Encore: S03 Ep. 19 - Kate’s People-Pleasing Trap

This week we’re in session with Kate, who wants to break free from her people-pleasing tendencies. We help her to see how this pattern developed in her family growing up, and how to start prioritizing her own feelings and needs with her parents and brother now that she’s an adult.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm Laurie 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 (00:10):
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 (00:18):
Each week we invite you into a real session where
we help people confront their biggest problems and then give
them actionable advice and hear about the changes they've made
in their lives.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
So sit back and welcome to today's session. This week,
we're in session with Kate, who wants to break free
from her people pleasing tendencies.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
I felt even guiltier for leaving.

Speaker 4 (00:40):
I was in this impossible position of trying to split
up my time between my brother and his family and
my mom, and neither side.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
Would be happy with the amount of time spent with them.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
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 professional health care advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let iHeartMedia
use it in part orn 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 guests.

(01:17):
Hey Laurie, Hey guy.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
So what do we have in our mailbox today?

Speaker 1 (01:22):
So today we have a letter from a woman who
is struggling with people pleasing and it goes like this,
Dear therapists, I'm a first generation immigrant and realize that
our family situation might not be uncommon for other immigrant families.
My father was always absent due to work and prioritizing
traveling in his free time. He also cheated on my

(01:42):
mom multiple times and has other children. I don't know
how many. My mother relied on me for emotional support,
as she was always lonely and depressed. I spent most
of my teenage years consoling her instead of going out
with my friends. My brother is ten years older than me,
and it felt like he was more of a fought
a brother. He was always very dominant, angry, and loud.

(02:04):
It was very easy to upset him, and he often
gave me tasks like going to the store or cleaning
his room. But somehow I always seem to do something incorrectly.
I was scared of him, and I think so was
my mom. My response to all this was to flee
after graduating and to move to another city and later
country to study. It gave me a legitimate reason not
to be there and to enjoy my life a little.

(02:25):
But whenever I would come home to visit my brother
and mother always made me feel guilty for not spending
enough time with them. My brother has three children, and
it was important to him that I spent time with
my nieces and nephews and helped out my sister in
law cleaning the house looking after the kids. I felt
like a maid at my brother's place and a counselor
at my mom's. Lately, it's been bugging me that my

(02:46):
mom never asks how I am. When she calls. She
immediately starts to talk about her life and problems. I
also have a very difficult time creating boundaries with my
brother because he so easily gets angry when I even
attempt to say no, I need to break free from
the people. Please her tendencies that keep me feeling in prisoned.
Please help Kate.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
I'm really glad Kate wrote to us, and I'm really
glad she recognizes that she's a people pleaser because it
sounds like this light thing, but it can be damaging
to every aspect of a person's life. It can really
dictate their relationships, their self esteem, and how they deal
with things. So it's such a broad problem.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
So many people deal with this. I get so many
messages on social media and we see it both in
our therapy offices. So many people were told that somebody
else's needs were more important than their needs, and so
there's always this conflict going on inside of them. Do
I do what I need or do I do what
the other person needs? And if I don't do what

(03:45):
the other person needs, there's this incredible guilt. So let's
go talk to her and find out more about what's
going on. You're listening to Dear Therapists for my Heart Radio.
We'll be back after a short break.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
I'm Lori Gottlieb and I'm Guy Wench and this is
Deo Therapist. Hi Kate, Hi, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Oh, it's our pleasure. We wanted to start by hearing
a little bit more about your current situation. Tell us
a little bit about how old you are, how people
pleasing might come into your life. Now. What are you
doing in your life professionally and socially.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
Sure, I'm thirty one years old. I currently live in Lebanon.

Speaker 4 (04:37):
I'm an aid worker, so for the past couple of years,
I've deployed to different emergencies around the world. I was
born and raised in Austria, but my parents are originally
from Bangladesh. I have an older brother, it's ten years
older than me, and I guess I left home when
I was around nineteen years old to study humanitarian eight

(05:00):
and then I've started working since I was around twenty three.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Can you tell us a little bit more about how
some of these tendencies might play out in your friendships
or your professional relationships, your romantic relationships.

Speaker 3 (05:13):
Sure. Yeah, married to a great guy. We met actually
at work, so he's in the same field as I am,
and I also have a bunch of great friends.

Speaker 4 (05:23):
I guess my people pleasing tendencies I see them really
more in my family. I feel like I'm much more
myself and who I want to be with my friends.
I guess it always felt like it felt liberating going
abroad making friends that are more like me, So I

(05:45):
think I don't have those people pleasing tendencies so much
with my friends and with my husband, but really more
with my family.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
But I might be wrong, Maybe I just don't see it.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Well, you're in a profession, both you and your husband,
of helping other people. It's humanitarian he You've found a
profession in which you get to do some of the
things that come naturally to you, like helping other people's
paying attention to other people's needs. And it's possible that
in doing that and in meeting somebody else who does
that might set up a situation so you're less likely

(06:18):
to express the people pleasing because you're with people who
are pleasing as well.

Speaker 4 (06:25):
Yes, while you were talking, I was just thinking that,
especially during my last job, which involved a lot of
different deployments to many different emergencies, ranging from a couple
of weeks at a time to a couple of months
at a time.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
It was very taxing.

Speaker 4 (06:40):
It was very tiring as well, and I didn't prioritize
me for those.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
Couple of years, just because it.

Speaker 4 (06:50):
Felt like I wasn't really a priority when there's so
much suffering all around me.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
So you have this idea that there's some kind of
hierarchy that if somebody else is suffering more than you are,
that your needs aren't as important.

Speaker 3 (07:07):
Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
Yeah, So when you were going through that, you're saying
over the past those two years, you might have neglected
yourself a bit, and your own priorities and needs got
pushed to the side a bit. Were you married at
that time when you're going in all these deployments, it.

Speaker 4 (07:23):
Was actually kind of crazy. I remember deploying to one
emergency it was in Africa, and I got back and
I got married two days later. I tried to somehow
build my life around my job or my deployment.

Speaker 3 (07:41):
So that also reflected.

Speaker 4 (07:43):
In meeting friends. I didn't make friends at all during
those couple of years. It was more connections that I
met during my deployments, but not really friends or even
maintaining my friendships. I think I was not really there.
I missed a bunch of weddings and birthdays. I guess
I never really asked what I wanted. I missed out

(08:07):
on a lot of things.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
So you and your husband went, given these deployments and
given the separations that they force upon you both, how
much is there an ongoing dialogue between you about, Hey,
we're only going to see each other for a little
bit of time. Here's what I need. What do you need?
Is that a conversation that you both have.

Speaker 4 (08:27):
So actually, after I did those deployments for about four years,
I moved to Afghanistan for two years, So that was
even harder in a way because I was permanently there
and it was hard. And then covided and that meant
we saw each other even less.

Speaker 3 (08:46):
But I think we have this.

