Encore: S04 Ep 07 - Vanessa’s Parental Betrayal

This week, we’re in session with Vanessa, whose father insisted she take out a huge loan she could not repay and give him all the money, then disowned her when she refused. We help her to process the loss of her entire family, and start to create a trusted, compassionate family of choice who treats her the way family should.

 

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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 Therapists 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 (00:19):
Each week we invite you into a real session where
we help people confront the problems in their lives and
then give them actionable advice and have them report back
to let us know what happened when they did what
we suggested.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
So sit back and welcome to today's session. This week,
a woman whose family disowned her after she refused to
loan her father a huge amount of money, mands how
to grieve the loss and how to trust again.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
That evening, my dad call me. I thought he wanted
to apologize, but then it was all about I'm not
your dad anymore, You're not my daughter anymore. We're just
strangers now. You mean nothing to me.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
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 healthcare advice. Diagnosis or treatment.
By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let iHeartMedia
use it in part or in full, and we may
edit it for length and clarity. In the session you'll hear.
All names have been changed for the privacy of our guests.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Hi Guy, Hi Laurie. What do we have in our
mailbooks today?

Speaker 1 (01:24):
Today we have a letter about a disagreement around finances
with a parent, and here's how it goes. Dear Therapists,
About a year and a half ago, crazy things happened
between me and my dad. His business was not doing
well and he wanted to get a loan for himself
by using my name. It was an amount that I

(01:44):
felt like I would never be able to repay in
my lifetime. When I said no, my dad shouted to
me on the phone that I was quote no longer
his daughter. I always considered my dad a role model
and did everything I could to meet his expectations and
get his praises. It was shocking and heartbreaking to go
through that experience. After a disturbing incident, I became scared

(02:05):
of him and moved to a new city across the country.
Since then, I have not spoken to anyone in my family,
my mom, my grandma, my siblings, my cousins, etc. They
all think that I was acting selfishly by not helping
my dad, even after I described what had happened. However,
as time goes by, I have this urge of reconnecting

(02:25):
with my dad and the rest of my family. I
am extremely conflicted because I don't think reconnecting will end
well for me, but I can't help but feel lonely
and crave the family connection. What should I do, Vanessa?

Speaker 2 (02:39):
I feel really badly full, Vanessa, that is an incredible
amount of loss to sustain. If she lost her dad,
her mom, grandparents, siblings, cousins, everyone, she lost her entire family.
What perplexes me is how this came about so shockingly
and suddenly, this massive change in behavior on the father spot,

(03:01):
when there was apparently no indication of these kinds of
tendencies previously. So I'm just curious about whether they were
and she wasn't seeing them, and if not, well, what
was actually going on with him? And why is all
her family taking the father's side. There must be more
to that story too, so there's a lot of missing
pieces for me on this.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
I'm also curious why she was the one that the
family depended on to make this loan. But I'm guessing
that this dynamic that's going on now probably has some
history to it. So let's go talk to her and
find out. You're listening to Dear Therapists for my Heart Radio.
We'll be back after a short break. I'm Laurie Gottlieb.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
And I'm Guy Wench, and this is Dear Therapists. So,
Hi Vanessa, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Hi Vanessa, Hi, thank you so much for your time.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Of course, so we wanted to start by learning a
little bit about you. How old you are, what you
do for a living, if you're living with anybody, or
you're living by yourself.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
So I am in my late twenties and I work
as an analyst, and I lived by myself.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
So in your letter you talked about this incident with
your father. Can you take us through from the beginning
what happened.

Speaker 3 (04:31):
So during COVID we were all in lockdown mode. I
was by myself, and now I was really worried about
my parents and my grandparents' health and all that. So
I moved back to be closer to my parents. I'm
the oldest child I have siblings and growing up, my parents'
marriage wasn't perfect at all. We did witness like domestic

(04:56):
violence from my dad to my mom. But my dad
has never lay up finger on any of us. Maybe
in an immigrant family where I'm coming from, is very
normal in that way. So I was actually proud.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
What make you proud of him?

Speaker 3 (05:13):
Because he had never lay a finger on us. I
remember telling my friends when was in elementary school, Oh,
I have this amazing that my dad never bid me
like it was because we were all very concerned about
our test results. And then I was like, my parents
will never do that to me because I got an

(05:36):
ask exam.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
In other words, what was normal in your world was
that if you didn't perform academically that there would be
some kind of physical punishment.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
Yeah, my cousins all experienced that, So I was like,
oh my god, my dad is always It's so amazing.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
But you said growing up it was normal that if
you didn't do well, you might get by a parent.
Was it also normal for domestic violence to happen between
the parents, such that the fact that there was domestic
violence in your home didn't register as problematic.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
I think the interpretation of the domestic violence was very different.
One was growing up. Right now, I understand just any
formal violence is violence, But then one was growing up.
I always thought, oh, if my dad just say something
really mean to my mom, or throw a cup on
the floor, or like hit my mom with a pillow,

(06:35):
that's nothing because she's technically not wounded. So my mom
would always come to me when this happens. Whether it's
three am, it really did not matter to her what
time it was.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
For me, there would be some domestic violence and your
mom would call you.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
She would show up in front of my door.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
Oh, she would come to be with you.

Speaker 4 (06:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:57):
So in the fall I had a really big fight,
and then my mom came to me as three am,
knocking on my door, and she promised, and she wouldn't
answer my dad's call for like two weeks, and we
promised that, oh, we should figure this out. If you
want to leave, you should, like why would you want

(07:18):
to get yourself hurt? And she wouldn't answer my dad's
call for like two weeks, and suddenly she picked up
one call from my dad without me knowing, and they're
back together. And to this day, I don't know what
happened during that call.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
What had he done to her that made her come
over to you, and that you felt like she has
got to leave.

Speaker 3 (07:40):
He was very violent to the point that my mom
thought she would die.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
And did she have bruises on her?

Speaker 3 (07:48):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Were you alarmed by that or was that not a
surprise for you?

Speaker 3 (07:54):
I was alarmed because, to be honest, that was my
first time actually seeing evidence from the violence, because I
know this happened, but I never really understand the severity.
And the thing is, I'm partially at fault at this

(08:15):
because growing up, my mom would always call me when
any small inconvenience happens to her. But really she was
just trying to dump it all out on me and
she never tried to change anything. Like since high school.
I was in boarding school, so I was never home much.
But I feel like my mom was like the guy
who cries wealth every single time. So it was my

(08:38):
first time actually seeing the physical result.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
Because you were away, you didn't realize how severe it
actually was.

