Facing A Parent’s Debt And A Hoarded Home

A single house becomes a pressure cooker for everything else: grief, money, loyalty, and the old wounds you thought you’d outgrown. I sit down with an anonymous guest for a one-time therapy session and they arrive with one word that says it all: exhaustion. They’re the executor of their mother’s estate, the mortgage is behind, creditors are pushing, and the courts want closure. On top of it, the home is packed with decades of belongings, making cleanup feel impossible and the decision to sell feel like a point of no return.

As we slow down, the stress of estate debt and the fear of foreclosure opens into something deeper: a lifetime of craving security. The guest connects today’s panic to growing up poor with an alcoholic parent, learning to read the room for danger, and being forced into caretaker roles long before adulthood. Bitterness makes sense in that context, especially when a parent’s death leaves one more mess to manage.

We also name the hidden cost of self-protection. Strong boundaries keep them safe, but the constant expectation of being taken advantage of has narrowed relationships and joy. We explore how intuition can be a gift and how it can be dialed too high, plus what it could look like to judge trust in the present moment instead of living inside a permanent warning signal.

If you’ve been carrying family responsibility, financial stress, childhood trauma, or trust issues, listen along and see what lands for you. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

For tools and techniques on awareness, forgiveness, and movement visit...

https://www.wayofawareness.com/

Transcript

Welcome And Therapy Ground Rules

SPEAKER_02 0:26

The one-of-a-kind podcast that focuses on a real-life therapy situation. I'm your host, Court Curtis, psychologist and therapist, passionate about bringing you into an immersive experience of self-awareness through therapy. In each episode, we dive deep into the struggles our guest faces and guide them on a journey of self-discovery and resolution. As your dedicated therapist, my purpose is to create a safe space where you can openly share and address your issues. We'll explore the power of the present moment in resolving your concerns, knowing that the past is completely over and the future is never yet. The key to healing lies in awareness, in being witness to your consciousness. And that's precisely what we'll uncover together in every episode of Eyewitness to Therapy. So join us as we navigate the transformative power of therapy and self-awareness. Welcome to another episode of Eyewitness to Therapy. Every individual that I interview in this podcast has volunteered to participate in a one-time therapy session. And so I'm happy to welcome a new guest today. This is the first time we have ever met, so I know virtually nothing about this person other than from a very brief questionnaire that they filled out prior to this meeting. Every guest's identity is anonymous. All therapy is centered around the guest's issues and goals. Whatever they bring forth into the session becomes the focus of our conversation. And my goal is to be helpful in the best way I can. Gestalt therapy is all about living in the moment. And that is exactly where we start each session. I ask my guest to take a moment and allow a word or short phrase to bubble up in consciousness that simply names their here and now experience. And then I have them expound on that word, what that word says of them, about them, or about anything. And then I ask that they declare an intention for the session.

unknown 2:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

An intention can be anything, such as what they hope to gain from the session or want help with. Declaring an intention from the outset helps frame our conversation and also serves to create a purpose and goal for our session. And then lastly, we end each session the way we begin with just a word that names their here and now experience as we come to the close of our conversation.

unknown 2:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

As well as a few words about how they feel about our session. Is there a takeaway, an insight, or realization that they gained from a meeting together? That's the question. So come along with us as we step into this journey of exploration. Where the conversation goes, nobody knows. But that's also the excitement of therapy. A step into the unknown of possibilities. So without further ado, let's welcome our new guest.

Finding A Word For Now

SPEAKER_02 3:25

There we are. Yeah, good afternoon, and uh welcome to our meeting today. And where are you calling from? Or where are you?

SPEAKER_00 3:34

I'm in Iowa.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

Okay. Good afternoon and uh welcome to our meeting here today. Every therapy session is actually with just a word or series of single words that name something in yourself and your life. So the invitation here is to turn your attention inward and to focus on the landscape of your life, your relationships, your situation. And as you reflect on these areas, go ahead and speak just one word or or series of single words that name something or anything in each or all or any of these areas. And then we'll go from there.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Exhaustion. I think that's what I'm afterwards.

SPEAKER_02 4:31

Okay, so we can come back to any of those. But one other invitation here is to look and see is there anything I'd like to feel by the end of our meeting today? Let's say if I could feel anything at all, is there anything I'd like to feel?

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Hopefully would be good.

SPEAKER_02 4:47

Hopeful. Feel free to expound on any of those words, or if you're coming in with anything you would like to focus on, we can go in whatever direction you desire our conversation to go.