Speaker 4 (08:49):
Understanding that I do this for a limited amount of
time and I'll be back. Now I'm back with my husband.
We look together and it's refreshing and nice to actually
be together in the same country. He's super supportive, and
I think we have this understanding without actually having to

(09:09):
discuss or talk about it much.

Speaker 3 (09:12):
We want to start a family, too, so.

Speaker 4 (09:14):
I think it's the first time I'm trying to prioritize
my private life.

Speaker 2 (09:18):
You're kind of implying that we kind of sense each
other's needs and we know the drill and so we're
there to support each other. But he doesn't express Hey,
this is really hard when you're away. Maybe we can
figure out how to spend more time together, you know,
in the next deployment or whatever it is. You don't
actually verbalize those things to one another.

Speaker 3 (09:37):
You would never say, don't go, I don't want you
to go. Stay with me.

Speaker 4 (09:41):
He is the type of person who would say, do
it if you feel like it's going to advance your career.
We'll figure it out as long as you're happy.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
So he's a people pleaser.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
Too, I guess. So we found each other.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
Tell us a little bit about your relationship with your family. Now.

Speaker 4 (10:06):
My parents are actually back in Bangladesh. They moved back
a couple of years ago. I see them around once
or twice a year, and I speak to my mom
once a week or so. I don't speak to my
dad often. In fact, we hadn't spoken in years, just

(10:28):
up until recently.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
What changed there?

Speaker 4 (10:33):
I think he feels guilty for his actions in the past,
and so he never really actively reached out. But I
was never fully guilting him, or I was never fully upset,
just because he was away so often, so he wasn't
even really.

Speaker 3 (10:52):
Present for me to be upset.

Speaker 4 (10:56):
So I think he never reached out, and I felt
like I should never read out because he was literally
not there while I was growing up. But I guess
as he's getting older, I felt like, maybe it's just
silly that we're both pulling up this wall. And I
was also curious I never really got to know him,

(11:18):
so I just kind of wanted to get to know
more about him.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
But I don't feel the need to talk to him
as much as I thought I would. With my brother,
it was always.

Speaker 4 (11:28):
My sister in law who was the connection to my
brother because my brother was also always busy and ten
years older, so I feel like we didn't really have
much to connect with each other.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
You say in your letter that when you visit your
family that you feel like a maid to your brother
and a counselor to your mother. Yeah, is that still
the case?

Speaker 4 (11:53):
So maybe I'll start with my brother. He was very
demanding growing up. He was sort of my father figure
in the absence of my actual father, and he would
be the one I would actually be scared of, Scared
of bad grades, scared of, you know, staying out too late,

(12:13):
of him judging me. He gets angry and mad very easily.
I always felt like I did something wrong because whatever
I did, he would either laugh at it or get mad.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
Can you paint a picture of what would happen when
he got mad. What was that like?

Speaker 4 (12:32):
It was very loud, so he would literally start yelling
at me. I remember one time he even shook me.
It was very intimidating as a small girl, and I
guess I sort of shut down.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
I would not speak much.

Speaker 4 (12:49):
I would not say much, just to protect myself because
his reactions were so unpredictable.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
Where was your mom when this was happening with your brother.

Speaker 4 (13:00):
Busy helping my dad run the business. I think sometimes
she witnessed it or she would sense it, And I
remember she would always say, Kate, don't be scared. Stand
up for yourself. But it was just too hard to
implement as a child. I just couldn't do it by myself.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
So she would tell you to stand up to him.
But it sounds like she never did what she should
be doing as a parent, which is she should have
stood up to him.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (13:25):
I think she was also scared of them, to be honest,
and I think she still is because he shows the
same reactions towards her. She wasn't really a mother to him.
She was almost more like the child being scolded by
my brother.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
It's weird.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
And in terms of your father, you said he cheated
on your mom. He had several children, you don't know
how many. It sounds like your mom might be a
little bit of a people pleaser, where she was afraid
to say anything.

Speaker 3 (14:01):
They had many fights growing up. I remember.

Speaker 4 (14:06):
So many weekend warnings waking up to fighting or even
in the evenings and overhearing really terrible things that probably
no child should hear.

Speaker 3 (14:18):
She would yell at him as well.

Speaker 4 (14:21):
But there was never a moment where I thought, Wow,
they're actually going to get divorced. And as a thirteen
year old me, I advised my mom to get divorced
to my dad, but she decided to stay despite everything
that happened, despite him leaving us, leaving her in the
worst position. Also after the business.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
Failed, you said that when you're old enough to leave
the school, you kind of fled because it was a
way to get out. But once you had left home
and you at least had a taste of adulthood, was
there a difference in how you felt or how you
reacted once you were a little bit older.

Speaker 4 (15:00):
Whenever I left, I felt so free. I felt like
I could finally be myself. But whenever I would come home,
I would fall back right into where I lived and
In fact, I felt even guiltier for leaving. And I
remember how I was in this impossible position of trying

(15:24):
to split up my time between my brother and his
family and my mom, and neither side would be happy
with the amount of time spent with them. It would
always be a struggle to make both of them happy.
My brother even counted down the days of how many

(15:45):
nights I spent at their place versus how many days
at my mom's whatever I did. But still, obviously I
felt guilty because she was all by herself. She doesn't
have many friends. She only had my dad, who also
did his own things, so I felt like she was
always alone, and yeah, I was sort of the only
one she wanted to be around with.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
Ever, it sounds like you did a lot of caretaking
for your mom growing up. You talked about that in
your letter as well. You described her a little while
ago as sort of the child. What was it like
for you as a child to feel like you had
to take care of your mom?

Speaker 3 (16:22):
It was really hard.

Speaker 4 (16:25):
I remember when my dad left for a couple of months,
I would come home every day after school and I
would find her sitting on the couch just crying.

Speaker 3 (16:37):
So every day.

Speaker 4 (16:38):
The first thing I'd do after coming back from school
is to console her and talk to her for what
felt like hours.

Speaker 3 (16:45):
And there were.

Speaker 4 (16:47):
So many times I didn't go out with my friends
because I felt like I had to be there. Sometimes
she would say, please don't go tonight. Sometimes she wouldn't
even have to ask. I would just stay because I
felt too guilty. So yeah, it was tough seeing.

Speaker 3 (17:02):
Her like that.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
What other feelings did you have rather than girl? Did
you feel resentful? Did you feel angry? Were you're jealous
of friends who didn't have that situation?

Speaker 3 (17:13):
Absolutely everything you just said. I was angry. I was resentful.

Speaker 4 (17:19):
I didn't want to spend time with her in the
living room. I would just stay in my room, which
actually doesn't even make sense for me staying at home
to not be with her. I wanted to live a
happy teenage life, and I would talk to my friends
after the parties and they would say how great it was,
and I felt like I missed out on a lot

(17:39):
of things.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
Did you ever express that to your mom?

Speaker 4 (17:42):
I did when I was angry, but not in a
meaningful way. I don't think I actually ever sat down
with her and told her how hard it was for
me because I always had to be.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
The strong one.