Speaker 3 (08:47):
Yeah, because my mom sometimes like exaggeratings, so I never
know whether it's true or not. And that's something she
criticized about me a lot because she always thinks that
I take a lot of things too seriously. So then
she would call me and be like, oh my god,
something extremely awful happened. I'm gonna die. And now I

(09:08):
would get extremely serious on the phone with her. I
was like, you should go to the doctor, and how
can you allow that happen? And then at the end
of the call, she was like, oh my god, you're
taking things too seriously, or like, oh, it's not a
big deal. Oh, nothing happened. So for almost thirty years
in my life, that's what happened. And so then like

(09:31):
when I first saw that, I was shocked. So I
stopped taking my dad like calls and messages as well,
because I want my dad to admit that he's wrong,
like make amend or like find a solution, whether it's
divorced or not.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Vanessa, you said, well, that was my fault that I
didn't take my mom seriously, and then you explain, well,
because she kept minimizing it and not changing it. Why
do you feel then that it's your fault.

Speaker 3 (09:59):
Because if, especially as the first child, I did not
stand up and pointed out openly in my family.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
Is that the role of the first child in your
culture that if you see something between your parents, the
first child has to stand up and point it out
and put it on the table.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
No where did you get the idea that this was
your role, that you are responsible for what happens between
your parents.

Speaker 3 (10:28):
After the incident, I w knew a therapist as well.
There was this reflection that came to my mind. It's
like growing up. Even though I was away while my
siblings were at home, they always say I'm the oldest,
so I should come and handle the family issue.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
Who says that.

Speaker 3 (10:51):
My relatives? So there were two instants in the time
frame the one year I was home when the first
instead happened. My mother's older sister and her daughter who
is older than me. They just suddenly show up in
front of my door really late as well, and then

(11:11):
they look extremely serious and they were just like, are
you gonna take care of your mom? I didn't even
know my parents had an argument. I had no idea
what happened?

Speaker 1 (11:22):
Did you ask?

Speaker 4 (11:23):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (11:23):
I was like, come down, what happened? And they were
just like, oh, your mom is walking over to your
apartment right now? And I was like, walking, are you serious?
My aunt was like, oh, your mom called me with
a stranger's phone an hour ago, saying that she's on
the way to your place, and she and your dad

(11:44):
had an argument, and now she just left the house
without car, without wallet, without her phone, And I was like,
what happened? And she said she doesn't know. But then
she's just like, why aren't you acting your part?

Speaker 1 (11:57):
What did your aunt say she wanted you to do?

Speaker 3 (12:00):
She wants me to make sure that my dad doesn't
hit her anymore.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
How are you supposed to do that?

Speaker 3 (12:07):
I don't know. The weirdest part is that, well, when
my mom got here, why to ask her are you okay?
Like I heard you walked? How long did it take you?
And she's like, oh, she doesn't know. But after my
aunt and cousin left, my mom admitted to me that

(12:27):
she did not walk. She actually took a cab. I
was like, why didn't you tell like aunt and like
my cousin about it. They're so angry about the fact
that my dad, what did you leave without money or
a car or anything? And then she was like, there's
no need to let them know.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
So this is the kind of thing that made you
feel like it's hard to know. With my mom the
crying wolf, it's difficult to know where reality lies.

Speaker 3 (12:53):
Yes, I don't know what she want from me.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
So it's very confusing because it's hard to know what's
really what's not real. And yet you blame yourself for
not taking her seriously at the times when she did
report things to you without acknowledging that partly, it was
hard to know how seriously to take her because she
would either minimize it or she wasn't telling the whole truth.

Speaker 3 (13:20):
Sometimes I always get a sense that she tells parts
of the story to different people. I find out it
hard to really piece stories together for her to really
identify the action of items I need to do.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
We're both saying that we understand that there was some
dramatic license and her stories, and therefore it was hard
for you to know what to do with them. But
let's see about the second incident and then what happened
with your dad.

Speaker 3 (13:50):
Yeah, after the second incident, my mom was staying with
me at that time, and then she was not talking
to my dad at all. I would occasionally speak to
my dad on the phone. I wanted to be bridge
that ament the gap between them. And then suddenly, all
of blue, like they got back so nicely together, and

(14:13):
my mom stopped answering my calls. My mom moved out
when I was not home, back to my parents' house,
and I just could not speak to her alone ever since.
And then about a week after my mom moved out,
my dad suddenly came to visit me in my apartment
and said, I'm so sorry for what I did to
your mom this time and over the years, and I'm

(14:37):
so sorry for all the mistakes that I might have done.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
When you said you were trying to mediate between your
mom and your dad, did you tell your dad how
disturbed and terrified you were to see your mom show
up in bruises? Yes, And what was his response to that?
Did he acknowledge that he had a problem.

Speaker 3 (15:03):
He said, it was an incident, and my mom like
try to fight back as well, and he was hurt
as well.

Speaker 4 (15:10):
Well.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
Of course she tried to fight back because she's defending herself.
But how did that land with you that he said, well,
it was an incident, and then your mom shows up
with all these bruises.

Speaker 3 (15:25):
I thought he was not taking things seriously. So I
actually took my mom to a hospital to get all
of her bruises like recorded, just in case like she
needed in the future. I actually was encouraged them to
get a divorce vocally.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
But when you spoke to your dad and you said, Dad,
I'm horrified by how you hurt mom, And he said, well,
it was just an incident. Did you have anything else
that you wanted from him, like I need you to
get help. Did you talk to him about that?

Speaker 3 (15:56):
Yeah, I asked him, like why he is played? I
not doing in the future to avoid this kind of
thing happened, And I even asking if it's necessary for
my mom to move out of the house and move
in with me for however long it will take for
him to recover from his violence. I thought if I

(16:20):
just separated them, then the issue would not happen anymore.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
So somehow you thought that instead of this being his responsibility,
that this was your responsibility, Like if I separate them,
I can solve this, as opposed to he needs to
take responsibility and go get help.

Speaker 3 (16:37):
I think growing up, I always thought it was my
responsibility to fix anything in my.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
Family, because that was the message that you got from.

Speaker 3 (16:46):
Everyone, my parents, my relatives, especially my grandparents. My grandma
on her dying bed, called me when was in college
because my parents got into an argument.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
So the idea was that you're the eldest. Your job
is to mediate between your parents, to keep the family peace,
to be the guardian of the family, to solve the
problems or come up with the solutions. You took on
very seriously the role of rescuer there. How much were
you thinking at the time about your own feelings, your

(17:24):
own needs, the expectations, the responsibility, the actual violence that
was going on. How much were you of variable in
your own equation for what your duties are.

Speaker 3 (17:36):
To be honest, I was glad that I was there.
I was so relieved that, like when the two incidents happened,
I was physically there in the same city so my
mom could escape to my place.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
It felt good to you to fulfill your duty in
a way. What I'm asking you, though, is your duty
as defined by your family is to the family primarily,
and I'm asking about your duty to yourself as well
as a member of the family for your own emotional
well being. That was a factor in any of the
thinking that went on around it.

