Eyewitness to Therapy
I am a Gestalt psychologist and therapist. In this podcast, I conduct real-life therapy sessions with individuals who volunteer to experience a taste of Gestalt therapy. The purpose of Gestalt therapy is to transform your experience of living, helping you to clear up the situations and emotions you are currently dealing with.
Eyewitness to Therapy
Healing Family Wounds: Navigating Estrangement and Emotional Turmoil
Send me a text message to let me know how you feel about this episode.
What are the emotional costs of estrangement, and how do we navigate the murky waters of family dynamics? Join us as Dahlia opens up about her journey through the complex network of sibling relationships and the emotional turmoil that comes with maintaining distance from a volatile family member. With a new job adding to her stress, Dahlia shares the duality of her emotions—cherishing the love within her immediate family while grappling with past traumas and the birth of her nephew stirring up feelings of guilt and a longing for connection. This candid discussion reveals the intricacies of family ties and the difficult choices we often face in pursuit of emotional well-being.
In our heartfelt conversation, Dahlia offers her insights on the challenges of interacting with a sister who has a history of impulsive and abusive behavior, further complicated by mental health issues. We explore how she manages the lose-lose situation of wanting a healthier relationship but being met with criticism and unrealistic expectations. Through a recent enlightening meeting, Dahlia gains a fresh perspective on managing anxiety and expectations, learning to embrace the present and move forward with an open mind. Her story is a testament to the power of connection and understanding, and the continual quest for personal growth and peace amidst the complexities of family relationships.
Good afternoon and welcome to our meeting today.
Speaker 1:So you like to be called Dahlia? Yeah, that sounds good. Okay, very good, yeah. So welcome to our conversation here.
Speaker 1:Just to lay a little groundwork for our meeting today is, first of all, it's the first time we've ever met, so I know virtually nothing about you, and I imagine you know a little about me, except for the little clip that you shared in the questionnaire prior to our meeting.
Speaker 1:The purpose of today is really to create a space for you to bring forth anything that you desire to bring forth in terms of something you might want to work on or address or gain from our meeting, and my job is to be as helpful to you as I can be meeting, and my job is to be as helpful to you as I can be.
Speaker 1:This is how we start each meeting is. Actually. What I would invite you to do is to take a moment to reflect on yourself, your life, your situation, your relationships, the places in your life where you engage or participate in your thoughts and feelings, and then speak one word or series of one words that simply name something in those varying contexts, and then, after that, look and see what do I hope to gain from a meeting? And whatever you hope to gain helps to frame our conversation, so you can just fill in the blank there, but let's start with a word or series of words that simply name something as you reflect that could be a feeling word or any word whatsoever that you come up with.
Speaker 2:Okay, loved, happy, overwhelmed, happy, overwhelmed, stressed out, stressed. There's one word Was that good or should I do more?
Speaker 1:That's perfect so far. Feel free to do more if there is more or that could be? Is that? Maybe that's the end. That pretty much sums it up for now. Okay, very good. So what you're doing in that little exercise is taking a snapshot of your consciousness, like what's there in your consciousness as we sit here right now, and so the other question is what do I hope to gain from our meeting today? Anything stand out for you about that?
Speaker 1:maybe just some clarity on some things and maybe some acceptance of my situation. Okay, clarity and acceptance, okay, those are great goals, all right. So, as far as the words that you just mentioned, feel free to expound on any of those words in terms of what any of those words say of you, about you or about anything, and then we can go from there.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 2:So I said loved and happy, which is pretty much how I feel about my current situation, with much how I feel about my current situation with my family, my husband and my son.
Speaker 2:I'm very happy in my life right now, but I have a lot of things going on making me feel overwhelmed and stressed.
Speaker 2:I just started a new job which I'm feeling very overwhelmed about, just have a lot of things going on, and I also feel overwhelmed in thinking about my relationships with the people in my family of origin and different dynamics that are playing out with them currently, and while I've separated myself from it, I find myself sometimes getting dragged back into it, which really stresses me out. So I spent a lot of time emotionally distancing myself from them after a lot of issues and drama, as I was a child and growing up, so as an adult, I've really kept them at an arm's length, which has been really good for me. But recently my sister, who I'm estranged from, had a baby and that has brought up a lot of different feelings for me, because, even though I'm estranged from her and have a limited relationship with my parents and my brother, I feel like I want to be involved in my nephew's life, so I've felt a lot of stress over that.