Speaker 4 (17:55):
She would have crumbled had she seen that I was
suffering from the effects of her failed marriage. She was
always very thankful, and she would always say how much
she loves me and.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
How proud she is.

Speaker 4 (18:13):
That I pulled off school while dealing with all these troubles.

Speaker 3 (18:17):
But I don't think she.

Speaker 4 (18:21):
Ever truly understood how much it affected me because ELSON
never showed it.

Speaker 1 (18:26):
The reason that we people please and the reason that
we don't say something is because we're afraid of some
negative consequence. So what did you think the negative consequence
would be if you said, Hey, Mom, I really want
to go to this party, or I really want to
go out with my friends, or this is really hard
on me. I don't know how to take care of you.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
I don't think she would have been able to handle this.
She would have probably just cried more. Maybe she would
have tried not to pour her heart out to me.

Speaker 4 (19:00):
I just knew I had to take care of her,
and I knew that I was the only person she
could rely on. I actually think she was clinically depressed
in hindsight.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
I just know that I had to take care of her.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
What often happens with people pleasers, is that there's something
quite empowering about being able to be that antidepressant for
your mum when she's going through such a hard time.
You were the only medication that worked. You were the
one thing that she needed and she appreciated it at least,

(19:33):
which is good. And she expressed that a lot. And
so the connection you felt with her was in some
significant way related to the fact that she expressed her
love and appreciation for you in those ways. She also
appreciated you were able to do well in school, so
there were messages she was giving you that were really
valuable to you. On the one hand, they were very

(19:55):
damaging on the other because they kept you in that prison,
but they have that value you as well. It's a
double edged sword, and sometimes people are afraid of losing
that positive part of losing that feeling of empowerment of like,
I'm just a kid, but I'm powerful enough to save
my mother from how a distress and that's difficult to

(20:16):
give up.

Speaker 3 (20:17):
Yes, I guess you're right.

Speaker 4 (20:19):
I did want to be valued and appreciated by my mother, definitely.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
Yeah, there's another aspect to this that I think is
important too. Which is that you had a lot of
feelings about your father's absence and your father's neglect. Really,
and your mom had a lot of feelings about your
father's absence and his neglect toward her. And if you

(20:46):
were taking care of your mother and her feelings about
your father, you didn't have to deal as much with
your own, because so much of that was about let
me manage my mom's feelings about my dad. I have
feeling about him too, but I'm not going to think
too much about that because I can channel it all
into taking care of my mother's feelings about my dad.

(21:10):
And I wonder if at any point you started feeling
your own feelings about your dad that were separate from
your mom's feelings about your dad. Did you ever get
to that point where you weren't so en messed with
her around this and you could come up with your
own ideas about how you felt about your relationship with him.

Speaker 4 (21:29):
I mean, I was mad at him, but I was
mad at him for leaving my mom. I wasn't really
mad at him for leading us the kids, and I
didn't talk to him for years at a time because
I felt like I was on my mom's side when
I was protecting her by doing that and trying to

(21:51):
hurt him by not being in touch with him.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
But I guess I never really just because he really wasn't.
I don't even know this person so much.

Speaker 4 (22:03):
I have some good memories of him coming back home
from his business trips and bringing me nice things, and
I would run into his arms. But I feel like
I don't even know him enough to have my own
feelings towards him.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
I want you to hear what you're saying. You're saying
I feel like I didn't know him enough to have
feelings toward him. You're a child and your parent is away,
So the fact that you didn't know him is enough
to have feelings about him. It's not that out of sight,
out of mind because he was away, I don't have

(22:40):
feelings toward him. It was because he was away. I
have so many feelings toward him, and they got squashed
down in the service of your mother's feelings toward him. Now,
she had legitimate feelings toward him. She was dealing with
a lot cheating on her, he was having other children.

(23:01):
He wasn't there. Clearly she was in distress, but you
were distressed. Never even made it on the radar, And
the way that you convinced yourself of this was to say,
I don't really know if I have any feelings toward him,
because I don't know him well enough. Even though the
fact that you didn't know him is a huge statement

(23:22):
of abandonment.

Speaker 3 (23:24):
It's really strange.

Speaker 4 (23:26):
I think of him sometimes and I think that, and
maybe that's how I justify it. But I would always
say that he's a funny person. He's charming, he knows
how to talk, he's educated, knows about different cultures and religions.

Speaker 3 (23:48):
But he's just not a family person.

Speaker 4 (23:52):
And I guess that's what I always told myself, that
he's actually a pretty cool person, but you just family
is not for him, and he preferred traveling abroad and
spending time outside, and part of it was working and
part of it was fun. But yeah, I never really

(24:13):
thought about the abandonment and that he left me dealing
with so many things.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Kate, if you think of yourself at that young age,
at six or at seven, and your dad's not around,
and your mom's miserable, and because your dad's not around,
your brother's around, and he yells at you and he
shakes you, and he scares you. And if you think
of a seven year old girl in that situation, do
you think that she would have feelings about the fact

(24:42):
that her father isn't there and that those feelings might
not be Well, he must be a cool dude. He's
just not a family person. Does it seem reasonable to
you that another child might have had quite strong feelings
about the concept uens of his absence?

Speaker 3 (25:02):
I think so.

Speaker 4 (25:03):
Rationally speaking, any other child would be pretty mad about
the fact that the dad was not there.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
And that's what we're saying that you need to be
interested in the fact that you really absorbed him of
or guilt from everything that was going on. You suffered
so many consequences for that absence, but you really didn't
blame him in any way. In fact, he remained a
cool dude in your eyes. And that's what Laurie was

(25:31):
saying earlier that part of the reason that happened was
because you channeled those feelings into helping your mom and
trying to make up for his absence, so much so
that you weren't able to take any look at all
at your own feelings and still struggle to do that

(25:51):
now about how you feel about the abandonment, about the
situation he left you in, about how that compromised your
childhood and so much your life in certain ways even now.

Speaker 4 (26:04):
Yeah, I think you're right. I knew I always had
issues with my brother. I knew that there was something wrong,
and he was in fact the first person who brought
me into therapy.

Speaker 3 (26:16):
Or even reading.

Speaker 4 (26:19):
About our bond or the non existence of our brother
and sister relationship. I knew from my sister in law,
for example, she would always say, you have to also
look at your issues with your parents, But I would
always think why, Like, up until recently, I thought everything
was fine even with my mom, and I guess I

(26:42):
did not even consider my dad at all or my
feelings towards him.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
When we're children and we have intensely difficult feelings about
our parents that are so so threatening to how you
would feel about your dad's absence, or to consider how
challenging it was to have to parent your mom, even

(27:09):
when you have an abusive brother yelling at you and
screaming at even scaring you in the home would have
been so big that you truly had to push them
aside and not see them because they were too big
to deal with. Not that they were absent. They were
too big to deal with. And that means that you

(27:30):
do have to dip into that now, because unless you do,
you will really be stuck in that people pleasing mode
in which you really dismiss your feelings in favor of
other people's.