Speaker 3 (18:13):
It wasn't at the moment that it is now. I'm
still trying to understand why no one from my relatives,
or my parents, or my grandparents never went to my
siblings for anything, And of course they always have the
reasoning like you're the oldest, you should be mature enough.
But one was growing up, one was twelve. They would

(18:35):
come to me, and one was away in high school.
They were come to me. So I start to believe
that it was my responsibility as well, just because I
was the oldest. But now I don't think it's true
at all. And a lot of their actions were extremely

(18:56):
disrespectful of me as an ind right.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
So your dad comes over, he's buttering you up. Where
did that conversation go?

Speaker 3 (19:06):
I was crying in front of him because I was
so touched.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
So you thought it was genuine, yes, I was like.

Speaker 3 (19:13):
Oh my god, you're back to the father I knew
you were. Of course, you realize you're wrong. Anyone can
see like domestic violences wrong. I'm so happy that you
recognize this, so it's not gonna happen anymore. And I
was just so touched. And my dad was even asking, oh,
am I a good dad for you? And I was like, yeah,

(19:34):
of course you're the best. Now I just feel stupid
because what happened. Yeah, So within twelve hours, his assistant
called me. He was like, can you go to this
place your dad is signed? No, can you go? Like

(19:55):
your dad wants to meet you there? I was like yeah,
of course, Like why wouldn't I go meet with my
dad at any place?

Speaker 2 (20:03):
Well, especially this reformed, idealized version of him, now that
he reformed the night before, now that he had a
moment where he acknowledges and took responsibility and connected, so
it was even more enticing to go and meet this
version of him.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
Tell us what happened when you go to meet him.

Speaker 3 (20:24):
So I went to the bank and I saw my dad,
and he was of course all nice like the night before.
He was like, oh, how's your day, like all that
kind of good stuff. And then suddenly he was like, hey,
I just need your signature very quick. That was like
for what we're at a bank, I don't know, maybe

(20:44):
something good. I was expecting something good to happen. He
suddenly has like a million of dollars and decided to
transfer me some, but no, he wanted me to sign
a loan. That was first of all, I would never
be able to take it out if I just go
to the bank myself. So he arranged something with the
bank so I was able to get that amount of

(21:05):
loan under my name, and I felt like I would
never be able to repay it myself, so I was
very hesitant. I said, let me think about it, and
I just went home. He was like, yeah, think about it.
It's not a big deal. I'll pay you back. Because
I was getting money for him for his business.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
Need just to be clear for our listeners. So the
expectation was, sign a loan in your name, get the
money from the bank, give me all the money from
the bank, and then I will pay you back so
that you can repay the loan. Yes, and you like,
that's not alone I would have gotten. I don't have
enough connateral or savings to get that kind of loan,
so that puts me in significant jeopardy.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
Yes, it's interesting because when you first got there, you
thought the reason he wanted you to sign something was
maybe he was going to give something to you. You
thought maybe something really nice has just happened.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
Yeah, because of the night before, he was so nice.
He was like, you're my favorite kid. Even it was like,
you're like fixing the relationship between me and your mom.
You're doing such an amazing job.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
So he really went all out the night before to
really kind of lay.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
The groundwork, and finally I feel like I was being
acknowledged for the first time by someone, and especially that
someone is the person I idolized for my whole life.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
Even waiting your whole life for somebody to acknowledge all
of the sacrifices that you had made on behalf of
the family. And he was finally seeing you and appreciating
that and acknowledging that, had it been genuine, that must
have felt so good.

Speaker 3 (22:39):
I didn't know I need that acknowledgment until he set it,
and I was completely broken down in tears, of course,
happy tears, and extremely relief. I had never felt that
relief in my lifetime.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
So then you go home and you start reflecting on
the request, and you must have connected what happened night
before with the request that came the next morning, and
so it must have taken you from this extream high
to a pretty low. I would imagine tell us what

(23:13):
you were thinking and feeling that when you got home
and you were starting to think through what was going on.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
I was just surprised and shocked. When I look at
the number on that book, like it feels like it
was a book when you sign alone. So then I
was like, let me take the paperback. I does some
research myself, ask my friends who knows more about finance
than I do, and then they were just like, don't
sign it. You're basically putting your life out there if

(23:42):
your dad doesn't pay this money back, like your stock
for life. They even said you might go to jail
if you can pay the low and I was freaking
out because I don't want to go into jail for
something I did not do, and especially the money is
not going to me, and I have no idea how

(24:05):
my dad would repay this, so I asked my dad
for a payment plan, and all of this information just
seemed so vague and just not stable enough for my
risk tolerance level. It dragged for a week and my
dad's friend, this uncle figure in my life, he knocked

(24:25):
on my door too, and he was like, hey, I
heard you have a small disagreement that's happening between you
and your dad. And you know, your dad loves you
so much, really cares about you. You are everything to hey,
and he is struggling trying to communicate with you. So
I'm here just to listen, you know, like an uncle,

(24:46):
Do you want to get coffee downstairs? And I was
like sure, like I know him since I was a kid.
So we went to the closest cafe that's like five
minutes away from my apartment, and we went to like
a really back of the cafe and I was facing
back of the door. I thought it was a one

(25:08):
on one meeting. But my dad show up, my dad's
assistant show up, people from the bank show up, and
the whole conversation suddenly elevated. My dad tried to hit
me with like a cup.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
Wait, so they show up, they circle you, they're trying
to pressure you. Obviously, how did it get from that
to your dad trying to hit you with a cup.

Speaker 3 (25:30):
I was in the conversation of trying to explain to
this uncle figure in my life, this is a big loan.
I have to really think about it. I don't think
I can repay and I have to be ready to
repay it back if something happened to my dad's finance
and he was like, Oh, don't worry about it. Why
are you worried about it? You're in good hands, it's
your dad. Why would he not take care of you

(25:53):
do anything that's harmful to you. And then the bank
people showed up with the paper and be like, hey,
you should trust us. Your dad negotiated really well. I
don't know when those people arrived because I was facing back.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
You were also very much quote by surprise and in shock,
and so it's very difficult sometimes to remember a sequence
of events when you were in chock, because it was
this one shock after another after another after another after another.
People just kept showing up, so you didn't have time
to process anything, and it was very overwhelming.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
It was, and I have no idea how long people
were in the back lurking like listening to my conversation.
I don't know if they arrived at the same time
or they arrived in the sequence that I saw them.
But they had everything ready. It was a plan, a bush.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
It was an ambush. It was absolutely an ambush.

Speaker 4 (26:49):
I know.

Speaker 3 (26:49):
And then my dad showed up and said, why aren't
you so worry about this? I explained to him, I
said to you so many times, I don't think I
can repay this myself, so I don't think I can
be capable of owning up to this responsibility. And he
was like, why are we making such a big deal.

