April 8, 2025 • 65 mins
This week we’re in session with Catherine, a seemingly polite woman who creates elaborate revenge fantasies about the people in her life. She wants to understand why she does this–and how she can stop.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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 (00:19):
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 (00:28):
So sit back and welcome to today's session.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
This week, a woman who has elaborate revenge fantasies about
the people in her life wants to understand why she
does this and how she can stop.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
I have no training and how to have a positive conversation.
I think it feel a shameful as a grown woman
that I can't defend myself, and so I take all
about hurt and I channel it towards these letters.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
First, a quick note deo Therapists is for informational purposes only,
does not constantitute medical or psychological advice, and is not
a substitute for professional health care advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
Always seek the advice of your physician, mental health professional,
or other qualified health provider with any questions you may
have regarding a medical or psychological condition. By submitting a letter,
(01:16):
you are agreeing to let iHeart Media use it in
part or in 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.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
So Hey Guy, Hi Laurie, what do we have going
on in our mailbox this week?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Today we have a rather interesting letter which I will
just read and you will see why. Deotherapists, I have
an issue in which I feel a great compulsion to
write letters to people that are filled with scathing criticisms
or that bring up long buried events. I am embarrassed
to admit that I write these mostly to good friends,
(01:55):
and I even think about sending such letters to the
spouses of good friends that contain in that would be
highly damaging to the relationships at hand. I have never
sent these letters because I know they could potentially cause
great emotional and in some cases financial damage to my friends.
But while I don't send these letters, I have to wonder,
why do I want to hurt other people? Some of
(02:17):
these people are friends of more than three decades? Am
I jealous of them? Do I feel abandoned when they
move and have their own families even though I am
married and have my own family too. Why do I
weaponize certain things that were told to me in confidence?
It's upsetting to take delight in crafting these letters when
most friends have shown genuine support and love for me.
(02:39):
Thanks for any help, Catherine.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
You know, this is really interesting because so many times
people come into our offices and they have these almost
confessions of things that they're very ashamed of. They feel
like they're very unique to them, and in this case
it is. But I think that what we discover when
we start exploring it with them is that whatever's going
(03:05):
on underneath it is probably pretty universal, that's right.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
And in this case, what's going on underneath is a
lot of emotion. Clearly, she feels a lot of these
feelings and then writes letters to express these feelings in
some way. What's certainly not clear to me yet is
what are these feelings about? What's causing them to come up?
And it sounds like she's not entirely sure why she
(03:31):
does it either, and that's why she's writing.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
To us, and I think that as she starts to
understand more about what this is, she will have more
compassion for herself and then also be able to hopefully
start to change the behavior. And so for anybody out
there who thinks that they have some kind of behavior
that they're embarrassed to share with anybody, this will probably
be a very helpful episode.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
So let's go talk to her.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
You're listening to Dear Therapists for my Heart Radio. We'll
be back after a short break.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
I'm Lori Gottlieb and I'm Guy Wench and this is Deatherapists.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Hi, Catherine, Hello, thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
It's our pleasure. We read your letter, and I'm curious
to hear how this habit of writing these skating letters
that you don't send, how that started, when it started?
If you can give us a little context of how
that got going and the development of it throughout the years.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I think it started probably about ten years ago. The
first time I began to compose these letters. In my mind,
it was to one particular friend, and our relationship had
started to go through some rockiness, largely in part because
she has a spouse who was treating me quite poorly.
(04:55):
The friendship sort of it lessened, but we've remained good friends,
I would say, but it sort of started as a
way of addressing wasn't said between us, and I would
find myself waking up in the morning, and perhaps as
I was unloading the dishwasher or taking a shower, I
would begin to write these letters in my mind, either
(05:18):
to this friend or to her spouse. I've known this
friend for a long time, probably about thirty years now,
and in the course of that relationship, she shared a
lot of personal details about herself and her relationship with
her spouse, and I would use that information to write
(05:41):
fairly scathing letters in my mind. In my mind, I've
never sent anything, and I do it to other people too.
It would be a criticism of the way that they
raised their children, the way that they spend money. It's
just it's not healthy. I do it mainly for a
couple friends, but also if there are people in town
(06:04):
that I see that their children are treating other kids
terribly on the playground, I'll think about writing letters to
these people. It's almost become now something that's a part
of my daily habit, and I want to understand why
I'm doing this and what I can do to stop
doing it, because I'm so aware of it not being productive.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
When you described the first incident, you were upset because
the husband was treating you poorly, and it was one
of the ways to kind of express your beef. But
you're saying that now it can happen with people you
don't know, people you just even see that you don't
have any personal stake in it, but it can activate
you sufficiently to want to do that. Are you aware
(06:51):
in those moments of what you're feeling that's making you
think of writing the letter.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Yes, I'm aware of people who I believe are not
taking responsibility for their actions or responsibility for how their
children are acting towards others.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
What's the feeling that you have in those moments? You
aware of what you're feeling in that moment.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
I think it's angry at feeling mistreated or disrespected and
feeling like my friends are not sticking up for me
and saying to their spouse, hey, that's not right to
treat someone this way. I love this person and you're
being awful to them.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
There seems to be a real thread of injustice throughout
these even when you see the kids that you don't
even know at the park who are being treated in
a way that feels unfair.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
I do have a pretty strong sense of what is
right and what is wrong, but I'm also keenly aware
that not everyone has those same views. When I'm feeling
angry and then I want to write these letters, it's
a way of, I guess settling scores.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
This sense of feeling misunderstood or feeling like you or
somebody else is being treated fairly. Was that something that
you felt growing up? Does it feel familiar at all?
Speaker 3 (08:05):
It does. In my household, we really weren't allowed to
express ourselves and what was decided upon by my parents,
mostly my father. That was the rule, and there wasn't
a lot of leeway to plead your case, to think differently,
to express yourself differently. That just wasn't tolerated.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Do you have siblings.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
I do. I have siblings, older and younger brother.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
How did they react to that environment?
Speaker 3 (08:29):
They took it as well. I mean, you know, to
be essentially iced out was just a really unpleasant feeling.
It could be a couple days of your parents not
talking to you. It could be feeling like you were
the odd man out in sort of an already not
(08:49):
terribly a motive family. It was. It was not fun.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
That's what your parents would do. If they're upset with you,
they would shun you, like ice you out.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Yes, my father would not speak to us for several days,
or my mother would write us letters and either leave
them on our bed, or sometimes she would even mail
them to us, just we were in the same house.
She would mail them to us, and you know she
would express her anger by writing these letters.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
So you have been the recipient of the letters that
you compose in your mind, Yes, I have. What were
the kinds of things that you would get iced out for.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Not bringing home perfect grades?
Speaker 1 (09:30):
What would happen with the grades? Can you paint the
picture of that?
Speaker 3 (09:33):
So if I did not bring home you know a's
or as it was just there was hell to bay.
This was in the eighties and the nineties, and you know,
if we brought home a report card with anything less
than a's, it was it was ranting and raving that
America is going to be surpassed by this country. America
(09:56):
is going to be surpassed by that country. And we're
not trying hard enough ever, any question about well do
you understand the material? Why are you getting b pluses
as if there's anything wrong with that.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
So you talked about them sending you letters, but it
sounds like they also directly expressed you their anger.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Yes, my mother would send me the letters. My father
would directly express the anger.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
I'm curious, then, what were the letters about that you
received from your mother.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
I have one specific incidence where she gave me a
jewelry box for Christmas, and I didn't particularly love the
jewelry box and I put it underneath my dresser and
it stayed there for a couple months, and she must
have found it at some point and it was dusty.
It wasn't broken, it wasn't used, it was just dusty.
And so that afternoon I came home and there was
(10:46):
a letter on my pillow just saying, you know, why
did you treat it like this? This was a gift
I gave to you, and I don't think it's acceptable
that you would treat something like that.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
It sounds like she sent you a lot of letters
over the course of your childhood. Did you ever respect
to them? Or she would send you a letter and
the two of you would never speak of it.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
It was more of the latter. I would never speak
of it, partially because I felt cowed by it, because
it wasn't her directly addressing me, and partly I thought
it was just ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
You know what's interesting to me in what your dad
said is the disproportionality of you not getting an A
and on your shoulders because of your lack of a
is the entire future of the American country. It wasn't
your future might be disappointing, it's about the whole country
now is on your shoulders. In other words, it's such
(11:35):
a disproportionate response that it really kind of set the
stage for you that it's okay to respond to these
kinds of things in a hugely disproportionate way, and in
a way from your mum in which people can't answer.
So between the two of them, they're really teaching you
(11:56):
that when you feel slighted or upset or disappointed even
with someone, you get to respond in ways that are
not direct but very disproportionate, like burn the house down
kind of thing. And that's what you're describing that you
do in your letters.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Yeah, and I hadn't actually thought about that disproportional reaction,
but it's right there, it's braided right in with the letters.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Can you tell us what happened with your friend's husband
that started you on this process of writing these letters
that in your fantasy world you would send, but you don't.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
From the time I met her fiance soon to be husband,
he was always very cold to me and very distant. He,
I believe, felt threatened by our friendship. And at their wedding,
they had some issues and they had a fight and
(12:51):
it was very uncomfortable, and she had withdrawn to a
room and she didn't want to be with him, and
I tried to talk to him to go and see her.
It was their wedding night. It was a beautiful wedding,
And that was the most that I could do to
(13:12):
help her was to just say to him, look, your
wife is waiting to talk to you. She's upset. And
all he would say to me was, oh, well, you're
very proper. Isn't it always important to have good manners?
And since I've at that point really seen him, it's
(13:33):
either been he cuts me short or makes a comment,
and I want to preserve the friendship with her, so
I really don't react, she'll tell me some terrible behavior
he's shown to her. I try not to react because
I get the sense she just wants to talk about it,
(13:55):
not necessarily get advice from me. So I can't point
to you a specific run in that we had. I
feel like from the beginning he just felt threatened by
me and by our friendship.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
You're saying that he would just be cold and distant.
You're also describing that your dad's way of dealing with
conflict was to shun to not speak to you for
several days. Now, that's extremely painful when you live with
someone when they're icing you out, when they're shunning you,
it's an extremely painful form of rejection. And you're describing
(14:31):
here with this husband of the friend that he also
was just a bit shunning and distant and cold. Because
there's also something about your mum's letter writing that's so impersonal,
and that she's not coming to talk to you. She's
writing and even mailing a letter as if it's far away.
There's something very distancing about that, and I'm wondering whether
(14:51):
that's something that you're aware of that you have a
specific history within reaction to it.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Could be I immediately. I notice it if I think
that someone isn't being polite to me, or if I
think someone's being disrespectful, I pick up on that, and
all of my senses in almost every other interaction following that,
are alert to it.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
And your mother felt the same way. She was hyper
aware of perceived disrespect. And I say perceived because of
what you're describing, And so I wonder if it's hard
for you to sometimes know whether this really is disrespectful
(15:34):
or whether you feel like maybe I'm holding them to
a standard that's a little bit stringent like your mother did.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
I think you're right that I think that there have
been some clear cut instances of disrespect. But also perhaps
I'm just I'm primed for it and I'm reading into
something differently. I think after about ten years of, you know,
sort of coolness on his part, I've got it pretty
accurately sized up. But yeah, it could be that I'm
(16:03):
just I'm looking for it, or I'm interpreting it in
the wrong way.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
You said that you're married with a family. Does that
mean that you also have children?
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Yes? I do.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
How old are your children?
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Twelve, ten, and seven.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
And you've been married for.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
About fifteen years now.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Does this come up in your relationships with your husband
or your children.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Well, yes, in the sense of I do get upset
when I have to ask my children to do something
and I'm asking them five and six times I've said
it to them before. I do not like feeling as
if I'm being ignored.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Because being ignored when you were growing up was extremely painful.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Yeah, that's kind of how I would characterize my whole childhood.