Speaker 1:What's the stress, then for you? I?
Speaker 2:know I can't be involved. We don't have a relationship.
Speaker 1:With your sister. You're talking.
Speaker 2:But I hate the thought of that. I have a nephew who I'll never know and just knowing my sister, I want to be there for him and be a support in his life, but I feel like I'm never going to know him and it's just been stressing me out a lot and making me feel guilty.
Speaker 1:I'm just well curious about your relationship, your sister. How would you describe what's occurred between you and what's created the need for you to distance yourself?
Speaker 2:could tell you that something was really wrong and in retrospect I can see all the markers of it and how it impacted our relationship and how my parents had to treat her to try to make her okay. And she's gone through different parts in her life where she has gotten help and been medicated and things have been better. But then she always goes through the cycle of thinking she doesn't need her medication and being off of it. She can be very emotionally, verbally and, when we were little, physically abusive. She holds grudges. She can be very harsh, very judgmental, just very difficult to get along with and interact with.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. Okay, that goes over the course of your whole relationship. Basically you're saying Do you tend to be pulled back into the potential birth or the birth of your nephew, but do you somehow feel pulled back into your relationship with her in some ways that you resist or don't like?
Speaker 2:So I'm more recently estranged from her over the past couple of years but would always try to keep my distance and then get pulled in by family obligations. Oh, you have to be involved in this, you have to do that. So I felt like I could never really separate myself. But now I feel myself getting pulled in again. But it's all totally my own doing.
Speaker 1:It's not no one's pulling me in, or trying to make me do things, but are you saying that somehow you feel drawn to? Yeah, it's not that she's merely pulling you in, but you're feeling drawn to the relationship?
Speaker 2:you say yeah, you're feeling drawn to the relationship. Would you say yeah?
Speaker 1:So over the past few years, then the only time that you've really interacted has been during family functions or obligations kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I probably haven't seen her in five years, but before it was only like family obligation kind of thing oh, okay, gotcha, gotcha.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, and so you don't interact at all, like at all kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Okay, no, sometimes she'll. If she's going through a certain phase, she'll reach out, but she has very rigid ideas of like how people should act and treat her and things that they should do, and if you don't live up to that, she's very quick to cut you off again. It's just been a very stressful kind of cycle and it's been good not like really good for me to not be involved in it anymore, but now I feel like over and not being there and getting to know my nephew.
Speaker 1:I see, okay, so in other words, are you saying, to get to know your nephew, you're going to need to go through her? Yeah, right, and so I hear that the way you describe things it sounds like her behavior is difficult to put up with, would you say it's really difficult yeah, okay, and then it sounds like there's a desire there to be involved in your nephew's life. What?
Speaker 2:did you say he was just born two months ago?
Speaker 1:Oh, I see Great, and so has your sister. She reached out to you at all, or have you reached out to her?
Speaker 2:I have, but I haven't heard anything back.
Speaker 1:If you did, let's say, get back in relationship to your sister, however that might look, whether it's just interacting or occasionally interacting or whatever, or finding a way to where you feel open to being there for your nephew, Do you have a sense of how you would if you could have it any way you want in your relationship with her? How would you, let's say, want it to be, given all the things that you've shared?
Speaker 2:Like in a perfect world. I wish that I could have a relationship with her that I know other people have with their siblings, Like that's what I would want it to be, but it's never been like that. So I know realistically that's not something possible. Like, best case scenario I could ever want is to have just a very formal, cordial relationship with her and get to see my nephew spend time with him, just knowing her. It would always be on her terms and there would always be conditions.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm also curious. So, when you think about your sister, what's the predominant emotion that you feel toward her and about her? If you could put that into a word, or a couple of words or a few words.
Speaker 2:I'm like scared of her, to be completely honest, Scared Okay. I wish she would be on her medication. I want everything to be better for her. I want everything to be fine and go well, but yeah, I'm definitely scared of her. Can you share a little bit more just what you're scared of with her? She's just like a very volatile person.