(27:10):
I can definitely pay it back. Don't worry. You're being
so just cowardly about this.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
This is so interesting because you have this with both
of your parents that they tell you these big things,
like your mom says, your dad was violent with me,
and then she minimizes it, and so you don't know
what to believe. And then your dad says, here's this
huge amount of money that I need this loan for
and you say that doesn't sound right, and then he says, oh, no, no, no,

(27:42):
don't worry about it. So it's very hard to trust
the people that you should be able to trust. The
people that you want to trust, your parents, but they
give you so many mixed messages and it's so confusing and.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
Actually never thought about this way. You know what this
reminds me of growing up. My parents always told me
not to trust anyone, including them, including them. They said,
not to trust anyone in this world except for yourself.
My dad would say not even your mom, and my
mom would say, not even your dad.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
That's quite the statement. That statement usually goes with accept
your family. But you kind of dismissed it when you
were told them because you did trust them.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
Yeah, whoever they tell me this kind of advice. I
always dismissed it because I always feel like they have
such a negative outlook on life, and I don't think
that's healthy. And I feel like relationship should be built
by trust. And going back to the incident, when my

(28:48):
dad was trying to just get away with his so
called plans to pay me back, I just really did
not think that was logical, and he started to just
go against with everything he told me. When he was
trying to make amend with me, he was like, you're

(29:08):
such a disappointment. Why can't you do this one thing
for me that I'm asking you literally don't need to
do anything. You just sign your name and I'll pay
the money back for you. And I said, no, that
I'm going to go into jail for this if you
can't pay me back, because I don't think I can
pay it back. So you trusted yourself at that point. Yes,

(29:31):
I was trying to stay calm, but deeply inside I
know I was extremely shaky and emotional.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
This reminds me of the way that he would treat
your mom. You said she didn't want to talk with
you after she went back to your dad because I
think she had so much shame around that. I think
that she knew that because now you knew the extent
of what was going on, that you would try to
bring that up and talk to her about it and

(30:00):
get her to leave and get her to be safe.
And she, for whatever reasons is, was not willing to
do that. And so here your father is doing to
you what he would do to your mom, which is
trying to intimidate you into doing something that you need

(30:24):
to do to protect yourself. Your mom couldn't protect herself,
but you were trying to protect yourself, and you were
very clear about protecting yourself, even if you were shaky inside.
And that's where the violence comes in, where someone tries
to protect themselves from him and then he just can't
handle that.

Speaker 3 (30:44):
Yes, he was wearing a leather jacket. I remember it
as because he took it off and try to throw
the jacket at my.

Speaker 1 (30:53):
Direction in front of all those people.

Speaker 3 (30:56):
Yes, I avoided it, but I think there was like
a metal button or something. I felt it on my
shoulder and I was in shocked because growing up, my
dad never laid a finger on me, and I was
so proud of it, and at that moment, I just
have like a cognitive dissonance or something else. Is this

(31:19):
a dream that I just need to wake up from?
And he was trying to throw a cup at me,
and I was like, I'm gonna leave, and he sheltered
at me in front of everyone. This sentence said, I
don't think I'll ever forget in my life. He said,
if I could have taken your life back, I would,

(31:40):
But the way he put it, he was like, if
I could have taken your life back, because he gave
me the life, he would have done that.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
It raised you from the book.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
Even right now when I talk about it, my heart
is racing.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
Vanessa. I don't know if you realize how much strength
and courage you have to be able to walk away
from that kind of pre planned manipulation, harassment, bullying. You
have all these people surrounding you telling you to do something,

(32:20):
pressuring you, yelling at you, and just reassuring it will
be fine. You know we love you. It is so
so difficult not to just fine fine. I'll just hope
for the best. But I can't take it. It's impressive
to me that you were able to, despite all that pressure,
realize I'm in danger here. In many different kinds of ways,

(32:43):
and I have to leave, and to leave with those
kind of stakes on the table, knowing that that might
cost you in other ways. Dearly, you did the right
thing for you, and I don't know if you appreciate
how brave that is.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
Thank you. This is my second time telling this story,
and I'm very proud that I did not become mass
and cry so much because last time it took me
among scene survey session to really piece this whole thing together.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
Why would it be a problem if you cried? Guy
was saying how brave this was and how much courage
that took, because it was really devastating what happened to you.
And you're saying, I'm glad that I didn't cry when
I was telling you about this, But it's such a
sad story, and you must feel so sad, and so

(33:43):
how does that serve you not to cry when something
is truly sad?

Speaker 3 (33:49):
To be honest, like, after that instance, I went back
to my apartment and I feel like I must be
lying not on my bad for hours and just crying
because I thought I lost my dad, and I think
I lost a dad that I thought I had for
the whole time, and that evening, my dad called me.

(34:12):
I thought he wanted to apologize for what happened, but
then it was all about pushing me to sign that loan.
And then in that conversation he hanged out the call
with this sentence saying his tone was extremely harsh. He
was like, I'm not your dad anymore. You're not my

(34:32):
daughter anymore. We're just strangers. Now. Don't ever call me
or let me see you. In my sight, just disappear
from this world. You mean nothing to me. And I
just remember after that call he hung up and I
just curl into a ball and start to cry for
I don't even know how long, because that was the

(34:56):
moment I felt like, oh my god, I lost him
in my life. And then like his group of people
would just start to randomly knock it on my door
in my apartment building, randomly calling me to talk about this,
try to push me into signing, and I was like, no,

(35:18):
I don't want to do that. And during this whole time,
my dad did not show up say a word, but
I know it was him behind all this. So I
got really scared because people would show up in front
of my apartment and I moved it to a different
apartment but still in the same city, so they try

(35:39):
to track me down. My dad would track to my
friend and ask them where I am, because my friend
would tell me, hey, your dad called me, and I
just became extremely insecure. I had a panic attack in public.
I was in like a foot court by myself and
I couldn't breathe, and I start crying like crazy, and

(36:03):
I was like, Okay, I need to leave. So I
packed up and moved across the country and now no
one knows where I am. But I still get nightmares
and extremely already that someone just show up in my

(36:25):
apartment door again.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
Have you tried to explain to your mom, who, of
all people would probably understand the bullying that your dad does.
Have you tried to explain to her what actually happened?
And what about your aunt, your cousins, or your siblings.

Speaker 3 (36:43):
I try to spoke to my mom once because I
was going back to my parents' house to pack up
a few things while was trying to move.

Speaker 1 (36:50):
And was your dad home when you went there?

Speaker 3 (36:52):
No. I pick a time that I knew he wasn't
going to be home, and I ran into my grandma
and my and they were just like, why are you
so selfish? Why aren't you not helping your dad with
his money needs? You know, you're a part of the family.
And I was like, do you know what happened? And
they were just like, yeah, of course your dad told

(37:14):
us everything. You refused to help him.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
But did you tell your side of the story.

Speaker 3 (37:20):
I said that he was not nice to me and
he was even try to be violent with me in public,
and they dismissed it immediately. For my siblings, I've been
in contact with them once and they did not agree
with what I did. But in my opinion, I think

(37:41):
they are not in a good financial place either. They're
still relatively dependent to my dad financially.