My brothers included, is that it was we were just
kind of bouncing around in a house and not really
given the space to express ourselves.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
You're kind of smiling and laughing as you're saying this.
Do you notice that?
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah? I do, because I don't necessarily think it's funny.
In fact, I don't think it's funny at all. But
I feel like it's just so interesting to me how
these patterns play out again and how certain things repeat themselves.
I fervently hope that I'm giving my girls more space
to express themselves and what I was given.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
So with your children, you've talked about having some of
these times when you feel ignored by them, and how
much that triggers you. What happens with your husband. Have
you ever felt ignored by him or what happens when
you feel disrespected or there's some kind of conflict between
the two of you.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
No, my husband is incredibly open and a motive and
does such a wonderful job of touching in with me.
He's had a good deal of therapy and understands how
to communicate. I am amazed at how he can talk
so beautifully to our daughters. I wish I had that.
(17:58):
I feel almost like, Oh, I let him do a
lot of like the tough talk, I don't feel quite
as well equipped to do it, and he is just
he is a gem when it comes to conversations.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Sometimes the letter in your head is a way to
kind of process all of these feelings, and it feels
very solitary because that's what you had to do growing up.
You really didn't have people to process your feelings with.
Even when your mom wrote those letters, you didn't go
then and talk to her about it or say I
feel differently.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
About this, yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
And so now you have someone in your life that
you can talk to that way. And I'm wondering when
something comes up, an incident happens where you feel slighted
by your friend's husband, or you see the kids being
mistreated at the park. Do you ever feel like if
I talk to my husband that that lessens the impulse
(18:53):
to need to then go ahead and write the letter.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Not really, And perhaps that's something I should do more of,
to sort of speak to someone about it. I think
something about me too, is that I really hold on
to grudges. I really hold on to perceive slights. It's
almost like it's a point of pride to keep going
(19:17):
over these unpleasant interactions I had with people as a
way of not I don't know, not forgetting as a
way of saying, oh see they're really bad. They said
this to me or they did this to me.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
The thing that strikes me about letter writing when we
don't send the letters is that there's a certain powerlessness
that comes with it because the powerlessness feeling is that
I can't address it with the person directly. I can't
actually get satisfaction. I can't tell them that I feel slighted.
If that's the case, the best I can do is
(19:51):
have a revenge fantasy in my head. But to me,
that is associated with feeling unempowered to actually have an
impact in the real world with a person themselves. Your
mother did something similar because she wasn't looking for a conversation.
She would have spoken to you if she was. She
was looking to just throw it out there and then
(20:13):
hope for the best. And I'm wondering about this aspect
of the feeling unempowered to address some of these lights
directly with the people who slighted you, and is that
something that you tend to do at all, And how
does that go when you try and actually have a conversation.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
It's very awkward for me, It's very difficult. I feel
like when I have to have a difficult conversation with someone,
it's almost as if like I'm blanking out and I
have a hard time keeping track of the conversation or
making coherent points. I would attribute that to my father's
(20:54):
anger when we were growing up, and what a great volume.
There was no room for a conversation. And I think
a difficult conversation like that now really cows me.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
When you feel slighted or hurt or dismissed or ignored,
do you also then feel frustration because of the powerlessness
that you feel because you can't address it directly, so
you won't be able to get satisfaction that way. Does
that feeling stand out for you?
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Yes, it does, because I know that it just sort
of goes on a hamster wheel of I feel affronted
by something, I'll write a letter. There's a slight release,
you know, the valve is twisted a little bit, and
then I'll ruminate on it again. So I write the
letter and it's a little bit more of vitriolic. It's
a treadmill, and it's exhausting and it's shameful. It's really
(21:46):
shameful that I do this to people that I love
and that have shown a great generosity to me.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Well, but you haven't done anything to them. From what
they know. You actually really pleasant because you never bring
up any issues, right.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
And maybe I'm mad at myself that I'm not bringing
up these issues. That's probably a portion of it too.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
You mentioned resentment, and I'm thinking about what Guy was
saying about how it really fuels more resentment. The way
that you ruminate you think about it, it gets bigger,
not smaller for you. And the more emotional real estate
that you devote to this, the more land it takes
up in your mind. Because it doesn't really feel satisfying.
(22:29):
It doesn't really go.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Anyyeah, right, it really doesn't.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
We think about resentment almost counterintuitively as related to grieving
that sometimes when we carry around a lot of resentment
towards someone, what we're really resisting is doing some grieving
of maybe I'm going to have to let go of something,
or maybe I'm going to lose this, maybe I can't
(22:55):
have this kind of closeness in the way that I
want to have it. So we hold the resentment thinking
that it's empowering, but in fact it's disempowering. And I
don't think that you see a third way, which is
is there a way that I can get more acquainted
with what I'm feeling, get more clarity on it, have
some perspective on it, and then be able to pick
(23:18):
and choose what I approach my friend about. Once I
have more clarity about what is historical and what is current,
what is something that's getting magnified because of my experience
as a child, and what is something that is really
very present right now. And those kinds of conversations could
very well bring you more closeness and not have you
(23:39):
feel the need to rehearse all of these scenarios in
your head.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
To say that word rehearsal is just so spot on.
I find myself having these conversations where I'm almost trying
to prepare for almost comeback, and it's like, why are
you rehearsing a conversation that hasn't taken place.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
It sounds like what you're doing is you're presenting a
your case in court. Yeah, and there's a jury that's
there in your head and you're trying to convince them.
And the problem is that really the courtroom is empty.
But we do that all the time. It's so common
where something happens in our lives and we have all
these fantasies about what we'd like to say and why
the other person was wrong and why we deserve to
(24:20):
be treated this way, and often we don't tell the
other person, but we're trying to prove our case in
our head, and that is not very satisfying.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Yeah, I think at the heart of the matter, what
it is is what you said. It's that there's a
closeness that I'm longing for that has disappeared since she
married this person. And I know logically friendships they wax
and they wane, but I really miss that friendship of
how we used to be before this person showed up.
And I know I can't ask her to throw away
(24:52):
her husband. That's not reasonable.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
But there's a lot in between asking her to throw
away her husband and not having closeness with her, right because.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Right now you're the one that's creating the distance, because
when you write these letters to her and to her husband,
and as Lori said, when you take the case to court,
to the empty court, because unfairness is what makes us
do that. We want to get validation that things are unfair.
So we prepare in our head the case that we
will present the court in which will be ruled, and indeed,
(25:21):
something unfair was done to us, and there's our validation
because we're not getting it anywhere else. But when you
do that, the anger and resentment towards the husband and
towards her for having that husband does create a distance
emotionally between you and her. But that's coming from you,
which you then have to overcome that distance whenever you're
together or talking with her to be able to reconnect,
(25:44):
And so it makes the friendship less satisfying for you. Yeah,
in other words, you're the one that actually pays the
price rather than her.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Or her husband, And that's that's exactly how I would
characterize the friendship. You know, we see each other sporadically.
It's by as high high kiss case, the quick lunch,
and then it feels pretty empty. Again. It's not satisfying.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Because it's hard to have connective tissue and conversation with
someone toward him, you're holding so many grudges and resentments
and history. It's hard to open up to feel vulnerable
because there's so much stuff in the way.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah, you said that you're very uncomfortable bringing up difficult
topics with people. Can you do that with your husband?
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Yes? I can. I don't very often, but I know
I can. I know he would make space for me.
I know he would hear just about anything and really
try to approach it with an open mind.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
You're saying that he would as if you imagine that
like the letters that you write, you imagine a scenario.
But I'd like to hear if you have had a
difficult conversation with him that you brought up, and can
you tell us about that.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
You know, we don't fight terribly often. If we have
a tough topic to discuss, it's my husband who brings
it up. He's really the one that sort of leads
that conversation. I often feel so like my hands and
arms are cut off when it's a difficult conversation. And
he's helpful, never in a way that's like he's telling
(27:17):
me what I think or what I feel. But I
find him very helpful to help me articulate things. But
to answer your question, Laurie, I can't say that I've
ever brought up a difficult conversation.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Yeah, and even there with someone that you feel very,
very safe with, it's hard for you to bring something up.
In fifteen years, you have never brought up a difficult
topic between you. It's always been him. Yeah, what's your
fear with your husband? If you were to bring something up?
Speaker 3 (27:50):
I guess my fear, and I think this is a
fear that applies to almost any difficult conversation with anybody,
is that I won't be able to, I guess, stay
on my ground or articulate my voice because you'll feel
too flooded to do that, or because they won't listen.
(28:11):
I think I'd feel too overwhelmed. I think i'd feel
fearful that that the floodgates would open, and that a
lot of hurt would come spilling out. And you know,
as I said before, when I fight with people, I
almost can't think. When I have a difficult conversation, I
(28:36):
lose the thread a lot, and I lose my thoughts,
so you dissociate. Yes, And I have no training in
how to have a positive conversation. I have no experience,
and I think it feels shameful as a grown woman
(29:02):
that I can't defend myself. And so I take all
of that hurt and I channel it towards these letters.
And I'm sure that you know these letters are not
just toward that one person, but it's towards all of
the people that I feel angry about. It's just easier
(29:25):
for me to sort of sift it down into one person.
But yes, fighting is very, very scary for me.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
See, we weren't even talking about fighting. We were talking
about a conversation. But for you, in your mind, there's
no difference between bringing something up to help prepare something
and fighting.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
That's right. I can't see them as being separate.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
And yet when your husband brings these things up to you,
do you feel that that's fighting or do you feel
like you're having a conversation.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
I feel like we're a conversation. I trust him, and
I never feel like it's going to be combative. I
know that I can always get to the words somehow,
but with other people, I don't know why I sort
of revert into this like I'm cowering in a corner.
(30:23):
I know what I feel and I know what I think,
but somehow to express that to people it's so tough
for me.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Can you give us an example of something that happened
recently with anyone? Is that it's not just with this friend? Yeah,
where you said you know exactly what you're feeling.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Sure. I was talking to a fellow mom on the
playground a few months ago, and she was ranting about
someone that we know in common, and the person I
was talking to she has a dusk job, and she
was all of a sudden making snide comments about this
(31:08):
third party not having a job. She was just a
stay at home mother, and she was really denigrating and
pitting sort of the work moms and the stay at
home moms, pitting them against one another. And I said
to her, well, you do realize that I must stay
at home mom. And I can't remember exactly what she said,
but she glossed over it, and she kept talking in
(31:29):
a very condescending manner about this woman, implying that she
does nothing. And I've stowed about it for days. I
continue to doe about it because she knows full well
that I'm a stay at home parent. And yet even
as I told her to back off that I found
this offensive, she kept going. And in the moment, for me,
(31:51):
it was easier just to sort of walk away from
this person rolling my eyes. But I still feel that
smart and I've sort of spun that interaction into her
being a horrible person, a neglectful mother, inconsiderate of other people,
and it just has sort of become this hurricane.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
But I was asking what you felt, so I'm hearing
a lot about what you thought. Yeah, tell me what
the feeling was.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Yeah, I felt disrespected and unheard, and those I think
are my trigger points. I felt small.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
What do you wish you would have said to her
in that moment?
Speaker 3 (32:30):
I wish I could have told her to I mean,
buzz off. I mean, she probably shouldn't say this to me.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
What occurred to me also is that you can think
about it in hindsight and you can articulate it very
clearly in the moment, the anxiety you feel is so
severe that you truly dissociate. And I'm just was wondering
whether you had any knowledge about whether that's something that
happened to your mom, And maybe that's why she would
write letters, because she too might not have been able
(32:59):
to handle a direct conversation.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
Yes, I believe so. She had a very hard, charging
mother who would tell you exactly what she thought, tolerated
no other opinions.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
So your grandmother would express herself in a very unthoughtful way, yeah,
and then your mother would express herself also in a
very rigid way and maybe unthoughtful, but never directly to later.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Yeah. I've often thought about that.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
And when we talk about intergenerational trauma, this is a
way of being that has been passed down through the generations,
and it's always the person who comes and says, I'm
having trouble with this. Who can put a stop to it,
who can really end the cycle? And I think it's
(33:58):
interesting that the word you used when you said this
woman was talking to you and I said how did
you feel? And you said I felt very small, because
you probably did feel small, literally like you felt as
a child.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
Yeah, totally, totally.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Is this something you've ever spoken about with your siblings.