Speaker 1:Volatile. Okay, when you say scared, are you saying that you fear for your safety, kind of thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, mine, hers, anyone who's involved? Yeah, she just is. She's very impulsive. She's very impulsive. She's very reactive and just like historically, like over our relationship, she's been very abusive, so got you getting drawn back into. That is like scary to me. Thank you, I read up a lot about how bipolar people interact with their children and perceive their children and but I don't I know that, even if I feel like it's my responsibility to do something about it, I can't do anything without her agreeing to it, so it's really to her so do you think or imagine she would resist you having a relationship with your nephew?
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:She would not want that, it would be like a control thing. A control.
Speaker 2:Or she would maybe agree to allow it for a little while to punish me. If I didn't do something she liked, she would take it away.
Speaker 1:I see, okay, so you feel like she holds a grudge toward you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she absolutely does. She feels like things happened when we were in high school that I liked my friends more than I liked her oh okay, but this, this is literally like years ago. She just holds a lot of grudges over perceived slights or things that in in the past, where I'm more like, a lot of things have happened. But if she like called me today and was like I really I want to start over, I would totally be on board with it Skeptically, like I would be tentative and careful about it.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:But I'm not like holding a grudge or have any bad feelings about it.
Speaker 1:You wouldn't.
Speaker 2:No, I would be careful.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, are you older than her or younger? Yeah, what's the age range? Two? And a half years is it, does it seem like for her?
Speaker 2:she's held grudges against you, unloved or just not as important as other things.
Speaker 1:Unloved and not as important. Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, another grudge is that she feels like I wasn't excited enough.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:Like when she got married, she would have wanted me to be more excited. When I thought I was excited, okay. Like feeling like I'm not reacting or responding the way that she wants me to Okay.
Speaker 1:So she has wants me to Okay, so she has a certain expectation, yeah.
Speaker 2:But I feel like it's an impossible to meet expectation, like, whatever I do, it's the wrong thing. I'm too excited. I'm not excited enough. I reached out too much. I didn't reach out enough.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:When I have reached out over time different times, trying to make a connection with her she would sometimes complain. I haven't heard from her and so long she clearly doesn't care or she keeps texting me and it's really annoying. I clearly don't want to talk to her. So I feel like it's like a lose-lose situation for me okay, sounds like she.
Speaker 1:She has some idea about how you should be with her or how she feels unloved or somehow she expects something from you. But no matter what you do, it doesn't seem like it is enough for her right, because it sounds like I guess part of what how she is. You feel helpless to, you feel maybe controlled by her or invalidated, or she's very judgmental of you, right yeah, and I try not to take it personally because it's not only directed at me I would say that at times.
Speaker 2:I have been the most victimized by her, but it's equally applied to everyone, so I know that it's not about me, so I try not to take it personally.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:But I don't know what the right way would be to reach out what would be received. I've tried all kinds of things.
Speaker 1:But what you're saying there? You're saying that you're clear that whatever her behavior is or she says about you or to you, it's not about you.
Speaker 2:I didn't always feel that way, but over time I've come to realize as. I've observed it happening to other people. I've had a hard time being able to differentiate what is her personality and what is her mental illness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm thinking, if it comes to pass, that you really want to be a part of your nephew's life and you realize that's going to have to go through her, how can I be with her how she is? Do you have a sense of that?
Speaker 2:I don't know. I feel it would be very stressful for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. Yeah, I hear that it is stressful. I can certainly understand, you know, being around people with certain behaviors that kind of drive you crazy, let's say. But she is how she is, there's no changing it, no changing it at all. And so you've come to anticipate and predict how she is right. Yeah, Predict how she is right. Yeah, Just knowing that and predicting how she is, just wondering if you might find a way to interact with her. That it's not all about how she's being or what she's doing or saying.
Speaker 2:I feel like I would just have to accept that everything would be on her terms and I would have to be okay with that. Okay, yeah and I just don't know how it worked. But I don't know that she's even willing, because I reached out several times, not recently, but in the past month to a year and have not gotten a response or some aggressive responses.
Speaker 1:Okay, but you're saying that if it's possible to be with her, interact with her, that I'll just have to do it on her terms.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I would be willing to do that.