Speaker 1 (37:50):
So your father helps financially with those siblings, yes, and
they live at home.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
But I so you said that this is the second
time you're telling this story. It was in the therapy
you did immediately after and now and I'm curious about friends.
You have friends that don't know this story. Why not
share with your friends what you went through and what
you're going through because this is so severe and it's

(38:21):
so difficult, and why not share that with any friends
to get some support.

Speaker 3 (38:33):
Because after this happened, I was googling like a maniac,
trying to understand if this ever happened to anyone else.
But I did not come across a story that's similar
to mine, and I don't want to be the emotional
burden for my friends. The issue I go to them

(38:53):
with are like normal problems, like, for example, oh, you're sick,
not feeling well.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
But if ever any one needed support from friends, it's
when their entire family turns against them. I can tell
you I know several places like this. It's not that rare,
But you do not want to burden your friends at
the time of your greatest need. Why didn't this qualify

(39:20):
as an unusually extreme event that requires that friends be
there for you, that someone be there for you.

Speaker 3 (39:29):
The main reason I don't want to burther them, and
the other reason is that I don't know what kind
of emotion I should be experienced, to be honest, because
I'm literally going through an emotional roller coaster and I'm
trying to understand it on a daily basis.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
Still, I'm thinking about the parallel between the way that
you're not telling anyone about this and the way that
your mom didn't want to talk to you after you
knew the extent of what was really happening to her
and the shame that she felt. I think that you

(40:10):
feel the same amount of shame, even though you feel
confident that you made a decision to protect yourself, that
your family gave you so many messages of your bad
You're selfish, You're not deserving of being my daughter, what's
wrong with you? They think that some of that shame

(40:33):
has been internalized by you, that that also prevents you
from telling people that somehow they might judge you or
think that you were not generous enough. And also the
shame of having a family like that, just the shame
of having a father who would disown you for not

(40:58):
putting yourself at risk.

Speaker 3 (41:01):
Yes, I agree with you. The hardest part for me, Oh,
my friends know how amazing my dad is. That's the problem.
Like some of my friend's parents thought I grew up
with a single parent, because all I talked about was
how amazing my dad was.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
What are the things he did that were amazing other
than not hitting you.

Speaker 3 (41:24):
My dad never checked my homework because he trusted me.
There was one time I remember I was really little.
I put my backpack to my parents and I said, Hey,
do you want to look into what I have in
my backpack, because that's what a lot of parents did
to my friends. Because that was like not trusting then,

(41:50):
and so I asked my parents to do that for me.
I was like, hey, check what I have in my
backpack and then they was like, oh, no, no need.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
But again something they didn't do, not something they did do.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
Yes, Now I think about it, a lot of things
I praised my dad for was more like he gave
me the independence to do something, or I did all
this by myself because he trusted me.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
The shame, I think, is one thing that really stops you.
I think the other thing that stops you from talking
to friends is that when everyone who's supposed to care
about you is telling you how wrong you are, how
disloyal and selfish you are for not doing that, it
really makes you distrust your own judgment and your own

(42:40):
sense of what's real. You're like, no, I'm risking my future,
and they're saying, no, it's such a small procedural thing.
Why are you making a fuss? And I think that
you had so much of that pressure from practically everyone
that you don't trust, that you're not making a fuss.
That you don't trust that your judgment was sound. You're
questioning whether, well, maybe I'm the selfish daughter who should

(43:04):
have done it. And even if you're not questioning it,
you're worried that somebody else, like a friend, might join
that chorus of people telling you how wrong you are
and how much you failed your parents, rather than vice versa.
And that's the value of talking with friends and presenting
them with your side of the story, because the fact

(43:26):
that it would be shocking to them that this hero
turned out to do this It is exactly the point,
because that's how shocking it was for you and still is.

Speaker 3 (43:37):
I just don't know, Like, if I cannot connect the
dots together in the story, then how can anyone else
do it?

Speaker 1 (43:45):
I think you do connect the dots, and I think
that's the part that's so hard, is that it's hard
to accept that that's where the dots lead. It's very
hard to accept that this did really happen in this way,
and then I am left feeling very alone, feeling very misunderstood,

(44:07):
feeling abandoned by my family. So you can connect the dots,
it's very painful to connect them. I'm wondering. You said
you moved across the country, so your friends are back
where your family lives. Is that right? Your friends growing up?

Speaker 3 (44:27):
I have some friends like the childhood friend.

Speaker 1 (44:30):
What about other friends, like your friends from boarding school
or your friends from where you live now? Do they
know at least that you're not in contact with your
family or they don't know anything?

Speaker 3 (44:42):
They don't know anything.

Speaker 1 (44:43):
It's very hard to make friends when you're hiding such
a big secret about yourself. Even without going into the
details of the incident, the fact that you don't have
content with your family is such a big omission. What

(45:05):
are you worried will happen if they learn that you're
not in contact with your family, that your family basically
disowned you for not signing alone, that you didn't feel
comfortable with.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
I don't know, because even when they talk about their parents,
I try to change the topic. Sometime they ask me
how my parents are doing. I was like, oh, they're good, Vanessa,
You're already so alone. And the way that you get
close to people is by opening up to their experience

(45:41):
and letting them open up to yours. So when you
change the topic, they may interpret that is she doesn't
want to get that close with me, and that leaves
you even lonelier when you could have all of these
very meaningful connections that you so desperate. We need right now.

(46:04):
I know I think I'm craving family relationship.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
The most right, but your instinct to maybe I need
to reconnect with them is the instinct to do what
Yomanda did, to snap her fingers and go didn't happen.
We're going to pretend that nothing ever happened. And the
only problem is that you might want to pretend that
nothing ever happened, but they will not because they're still angry.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
And guys, right, that's what your mom did every time
she would go back. There are terms to going back,
and the terms are you do what we demand and
you pretend nothing happened, and your family won't pretend nothing
happened until they get you to sign that.

Speaker 3 (46:49):
I totally agree with what you just said, and I'm
amazed how you can just see it within like the
amount of time we've been talking. But it took me
so long to realize that. To be honest, I was
just in shocked, disbelieve I'm grieving that I've lost my family.

Speaker 2 (47:13):
Yes, you're grieving alone, and that's it's the problem.

Speaker 1 (47:17):
And you don't need to be grieving alone.

Speaker 3 (47:20):
I know, like grieving is not only when people are dying.
But my parents are still there, you know, if I
want to find them.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
No, if you want to sign away that kind of money,
then they're there.