Is it a conversation you've had about the style your
parents had with the shunning and the letters, and the
impact that had on you.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
It's interesting you say that because I recently saw both
my brothers over the holidays. My father is in the
middle of dementia and he really can't handle having grandchildren
around him because he doesn't know who is who. He
had an outburst yelled at some small grandchildren. But my
oldest brother said to me, she just like being twelve again,
(34:47):
And I kind of thought, like, oh, look at you.
That's right. Like if anybody has been more forward in
talking about our father and how sort of oppressive he was,
it's me. I felt like a little glimmer of hope
hearing my brother say that, an acknowledgment that, like his
childhood had been kind of miserable too.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Have you ever directly talked to your brothers about the
experience of being children together and your father's outbursts and
your mother's letters.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
No, we haven't. We've had some comments where I know
that they felt similarly, but no, we've skated over it
and made comments. I think because it was traumatic for us.
All we try to put it behind us.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
That comment, though, about oh, which just like being twelve again,
feels a little bit like an acknowledgment and opening.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
That's how I read it.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Can you give us an example of the most recent
letter that you've written in your head with this friend.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Sure, I'll give you an example of a letter I
would write to the spouse. I would probably say something
about how my friend had an affair because she was
so frustrated and bored by you, And I would probably
end it by saying, that's how everyone finds you boring
and frustrating. They're just written to eviscerate, and no, there's
(36:15):
nothing really about them other than to hurt.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
But you don't convey your hurt. In other words, the
letter isn't I'm very upset with you because you took
my friend away from me, and you cost me this
bond that was so special to me for so long,
and you created such resentment in me that it's difficult
for me now to really connect with her and to
(36:39):
reach the depths of friendship that we used to have.
That's not what the letter is. Have you ever written
a letter like that that actually just speaks about how
you feel. No, no, why not do you think?
Speaker 3 (36:54):
I think because it's harder for me to express myself.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
I think it's because it's more pained to do that,
to confront yourself with how you're really feeling, with the
loss that you really experience, with the sense of injustice
that you have, with that sense of powerlessness and frustration.
I think it taps into that. Yeah, and I think
you're trying to stay away from that, even though you
do have access to it, because when we speak about it,
(37:19):
you get tearful. But the letters are not just the
venting there to keep you away from the real painful
stuff that's going on underneath.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Yeah, I see that, and I agree with you.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Are you wanting something to change with your friend or
with her husband, because you were talking about a letter
to her husband. What are the letters that you write
to your friend?
Speaker 3 (37:45):
The most recent versions would have to do with how
she's raising her children, or who are all lovely by
the way, I would perhaps see the child and the
child in completely the normal course of being an eight
year old or a nine year old has a moment
(38:07):
where they act out, so I would probably say something like, well,
your child is disrespectful to you, and everyone thinks is
a brat. Really, the crux of my letters are written
to this husband, So you know the letters that I
write to my friend, I would probably also point out
(38:31):
how awful her husband is.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
It sounds like she shares her own difficulty with her
husband with you, Yes, And I wonder what that's like,
given your own feelings toward him. What role do you
play in that when she brings up something difficult about
her husband.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
Well after they were first married, there was a very
rocky period immediately following their marriage, and it looked as
if the marriage would be over very quickly. And I
remember being out with her one night and she was
telling me his terrible treatment of her, and I offered
(39:12):
her a place to stay, and I said, you know,
you can always stay with me for however long you need,
but I don't believe that you deserve this treatment. Within
a couple weeks, things were repaired, they were back together,
and it was as if sort of an iceberg had
(39:34):
come in between us. I think she was greatly offended
by me saying, based upon what she told me, that
if you want to leave him, I will help you.
I think she wanted to vent and the fact that
I gave her advice put a wedge in between us.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
But she still shares things that happen with her husband
with you.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Yes, And now what I say is I just say, do.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
You share any struggles with her? Since she's sharing such
personal things, do you?
Speaker 3 (40:06):
She never asks, And when I try to bring something
up that has happened to me, something about my family
or my father, it almost always reverts back to her.
And I'm certain that's feeling. Some of my anger in
this situation is that I don't feel heard.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
It doesn't sound like there's a lot of reciprocity in
the friendship.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
You're absolutely right. The way that the friendship is structured,
there's very little reciprocity. I'm aware of the imbalance of it.
And I have tried to talk about, you know, my children,
not in a way that feels forceful, but just to
sort of even things out, and it always seems to
go back to her and her situation or her life
(40:53):
whatever it is.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
You know, of all the letters that you write in
your head, I haven't heard you write a letter in
your head to your mother or your father. Yeah, when
you were young, did you do that? Did you make
your case. Did you have your courtroom in your head
when you would feel misunderstood or mistreated.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Yes, in my head, I would definitely write them letters.
It was too scary, though, to think about having an
actual face to face conversation with them. My father would
just walk away. I'm almost positive of it.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
So you've been writing these letters, in fact, for a
very very long time.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Tell us a little bit about what your relationship with
your mother is like now.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
I touch base with her usually every day, every other day.
She is recovering from about of cancer. We talk, but
we don't talk about anything that's you know, I had
a fight, I'm feeling very closed in today, or something
like that. We just would never talk about that. My
(42:01):
mother is relentlessly positive, relentlessly positive, and you always look
to the bright side. If someone offends you, you just
shake your head and roll your eyes and move on,
and you don't waste time on stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
Well, you write them a letter, really, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
She has her own ways of dealing with it. So
I'm close with her, but I'm not emotionally close with her.
I want her to be a part of my children's lives,
and she's a wonderful grandmother cozy in a way that
I didn't have the grandmother be cozy with me, And
I'm really happy for that relationship. She loves those girls
(42:39):
so much. But she just is not an emotional mother.
She never has been an emotional mother that would give
me advice or I don't feel like she or my
father ever taught me how to navigate difficult conversations.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
I want you to notice that you said she's cozy
with them in a way that I didn't have that
with a grandmother. But you didn't say she's cozy in
a way with them that I didn't have with my mother.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
True.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Do you see how far away you stay from those
painful feelings?
Speaker 4 (43:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (43:09):
Yeah, I have to tell you that there's been one
time in my life that my mother called me sweetheart.
She called me something other than Catherine. And when she
called me sweetheart, I remember just freezing and just I
couldn't believe that she used a term of endearment towards me.
It was so strange. I still remember where I was
(43:31):
and just kind of thinking, like, I can't believe she
said something to me like that. It was almost like
being slapped.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
You kind of dissociated too, you kind of froze.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Have you had a friendship that's been reciprocal and satisfying.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
Yes, Yes. It was somebody I met through work and
it's been a friendship of about twenty years or so.
This person has subsequently moved to another state and we
don't talk very often, but it's an immediate and deep
friendship when we do. I feel very comfortable with her,
sort of like my husband. I feel like she has
(44:09):
an emotional adroitness that I admire and one that I
know won't be used against me.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
So you don't freeze with her. You're able to bring
up things with her, although it sounds like probably not
a lot comes up because you're not in the same location.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
Yeah. Yeah, I do feel comfortable having difficult conversations with her.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
Have you ever done that?
Speaker 3 (44:31):
Yeah? I think at one point it was probably in
the lead up to her wedding. It was all we
talked about, and I asked her for a little bit
of space because I couldn't talk about this wedding anymore.
I just needed a break, and she was very respectful
of that.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
And it didn't make the friendship go away.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
No, it didn't make the friendship go away. I still
count that as one of my most important friendships, and
I'm very thankful for it.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Does she know how much you appreciated that?
Speaker 3 (45:00):
I don't know. I should probably tell her about that.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
Does your husband know how much you appreciate him?
Speaker 3 (45:07):
I think he does. I think we have a good
a good way of just sort of day in day out,
you know, a touch on the shoulder. He is. I
will say this very good about every day saying I
appreciate you. I am less good. But I will tell
you something. The big difference between my husband and I.
My husband lost his father in a terrible boating accident,
(45:30):
so he understands far better than I do about losing people.
He has done a great deal of work emotionally processing
that loss, and although I know it has been the
defining moment in his life, it has brought him a
(45:53):
real emotional clarity and a facility with saying I need help,
who can help me? And and taking that help. And
I have not had that experience of loss.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
I think you have had an experience of loss. It
just looks different. You mentioned when your mother called you sweetheart,
it you froze. Yeah, what do you do when your
husband tells you I appreciate you.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
Well, he usually comes in for a kiss and it's
very sweet, and I love that he does that.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
But what happens inside your body?
Speaker 4 (46:27):
Well, I think it's a little bit still of an
unfamiliar feeling, but it's also quite sweet and welcome. Does
your body freeze, well, a little bit, But you know
I return his kiss or his hug.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
Yeah, but verbally you don't. Oh, yeah, very turn the sentiment.
Speaker 3 (46:42):
You know what I usually say. I usually say we
have a wonderful life together, because we do do.
Speaker 5 (46:50):
And I really feel that I'm laughing because it's like
if someone says I love you, and you say things
are very nice, right, it's not personal, it's not intimate,
it's not about you specifically. We have a nice life
together is a very safe response.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Yeah, I appreciate you too is a less safe response.
Speaker 3 (47:15):
Right. It's just it's wildly unfamiliar to me to be
I guess more of vulnerable.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Do you say I love you to him?
Speaker 3 (47:24):
Oh? Yes, yes, we say that quite often. I'm very
comfortable saying that to him. I'm very comfortable saying it
to my children. When my mother calls, she never says
the word I, but she just says love you, you know,
and I notice that, and I don't want my husband
or my children to feel that because there's a lot
(47:47):
of space missing from that word.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
There's a huge space left by the lack of the eye.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
Yeah, so, Catherine, we have some advice for you. When
here's the first part. We spoke about the fact that
when there's something intense emotionally going on, you tend to dissociate.
That's what keeps you, in part from being able to
have confrontations or even difficult discussions with people. But it
(48:20):
also happened when good things happen, when your mom calls
your sweetheart, or when your husband says something very loving
to you, then you also have a little bit of
a freezon that moment because it's intense. So the first
thing we'd like you to do is we'd like you
to express to your husband. And we think the best
way for you to do this would be to write
(48:40):
it out, not as a letter, but just write it
out and then read it to him. He says to
you that he appreciates you all the time, you said,
and your response, people areking the said is like, yes,
we have a nice life together and we want you
to make it more personal. We'd like you to express
to him how much you appreciate him, and we'd like
you to make it very personal about how he makes
(49:03):
you feel, that you feel safe with him, whatever the
things are that are specific that he does that is
so emotionally expressive, that you admire how well he recovered
from the loss of his dad and how much work
he did in therapy and work on himself and be
such a loving dad after that kind of loss. We'd
(49:24):
like you to write it out, because we think that'll
be easier if you wrote it out ahead of time,
but then we'd like you to read it to him
and see how you feel doing that. But we'd like
you to not only do that, but then also be
able to sit with his response and sit with how
he's receiving it, and especially if it's meaningful to him,
to be able to take that in as well, because
(49:45):
that's connective tissue we think you can have even more
of with him.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
I can do that.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
And as we're talking about having a more direct connection
with your husband, we were thinking about your friend about
how many of the letters that you write in your
head around that friendship are actually directed toward her husband.