Speaker 1 (27:45):
And it's important to consider, as Guy said, both parents,
because the abandonment was very clear from your father because
he was absent, and you might not have considered that
your mother abandoned you too because you were so close,
you were always together, But in fact she abandoned you
because you had to abandon your own personhood to take

(28:08):
care of her, so she couldn't protect you from your brother,
or chose not to. She didn't see you as a
separate person, as a child, as somebody in middle school,
as somebody in high school who wanted to go and
make friends and do the normal teenage things. She didn't
see that it was not healthy for you to have

(28:30):
to be in that parentified role of taking care of her.
So you really didn't have a mother acting as a mother.
You didn't have a father acting as a father, so
you had the double abandonment, but you only saw it
as my father abandoned me. But hey, he's a cool dude,
and he's really interesting and he's just not a family guy.

(28:54):
But that hurts. Maybe he's not a family guy, but
he has a family, and when you are child in
the family of someone who isn't interested in being a
part of the family, that's extremely painful. And you didn't
have to feel so much pain because you were so
busy taking care of your mother. And I can see

(29:15):
your eyes are starting to get watery. You can start
to access some of this in your body, but I
don't think you've really started to put your toe in
there yet of what that felt like. For the same
reason that you were afraid as a child, I am
afraid of what will happen if I start to feel
these feelings and you're nodding.

Speaker 4 (29:41):
I guess everything you said really hits home. I guess
I never really had to think much about my feelings,
and I guess it hurts now just because it didn't.

Speaker 3 (29:57):
I didn't let it hurt me for.

Speaker 4 (30:00):
So many years, and I sort of pushed away those
feelings that I never gave myself room to even think
about what it meant to me as a child, and
I had to deal with so many things.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
I had to deal with.

Speaker 4 (30:15):
My crazy brother trying to escape his madness, and I
had to deal with consoling my mom. I was always
fleeing because it felt like I could just be free,
and whenever I would come home, I would feel exactly

(30:35):
those feelings of being eight years old again and having
to deal with all these things, just in a different
time and space.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
Now, the tears that you're experiencing now, did you ever
see those tears when you were younger or did you
not even let yourself feel any of this?

Speaker 4 (30:54):
I remember a time when I was really, really sad,
and it was my best friend who was there for me.
But I remember thinking that if I keep doing this
and keep being so sad, I will lose her too,
because it's not fun to be around a person who

(31:14):
cries all the time. So I just pulled myself together
and put on a happy face.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
So there's the people pleasing again. I can't be authentic
and get support from my friend because I will be
a burden to her. Yeah, yeah, was there ever a
time when you cried the way you're crying now and
just let yourself feel all of the sadness, the anger,

(31:44):
the sense of abandonment, any of that. Did you ever
let your body do some of the speaking that you
couldn't do with words?

Speaker 3 (31:52):
I cried so many times.

Speaker 4 (31:54):
I cried about my mom and about just our overall
terrible situation.

Speaker 3 (32:00):
Or yours hers.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
Not mine, right, because your brother was the one person
you allow yourself to feel about. And I want you
to keep in mind this link between people pleasing and
shoving your own feelings down, because to people please, you
really have to allow other people's needs and feelings to

(32:23):
loom way larger than your own, and it really trains
you to be much more oriented towards the needs of
other people, truly, to not even ask yourself how you feel.
And so that's the connection that you need to be
able to break.

Speaker 3 (32:42):
Yeah, I don't think I've ever done that.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
Yeah, because when you were crying, you were crying for
your mum, but never for you.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
And it was today that you were crying for you.
Did that feel different to you?

Speaker 3 (32:59):
Yes? A part of me.

Speaker 4 (33:03):
Doesn't even really understand what's happening right now. There are
so many I don't know what the tears are just coming,
but it's like my brain doesn't really understand. I never
thought I felt abandoned because, as you said, Laurie, my
mom was always around, so it never struck me.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
Really, I would say the opposite. Your mom wasn't always around.
You were always around. She was depending on you to
be around.

Speaker 3 (33:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (33:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
And I think the part that's keeping you from feeling
your feelings too is this idea that if you feel
these feelings towards your parents, you feel guilty for feeling
that way. And it kind of is that both and
that we talk about so much on this podcast, which

(33:58):
is that parents can have good qualities and they can
also have let you down, and both of those things
can be true. It's not one or the other.

Speaker 3 (34:12):
Yeah, I guess they're only human beings.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
Yes, but you've always given them the benefit of the doubt.
My dad's this cool guy. He's not a family guy.
Oh well, no big deal. He goes off, he has affairs,
he has other kids, he's not here, and then our
family goes into chaos without him there. My mother becomes
depressed and lonely. My brother becomes the father figure. I
become the lone person who has nobody there to protect me.

(34:40):
Oh well, that's just how it is. And there's a
way that we cope as children. That is very effective
for us, because, as Guy said, we can't handle all
of these big feelings or these big realities. But now
you say, you're still in this people please in prison,
and in order to get out of it, you're ready

(35:00):
to start feeling some of these feelings because you're not
the little helpless girl in the house anymore.

Speaker 3 (35:09):
Right.

Speaker 4 (35:10):
I feel like I'm just really at the beginning of
this road and I don't even know what I'm feeling.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
One exercise that you can consider. You mentioned you and
your husband want to have a family. If you imagine
having a daughter, and if you imagine that daughter being
in that position of having an absent father and a
mother who was just relying on her at incredibly young
ages to support her. If you can imagine having a

(35:42):
daughter who never got to feel her own feelings because
she was always in duty to other people and that
she was sad and that she didn't get to do stuff,
it might be easier for you to access those feelings,
because I think it would be easy of you to
feel like that is not okay for my daughter.

Speaker 4 (36:04):
Can I ask you, perhaps, if you've dealt with other
people preesers like me, I mean, I don't want you
to put words into my mouth or feelings into my head,
but just because I'm so lost and my feelings other
than abandonment, What should a little girl have felt.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
In that moment?

Speaker 1 (36:33):
I'm wondering where you went when Guy asked you that question.
I think he touched something very tender in you, and
you got scared and went into the intellectual part of yourself.
You went into Okay, let me intellectually understand that, because
that's safer and that's familiar territory for me. So we

(36:56):
want to help you. We aren't abandoning you. We're actually here,
and I don't think you're used to that. I don't
think you're used to people being there and sitting with
you when you're having a feeling that feels scary to you,
and we want to give you a little taste of that.
Like if you could contemplate guys question for a second
and imagine that little girl who is your daughter and

(37:18):
she's in that situation, what feelings come up for you
before you get scared and run away and want to
know all about people pleasing?

Speaker 4 (37:29):
Sorry, Guy, I think I zoomed out while you were
asking me the question.