Speaker 3 (47:34):
And now I'm more afraid of trusting. I don't even
share where I live with people because I have this
nymer that they're going to find me and then push
me to do this, to sign the law or something
even more horrible. I just have this constant nymer that
I would wake up and then suddenly I'm back in

(47:55):
a dark room with my dad interrogating me and then
put me to sign a you know those like dramatic
crazy things. And I have a security camera in my apartment.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
Now, let's talk about what you imagine would happen in
reality if your family found out where you are, so
maybe they would keep trying to push you to sign
the papers which you don't want to do. Is there
something more you said and even worse, that your father
would be violent with you. Is that part of it?

Speaker 2 (48:27):
So you concerned for your safety? Literally?

Speaker 3 (48:28):
Still yes, because I saw my mom and I think
money really changes people, and what my dad was my dad.
To my experience, he was nice, but then when this
whole thing get involved, I just feel like he became
a different person and was so money driven and he

(48:50):
could do anything. He sent people to knock on my door,
non stuff. That's the reason why I move in the
first place. People would text me randomly and be like, Hey,
I'm gonna hunt you down where you live, and that's
why I had to move across the country.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
You've lived in this new location for over a year now,
is that right?

Speaker 4 (49:09):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (49:10):
Okay? And so your friends that you have in the
city that you're in do not know where you live.

Speaker 3 (49:18):
They know the area, but they don't know where I
live exactly.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
Are there any of those friends who arenew that your
parents don't know of or don't know how to get
in touch with it, because then.

Speaker 1 (49:28):
You, yeah, my parents wouldn't know who they are with
your existing friends that do know your parents, if they
did know the story and they did know that you
fear for your safety. Do you think that you could
trust them not to tell your parents where you are.

Speaker 3 (49:47):
I trust them not to tell my parents where I live.
But I think because they really care about me, they
would want to fix my relationship between me and my dad.
So they might reach out to my.

Speaker 1 (49:59):
Dad against your wishes.

Speaker 3 (50:02):
Yeah, because they would think they're doing the right thing
for me like I did for my mom.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
You might not need to trust them with your location,
but are any of those people close enough you can
trust them with the story?

Speaker 3 (50:19):
I think there would be war two.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
I keep thinking about you googling trying to find a
story like yours, and there are so many of them.
You might not have seen people post about them, but
there are so many stories like this.

Speaker 3 (50:38):
Am I the crazy one?

Speaker 1 (50:39):
That's what I was going to ask, is what was
the real question you were asking by doing this search?
That's the question that I think you're asking, is am
I the crazy one? And I think that that's so
important because your parents, in a weird way, warned you
don't trust us, and so you don't know who you
can trust. And what's so courageous, as guy said, and

(51:02):
we want you to hold onto this is the fact
that you trust in every fiber of your being and
every cell in your body. You know how much danger
you would put yourself in if you signed those papers,
that that would affect you for the rest of your life.

(51:23):
We want you to keep trusting that place in yourself
where you can find yourself, because that's where you truly are.
And instead of googling to say did this happen to
other people? Because I need to find out if I'm crazy,
we want you to trust the part of you that
knows that you are not crazy, that what your family
has done that is what has been done to you,

(51:45):
not something that you have done to them. They have
acted in ways that have made you scared for your
very livelihood in the literal sense and also in the
financial sense. And now the question is are you going
to sit with all this by yourself or are you
going to do the kind of grieving that you need
to do. Are you going to find the surrogate family

(52:06):
that you can trust? But you're going to need to
trust yourself in order to take the steps to do that.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
And Vanessa, the surrogate family that Lauri mentioned, which is
so so important, doesn't get constructed in a day. It
is a process. You do a layer at a time
and check and verify a layer at a time. Because

(52:35):
you've been terrorized, essentially, and you're terrified. Even if you're
not in touch with that all the time, you have
monitors in your home. You're afraid to tell anyone where
you live. That's witness relocation stuff.

Speaker 1 (52:52):
You have dreams about this.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
You're traumatized, and you're terrorized, and you need, though to
start working on that surrogate family, one step, small step
at a time. You know, through processing, you know through grieving,
by a long shot, there's work to be done to
recover and to rehabilitate your life.

Speaker 3 (53:18):
Am I too slow in the process? At first I
thought I was over it, and then the holiday season
came around.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
Vanessa, you just went off into blaming yourself for something,
like something's wrong with you. How did you take in
what Guy said about creating this surrogate family, about learning
to trust people, but doing it in a very cautious,
careful way.

Speaker 3 (53:41):
The idea of like surrogate family was so new to
me in therapy. That was my first time doing therapy too.
After this incident, I was like, Oh, I'm never going
to have families anymore. I lost my parents, my sibling,
my relatives, my grandparents one and the therapist told me

(54:05):
that family doesn't have to be blood related, they can
be chosen. But in reality, I have not been able
to put that into practice because I'm really scared. I

(54:27):
trust my friend still, but I'm not telling them the story.
But what if she's doing the same thing to me?

Speaker 2 (54:35):
What if the people you thought loved you turn against
you for their unselfish reasons.

Speaker 3 (54:41):
Yeah, I don't think I can take another one anymore.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
That's why we're using the words slowly, cautiously, step layer.
That's very important because of those fears, which, given what
you've been through, a warranted.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
You've never actually had a family where you could trust
that they would act lovingly toward you that was not
in a conditional way. If I do the things that
they want, if I perform the way that they want,
if I make them proud, they will treat me well.

(55:19):
They won't treat each other well, but they'll treat me well.
That's not family. So you grew up with a very
warped definition of family. Yeah, I'm there to save them,
but they're not there to ask me how I'm feeling
about any of this. They're not there to take care
of me and see what it's like to be a
child who has to deal with domestic violence and these

(55:42):
kinds of calls that are way above my ability to
deal with and not my responsibility. So as you're forming
a surrogate family, you will start to learn what the
true definition of family is and it does not have
to be your blood relatives. What does it mean to
be family? And are these people that I'm testing the

(56:04):
waters with people who are worthy of being part of
my family.

Speaker 3 (56:09):
I just wanted someone to spend holidays with. You know,
I don't want to be alone and.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
Scared, Vanessa. We think you want more than just someone
to spend holidays with.

Speaker 3 (56:21):
Yeah, I want someone to care about me, like you
can talk about this thing and anything that I am
having a hard time with. But also I will do
the same thing for them, like, yes, I wanted to
await communication, Carrie.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
And you've never had that in the way that you've
needed it. So, Vanessa, we're really moved by what has
happened with you and your family, and we have several
pieces of advice for you. The first one is we
were talking about what it would mean to create a

(57:03):
family for yourself so that you aren't alone. And we're
very aware that you don't know how to trust right
now because you haven't been around people who have taught
you what trust looks like. So we want you to
take this very slowly, and we want you to do
one thing this week. We would like you to ask

(57:25):
one of your friends who does not know your parents,
to coffee and in the conversation when people say how
are you doing, how is your week, that you answer
honestly with just a little bit of information and you say,
you know, actually, I'm having a really hard week. And

(57:47):
I haven't told you this before because I don't really
talk about this yet. I'm just kind of coming to
terms with it myself. But I am strange for my
parents right now because they ask me to do something
that would put me in financial jeopardy for the long
term and I couldn't agree to that, and they have

(58:09):
estranged themselves from me, and that's been really hard. That's
the only information that you really need to say at
this point. We just want you to see what it's
like to tell somebody that to be honest about what
you're actually experiencing, and then to see how this person

(58:31):
responds to you. That's where the trust piece comes in.