We would like you to focus more on the relationship
between you and your friend, regardless of what's going on
(50:11):
in their marriage. And one of the things that was
interesting was you talked about how close you are, but
at the same time, there doesn't seem to be a
lot of room for you to get support from her.
The conversation kind of drifts back to whatever is going
on with her.
Speaker 3 (50:27):
You have this.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
Idea that either you confront somebody and everything could blow up,
which is why you don't confront people, or you write
letters in your head and you plot revenge. And those
are the two alternatives. We want to give you a
third way. We would like you to call your friend
and say, is there a time that we can talk,
And we'd like you to talk about something going on
(50:48):
in your own life, and maybe it's your father right
now with dementia and some of the difficulty because your
family doesn't really talk about things. And if she readirects
and says, let me tell you about what's going on
with my husband instead of just sitting there and then
writing a revenge letter later in the moment, you can say,
you know, I'm happy to talk about that later, but
(51:09):
right now, I'm really struggling with this. Can we talk
about this a little bit more and see how she responds. Now,
she might not be able to do that with you,
and that's good information, and the information is, oh, okay,
she's not a person that really has the capacity for that,
And that might motivate you to look at the other
(51:29):
relationships in your life and other friendships so that you
don't lose this friendship. But maybe it serves certain purposes
for you but not others, so you're not simmering all
the time with this feeling of being unacknowledged or unseen
or unheard. The other possibility is that she might respond well,
and she might really be there for you. And now
(51:50):
what you're doing is you're changing that assumption you have
that she just doesn't have an interest in you, and
you're saying, oh, I haven't been stepping up. I haven't
been sharing myself with her because I was afraid to.
But when I do insert myself into the conversation and
I tell her what I need, she's actually quite responsive.
And this takes you away from the whole obsession around
(52:11):
the husband and all the revenge fantasies around him, and
it puts you right there in the friendship to see
what this friendship can be.
Speaker 6 (52:20):
Yeah, because that's entirely what I want, so that you're
not sitting there feeling helpless like you experienced growing up,
and then you feel like you have no recourse other
than to have these court cases go on in your mind.
Speaker 3 (52:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
And our hope is that once you establish more trust,
that you can be in this friendship differently. Maybe you
guys will start talking about the friendship itself at a
certain point to be able to say to her, Hey,
I miss you, can we get together, or even positive
things like I've really enjoyed how we've been talking lately.
It makes me feel really close with you. Little statements
like that really can have an effect on the entire
(52:59):
feeling of what the friendship is like.
Speaker 3 (53:01):
Yeah, yeah, no, I like that.
Speaker 2 (53:04):
One more thing we have for you to do. We
were thinking about your childhood and how unseen you felt,
and how unable you will to speak up because your
dad would just bark and your mom wouldn't communicate. You'd
send a letter but not have the conversation. We'd like
you to get in touch with how that felt to
(53:26):
grow up in that house because your letters tend to
be an attempt to, in fantasy hurt the other person,
but you're writing them because you're not looking at your
own hurt. And we'd like you to get in touch
with some of that hurt from childhood. So we'd like
you to actually write a real letter. Now it will
(53:48):
be one you don't send, but we'd like you to
write a letter to your mum in which you tell
her and describe to her what it was like for
you to grow up in the house, what it was
like for you to receive that letter from her about
the box that you didn't love and gather dust. We'd
(54:09):
like you to tell her what it was like to
not be able to speak up, what it was like
to be told that the weight of the future of
America is in your hands and that a minus is
going to cost us Aul dearly. You know, we'd like
you to be as honest and as open as you can,
because you won't be sending the letter to her, what
you will be doing with it after you're done. We
(54:32):
want you to be seen, So we'd like you just
to share it with your husband and say, this is
a letter I'm not sending to my mom. Someone has
to hear it and I'll appreciate so much of that
with you and read it to him and be able
to express it and be heard and be seen by someone.
Speaker 3 (54:51):
Yeah, that's beautiful. I love that idea.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
And then we'd also like you to sit with what
it feels like when he resis what is it like
not only to be able to let your feelings be
seen by yourself, which we think you don't do enough
because you're so focused on the other people and the
revenge fantasies, but what is it like to be seen
by someone I'm close with? Yea, those are the three
(55:17):
tasks for the week, okay, and we're really looking forward
to hearing how those go for you.
Speaker 3 (55:22):
Oh, thank you. This has been something more than I
could have imagined.
Speaker 2 (55:33):
I really feel for Catherine because growing up feeling so
unseen and dealing with that silent treatment and the shunning,
it's so painful, and then experiencing that in her adult
life over and over again because she can't speak up
and so she feels so unseen and then so powerless.
(55:53):
It is just very difficult to deal with for so
many decades.
Speaker 1 (55:58):
And what's interesting is that sometimes people don't realize that
there's an intergenerational transmission. We saw that it might present differently,
where her grandmother was very critical and outspoken, and then
the mother was very critical writing letters, but we're not
going to have a conversation about it. And then you
come to Catherine and she's just dissociated, so you can
(56:23):
see that she wants to stop it. I was very
encouraged by how open she is to taking risks, even
though it scares her. She's very interested in trying something new.
She's gotten to the point where she said, this is
very exhausting. I don't want to live this way. This
is emotionally draining, and so I really hope that the
assignment we gave her will help her not only to
(56:45):
feel more seen and heard around her experiences, but also
opens her up to the positive experiences. We always say
that if you're going to mute the pain, you're going
to mute the joy, and I think that's what's happened here.
When her husband says I appreciate you, she says, well,
we have a nice life together. So I think it'll
be really interesting to see how these exercises go this
week and what kind of shifts she can make from them.
Speaker 2 (57:10):
You're listening to dea therapists. We'll be back after a
short break.
Speaker 3 (57:26):
So guy.
Speaker 1 (57:27):
We heard back from Catherine and let's hear how her
week went.
Speaker 3 (57:31):
Hello, Assignment number one. My husband was very touched to
hear my letter. He listened and cried at times. While
he knows how hard it is for me to express
my feelings, they really felt as if I saw him. Overall,
he was very supportive and cited my kindness and the
fact that I reached out to your program the signs
that despite having had an unhappy childhood, I still want
(57:54):
to treat others and myself well and want to find
a deeper understanding about my childhood so I can have
better relationships. We had a great conversation that lasted about
an hour. I didn't blank out, but I do feel
that because it was just a lot to process, I
will remember more about it in the coming days. It
was a very positive and loving experience, and my husband
(58:15):
noted at the end that he doesn't doubt my love
for him, but he would like it if I expressed
that love more, which having heard that from him, I
will do for me. The atmosphere was sort of charged
in a very unfamiliar but I think positive way, and
my body felt relaxed for assignment too. Speaking with my friend,
it certainly felt unfamiliar to pick up the phone and
(58:37):
call her. We chatted for a few minutes, and then
I asked her if she had the experience of seeing
her childhood in a way that significantly differed from her siblings.
I could hear the surprise in her voice, maybe because
we text far more often than speak on the phone,
but she answered my question openly. We laughed at parts
and we commiserated at others, and I felt a connection
(58:59):
through that. I'll see her soon, and I'm going to
tell her how much I enjoyed that conversation, and that
I think about our friendship a lot. Assignment three. Writing
the letter to my mom, but reading it to my husband,
this letter came flowing out of me. I noted how
she could see my father's ragey behavior dictating the atmosphere
of almost everything in the house, and how that left
(59:20):
very little room for anyone to safely express their feelings.
I wish that she could have taken me aside, somewhere
safe to have these conversations, if only to say, you
may not feel comfortable speaking with your dad around, but
we need to do it for your sake and your benefit.
My mom has often said that she's so thankful that
I've never had something terrible happen to me. But I
(59:41):
wrote to her that although I look okay, they are
hollow parts inside, and she had a role in that.
My mom often spent time with her best friend, with
whom she had a deep friendship. She got to escape
my father, and she had a confidant to discuss his behavior.
But I realized last week after our talk that she
didn't provide that escape for me, and that's a real
(01:00:02):
failure on her part. Reading this letter, I noted I
kept crossing my arms. I felt flat while I was
reading it, but less so when I discussed it with
my husband. We agreed that if I sent this letter
to my mom, she would never respond to it, so
fixed is she on only seeing good things. I feel
very thankful to have had these three experiences. At the
(01:00:22):
end of the day, the thoughts were right there, and
I really didn't have a tough time expressing them. Made
a couple interesting connections in my mind since talking with
you both. Most of all, I've taken from it that
a conversation won't automatically scale up into a screaming match.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
So let's start with that conversation with her husband where
she read to him how she felt about him. That
sounded like such a powerful moment for the two of them,
and as we suspected, he really needed to hear it,
and then he even asked for more of it thereafter,
and he was so moved by it, And to me,
(01:01:03):
that just confirms what we suspected that although she has
these internal emotional experiences, they don't get expressed outwardly enough
the good or the bad, as we said, and here
the good wasn't coming across as overtly as it might.
So hopefully this opens an entire new way for her
to communicate with her husband that will allow them much
(01:01:24):
more closeness as a result.
Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
I like what you said about the good and the
bad because I think sometimes when people are really afraid
of sharing their feelings, they also aren't comfortable sharing the
positive feelings, and that really keeps a distance in a
relationship even when the positive feelings are there. And I
was so moved when he was able to tell her,
and it sounds like in a very gentle, loving way,
(01:01:48):
I would like more of this, I think that will
bring them so much closer, and I think she will
get more as well from the reciprocity that's going to
come from this.
Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
The second assignment that was a little confused, to be honest,
what we asked her to do was share something about
herself with her friend, whatever it is, and make sure
that her friends can stay on her, rather than revert
the conversation back to the friend's feelings or needs. So
she said she brought up this question about whether she
or siblings had different perceptions. If she then followed that
(01:02:23):
question with because for me, and she spoke about herself
and the friend listened, great, But if she just asked
a friend to do that, then there was a miss
in terms of the point of that assignment, and I'm
just not sure which it is.
Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
There was something else that was interesting in her update,
which was that her mom had this confidant that she
would go to to complain about Catherine's dad too, And
it sounds a little bit like a mirror of Catherine's
friend coming to Catherine to complain about the friend's husband,
And I think that some of the resentment might be
wrapped up in that parallel dynamic. That's going on that
(01:02:58):
we hadn't heard about during session, So it's just another
thing for Catherine to think about as she thinks about
what the source of her anger and resentment really are
when it comes to this friend and her husband.
Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
Right her third assignment, writing the letter to her mother,
I was glad to hear that she was commenting on
how she feels hollow internally and that her mother has
something directly to do with that, and wishing her mother
had taken her aside and legitimized conversations and talking about
feelings with her. I think those were very important things.
Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
And I think the important part of this too was
being able to share it so it's not just something
that she is holding inside, because I think that's where
all of those letters were coming from. And we always
say choose your audience well in terms of who you're
going to share yourself with in a very vulnerable way,
and her husband was it sounds like a great audience.
I also think about that friend who lives in another
(01:03:51):
city that she also feels very close to, and one
of the things we also wanted her to do was
to see about cultivating friendships that feel better to her,
and I think that the exercises that we gave her
our first step to cultivating all kinds of relationships, including
a closer relationship with her husband, a better relationship with
(01:04:13):
her friend, and maybe cultivating other friendships and mostly a
better relationship with herself.
Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
I agree, and so I think that in the one week,
she's taken quite a few steps and gone quite a journey.
Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
Yeah, as you said, it's an opening, and I think
it's a fantastic place to start. Next week, a woman
who loves her husband worries about his anger toward their
young children and considers whether she should leave him to
protect them.
Speaker 3 (01:04:41):
It's not healthy for our daughter. You need to get
therapy or we're going to leave so that I can
protect her.
Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
If you're enjoying our podcast, don't forget to subscribe for
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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 (01:05:01):
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 Ben Bernstein, Emily Gutierrez
(01:05:24):
and Silver Lifton. And special thanks to our podcast Fairy
Godmother Katie Curic. We can't wait to see you at
our next session. Deotherapist is a production of iHeartRadio.