Speaker 3 (37:34):
Could we do that again.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
Yes, I want you to visualize your own daughter at
say seven, eight years old, a little girl who wants
to be happy, who wants to play, who doesn't want
to have to deal with too many adult problems. I
want you to visualize her face as she comes home
from school and she had friends, she was playing with them,

(37:58):
everything was fine, and she walks in and dad isn't
home and mom is weeping on the couch. Can you
keep the focus on your daughter's face, on what that
face looks like when she walks through the door and
sees that. Can you describe that?

Speaker 4 (38:15):
Yes, it will be so annoyed, so so annoyed that
she would have to deal with this again, just another
day with the mother crying. The happy mood would be gone,
actually not even caring or concerned, actually just really annoyed.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
And what is it like for you to imagine that
being your daughter? How would you feel if that were
your daughter, watching her in that scenario, watching her come
home and go from this happy child to this numb child,
this child who can't have any feelings because she can
feel a little frustrated and angry, but that's all. Otherwise

(39:00):
it's too much.

Speaker 4 (39:03):
I would be so sad. I would be heartbroken not
to see her laugh and play.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
And yes, yeah, how would you comfort her?

Speaker 3 (39:20):
I'd probably give her a big hug and I would
ask how her day was and what she experienced, what
she would like to do this afternoon. I would like
to listen to her instead of always talking about myself.

Speaker 1 (39:42):
That is so beautiful to hear the adult you thinking
about how you might take care of that child, because
that child is still right there inside of you. And
to be able to see you cry and feel the
sadness and know that as an adult you're now safe

(40:05):
and you can comfort her and say, wow, you were
just robbed of your joy the minute you walked in
that house. Your spirit was quashed. When you walked in
that house, you were terrified of what you might have
done wrong that day, because your brother's going to start
screaming at you depending on what you did or didn't

(40:26):
do right that day. Your mom's going to be dependent
on you to maintain her, and you become invisible. Yeah,
and when you can imagine the face, that's what you
would never let yourself feel or see, right, And.

Speaker 2 (40:52):
Kate, what is so painful? I think in that moment
for you is that when you describe what you would
do as another which was so lovely, it gave you
a glimpse of the childhood you should have had but didn't,
and that brought a lot of feelings for you too.

Speaker 4 (41:11):
And I think a part of me whenever I speak
to my mother now, and I get annoyed that she
doesn't really ask me how I'm doing. She starts to
talk about her troubles and her life right away. I
get so annoyed. And that's probably the reason.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
Why it's an exact repeat of what you experienced as
a child. It was helped me with my problems daughter.

Speaker 4 (41:45):
And I wish it wouldn't affect me so much. I
wish I wouldn't care so much about her not asking
me how I'm doing, but it does. And I told
her a million times, why don't you just ask me
how to do? And then the next time she calls,
she'll ask, and then the following times it's forgotten again,

(42:08):
and the whole thing will start all over again. I
wish I could just accept that I don't need my
mother to ask me how I am, but it really
bothers me.

Speaker 1 (42:22):
I'm wondering if we can look a little bit at
some of the other relationships as well. So where are
things with your father? Sounds like growing up, you would
come back, he'd bring some nice gifts, you'd run into
his arms, and then he would leave again, and there
was this unspoken secret in the family that he was

(42:44):
having these affairs and other children. How did you learn
about this and the other children?

Speaker 4 (42:51):
So it's actually really terrible. We had someone to help
us in the household, and she turned out to be
one of his, and she was living with us, and
she was like a sister to me.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
How did you know that was going on.

Speaker 4 (43:07):
The day when my mom found out, she went into
her room and she saw my dad there, and I
heard her screaming early in the morning, so I ran
up and I saw my dad come downstairs. That was
obvious shortly after she left, But I think my dad
then left us for her, although he never mentioned it

(43:32):
obviously to us. He told us that.

Speaker 3 (43:36):
He needed to find a new job and it happened
to be abroad, but I knew there was something fishy
about it.

Speaker 4 (43:44):
And then years later I found out I had a
half sibling for my brother. She contacted my brother.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
And you've never discussed this with your father directly.

Speaker 4 (43:56):
I never discussed it directly with him. I caught him
once top on the phone with some woman and I
went back into the house and told him he's disgusting.
I think he was really ashamed. But we never discussed
ever since. I stopped talking to him, and I told

(44:16):
my mother I don't want to have anything to do
with him, so he knows, but we never really discussed it.
And I guess recently, I don't know why I felt
like I needed a father in my life, but I

(44:37):
don't even know what that feels like.

Speaker 1 (44:39):
So what happens when you talk to him? Are you
then playing this game where you're pretending everything's fine. Yeah,
because I don't think you're really going to get a
father like that.

Speaker 3 (44:51):
No, And it doesn't really feel good either.

Speaker 4 (44:54):
It's the I'm good and what happened happened, and we
don't really talk about things that happened in the past,
so we just kind.

Speaker 3 (45:03):
Of start from, I guess, a superficial stuff.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
It feels empty.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
When you're not being authentic. The conversation can't feel authentic
when you're engaged with the cool dude rather than a
father in that manner where you're not sharing how you
feel you've never brought up Hey, we never spoke about
why I stopped talking to you and what happened, and
I would like to without doing any of that. Then

(45:33):
the conversation is artificial and it can't feel satisfying in
the way that you would like it to.

Speaker 4 (45:38):
Yeah, I just feel like whatever he'd say, it almost
doesn't make up for he's so old now, it almost
doesn't make up for all these years.

Speaker 3 (45:49):
That were lost.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
Having a relationship with your father now is it going
to take away the pain from the past. But what
it can do is it can give you a sense
of what it's like to have a father, which can
be very healing for you. He may not turn out
to be exactly the father that you want or need,
but the more you're in touch with your own needs
and the more you can express them to him and

(46:12):
you can see what he's capable of in terms of
responding to them, it could be a very important healing
experience for you. Now that will help you with this
issue of caring more about other people's feelings than your own, And.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
Katie will do another thing. Potentially it might make him
as a grandfather be more meaningful to you, because that
connection that you forged with him, even though it's not
going to make up for lost time, but it's more
authentic in the present, will resonate much more deeply when

(46:47):
you see him interact with your future kids than it
would write now, because right now it would be the
stranger interacting with them, and in that case it might
be a father and grandfather.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
And on a similar note, let's talk about your brother
right now. You say, every time you go to visit,
you feel like he's still telling you what to do,
and you still seem very afraid of him.

Speaker 3 (47:13):
Yeah, I have also had quite a difficult conversation with him.