Speaker 2 (58:35):
And what you want to look for in that response
is they might be curious and say, oh, well it happened,
tell me more. You could say, I don't really want
to get into the details. This is still very raw
for me. But what would be good, for example, is
if at some point in that conversation later on, they
shared something with you that they hadn't said before that

(58:56):
was a little emotionally vulnerable. Also, because that's what you're doing,
allowing some emotional vulnerability, it would be nice if they
followed up the next time you saw them, or with
the text in between saying hey, just thinking about you,
how are you doing, or the next time you saw
them anything new going on there. That sounded so difficult,
because that's what you would want from a friend. And

(59:18):
this is how you test the waters. You allow some
vulnerability with someone. You hope that they do the same
because that shows the trusting you. And you do this
very slowly, you get to know them a little bit
more and vice versa.

Speaker 1 (59:30):
And when you say I'm not really ready to share more,
you want to make sure that your tone isn't such
that they feel like I can never talk about this
again with her, that you're not shutting the door. You're saying,
I really appreciate that, I know you're curious. I'm just
not ready. I will share more when i'm ready, but
thank you so much for your concern. They might say,

(59:53):
is there anything I can do for you? Or that
sounds really hard? Or thank you for telling me. For
empathy from them, you could just be one statement because
you're not really giving them a lot to go on here, and.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
It could be nonverbal. Do they look distressed and look
worried for you?

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
So those are the things to look for. And along
those lines, we have an exercise that we would like
you to do on your own, which is we would
like you to define for yourself what family should be.
We want you to write down a list of these
are the qualities that a person that I would like
to be in a family with would have. And you're

(01:00:32):
going to use that as your barometer as you are
testing the waters with people. Does this person meet my
definition of family? So you're taking these little, tiny steps
and every time you check back to this list, does
this person meet these qualifications? And if not, oh, maybe
I'm not going to really invite them into my family.

(01:00:52):
Oh but this person does. Oh, that's a person I'm
going to invite a little bit more into my family.
And we'd like you to get very specific about what
does family mean? How do they support, How do they care?
How did they show their love for me? How do
they show up? How do they hold my boundaries? We

(01:01:15):
want to know what it felt like for you to
make this list and to see the gap between what
a family should be like and what your family has
been like.

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
A quick question, are you still in therapy with that therapist?

Speaker 4 (01:01:29):
Not anymore?

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
We would like you very much to find a therapist,
hopefully someone local, because you have a lot of grief
work to do and you need to do that with
a therapist, and specifically, you need to do a lot
of revising of your previous perceptions of who your family is,

(01:01:51):
who your dad is, who your mom is, because Laurie
and I both think your dad didn't change that much.
It was always condition But you were always so good.
Here you can check my bag. Don't have to wait
for you to ask. You were always so good. You
never encountered the one who's hitting your mum, the one
who can put you on the spot like that and
terrorize you like that. But he's been that person all along.

(01:02:15):
So there's a lot of revising that has to be
done in terms of who they are and what your
history is with them, really, and that's the grief work,
because it's very upsetting to go back and revise and realize, yes,
I've lost the idealized version. It never existed, but now
I've lost even who they actually are. I don't have

(01:02:35):
because this is something you can bring to the therapist,
and as a part of that, we'd like you to
write the story of what happened to you from your
point of view, using only what you know to be true,
literally your experience of what this was like from the
minute your dad shows up at your door and tells
you how amazing you are and how great the relationship

(01:02:58):
is and how much he loves you till today fearing
for your safety from your own family because you refuse
to put yourself in financial jeopardy. When you tell the story,
it's still not sharp enough from your point of view.
You keep saying, he asked me to sign something, which
is completely not the case. He asks you to take
out the loan in your name and give him the money.

(01:03:19):
That sounds very different than he asked me to sign something.
That's their rendition. It's just a signature no take it
alone in my name that I will never be able
to repay, and give you all that money sounds much
clearer in terms of what was happening. We want you
to write that story because you need to have a
very clear idea of the true narrative after all the
gaslighting that went on, and that you can bring to

(01:03:43):
the therapy.

Speaker 1 (01:03:44):
And part of that story and part of the grieving
is that you didn't really have the opportunity to be
the child that you were. Your mom would call you
with all of these very adult issues that were happening,
and then she would alarm you and then tell you
not to be alone, which was very confusing. And this
responsibility from all of your family telling you that as

(01:04:06):
the oldest child, that you had to take care of
everybody and solve all the family's problems. You missed out
on a lot. We want the accurate version of the
story to be there on paper as a starting point
for the grief work that you need to do. This
does not mean that your parents are all bad. This
means that your parents are deeply flawed, and you need

(01:04:28):
to be able to separate out the fact that the
ways in which they're deeply flawed have affected you to
the point that you're scared for your own life.

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
So how does this sound to you.

Speaker 3 (01:04:43):
I feel like I'm just enlightened. I thought that was
well family men, So I'm really grateful for the direction.

Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
We think that this is the starting point that will
help you get much more clarity on how you eventually
want to handle things with your family. But until you
have more clarity and trust within yourself and you have
more support around you, you won't get that clarity. And
if you do this work, you will have people to

(01:05:18):
spend the holidays with that you actually want to spend
the holidays with, who feel like family to you.

Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
So we really look forward to hearing from you and
learning how this week goes for you.

Speaker 3 (01:05:29):
Thank you, I'm excited.

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
We're excited for you. To Vanessa.

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):
One thing that really impressed me about Vanessa is that
it's hard enough to hold onto your truth when someone
gaslights you, but in this case, it was her entire
family gaslighting her, and yet remarkably she was able to
hold on to her truth. She was vacillating a bit,
but fundamentally she was able to hold on to that.

(01:06:00):
That takes so much strength. It's really remarkable.

Speaker 1 (01:06:03):
Yeah, And I think that that's why it's so important
for her to write down the story from her point
of view, because she keeps toggling between fear and denial,
and I think what she really sees the story on paper,
she can then hold on to her truth more easily.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
And for that same reason, it's so important for her
to redefine what family is and what it means to her,
because she really has to know what it is she's
seeking and what it is she's not getting from her
family of origin. So that'll be a really important exercise.

Speaker 1 (01:06:35):
I know we both had so much compassion for her.
She's in such a difficult situation. And while this might
sound extreme, I think anybody who's had their family tell
them that what they're feeling, or thinking or believing is
not okay can relate to what she's going through.