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 (00:19):
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 (00:28):
So sit back and welcome to today's session.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
This week, a woman who has elaborate revenge fantasies about
the people in her life wants to understand why she
does this and how she can stop.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
I have no training and how to have a positive conversation.
I think it feel a shameful as a grown woman
that I can't defend myself, and so I take all
about hurt and I channel it towards these letters.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
First, a quick note deo Therapists is for informational purposes only,
does not constantitute medical or psychological advice, and is not
a substitute for professional health care advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
Always seek the advice of your physician, mental health professional,
or other qualified health provider with any questions you may
have regarding a medical or psychological condition. By submitting a letter,
(01:16):
you are agreeing to let iHeart Media use it in
part or in 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.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
So Hey Guy, Hi Laurie, what do we have going
on in our mailbox this week?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Today we have a rather interesting letter which I will
just read and you will see why. Deotherapists, I have
an issue in which I feel a great compulsion to
write letters to people that are filled with scathing criticisms
or that bring up long buried events. I am embarrassed
to admit that I write these mostly to good friends,
(01:55):
and I even think about sending such letters to the
spouses of good friends that contain in that would be
highly damaging to the relationships at hand. I have never
sent these letters because I know they could potentially cause
great emotional and in some cases financial damage to my friends.
But while I don't send these letters, I have to wonder,
why do I want to hurt other people? Some of
(02:17):
these people are friends of more than three decades? Am
I jealous of them? Do I feel abandoned when they
move and have their own families even though I am
married and have my own family too. Why do I
weaponize certain things that were told to me in confidence?
It's upsetting to take delight in crafting these letters when
most friends have shown genuine support and love for me.
(02:39):
Thanks for any help, Catherine.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
You know, this is really interesting because so many times
people come into our offices and they have these almost
confessions of things that they're very ashamed of. They feel
like they're very unique to them, and in this case
it is. But I think that what we discover when
we start exploring it with them is that whatever's going
(03:05):
on underneath it is probably pretty universal, that's right.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
And in this case, what's going on underneath is a
lot of emotion. Clearly, she feels a lot of these
feelings and then writes letters to express these feelings in
some way. What's certainly not clear to me yet is
what are these feelings about? What's causing them to come up?
And it sounds like she's not entirely sure why she
(03:31):
does it either, and that's why she's writing.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
To us, and I think that as she starts to
understand more about what this is, she will have more
compassion for herself and then also be able to hopefully
start to change the behavior. And so for anybody out
there who thinks that they have some kind of behavior
that they're embarrassed to share with anybody, this will probably
be a very helpful episode.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
So let's go talk to her.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
You're listening to Dear Therapists for my Heart Radio. We'll
be back after a short break.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
I'm Lori Gottlieb and I'm Guy Wench and this is Deatherapists.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Hi, Catherine, Hello, thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
It's our pleasure. We read your letter, and I'm curious
to hear how this habit of writing these skating letters
that you don't send, how that started, when it started?
If you can give us a little context of how
that got going and the development of it throughout the years.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I think it started probably about ten years ago. The
first time I began to compose these letters. In my mind,
it was to one particular friend, and our relationship had
started to go through some rockiness, largely in part because
she has a spouse who was treating me quite poorly.
(04:55):
The friendship sort of it lessened, but we've remained good friends,
I would say, but it sort of started as a
way of addressing wasn't said between us, and I would
find myself waking up in the morning, and perhaps as
I was unloading the dishwasher or taking a shower, I
would begin to write these letters in my mind, either
(05:18):
to this friend or to her spouse. I've known this
friend for a long time, probably about thirty years now,
and in the course of that relationship, she shared a
lot of personal details about herself and her relationship with
her spouse, and I would use that information to write
(05:41):
fairly scathing letters in my mind. In my mind, I've
never sent anything, and I do it to other people too.
It would be a criticism of the way that they
raised their children, the way that they spend money. It's
just it's not healthy. I do it mainly for a
couple friends, but also if there are people in town
(06:04):
that I see that their children are treating other kids
terribly on the playground, I'll think about writing letters to
these people. It's almost become now something that's a part
of my daily habit, and I want to understand why
I'm doing this and what I can do to stop
doing it, because I'm so aware of it not being productive.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
When you described the first incident, you were upset because
the husband was treating you poorly, and it was one
of the ways to kind of express your beef. But
you're saying that now it can happen with people you
don't know, people you just even see that you don't
have any personal stake in it, but it can activate
you sufficiently to want to do that. Are you aware
(06:51):
in those moments of what you're feeling that's making you
think of writing the letter.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Yes, I'm aware of people who I believe are not
taking responsibility for their actions or responsibility for how their
children are acting towards others.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
What's the feeling that you have in those moments? You
aware of what you're feeling in that moment.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
I think it's angry at feeling mistreated or disrespected and
feeling like my friends are not sticking up for me
and saying to their spouse, hey, that's not right to
treat someone this way. I love this person and you're
being awful to them.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
There seems to be a real thread of injustice throughout
these even when you see the kids that you don't
even know at the park who are being treated in
a way that feels unfair.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
I do have a pretty strong sense of what is
right and what is wrong, but I'm also keenly aware
that not everyone has those same views. When I'm feeling
angry and then I want to write these letters, it's
a way of, I guess settling scores.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
This sense of feeling misunderstood or feeling like you or
somebody else is being treated fairly. Was that something that
you felt growing up? Does it feel familiar at all?
Speaker 3 (08:05):
It does. In my household, we really weren't allowed to
express ourselves and what was decided upon by my parents,
mostly my father. That was the rule, and there wasn't
a lot of leeway to plead your case, to think differently,
to express yourself differently. That just wasn't tolerated.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Do you have siblings.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
I do. I have siblings, older and younger brother.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
How did they react to that environment?
Speaker 3 (08:29):
They took it as well. I mean, you know, to
be essentially iced out was just a really unpleasant feeling.
It could be a couple days of your parents not
talking to you. It could be feeling like you were
the odd man out in sort of an already not
(08:49):
terribly a motive family. It was. It was not fun.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
That's what your parents would do. If they're upset with you,
they would shun you, like ice you out.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Yes, my father would not speak to us for several days,
or my mother would write us letters and either leave
them on our bed, or sometimes she would even mail
them to us, just we were in the same house.
She would mail them to us, and you know she
would express her anger by writing these letters.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
So you have been the recipient of the letters that
you compose in your mind, Yes, I have. What were
the kinds of things that you would get iced out for.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Not bringing home perfect grades?
Speaker 1 (09:30):
What would happen with the grades? Can you paint the
picture of that?
Speaker 3 (09:33):
So if I did not bring home you know a's
or as it was just there was hell to bay.
This was in the eighties and the nineties, and you know,
if we brought home a report card with anything less
than a's, it was it was ranting and raving that
America is going to be surpassed by this country. America
(09:56):
is going to be surpassed by that country. And we're
not trying hard enough ever, any question about well do
you understand the material? Why are you getting b pluses
as if there's anything wrong with that.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
So you talked about them sending you letters, but it
sounds like they also directly expressed you their anger.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Yes, my mother would send me the letters. My father
would directly express the anger.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
I'm curious, then, what were the letters about that you
received from your mother.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
I have one specific incidence where she gave me a
jewelry box for Christmas, and I didn't particularly love the
jewelry box and I put it underneath my dresser and
it stayed there for a couple months, and she must
have found it at some point and it was dusty.
It wasn't broken, it wasn't used, it was just dusty.
And so that afternoon I came home and there was
(10:46):
a letter on my pillow just saying, you know, why
did you treat it like this? This was a gift
I gave to you, and I don't think it's acceptable
that you would treat something like that.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
It sounds like she sent you a lot of letters
over the course of your childhood. Did you ever respect
to them? Or she would send you a letter and
the two of you would never speak of it.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
It was more of the latter. I would never speak
of it, partially because I felt cowed by it, because
it wasn't her directly addressing me, and partly I thought
it was just ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
You know what's interesting to me in what your dad
said is the disproportionality of you not getting an A
and on your shoulders because of your lack of a
is the entire future of the American country. It wasn't
your future might be disappointing, it's about the whole country
now is on your shoulders. In other words, it's such
(11:35):
a disproportionate response that it really kind of set the
stage for you that it's okay to respond to these
kinds of things in a hugely disproportionate way, and in
a way from your mum in which people can't answer.
So between the two of them, they're really teaching you
(11:56):
that when you feel slighted or upset or disappointed even
with someone, you get to respond in ways that are
not direct but very disproportionate, like burn the house down
kind of thing. And that's what you're describing that you
do in your letters.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Yeah, and I hadn't actually thought about that disproportional reaction,
but it's right there, it's braided right in with the letters.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Can you tell us what happened with your friend's husband
that started you on this process of writing these letters
that in your fantasy world you would send, but you don't.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
From the time I met her fiance soon to be husband,
he was always very cold to me and very distant. He,
I believe, felt threatened by our friendship. And at their wedding,
they had some issues and they had a fight and
(12:51):
it was very uncomfortable, and she had withdrawn to a
room and she didn't want to be with him, and
I tried to talk to him to go and see her.
It was their wedding night. It was a beautiful wedding,
And that was the most that I could do to
(13:12):
help her was to just say to him, look, your
wife is waiting to talk to you. She's upset. And
all he would say to me was, oh, well, you're
very proper. Isn't it always important to have good manners?
And since I've at that point really seen him, it's
(13:33):
either been he cuts me short or makes a comment,
and I want to preserve the friendship with her, so
I really don't react, she'll tell me some terrible behavior
he's shown to her. I try not to react because
I get the sense she just wants to talk about it,
(13:55):
not necessarily get advice from me. So I can't point
to you a specific run in that we had. I
feel like from the beginning he just felt threatened by
me and by our friendship.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
You're saying that he would just be cold and distant.
You're also describing that your dad's way of dealing with
conflict was to shun to not speak to you for
several days. Now, that's extremely painful when you live with
someone when they're icing you out, when they're shunning you,
it's an extremely painful form of rejection. And you're describing
(14:31):
here with this husband of the friend that he also
was just a bit shunning and distant and cold. Because
there's also something about your mum's letter writing that's so impersonal,
and that she's not coming to talk to you. She's
writing and even mailing a letter as if it's far away.
There's something very distancing about that, and I'm wondering whether
(14:51):
that's something that you're aware of that you have a
specific history within reaction to it.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Could be I immediately. I notice it if I think
that someone isn't being polite to me, or if I
think someone's being disrespectful, I pick up on that, and
all of my senses in almost every other interaction following that,
are alert to it.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
And your mother felt the same way. She was hyper
aware of perceived disrespect. And I say perceived because of
what you're describing, And so I wonder if it's hard
for you to sometimes know whether this really is disrespectful
(15:34):
or whether you feel like maybe I'm holding them to
a standard that's a little bit stringent like your mother did.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
I think you're right that I think that there have
been some clear cut instances of disrespect. But also perhaps
I'm just I'm primed for it and I'm reading into
something differently. I think after about ten years of, you know,
sort of coolness on his part, I've got it pretty
accurately sized up. But yeah, it could be that I'm
(16:03):
just I'm looking for it, or I'm interpreting it in
the wrong way.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
You said that you're married with a family. Does that
mean that you also have children?
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Yes? I do.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
How old are your children?
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Twelve, ten, and seven.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
And you've been married for.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
About fifteen years now.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Does this come up in your relationships with your husband
or your children.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Well, yes, in the sense of I do get upset
when I have to ask my children to do something
and I'm asking them five and six times I've said
it to them before. I do not like feeling as
if I'm being ignored.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Because being ignored when you were growing up was extremely painful.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Yeah, that's kind of how I would characterize my whole childhood.