Speaker 4 (47:20):
It actually happened because one time he was criticizing me
and I actually stood up and left because I couldn't
take it anymore. And then when I came back, we
had this huge fight for I think the first time
in our lives, and I just sort of exploded. Whatever

(47:45):
I do, he finds a way to criticize it. One time,
I'm leaving my job for love and he thinks I'm
crazy and makes fun of me earning as much as
a cab driver. And then a couple of years later,
I take up a job in a different country because

(48:05):
it seems interesting, and he thinks I'm crazy for taking
up that job and leaving my husband. So I feel
like whatever I do is always wrong, And I told
him everything I was so frustrated about back then. I
was just so so mad. I literally I was at

(48:26):
one point just just screaming. It was like a big
screen coming out of me, and I had to try
to stop myself. And he was very defensive, and he
kept criticizing me and telling me how selfish I am
for doing my own thing and not considering the family

(48:47):
or him or the kids. He was mad because I
came to visit them too late. The kids had to
stay up for me while I wanted to visit a
friend on the way. And so yeah, that was hurtful,
but also liberating in a way.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
Kate, it sounds like with your brother, the premise to
this day is that you were there to serve his needs.
That it's incredibly lop sided premise for the relationship. Is
there anything that he does that feels good?

Speaker 1 (49:24):
No?

Speaker 4 (49:25):
Actually, no, nothing. He was never really there when I
needed him. He knew how difficult it was back then
with my mother, that he just sort of lived his
life and built his family and had other priorities, so
he wasn't really there when I needed him, and when

(49:46):
he was there, it made my life so much harder.

Speaker 2 (49:51):
What is the relationship you want with him and his family?

Speaker 3 (49:57):
So all I ever want it was to be close
to my brother. I wanted a brother and sister relationship
where we could just let lose and make jokes, and
we never had that sort of openness. And it's interesting
because it turns out he's the same sort of criticizing

(50:20):
husband to his wife, and they're going through a not
a divorce, but they're close to it. He is now
living away from the kids and his wife, and I
think he's had a lot of time to reflect and
actually tries to make things better with me.

Speaker 4 (50:42):
So he just recently came to visit and he told
me that he wants to work on our relationship and
he wants us to do trips, visit my mom together
and share a hotel room and all these things. But
it's almost too much for me right now. I appreciated it,

(51:09):
but it's almost as if I have some sort of.

Speaker 3 (51:13):
Blockish.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
It might be possible, Kate, that you don't know yet
how you feel about it, and that's okay. In fact,
that is healthy. I'm thinking about that moment when you
were going to visit and you wanted to see a
friend first, and he got mad at you because the
kids were going to be asleep, and that reminds me

(51:36):
of your mom with don't go out with your friends.
Make sure that my needs are taken care of. It's
a very parallel kind of thing. Make sure that my
needs are taken care of. I don't care if you
experienced joy by seeing your friends and then to have
that whole history with him and for him to say, Okay,

(51:56):
now I'm ready to be the kind of brother you
want me to be. I'm having this reckoning in my
own life and I'm starting to see things. You may
need to take that at your own pace. You may
need to be able to actually express for the first
time what you do need, and that will be part

(52:16):
of the coming together. It's can you let me go
at my own pace? Because part of the problem, dear brother,
is that my needs were never in the equation. So
I really welcome this. I've hoped for this for so long,
but we need to do it in a way where
both of our needs are taken care of. As we

(52:39):
figure out how we can be different with each other.

Speaker 4 (52:43):
Yeah, and I think in the back of my mind,
a part of me thinks, well, now you're ready, now
that you're lonely, now that you're alone in your apartment.
Now you're ready to travel with me, and now you want.

Speaker 3 (53:03):
To be that brother.

Speaker 4 (53:05):
It just almost feels selfish to me again that he
wants to travel with me now and do all those
things when I know that.

Speaker 3 (53:12):
He's doing that because.

Speaker 4 (53:15):
His life is so sad right now, like your mom,
like my mom, O.

Speaker 2 (53:21):
What you said just now is real. You just didn't
say it to him, and that's what you need to
be able to say to him. It's very fair to say, yes,
I really wanted this for a long time. But you're
asking me now when you're lonely, when you need it,
not when I do. You're still not asking me what
I need. You're still asking how I feel. It's that

(53:43):
authenticity that allows for close bunds.

Speaker 4 (53:47):
Yeah, and I feel like that when he tells me
he's going to come visit again in a couple of
weeks and I don't really want that. It's exhausting for
me too to listen to his problems now and I
just want my peace and quiet, which is so crazy

(54:08):
because all I ever wanted was to be close to him.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
And now that it's here, it's not actually here. What's
here is he has someone to talk to about his
marital problems. That's different from we have a reciprocal relationship.
I'm not saying it can't become that. It's just that,
for good reason, you don't trust it. And what I
think we're asking you to do in all of this

(54:33):
conversation today is to learn to trust yourself, to listen
to yourself when no one else was listening to you.
It was very hard to do that as a kid.
But now as an adult, can you listen to yourself,
access your needs, and then communicate them.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
It's legitimate kid for you to say, you know, brother,
when I was a kid, I would come home and
Mom would cry on the couch and I had to
be her support and she never asked about me, and
it was always about me having to support her, and
that was really difficult for me. It's very difficult for
me when a relationship isn't reciprocal. And I've wanted us

(55:17):
to have that kind of relationship for a long time.
But when you come now, and you expect me to
just be there for you the way I was for mom.
That feels too one sided for me. That doesn't feel good.

Speaker 3 (55:29):
Yeah, yeah, I think you're right, And I'm afraid.

Speaker 4 (55:35):
Again of his reaction because I feel like he's going
to be so mad and.

Speaker 3 (55:44):
Say, no, you don't understand. I actually want to be
a good brother to you.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
When he says you don't understand, I want to be
a good brother to you, you can say, and part
of being a good brother to me is making room
for my feelings too, so I can be able to say,
you know, now's not a good time to visit. I
have a lot going on in my life right now too,

(56:10):
but maybe we can visit another time, or let yeah, sure,
we can talk about what's going on with your marriage,
and also let me tell you a little bit about
what's going on with me so that you can actually
see is it possible for us to have more of
a give and take in this relationship? Is it possible

(56:31):
to talk to him about you scared me so much
when I was a kid, or you try to impose
your values on me and it makes it hard for
me to want to get close to you because I'm
happy with my choices. So, as we sit here now,
having had this conversation and imagining a universe in which

(56:56):
you might be able to be more open about what
your needs are and how you're feeling in these relationships
with your family members, is there any sense of lightness,
any sense of relief, whether or not you think it
can happen, but just imagining a small possibility. You're probably worried,

(57:20):
You're probably thinking about how they're going to react, but
imagining just saying those things and showing up. Is there
any sense of relief or lightness in your body that
feels a little bit different.

Speaker 3 (57:34):
Yeah, that will be amazing.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
So, Kate, we have some advice for you. We'd like
you to have a conversation with you mom, and we'd
like you to keep in mind that when there's a
thirty year history, it takes time to change a dynamic.
It's like a big ship. It's a lot of effort
to change course. So there needs to be repetition. And

(58:04):
you've started that journey already and we'd like you to
continue it. We'd like you to first, when she asks
you questions about how are you doing, we'd like you
to not answer with good, but be a little bit
more nuanced and your answers there. But we'd also like
you to share with her two things in that conversation.