Speaker 1:You'd be willing to do that? Yeah, Until I couldn't.
Speaker 2:If I couldn't. But I'm willing to make the effort and try.
Speaker 1:I guess I see that's what's possible in terms of just you desire to be an influence in your nephew's life and all this stuff that's going on between you and your sister, and there's her past behavior, and then you know how she is and how she's been.
Speaker 2:When was the last interaction that you had with her, like in person or text, either or so in person hasn't been, like I said, for like maybe five years five years okay and it wasn't like a negative interaction it wasn't all right like a family party or something, and how it was, how she was in that scene and how you were in that scene in terms of your interaction with her.
Speaker 1:Can you go back there?
Speaker 2:yeah, I feel like she's someone that I don't know. Hey, what?
Speaker 1:do you say? You feel like she's somebody. But can you go back to the actual scene? What did she do? What did she say? What came out of her mouth? What came out of her mouth? What came out of your mouth, just in terms of your interaction with one another?
Speaker 2:If you can recall.
Speaker 1:I know it's hard to recall, but do you remember meeting her face to face or talking with her face to face? Okay, so there was a face to face conversation that you had and whatever occurred between you, you're saying, but then it wasn't so bad.
Speaker 2:No, not at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. So if it wasn't so bad, how would you characterize it?
Speaker 2:Like.
Speaker 1:Neutral.
Speaker 2:Okay, like formal, like a conversation that you'd have with someone who you don't know really well, who you haven't seen in a while.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right. And then when you go back there, how do you feel about how you related to her in that moment?
Speaker 2:I feel fine about it. It was totally. Yeah, it wasn't dramatic, there wasn't a fight or anything. It was fine.
Speaker 1:One idea mostly we hold images of people, how they are, based on past events and past situations and past behaviors and so on, and that becomes a fixture in our minds in terms of who we say that person is or what she's like she's. That way, there is recognizing that people change and it's not always reflected in their behavior, but people change inwardly and who knows what she's processing in her life in terms of what she's going through, or maybe she's reflecting on her relationship with you? Who knows?
Speaker 1:The idea there is, assuming there's an occasion to connect you know, to see how you want to do that and to see it doesn't have to be all drama just because it was in the past. It certainly wasn't the last time. So promising to me that's something. At least the last time there wasn't all this drama. I guess what I'm suggesting is that, whatever the occasion is that you would connect with her next time, just be open to the moment, see what occurs, see where things go, without deciding in advance how it's going to be or what the outcome of that is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like I have to accept she might not respond, there might be no interaction, but whatever happens, and maybe the other idea in that is understand your fear but maybe you need not be so afraid of her. Just have confidence in your ability to respond to her.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe I've built it up to be so much in my mind that it's more like anticipation versus what it would actually be like. Last time it wasn't that bad.
Speaker 1:Yes, right, exactly, I think it's good to get in touch with you, know. You know you can substitute instead of anticipating how you think it's going to be, you could substitute openness with how it could be and we'll see how it actually is. That just came about, right. Yeah, things like that can come about just out of an openness because you don't know where she's at in the moment. You're where you're at in the moment. See what occurs between you. Does this feel like a good place to complete our meeting here? Yeah, this is how we end each session, a little bit like the way we begin with. How about a word that names your here and now experience Our meeting here? Yeah, this is how we end each session, a little bit like the way we begin with. How about a word that names your here and now experience coming to a close, and a few words. How do I feel about this meeting we had today? Was there anything that I gained from this? Any insight or realization?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel calm right now. I feel much more relaxed than I did when I started talking about the situation. I feel much more relaxed than I did when I started talking about the situation and I feel like I have a different perspective of what I said not over anticipating and just letting things happen, like not getting so anxious about things, based on past experiences and just seeing where they are now. It could be the same as it always was. It might be different. Who knows where they are now? It could be the same as it always was.
Speaker 1:It might be different, who knows? Go forward with that and see what occurs.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Well, take care. It was nice to meet with you and get to know you a little bit here. I wish you well and I wish you good things on your life journey.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:I appreciate it. Okay, thank you so much. Take care.
Speaker 2:Okay, bye.