My brothers included, is that it was we were just
kind of bouncing around in a house and not really
given the space to express ourselves.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
You're kind of smiling and laughing as you're saying this.
Do you notice that?
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah? I do, because I don't necessarily think it's funny.
In fact, I don't think it's funny at all. But
I feel like it's just so interesting to me how
these patterns play out again and how certain things repeat themselves.
I fervently hope that I'm giving my girls more space
to express themselves and what I was given.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
So with your children, you've talked about having some of
these times when you feel ignored by them, and how
much that triggers you. What happens with your husband. Have
you ever felt ignored by him or what happens when
you feel disrespected or there's some kind of conflict between
the two of you.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
No, my husband is incredibly open and a motive and
does such a wonderful job of touching in with me.
He's had a good deal of therapy and understands how
to communicate. I am amazed at how he can talk
so beautifully to our daughters. I wish I had that.
(17:58):
I feel almost like, Oh, I let him do a
lot of like the tough talk, I don't feel quite
as well equipped to do it, and he is just
he is a gem when it comes to conversations.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Sometimes the letter in your head is a way to
kind of process all of these feelings, and it feels
very solitary because that's what you had to do growing up.
You really didn't have people to process your feelings with.
Even when your mom wrote those letters, you didn't go
then and talk to her about it or say I
feel differently.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
About this, yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
And so now you have someone in your life that
you can talk to that way. And I'm wondering when
something comes up, an incident happens where you feel slighted
by your friend's husband, or you see the kids being
mistreated at the park. Do you ever feel like if
I talk to my husband that that lessens the impulse
(18:53):
to need to then go ahead and write the letter.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Not really, And perhaps that's something I should do more of,
to sort of speak to someone about it. I think
something about me too, is that I really hold on
to grudges. I really hold on to perceive slights. It's
almost like it's a point of pride to keep going
(19:17):
over these unpleasant interactions I had with people as a
way of not I don't know, not forgetting as a
way of saying, oh see they're really bad. They said
this to me or they did this to me.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
The thing that strikes me about letter writing when we
don't send the letters is that there's a certain powerlessness
that comes with it because the powerlessness feeling is that
I can't address it with the person directly. I can't
actually get satisfaction. I can't tell them that I feel slighted.
If that's the case, the best I can do is
(19:51):
have a revenge fantasy in my head. But to me,
that is associated with feeling unempowered to actually have an
impact in the real world with a person themselves. Your
mother did something similar because she wasn't looking for a conversation.
She would have spoken to you if she was. She
was looking to just throw it out there and then
(20:13):
hope for the best. And I'm wondering about this aspect
of the feeling unempowered to address some of these lights
directly with the people who slighted you, and is that
something that you tend to do at all, And how
does that go when you try and actually have a conversation.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
It's very awkward for me, It's very difficult. I feel
like when I have to have a difficult conversation with someone,
it's almost as if like I'm blanking out and I
have a hard time keeping track of the conversation or
making coherent points. I would attribute that to my father's
(20:54):
anger when we were growing up, and what a great volume.
There was no room for a conversation. And I think
a difficult conversation like that now really cows me.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
When you feel slighted or hurt or dismissed or ignored,
do you also then feel frustration because of the powerlessness
that you feel because you can't address it directly, so
you won't be able to get satisfaction that way. Does
that feeling stand out for you?
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Yes, it does, because I know that it just sort
of goes on a hamster wheel of I feel affronted
by something, I'll write a letter. There's a slight release,
you know, the valve is twisted a little bit, and
then I'll ruminate on it again. So I write the
letter and it's a little bit more of vitriolic. It's
a treadmill, and it's exhausting and it's shameful. It's really
(21:46):
shameful that I do this to people that I love
and that have shown a great generosity to me.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Well, but you haven't done anything to them. From what
they know. You actually really pleasant because you never bring
up any issues, right.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
And maybe I'm mad at myself that I'm not bringing
up these issues. That's probably a portion of it too.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
You mentioned resentment, and I'm thinking about what Guy was
saying about how it really fuels more resentment. The way
that you ruminate you think about it, it gets bigger,
not smaller for you. And the more emotional real estate
that you devote to this, the more land it takes
up in your mind. Because it doesn't really feel satisfying.
(22:29):
It doesn't really go.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Anyyeah, right, it really doesn't.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
We think about resentment almost counterintuitively as related to grieving
that sometimes when we carry around a lot of resentment
towards someone, what we're really resisting is doing some grieving
of maybe I'm going to have to let go of something,
or maybe I'm going to lose this, maybe I can't
(22:55):
have this kind of closeness in the way that I
want to have it. So we hold the resentment thinking
that it's empowering, but in fact it's disempowering. And I
don't think that you see a third way, which is
is there a way that I can get more acquainted
with what I'm feeling, get more clarity on it, have
some perspective on it, and then be able to pick
(23:18):
and choose what I approach my friend about. Once I
have more clarity about what is historical and what is current,
what is something that's getting magnified because of my experience
as a child, and what is something that is really
very present right now. And those kinds of conversations could
very well bring you more closeness and not have you
(23:39):
feel the need to rehearse all of these scenarios in
your head.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
To say that word rehearsal is just so spot on.
I find myself having these conversations where I'm almost trying
to prepare for almost comeback, and it's like, why are
you rehearsing a conversation that hasn't taken place.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
It sounds like what you're doing is you're presenting a
your case in court. Yeah, and there's a jury that's
there in your head and you're trying to convince them.
And the problem is that really the courtroom is empty.
But we do that all the time. It's so common
where something happens in our lives and we have all
these fantasies about what we'd like to say and why
the other person was wrong and why we deserve to
(24:20):
be treated this way, and often we don't tell the
other person, but we're trying to prove our case in
our head, and that is not very satisfying.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Yeah, I think at the heart of the matter, what
it is is what you said. It's that there's a
closeness that I'm longing for that has disappeared since she
married this person. And I know logically friendships they wax
and they wane, but I really miss that friendship of
how we used to be before this person showed up.
And I know I can't ask her to throw away
(24:52):
her husband. That's not reasonable.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
But there's a lot in between asking her to throw
away her husband and not having closeness with her, right because.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Right now you're the one that's creating the distance, because
when you write these letters to her and to her husband,
and as Lori said, when you take the case to court,
to the empty court, because unfairness is what makes us
do that. We want to get validation that things are unfair.
So we prepare in our head the case that we
will present the court in which will be ruled, and indeed,
(25:21):
something unfair was done to us, and there's our validation
because we're not getting it anywhere else. But when you
do that, the anger and resentment towards the husband and
towards her for having that husband does create a distance
emotionally between you and her. But that's coming from you,
which you then have to overcome that distance whenever you're
together or talking with her to be able to reconnect,
(25:44):
And so it makes the friendship less satisfying for you. Yeah,
in other words, you're the one that actually pays the
price rather than her.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Or her husband, And that's that's exactly how I would
characterize the friendship. You know, we see each other sporadically.
It's by as high high kiss case, the quick lunch,
and then it feels pretty empty. Again. It's not satisfying.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Because it's hard to have connective tissue and conversation with
someone toward him, you're holding so many grudges and resentments
and history. It's hard to open up to feel vulnerable
because there's so much stuff in the way.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah, you said that you're very uncomfortable bringing up difficult
topics with people. Can you do that with your husband?
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Yes? I can. I don't very often, but I know
I can. I know he would make space for me.
I know he would hear just about anything and really
try to approach it with an open mind.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
You're saying that he would as if you imagine that
like the letters that you write, you imagine a scenario.
But I'd like to hear if you have had a
difficult conversation with him that you brought up, and can
you tell us about that.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
You know, we don't fight terribly often. If we have
a tough topic to discuss, it's my husband who brings
it up. He's really the one that sort of leads
that conversation. I often feel so like my hands and
arms are cut off when it's a difficult conversation. And
he's helpful, never in a way that's like he's telling
(27:17):
me what I think or what I feel. But I
find him very helpful to help me articulate things. But
to answer your question, Laurie, I can't say that I've
ever brought up a difficult conversation.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Yeah, and even there with someone that you feel very,
very safe with, it's hard for you to bring something up.
In fifteen years, you have never brought up a difficult
topic between you. It's always been him. Yeah, what's your
fear with your husband? If you were to bring something up?
Speaker 3 (27:50):
I guess my fear, and I think this is a
fear that applies to almost any difficult conversation with anybody,
is that I won't be able to, I guess, stay
on my ground or articulate my voice because you'll feel
too flooded to do that, or because they won't listen.
(28:11):
I think I'd feel too overwhelmed. I think i'd feel
fearful that that the floodgates would open, and that a
lot of hurt would come spilling out. And you know,
as I said before, when I fight with people, I
almost can't think. When I have a difficult conversation, I
(28:36):
lose the thread a lot, and I lose my thoughts,
so you dissociate. Yes, And I have no training in
how to have a positive conversation. I have no experience,
and I think it feels shameful as a grown woman
(29:02):
that I can't defend myself. And so I take all
of that hurt and I channel it towards these letters.
And I'm sure that you know these letters are not
just toward that one person, but it's towards all of
the people that I feel angry about. It's just easier
(29:25):
for me to sort of sift it down into one person.
But yes, fighting is very, very scary for me.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
See, we weren't even talking about fighting. We were talking
about a conversation. But for you, in your mind, there's
no difference between bringing something up to help prepare something
and fighting.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
That's right. I can't see them as being separate.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
And yet when your husband brings these things up to you,
do you feel that that's fighting or do you feel
like you're having a conversation.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
I feel like we're a conversation. I trust him, and
I never feel like it's going to be combative. I
know that I can always get to the words somehow,
but with other people, I don't know why I sort
of revert into this like I'm cowering in a corner.
(30:23):
I know what I feel and I know what I think,
but somehow to express that to people it's so tough
for me.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Can you give us an example of something that happened
recently with anyone? Is that it's not just with this friend? Yeah,
where you said you know exactly what you're feeling.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Sure. I was talking to a fellow mom on the
playground a few months ago, and she was ranting about
someone that we know in common, and the person I
was talking to she has a dusk job, and she
was all of a sudden making snide comments about this
(31:08):
third party not having a job. She was just a
stay at home mother, and she was really denigrating and
pitting sort of the work moms and the stay at
home moms, pitting them against one another. And I said
to her, well, you do realize that I must stay
at home mom. And I can't remember exactly what she said,
but she glossed over it, and she kept talking in
(31:29):
a very condescending manner about this woman, implying that she
does nothing. And I've stowed about it for days. I
continue to doe about it because she knows full well
that I'm a stay at home parent. And yet even
as I told her to back off that I found
this offensive, she kept going. And in the moment, for me,
(31:51):
it was easier just to sort of walk away from
this person rolling my eyes. But I still feel that
smart and I've sort of spun that interaction into her
being a horrible person, a neglectful mother, inconsiderate of other people,
and it just has sort of become this hurricane.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
But I was asking what you felt, so I'm hearing
a lot about what you thought. Yeah, tell me what
the feeling was.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Yeah, I felt disrespected and unheard, and those I think
are my trigger points. I felt small.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
What do you wish you would have said to her
in that moment?
Speaker 3 (32:30):
I wish I could have told her to I mean,
buzz off. I mean, she probably shouldn't say this to me.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
What occurred to me also is that you can think
about it in hindsight and you can articulate it very
clearly in the moment, the anxiety you feel is so
severe that you truly dissociate. And I'm just was wondering
whether you had any knowledge about whether that's something that
happened to your mom, And maybe that's why she would
write letters, because she too might not have been able
(32:59):
to handle a direct conversation.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
Yes, I believe so. She had a very hard, charging
mother who would tell you exactly what she thought, tolerated
no other opinions.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
So your grandmother would express herself in a very unthoughtful way, yeah,
and then your mother would express herself also in a
very rigid way and maybe unthoughtful, but never directly to later.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Yeah. I've often thought about that.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
And when we talk about intergenerational trauma, this is a
way of being that has been passed down through the generations,
and it's always the person who comes and says, I'm
having trouble with this. Who can put a stop to it,
who can really end the cycle? And I think it's
(33:58):
interesting that the word you used when you said this
woman was talking to you and I said how did
you feel? And you said I felt very small, because
you probably did feel small, literally like you felt as
a child.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
Yeah, totally, totally.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Is this something you've ever spoken about with your siblings.