(58:24):
One thing that you're concerned about, but we'd also like
you to share something that you're joyful about or excited about,
because opening up emotionally and sharing should be both about
the difficult things and about the good things. She can
talk about her, but there are a couple of things
that as her daughter, you get to say, Mom, I

(58:47):
might not be the best person for this. If she
wants to talk about your dad, whether it's her concerns
about the affairs or whatever it is. Unless it's just informational,
you get to say to her, Mom, I really want
to try and build a relationship with dad. This is
not good for me to be your counselor in your marriage,

(59:10):
and I think you could find one and speak to one,
a counselor religious person, community person, friend. But as your daughter,
that makes me really uncomfortable and I'm happy to hear
other things that are going on in your life, but
not about Dad. And the same thing goes for if

(59:30):
she's going to talk about her depression, if she's still
depressed and she wants to look better. I'm just miserable.
My life is so difficult to say, Mum, those are
the kinds of things you need to talk to professional about.
It's too much for me as your daughter. I'm going
to ask you to find someone professional who can really
help you with that. I want us to have a
mother daughter relationship. Okay, So that's the first conversation you're.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
Going to have this week, And along those lines, we
want you to I have another conversation this week, and
that one is with your father, and we want you
to say to him, Hey, Dad, I am so glad
that we are in contact and that we are trying
to build something with each other. But in order to

(01:00:18):
do that, it has to be an authentic relationship. And
that doesn't mean I'm here to blame you for what happened.
It means that I need to be seen authentically, and
that means that I want to be able to share
with you what my experience with you has been like,
so that there's room for me in this relationship too,

(01:00:40):
so we don't have a fake relationship that feels empty
and where I feel abandoned again. And I want to
know if you're interested in that because if you aren't,
what I'm afraid is going to happen is that I'm
going to share some things with you and you will
abandon me again. You will get angry, you will not

(01:01:00):
want to talk to me, you'll disappear. And I'm doing this, dad,
not to push you away, but to bring you closer,
because I think that at this point in our lives,
we're both realizing it could be very good for us
to start to have a relationship with each other that
feels real, and in order for us to enjoy being

(01:01:21):
around each other, it has to feel authentic too. Are
you willing to do that? Are you willing to let
me talk about my experience growing up and my experience
with you in the present, how it feels, so that
we can have a relationship that feels real to both
of us. And while you're having that conversation and also

(01:01:43):
the conversation with your mother, we want you to notice
in your body, since you have more access to how
you feel from how your body reacts, notice how you
feel in your body. Notice what that is like for
you to not worry so much about what the other
person is feeling and to notice what you're feeling.

Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
Okay, So those are two conversations. We're actually going to
add one more, and that's with your brother, and the
conversation there has to be a similar one to your dad.
It has to be something like brother. I've wanted all
my life to have a brother sister relationship with you

(01:02:27):
and to feel close, and I'm so glad that you're
open to that now that you're seeking that out now.
I'm worried, though, that you're doing that now because you
feel lonely and because you need me. I want to
feel like you are here to listen to my needs
and to my feelings as well, because that's the only

(01:02:49):
way we can really be close. So, for example, it's
important for me to be able to be honest with you,
and to be honest with you. This is not a
good time for a visit, so I would love to
see you soon at some other time. But in the meantime,
i'd love to continue talking, and I'd like you to
share an interest with me, and I will try and

(01:03:12):
share things with you, but I need you to hear them,
and I need you to take them seriously. And part
of taking my needs seriously and my feelings seriously is
not to mock me. For the decisions I make, or
for the values that I have, or for the work
that I do, to be respectful, to really get to

(01:03:32):
know me as an adult, because you truly don't. You
know me as a little sister that's there to help
you and serve you. And that's not who I am
right now. I'm an adult. I'm an independent person. You
need to see me that way. You need to respect
me in that way, and I think if you could
do that, we could become close. But that's what I

(01:03:52):
need for that closeness to happen.

Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
You don't have a lot of practice stating your needs,
and it might be hard for you to remember that
what you're doing is actually very kind, that you are
not abandoning them. You're doing something very kind, which is
I want all of you in my life. And we've
had this difficulty and we need to change things so

(01:04:18):
that we can be close. And so, because these are
going to be probably uncomfortable conversations for you to have,
we would like you to have some support as you
do this. And we were thinking about your husband and
how supportive he is. Is there a way that he
can support you? For example, would you like him in
the room when you're on the phone with these people,

(01:04:40):
would you like him in the adjacent room, and then
we would also like him to be available to you
and tell him. I might feel lots of things after
I have these conversations, even if they go well, and
they might not go well. I might feel guilty, i
might feel unheard again, i might feel criticized again. I
might feel like that little girl again who's helpless and

(01:05:02):
doesn't know what to do.

Speaker 2 (01:05:04):
And I would say to him what I'd like you
to tell me, regardless of how the call went, is
how proud you are of me for being able to
speak my mind and share my real feelings in a
very difficult circumstance. And if I'm feeling guilty, I want
you to talk me down and tell me that I
did something that was overdue and that I'm really entitled

(01:05:28):
to do.

Speaker 3 (01:05:29):
I think thinking of that little child probably makes it easier.
So I'm going to try and think of the little
me and how I feel.

Speaker 1 (01:05:42):
It's not just the little you to think of, it's
the little you through the eyes of the adult you.
Just like before in that other exercise that was where
you were able to get in touch with your feelings
and also the confidence that you have as an adult.
You knew exactly what she needed. You said, I would
go hug her, I would go ask her how her

(01:06:02):
day was. I would say, how do you want to
spend the afternoon? You knew exactly how to take care
of her, And we know that you know exactly how
to take care of that little girl inside of you.
So you are not the helpless little girl anymore. You
are the adult who's very confident and capable of doing this.
As long as you can see her.

Speaker 3 (01:06:24):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:06:32):
I think what Kate was discovering is that people who
have a tendency to people please often have a long
history of having their needs dismissed, of being told in
various ways that their feelings don't matter as much as
somebody else's feelings, and then they carry that message with
them throughout their lives. And I'm really glad to hear

(01:06:53):
that she hasn't carried that into her marriage. It sounds
like she is able to express how she feels with
her husband, and she is able to be supported when
she wants to do things, and her needs are getting met.
But I do think that when you have these relationships
that have gone on for decades and now people are
trying to redefine them. She's trying to redefine it with

(01:07:15):
her mother, and now both her father and her brother
are saying, hey, I want to have a relationship with you,
but it has to be on different terms. And once
she's able to access her feelings, as we got her
to do a little bit in this session, I think
she's going to get a lot of mileage out of
that in terms of really being able to say, here's

(01:07:36):
what I need. This has to be a reciprocal relationship,
and it's going to be better for all of us
if it is.

