know why this is affecting you and how it's
affecting you, and I'm proud of you, and I will
be there however you need me to be there. You
just tell me what you need me to do. He
said that I've been there for him a lot and
that whatever I need, he'll be there for Overall, I
(52:01):
feel relieved in some respects. Other respects, I don't feel like,
especially with my mom, that I know what to talk about.
In the last couple of days, it's been a little
more difficult that way, without having the family therapist conversations.
Speaker 4 (52:18):
We'll see how it goes. I'm still feeling it out.
I feel like.
Speaker 1 (52:25):
So what we're seeing here is very common where sometimes
when we try to redefine our roles in the family,
some people don't like it. And I think what's going
on here is that her mom is not happy about
losing her own personal family therapist, and she went so
far as to call the father to say, something's wrong
(52:47):
with Nicole. She's gone crazy. She's not going to be
my therapist anymore.
Speaker 2 (52:55):
I agree, But you know what, Nicole is right, it's
going to be tense for a while with her mom
because when all the conversations have been the family therapy stuff. Yes,
you're going to have to figure out what else you
can talk about. Indeed, both of you will have to
do that, and that's part of the deal. There's nothing
wrong with that. It does take time to figure out
what do we talk about, and hopefully, Nicole, you'll prevent
your mom from dragging you back to therapy territory as
(53:16):
she will try to.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
Do, and that will involve constant reminders because it sounds
like she's not going to let go of this very easily.
But I think the positive thing here is that you
will have a different kind of relationship with your mother.
Ultimately that I think will be a much more fulfilling
relationship for both of you and certainly take that pressure
off of you. And I think that it went well
(53:37):
with Nicole's sister, and I think her husband when she
says you didn't really know what to do with it,
he won't know what to do with it yet. But
this is again a redefining and it will certainly help
the communication in their marriage.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
There is a learning curve when you change a dynamic
with someone. There is a learning curve in figuring out
the new dynamic. Everyone gets to have one. Her husband included,
and I.
Speaker 1 (53:59):
Thought that the response was great, and I hope that
that was very reassuring for Nicole because I think that
ultimately he's the one who gets it right now, and
I think the others will eventually start to get it too.
Speaker 2 (54:11):
Nicole, you might have some time on your hands now
that you're not busy with all the family therapy, so
hopefully you'll get to discover some new passion that keeps
too happy.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
Next week. A mother and daughter find it difficult to
reconnect after the mother's years long struggle with severe depression.
Speaker 3 (54:32):
My body is so full of her triggers that even now,
at thirty five, I'll see something that I know she
can't handle and.
Speaker 4 (54:41):
I will have a reaction to it.
Speaker 1 (54:43):
I think for a lot of my life. I deluded
myself into thinking that my depression wasn't impacting you. Hey,
fellow travelers, if you're enjoying our podcast each week, don't
forget to subscribe for free so that you don't miss
any episodes, and please help support Dear Therapists by telling
your friends about it and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.
(55:06):
Your reviews really help people to find the show.
Speaker 2 (55:08):
If you have a dilemma you'd like to discuss with us,
Bigo Smooth, email us at Lorian Guy at iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 1 (55:16):
Our executive producer is Noel Brown. We're produced and edited
by Mike Johns, Josh Fisher, and Chris Childs. Our interns
are Dorit Corwin and Silver Lifton. Special thanks to Alison
Wright and to our podcast fairy Godmother Katie Kuric.
Speaker 2 (55:32):
We can't wait to see you at next week's session.
Speaker 1 (55:34):
Dear Therapist is a production of iHeartRadio.
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