Is it a conversation you've had about the style your
parents had with the shunning and the letters, and the
impact that had on you.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
It's interesting you say that because I recently saw both
my brothers over the holidays. My father is in the
middle of dementia and he really can't handle having grandchildren
around him because he doesn't know who is who. He
had an outburst yelled at some small grandchildren. But my
oldest brother said to me, she just like being twelve again,
(34:47):
And I kind of thought, like, oh, look at you.
That's right. Like if anybody has been more forward in
talking about our father and how sort of oppressive he was,
it's me. I felt like a little glimmer of hope
hearing my brother say that, an acknowledgment that, like his
childhood had been kind of miserable too.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Have you ever directly talked to your brothers about the
experience of being children together and your father's outbursts and
your mother's letters.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
No, we haven't. We've had some comments where I know
that they felt similarly, but no, we've skated over it
and made comments. I think because it was traumatic for us.
All we try to put it behind us.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
That comment, though, about oh, which just like being twelve again,
feels a little bit like an acknowledgment and opening.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
That's how I read it.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Can you give us an example of the most recent
letter that you've written in your head with this friend.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Sure, I'll give you an example of a letter I
would write to the spouse. I would probably say something
about how my friend had an affair because she was
so frustrated and bored by you, And I would probably
end it by saying, that's how everyone finds you boring
and frustrating. They're just written to eviscerate, and no, there's
(36:15):
nothing really about them other than to hurt.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
But you don't convey your hurt. In other words, the
letter isn't I'm very upset with you because you took
my friend away from me, and you cost me this
bond that was so special to me for so long,
and you created such resentment in me that it's difficult
for me now to really connect with her and to
(36:39):
reach the depths of friendship that we used to have.
That's not what the letter is. Have you ever written
a letter like that that actually just speaks about how
you feel. No, no, why not do you think?
Speaker 3 (36:54):
I think because it's harder for me to express myself.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
I think it's because it's more pained to do that,
to confront yourself with how you're really feeling, with the
loss that you really experience, with the sense of injustice
that you have, with that sense of powerlessness and frustration.
I think it taps into that. Yeah, and I think
you're trying to stay away from that, even though you
do have access to it, because when we speak about it,
(37:19):
you get tearful. But the letters are not just the
venting there to keep you away from the real painful
stuff that's going on underneath.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Yeah, I see that, and I agree with you.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Are you wanting something to change with your friend or
with her husband, because you were talking about a letter
to her husband. What are the letters that you write
to your friend?
Speaker 3 (37:45):
The most recent versions would have to do with how
she's raising her children, or who are all lovely by
the way, I would perhaps see the child and the
child in completely the normal course of being an eight
year old or a nine year old has a moment
(38:07):
where they act out, so I would probably say something like, well,
your child is disrespectful to you, and everyone thinks is
a brat. Really, the crux of my letters are written
to this husband, So you know the letters that I
write to my friend, I would probably also point out
(38:31):
how awful her husband is.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
It sounds like she shares her own difficulty with her
husband with you, Yes, And I wonder what that's like,
given your own feelings toward him. What role do you
play in that when she brings up something difficult about
her husband.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
Well after they were first married, there was a very
rocky period immediately following their marriage, and it looked as
if the marriage would be over very quickly. And I
remember being out with her one night and she was
telling me his terrible treatment of her, and I offered
(39:12):
her a place to stay, and I said, you know,
you can always stay with me for however long you need,
but I don't believe that you deserve this treatment. Within
a couple weeks, things were repaired, they were back together,
and it was as if sort of an iceberg had
(39:34):
come in between us. I think she was greatly offended
by me saying, based upon what she told me, that
if you want to leave him, I will help you.
I think she wanted to vent and the fact that
I gave her advice put a wedge in between us.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
But she still shares things that happen with her husband
with you.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Yes, And now what I say is I just say, do.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
You share any struggles with her? Since she's sharing such
personal things, do you?
Speaker 3 (40:06):
She never asks, And when I try to bring something
up that has happened to me, something about my family
or my father, it almost always reverts back to her.
And I'm certain that's feeling. Some of my anger in
this situation is that I don't feel heard.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
It doesn't sound like there's a lot of reciprocity in
the friendship.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
You're absolutely right. The way that the friendship is structured,
there's very little reciprocity. I'm aware of the imbalance of it.
And I have tried to talk about, you know, my children,
not in a way that feels forceful, but just to
sort of even things out, and it always seems to
go back to her and her situation or her life
(40:53):
whatever it is.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
You know, of all the letters that you write in
your head, I haven't heard you write a letter in
your head to your mother or your father. Yeah, when
you were young, did you do that? Did you make
your case. Did you have your courtroom in your head
when you would feel misunderstood or mistreated.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Yes, in my head, I would definitely write them letters.
It was too scary, though, to think about having an
actual face to face conversation with them. My father would
just walk away. I'm almost positive of it.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
So you've been writing these letters, in fact, for a
very very long time.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Tell us a little bit about what your relationship with
your mother is like now.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
I touch base with her usually every day, every other day.
She is recovering from about of cancer. We talk, but
we don't talk about anything that's you know, I had
a fight, I'm feeling very closed in today, or something
like that. We just would never talk about that. My
(42:01):
mother is relentlessly positive, relentlessly positive, and you always look
to the bright side. If someone offends you, you just
shake your head and roll your eyes and move on,
and you don't waste time on stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
Well, you write them a letter, really, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
She has her own ways of dealing with it. So
I'm close with her, but I'm not emotionally close with her.
I want her to be a part of my children's lives,
and she's a wonderful grandmother cozy in a way that
I didn't have the grandmother be cozy with me, And
I'm really happy for that relationship. She loves those girls
(42:39):
so much. But she just is not an emotional mother.
She never has been an emotional mother that would give
me advice or I don't feel like she or my
father ever taught me how to navigate difficult conversations.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
I want you to notice that you said she's cozy
with them in a way that I didn't have that
with a grandmother. But you didn't say she's cozy in
a way with them that I didn't have with my mother.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
True.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Do you see how far away you stay from those
painful feelings?
Speaker 4 (43:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (43:09):
Yeah, I have to tell you that there's been one
time in my life that my mother called me sweetheart.
She called me something other than Catherine. And when she
called me sweetheart, I remember just freezing and just I
couldn't believe that she used a term of endearment towards me.
It was so strange. I still remember where I was
(43:31):
and just kind of thinking, like, I can't believe she
said something to me like that. It was almost like
being slapped.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
You kind of dissociated too, you kind of froze.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Have you had a friendship that's been reciprocal and satisfying.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
Yes, Yes. It was somebody I met through work and
it's been a friendship of about twenty years or so.
This person has subsequently moved to another state and we
don't talk very often, but it's an immediate and deep
friendship when we do. I feel very comfortable with her,
sort of like my husband. I feel like she has
(44:09):
an emotional adroitness that I admire and one that I
know won't be used against me.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
So you don't freeze with her. You're able to bring
up things with her, although it sounds like probably not
a lot comes up because you're not in the same location.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
Yeah. Yeah, I do feel comfortable having difficult conversations with her.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
Have you ever done that?
Speaker 3 (44:31):
Yeah? I think at one point it was probably in
the lead up to her wedding. It was all we
talked about, and I asked her for a little bit
of space because I couldn't talk about this wedding anymore.
I just needed a break, and she was very respectful
of that.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
And it didn't make the friendship go away.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
No, it didn't make the friendship go away. I still
count that as one of my most important friendships, and
I'm very thankful for it.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Does she know how much you appreciated that?
Speaker 3 (45:00):
I don't know. I should probably tell her about that.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
Does your husband know how much you appreciate him?
Speaker 3 (45:07):
I think he does. I think we have a good
a good way of just sort of day in day out,
you know, a touch on the shoulder. He is. I
will say this very good about every day saying I
appreciate you. I am less good. But I will tell
you something. The big difference between my husband and I.
My husband lost his father in a terrible boating accident,
(45:30):
so he understands far better than I do about losing people.
He has done a great deal of work emotionally processing
that loss, and although I know it has been the
defining moment in his life, it has brought him a
(45:53):
real emotional clarity and a facility with saying I need help,
who can help me? And and taking that help. And
I have not had that experience of loss.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
I think you have had an experience of loss. It
just looks different. You mentioned when your mother called you sweetheart,
it you froze. Yeah, what do you do when your
husband tells you I appreciate you.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
Well, he usually comes in for a kiss and it's
very sweet, and I love that he does that.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
But what happens inside your body?
Speaker 4 (46:27):
Well, I think it's a little bit still of an
unfamiliar feeling, but it's also quite sweet and welcome. Does
your body freeze, well, a little bit, But you know
I return his kiss or his hug.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
Yeah, but verbally you don't. Oh, yeah, very turn the sentiment.
Speaker 3 (46:42):
You know what I usually say. I usually say we
have a wonderful life together, because we do do.
Speaker 5 (46:50):
And I really feel that I'm laughing because it's like
if someone says I love you, and you say things
are very nice, right, it's not personal, it's not intimate,
it's not about you specifically. We have a nice life
together is a very safe response.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Yeah, I appreciate you too is a less safe response.
Speaker 3 (47:15):
Right. It's just it's wildly unfamiliar to me to be
I guess more of vulnerable.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Do you say I love you to him?
Speaker 3 (47:24):
Oh? Yes, yes, we say that quite often. I'm very
comfortable saying that to him. I'm very comfortable saying it
to my children. When my mother calls, she never says
the word I, but she just says love you, you know,
and I notice that, and I don't want my husband
or my children to feel that because there's a lot
(47:47):
of space missing from that word.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
There's a huge space left by the lack of the eye.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
Yeah, so, Catherine, we have some advice for you. When
here's the first part. We spoke about the fact that
when there's something intense emotionally going on, you tend to dissociate.
That's what keeps you, in part from being able to
have confrontations or even difficult discussions with people. But it
(48:20):
also happened when good things happen, when your mom calls
your sweetheart, or when your husband says something very loving
to you, then you also have a little bit of
a freezon that moment because it's intense. So the first
thing we'd like you to do is we'd like you
to express to your husband. And we think the best
way for you to do this would be to write
(48:40):
it out, not as a letter, but just write it
out and then read it to him. He says to
you that he appreciates you all the time, you said,
and your response, people areking the said is like, yes,
we have a nice life together and we want you
to make it more personal. We'd like you to express
to him how much you appreciate him, and we'd like
you to make it very personal about how he makes
(49:03):
you feel, that you feel safe with him, whatever the
things are that are specific that he does that is
so emotionally expressive, that you admire how well he recovered
from the loss of his dad and how much work
he did in therapy and work on himself and be
such a loving dad after that kind of loss. We'd
(49:24):
like you to write it out, because we think that'll
be easier if you wrote it out ahead of time,
but then we'd like you to read it to him
and see how you feel doing that. But we'd like
you to not only do that, but then also be
able to sit with his response and sit with how
he's receiving it, and especially if it's meaningful to him,
to be able to take that in as well, because
(49:45):
that's connective tissue we think you can have even more
of with him.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
I can do that.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
And as we're talking about having a more direct connection
with your husband, we were thinking about your friend about
how many of the letters that you write in your
head around that friendship are actually directed toward her husband.
We would like you to focus more on the relationship
between you and your friend, regardless of what's going on
(50:11):
in their marriage. And one of the things that was
interesting was you talked about how close you are, but
at the same time, there doesn't seem to be a
lot of room for you to get support from her.