Speaker 2 (01:07:42):
It was really remarkable to hear that her father, who
had abandoned the family essentially, who had left her to
the difficult brother and the needy mother, that she thought
of them today as a is a cool dude. It
was so distance from how she actually felt. And that

(01:08:03):
is indeed a result of implementing this idea that her
feelings don't matter. And when you're told as a child,
and when you're given the message that your feelings don't matter,
you yourself dismiss them and so thoroughly that you are that
disconnected from them.

Speaker 1 (01:08:19):
And I think that the part of her that knows
exactly what that little, scared, lonely girl needed is going
to step up. And once she starts doing that, I
think she's going to see some big changes. Even if
the other people don't change in the way she wants,
I think she's going to see some big changes in
how she responds to those other people. So I'm curious

(01:08:42):
to hear how this week goes for her.

Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
Me too. You're listening to dea therapists will be back
after a short break, So we heard that from Kate,

(01:09:06):
and I am curious to hear how she did with
the homework we gave her.

Speaker 4 (01:09:10):
Hi Laurie, Hi guy, Thank you again so much for
speaking to me. It really meant a lot, and I
really took your advice to hart and spoke to my
family this week. I first spoke to my mom and
I told her how I was doing that I felt
a little bit tired from work this week, but also
that I really enjoyed attending a friend's wedding the other day,

(01:09:31):
and she wanted to hear more about that and actually
asked questions. So that was great, and it showed me
that opening up to her actually means that I can
also drive the conversation. The second conversation I had was
with my dad, and that was a little bit more difficult,
and I shared with him how much of an impact

(01:09:53):
his abandonment had on my life and on my childhood,
and at first he kind of brushed it off and
said we should leave the past in the past, but
I kept moving the conversation back and told him how
important it was for me to share my feelings with him,
And when he started talking about his pain and how

(01:10:18):
he can't sleep at night thinking about what he's done
to us, I also brought it back to me and
told him that this conversation at this very point is
not about his pain, but it's about mine, and that
I really wanted to share it with him so we
can have a meaningful relationship. And I think he really
understood and he thanked me for opening up to him.

(01:10:43):
The third conversation I unfortunately wasn't able to have with
my brother because he was traveling this week. But I
will and I will share with him how I want
my future visits to be joyful for me and not
out of obligation or guilt. And I think he's going
to react well, but also if he doesn't I hope

(01:11:05):
it's not going to affect me too much, because I
will be more confident, and this conversation with you actually
brought a new perspective to my life and so many
other aspects as well. Also in terms of my job,
I'm wondering if my profession as an aid worker is

(01:11:27):
something I truly did out of passion, or if it's
something where I thought I could help other people. It's
probably a bit of a mix of both, but I
do feel lately that it's out of service for others
and it's not serving me, So perhaps it's an opportunity

(01:11:48):
for me to figure out what I actually really want
to do. I also wanted to share some good news.
I just found out I was pregnant, So I'm really
really happy that I get to have these conversations now
so that I can also become a better mother for
my child.

Speaker 3 (01:12:07):
So thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
I was so impressed by this voicemail and what Kate
did over the week. It's not just that she took
the advice to heart, It's that she really had to,
especially with her dad circle back and insists no, I
want to have this conversation and then when he said, okay,
we'll have it, but let's talk about me, she said, no, no, no,

(01:12:35):
this is about my pain. She really insisted with him,
and that was successful. And with her mom, she was
really successful in opening up and talking about some happy
and regular things in a way that felt good to her.
So I really felt that she got it. She did
it so well, she felt the results of it, and

(01:12:58):
she says that really increased my confidence. And yes, she
hadn't had a chance to talk with her brother, but
I do get the sense from how well she did
with the first two calls that she will have that
conversation with her brother, and I really trust that she'll
do with a job with it.

Speaker 1 (01:13:13):
This whole session was based on her letter saying, I
feel like I'm a people pleaser and I don't know
how to change that. And I think when we got
to sort of the root of what that was all about,
and she really was able to not only understand it,
but to feel understood, to feel like, oh, maybe there
is a way forward. I love that she was able

(01:13:35):
to talk about things that were joyful with her mom,
because that had been a problem, and usually the conversation
was about the mom's issues and it didn't go that
way because of the boundary she had set, and also
with her dad. There were three things that happened. The
first was that he said, let's leave the past in
the past, and she said no. And then he said, okay,

(01:13:57):
we can talk about pain. But basically he was talking
about his guilt and his pain and she said no.
And then she talked about her own experience and he
thanked her for opening up to him. So I thought
that was beautifully, beautifully done. And I like what she
said about the fact that even though she hadn't had
a chance yet to talk to the brother, she has

(01:14:17):
in her mind the sense that even if he doesn't react, well,
it's going to be okay, that she'll be able to
kind of bring things back and keep having the conversation
until he really can hear her. So I'm very optimistic
about the changes that she's been making.

Speaker 2 (01:14:34):
And what I think was so interesting is that when
she understood where it comes from this people pleasing and
how much her childhood impacted her and made her feel
like she has to be in the service of others,
it gave her this insight about her job and her career,
and she started the question, Am I doing this because
it's truly a passion or is this just a professional

(01:14:56):
people pleasing that I've gone into Because that's a question
and she needs to spend some time thinking about that.
But the fact that she's thinking about that shows how
much insight she gained from that session and how much
you really understood the impact of this childhood on most
of her choices in life.

Speaker 1 (01:15:14):
And there was one thing that she really was clear
that she did want, which was to become a mother.
And her comment about that was that what she's learning
about people pleasing and where it comes from and how
to have more reciprocal relationships is really setting the stage
to become the kind of mom that she wants to
be for her child, so she can model for her

(01:15:35):
child what it looks like to have that healthy balance
of your own needs and meeting somebody else's needs. So
I feel like it all tied together for her, and
I'm very excited for what the future holds for her.

Speaker 2 (01:15:48):
Me too, I'm very hopeful for Kate. We hope you
enjoyed Season three of Theotherapists. As we get ready for
season four, we have two special Bonah episodes to share
with you. Sometimes After a session, we like to think
about what worked well and also what we would do
differently if we could do it again. In these two

(01:16:09):
bonus episodes, we do a case consultation with our intern, Ben,
a psychology graduate student who pre interviews the guests and
helps select who gets on the show. Next week, we're
going to unpack what worked with a session we loved
Adam's Cheating Boyfriend.

Speaker 1 (01:16:25):
If you're enjoying our podcast, 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. Your reviews really
help people to find the show.

Speaker 2 (01:16:39):
If you have a dilemma you'd like to discuss with us,
email us at Laurie and Guy at iHeartMedia dot com.
Our executive producer is Noel Brown. We're produced and edited
by Josh Fisher, additional editing support by Helena Rosen, John
Washington and Zachary Fisher. Our interns are then Ernstein, Emily

(01:17:01):
Gutierrez and Silver Lufton and special thanks to our podcast
fairy Godmother Katie Curic. We can't wait to see you
at our next session. Deo Therapist is a production of
iHeartRadio

Speaker 3 (01:17:16):
Fish Fold