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):
You listening to deotherapists back after a short break, So Laurie,
we heard from Vanessa. I'm very curious to hear how

(01:07:18):
this week went for her and how she did with
the assignments. So let's take a listener.

Speaker 4 (01:07:23):
I just want to give you an update on the
assignments you gave me last week. The first thing was
to meet with my friend and tell them I having
some issues with my family. I actually wasn't able to
meet my friend because of errands and weather, so instead

(01:07:47):
I call someone on Sunday evening and I told her
that actually, my past week wasn't that easy because I
I had some family issues and I am still processing
it myself, so I cannot really tell her anything specific

(01:08:14):
until I have sorted it out.

Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
And then, because it was a call and it was
late at night, she asked me if she wanted me
to have her drive over so she can keep me
a company. And I was really surprised and touched by

(01:08:36):
her question because I didn't expect that kind of response,
especially I did not say anything besides I had a
bad week because of some family issue.

Speaker 4 (01:08:55):
I think this is going to the right direction for me.
I hope to continue this relationship and hopefully I can
actually have her over at my place sometimes. The second
thing on the to do list is to find a therapist,

(01:09:16):
so I am working with my insurance to find someone.
At the moment, I'm probably gonna speak to a professional
in a week or two. And as for the letter,
so the first draft I wrote was still very scattered,

(01:09:38):
trying to piece everything together in my own voice.

Speaker 3 (01:09:41):
But I feel so.

Speaker 4 (01:09:44):
Surreal for me still, so I think I'm gonna try
to write the letter from a third person perspective, so
I'm no longer I in the story or my dad.
It will be Vanessa and Vanessa's dad, so I can

(01:10:06):
see things more clearly. Because what really shocked me was
how you thought my dad was always this way, but
I just choose to not see him in that way.
So I want to be able to write my story

(01:10:29):
from a third person point of view, first to see
if I can have an objective storyline, and last, not least,
it's the meaning of family. So I just wrote down
some aspects. Families are supposed to be uplifting and hopeful

(01:10:53):
for each other, and I hope my family can embrace
me for being me, and we can get through difficult
times together, celebrate the happy times together, of course, and
just provide mental support through the good the bad. And

(01:11:17):
most importantly, I can be myself when I'm around them.
I don't have to behaving a certain way or wear
a mask. I just want to say I'm really grateful
for the opportunity to speak to you both. I really

(01:11:39):
learned a lot about myself, my family, my childhood. It's
crazy how you learn something about me and my story
so quickly, while it took me so long to realize
there are a lot of things that I'm afraid of admitting,

(01:12:00):
but somehow you just get it.

Speaker 3 (01:12:05):
Thank you, Thank you a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:12:11):
I was so touched to hear how her friend responded
to her saying I'm having trouble. My week didn't go
so well, and the offer to drive over late at
night and spend time with her was something that was
so new to Vanessa. And when we talk about the

(01:12:32):
other task of defining what family is, that's what family
looks like.

Speaker 2 (01:12:37):
And I think it was new to Vanessa because what
Vanessa did was new. She admitted a smidge of pain
and vulnerability. It wasn't a great week. She couldn't say more,
but she didn't have to say more. The fact that
the friend was so willing to come over, I think
means she's not used to hearing Vanessa say I'm struggling,
and Vanessa has really been struggling. So to me, this

(01:13:02):
was a great experiment of open a little bit of vulnerability.
See the response and if it's encouraging, then do more. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:09):
I think she's really learning what family is, or what
family is supposed to be. And I loved her definition
of the meaning of family because part of that was
exactly what the friend did. She said, they're supposed to
emotionally support you through the good and the bad, and
that's exactly what she got when she was open with

(01:13:30):
her friend and vulnerable.

Speaker 2 (01:13:32):
And that means, Vanessa, that family are people with whom
you can feel comfortable being open and vulnerable. Because my
general sense with her is that this is still so raw,
so unprocessed. She hasn't been able to talk about it
with anyone, and so she's really in the initial stages
of dealing with this, of grieving, of processing, of understanding,

(01:13:55):
and that requires her to open up.

Speaker 1 (01:13:59):
Yeah, And she said part of her definition of family
was that I can be myself when I'm around them.
So she was dipping her toe in for the first time,
but she was being her real self and she got
such a warm, supportive reaction.

Speaker 2 (01:14:13):
I also really liked what she said about the narrative,
that it was too difficult to write in the first person.
So she actually used a psychological technique that we often recommend.
It has a lot of research behind it, and that's
called psychological distancing, and that is that you find a
way to distance the emotions so it's less present and suffocating.

(01:14:33):
And you do that by literally using third person from
first person. And that shift from first to third person
was enough to take down the distress level to make
it workable rather than too much.

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
And that's different from dissociating, So what she was doing
was actually healthy. It was a way for her to
go into a place that feels very dangerous, but in
a way that feels safe. But she was going into
the feelings. That's different from dissociating, where you're removing yourself
from the feelings.

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
And I hope nessa that once you finish that narrative
and the third person still give yourself the task when
you're ready to translate that into first person, that will
be important to do at the point where you feel
you can do it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:15):
And she also started the process of finding a therapist,
which is going to be very important for her to
have a place where she can really process all of
these feelings and feel safe and comfortable. We give people
a week normally to do our homework assignments, and our
producer said that she turned this in within a few days,
so she was really ready and she was so receptive
and these were really really hard things to do in

(01:15:38):
her situation. I so admire the fact that she was
able to do this so quickly.

Speaker 2 (01:15:43):
I think another reason she got so much done this
week because she has been waiting a full year to
open up to talk about it with someone, and I
think doing that got her to the starting line right.

Speaker 1 (01:15:55):
And what she said at the end about how we
saw things that she hadn't seen before, I think really
what happened was she felt heard for the very first time.
I think there were things that she knew. We were
able to create a space for her where she had
been afraid to acknowledge certain things, and now they were
being talked about in an open way, and that's where

(01:16:17):
we want her to get to. So I think this
will be a journey for her as she heals, but
I think she's definitely on the right path. Next week,
a young married couple wants to learn how to stop
their arguments from escalating into destructive screaming matches.

Speaker 5 (01:16:36):
My sister moved in with us, and there's been rules
that need to be set in place for the household.
We've had certain disagreements and it always ends with arguments
to where we don't even want to talk to each
other anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:16:46):
If you're enjoying our podcast, don't forget to subscribe for
free so 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 (01:17:00):
If you have a dilemma you'd like to discuss with us,
email us at Lauriandguy at iHeartMedia dot com. Our executive
producer is Noel Brown. We're produced and edited by Josh Fisher,
additional editing support by Zachary Fisher and Katie Matty. Our
intern is an Anna Doherty and special thanks to our

(01:17:20):
podcast fairy Godmother Katie Couric. We can't wait to see
you at our next session. Deotherapist is a production of iHeartRadio,
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