The conversation kind of drifts back to whatever is going
on with her.
Speaker 3 (50:27):
You have this.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
Idea that either you confront somebody and everything could blow up,
which is why you don't confront people, or you write
letters in your head and you plot revenge. And those
are the two alternatives. We want to give you a
third way. We would like you to call your friend
and say, is there a time that we can talk,
And we'd like you to talk about something going on
(50:48):
in your own life, and maybe it's your father right
now with dementia and some of the difficulty because your
family doesn't really talk about things. And if she readirects
and says, let me tell you about what's going on
with my husband instead of just sitting there and then
writing a revenge letter later in the moment, you can say,
you know, I'm happy to talk about that later, but
(51:09):
right now, I'm really struggling with this. Can we talk
about this a little bit more and see how she responds. Now,
she might not be able to do that with you,
and that's good information, and the information is, oh, okay,
she's not a person that really has the capacity for that,
And that might motivate you to look at the other
(51:29):
relationships in your life and other friendships so that you
don't lose this friendship. But maybe it serves certain purposes
for you but not others, so you're not simmering all
the time with this feeling of being unacknowledged or unseen
or unheard. The other possibility is that she might respond well,
and she might really be there for you. And now
(51:50):
what you're doing is you're changing that assumption you have
that she just doesn't have an interest in you, and
you're saying, oh, I haven't been stepping up. I haven't
been sharing myself with her because I was afraid to.
But when I do insert myself into the conversation and
I tell her what I need, she's actually quite responsive.
And this takes you away from the whole obsession around
(52:11):
the husband and all the revenge fantasies around him, and
it puts you right there in the friendship to see
what this friendship can be.
Speaker 6 (52:20):
Yeah, because that's entirely what I want, so that you're
not sitting there feeling helpless like you experienced growing up,
and then you feel like you have no recourse other
than to have these court cases go on in your mind.
Speaker 3 (52:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
And our hope is that once you establish more trust,
that you can be in this friendship differently. Maybe you
guys will start talking about the friendship itself at a
certain point to be able to say to her, Hey,
I miss you, can we get together, or even positive
things like I've really enjoyed how we've been talking lately.
It makes me feel really close with you. Little statements
like that really can have an effect on the entire
(52:59):
feeling of what the friendship is like.
Speaker 3 (53:01):
Yeah, yeah, no, I like that.
Speaker 2 (53:04):
One more thing we have for you to do. We
were thinking about your childhood and how unseen you felt,
and how unable you will to speak up because your
dad would just bark and your mom wouldn't communicate. You'd
send a letter but not have the conversation. We'd like
you to get in touch with how that felt to
(53:26):
grow up in that house because your letters tend to
be an attempt to, in fantasy hurt the other person,
but you're writing them because you're not looking at your
own hurt. And we'd like you to get in touch
with some of that hurt from childhood. So we'd like
you to actually write a real letter. Now it will
(53:48):
be one you don't send, but we'd like you to
write a letter to your mum in which you tell
her and describe to her what it was like for
you to grow up in the house, what it was
like for you to receive that letter from her about
the box that you didn't love and gather dust. We'd
(54:09):
like you to tell her what it was like to
not be able to speak up, what it was like
to be told that the weight of the future of
America is in your hands and that a minus is
going to cost us Aul dearly. You know, we'd like
you to be as honest and as open as you can,
because you won't be sending the letter to her, what
you will be doing with it after you're done. We
(54:32):
want you to be seen, So we'd like you just
to share it with your husband and say, this is
a letter I'm not sending to my mom. Someone has
to hear it and I'll appreciate so much of that
with you and read it to him and be able
to express it and be heard and be seen by someone.
Speaker 3 (54:51):
Yeah, that's beautiful. I love that idea.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
And then we'd also like you to sit with what
it feels like when he resis what is it like
not only to be able to let your feelings be
seen by yourself, which we think you don't do enough
because you're so focused on the other people and the
revenge fantasies, but what is it like to be seen
by someone I'm close with? Yea, those are the three
(55:17):
tasks for the week, okay, and we're really looking forward
to hearing how those go for you.
Speaker 3 (55:22):
Oh, thank you. This has been something more than I
could have imagined.
Speaker 2 (55:33):
I really feel for Catherine because growing up feeling so
unseen and dealing with that silent treatment and the shunning,
it's so painful, and then experiencing that in her adult
life over and over again because she can't speak up
and so she feels so unseen and then so powerless.
(55:53):
It is just very difficult to deal with for so
many decades.
Speaker 1 (55:58):
And what's interesting is that sometimes people don't realize that
there's an intergenerational transmission. We saw that it might present differently,
where her grandmother was very critical and outspoken, and then
the mother was very critical writing letters, but we're not
going to have a conversation about it. And then you
come to Catherine and she's just dissociated, so you can
(56:23):
see that she wants to stop it. I was very
encouraged by how open she is to taking risks, even
though it scares her. She's very interested in trying something new.
She's gotten to the point where she said, this is
very exhausting. I don't want to live this way. This
is emotionally draining, and so I really hope that the
assignment we gave her will help her not only to
(56:45):
feel more seen and heard around her experiences, but also
opens her up to the positive experiences. We always say
that if you're going to mute the pain, you're going
to mute the joy, and I think that's what's happened here.
When her husband says I appreciate you, she says, well,
we have a nice life together. So I think it'll
be really interesting to see how these exercises go this
week and what kind of shifts she can make from them.
Speaker 2 (57:10):
You're listening to dea therapists. We'll be back after a
short break.
Speaker 3 (57:26):
So guy.
Speaker 1 (57:27):
We heard back from Catherine and let's hear how her
week went.
Speaker 3 (57:31):
Hello, Assignment number one. My husband was very touched to
hear my letter. He listened and cried at times. While
he knows how hard it is for me to express
my feelings, they really felt as if I saw him. Overall,
he was very supportive and cited my kindness and the
fact that I reached out to your program the signs
that despite having had an unhappy childhood, I still want
(57:54):
to treat others and myself well and want to find
a deeper understanding about my childhood so I can have
better relationships. We had a great conversation that lasted about
an hour. I didn't blank out, but I do feel
that because it was just a lot to process, I
will remember more about it in the coming days. It
was a very positive and loving experience, and my husband
(58:15):
noted at the end that he doesn't doubt my love
for him, but he would like it if I expressed
that love more, which having heard that from him, I
will do for me. The atmosphere was sort of charged
in a very unfamiliar but I think positive way, and
my body felt relaxed for assignment too. Speaking with my friend,
it certainly felt unfamiliar to pick up the phone and
(58:37):
call her. We chatted for a few minutes, and then
I asked her if she had the experience of seeing
her childhood in a way that significantly differed from her siblings.
I could hear the surprise in her voice, maybe because
we text far more often than speak on the phone,
but she answered my question openly. We laughed at parts
and we commiserated at others, and I felt a connection
(58:59):
through that. I'll see her soon, and I'm going to
tell her how much I enjoyed that conversation, and that
I think about our friendship a lot. Assignment three. Writing
the letter to my mom, but reading it to my husband,
this letter came flowing out of me. I noted how
she could see my father's ragey behavior dictating the atmosphere
of almost everything in the house, and how that left
(59:20):
very little room for anyone to safely express their feelings.
I wish that she could have taken me aside, somewhere
safe to have these conversations, if only to say, you
may not feel comfortable speaking with your dad around, but
we need to do it for your sake and your benefit.
My mom has often said that she's so thankful that
I've never had something terrible happen to me. But I
(59:41):
wrote to her that although I look okay, they are
hollow parts inside, and she had a role in that.
My mom often spent time with her best friend, with
whom she had a deep friendship. She got to escape
my father, and she had a confidant to discuss his behavior.
But I realized last week after our talk that she
didn't provide that escape for me, and that's a real
(01:00:02):
failure on her part. Reading this letter, I noted I
kept crossing my arms. I felt flat while I was
reading it, but less so when I discussed it with
my husband. We agreed that if I sent this letter
to my mom, she would never respond to it, so
fixed is she on only seeing good things. I feel
very thankful to have had these three experiences. At the
(01:00:22):
end of the day, the thoughts were right there, and
I really didn't have a tough time expressing them. Made
a couple interesting connections in my mind since talking with
you both. Most of all, I've taken from it that
a conversation won't automatically scale up into a screaming match.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
So let's start with that conversation with her husband where
she read to him how she felt about him. That
sounded like such a powerful moment for the two of them,
and as we suspected, he really needed to hear it,
and then he even asked for more of it thereafter,
and he was so moved by it, And to me,
(01:01:03):
that just confirms what we suspected that although she has
these internal emotional experiences, they don't get expressed outwardly enough
the good or the bad, as we said, and here
the good wasn't coming across as overtly as it might.
So hopefully this opens an entire new way for her
to communicate with her husband that will allow them much
(01:01:24):
more closeness as a result.
Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
I like what you said about the good and the
bad because I think sometimes when people are really afraid
of sharing their feelings, they also aren't comfortable sharing the
positive feelings, and that really keeps a distance in a
relationship even when the positive feelings are there. And I
was so moved when he was able to tell her,
and it sounds like in a very gentle, loving way,
(01:01:48):
I would like more of this, I think that will
bring them so much closer, and I think she will
get more as well from the reciprocity that's going to
come from this.
Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
The second assignment that was a little confused, to be honest,
what we asked her to do was share something about
herself with her friend, whatever it is, and make sure
that her friends can stay on her, rather than revert
the conversation back to the friend's feelings or needs. So
she said she brought up this question about whether she
or siblings had different perceptions. If she then followed that
(01:02:23):
question with because for me, and she spoke about herself
and the friend listened, great, But if she just asked
a friend to do that, then there was a miss
in terms of the point of that assignment, and I'm
just not sure which it is.
Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
There was something else that was interesting in her update,
which was that her mom had this confidant that she
would go to to complain about Catherine's dad too, And
it sounds a little bit like a mirror of Catherine's
friend coming to Catherine to complain about the friend's husband,
And I think that some of the resentment might be
wrapped up in that parallel dynamic. That's going on that
(01:02:58):
we hadn't heard about during session, So it's just another
thing for Catherine to think about as she thinks about
what the source of her anger and resentment really are
when it comes to this friend and her husband.
Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
Right her third assignment, writing the letter to her mother,
I was glad to hear that she was commenting on
how she feels hollow internally and that her mother has
something directly to do with that, and wishing her mother
had taken her aside and legitimized conversations and talking about
feelings with her. I think those were very important things.
Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
And I think the important part of this too was
being able to share it so it's not just something
that she is holding inside, because I think that's where
all of those letters were coming from. And we always
say choose your audience well in terms of who you're
going to share yourself with in a very vulnerable way,
and her husband was it sounds like a great audience.
I also think about that friend who lives in another
(01:03:51):
city that she also feels very close to, and one
of the things we also wanted her to do was
to see about cultivating friendships that feel better to her,
and I think that the exercises that we gave her
our first step to cultivating all kinds of relationships, including
a closer relationship with her husband, a better relationship with
(01:04:13):
her friend, and maybe cultivating other friendships and mostly a
better relationship with herself.
Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
I agree, and so I think that in the one week,
she's taken quite a few steps and gone quite a journey.
Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
Yeah, as you said, it's an opening, and I think
it's a fantastic place to start. Next week, a woman
who loves her husband worries about his anger toward their
young children and considers whether she should leave him to
protect them.
Speaker 3 (01:04:41):
It's not healthy for our daughter. You need to get
therapy or we're going to leave so that I can
protect her.
Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
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 (01:05:01):
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 Ben Bernstein, Emily Gutierrez
(01:05:24):
and Silver Lifton. And special thanks to our podcast Fairy
Godmother Katie Curic. We can't wait to see you at
our next session. Deotherapist is a production of iHeartRadio.
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