Grief And The Sisyphus Feeling

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Overall, I felt like that Greek guy who was sentenced to push a rock up a hill for the rest of eternity, but was never gonna get to finish the task.

SPEAKER_02 5:12

What was his name?

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Forget Syphia, I can I can't say Sisapha.

SPEAKER_02 5:18

Yeah, I'm familiar. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

Life is just like that. Things happen and they keep happening at the same time. It's not just one thing after another. Sometimes it's 10 things at once. For the past a little over a year now, I felt tiled on since my mom died.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

Oh, a year ago?

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Yeah, over a year ago. February last year.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Life has always been like that. Where every time it felt like I caught a break, something else happened to negate the effects of that break. So things just went back to the way that they were before, or worse. So life has always just been like that.

SPEAKER_02 5:58

But it's one thing after another, you're saying, basically.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

Yeah, like one thing after another.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

It's not much break, even but when there is a break, it goes right back to one thing after another. Exactly. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Like every time something good happens, I think, okay, this is the turning point. We're gonna get over that hump.

SPEAKER_02 6:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

It just gets steeper and there's no turning point.

SPEAKER_02 6:23

Okay, that's a sisyphus thing.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

There's never any point where it gets better.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

Real quickly, are you at that point right now? Like things aren't getting any easier? Are you dealing with something right now where you feel that things are not getting any easier?

Executor Pressure And Selling The House

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Yeah. I'm executor of my mom's estate. It's not going well. And I haven't been able to figure out a solution to be able to do what my sister and I want to do with her estate. She died so unexpectedly that she left so much debt that we're looking at having to sell the house, which is not what my sister wants to do. She doesn't blame me if we have to, but she wants to keep it. It's her childhood home. And I get that.

SPEAKER_02 7:14

Just curious quick. So there are two two of you?

SPEAKER_00 7:17

Yeah, there's two of them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

Younger. Younger. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

I wanted to save the house for her because she loves it. And also partially because with the state of things in the United States, I love the idea of having a place that we can go to where we don't owe any money. We don't have to pay it. We can just live there. So there was definitely an element of there could be a benefit to me as well if we kept the house.

SPEAKER_03 7:44

I see.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

Um, but I wanted to save it for her because I know she loves it.

SPEAKER_02 7:48

And you're real curious, is that something you've been having a conversation about and you've come to an agreement that we're gonna save the house?

SPEAKER_00 7:55

We've talked and very open with her about the situation. It may just not be possible.

SPEAKER_02 8:01

Okay, so it's still a fluid situation.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

I would say it's not all that fluid, but we're trying to make it fluid.

SPEAKER_02 8:10

Trying. Okay, so you're trying to work out some kind of disagreement or how to handle this whole mess, would you say?

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Yeah, we're trying to find a solution that would allow us to do what we want.

SPEAKER_02 8:23

Real quickly, sorry to interrupt you. Can you articulate what is it that you want? What is it that we want?

SPEAKER_00 8:28

We want to save the house. We want to not have to get rid of the house.

SPEAKER_02 8:31

Okay, that's something you want. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

But we've been trying to find a solution that would allow us to save it by we've been trying for over a year, and the mortgage company wants us to sell it. Our lawyer wants us to sell it, the realtors want us to sell it.

SPEAKER_02 8:49

Quickly, what do you mean they want you to sell it? Are they recommending you sell it or are they?

SPEAKER_00 8:54

No, they want us to sell it.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

What do they get out of you selling it?

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Money.

SPEAKER_02 8:59

Oh, okay. All right. What whether it benefits you or not?

SPEAKER_00 9:05

Yeah, because they want to settle the estate.

SPEAKER_02 9:08

They want to settle the estate.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

And the courts want us to settle the estate. It's been a year. They want to settle the estate. And the mortgage company just wants it to be done. So they want us to sell it so that we'll pay off the mortgage. And the creditors want us to sell it so they can get paid.

SPEAKER_03 9:28

I see.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Yeah, we don't want to sell it. Part of the problem is it's not ready to be sold. She was like a fucking hoarder. So there are 25 years worth of stuck in that house.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

It's been a year and there's still parts of the house that we can't act.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

Oh, really? Wow. Okay. Yeah. The state of things.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

The lawyer's really pushing us to move forward and sell it. He says that if I don't, the creditors can claim that I mismanaged her estate.

SPEAKER_03 10:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

By not getting the house on the market soon enough because we're losing equity in the house because we owe money to the mortgage company.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

So the mortgage hasn't been paid recently?

SPEAKER_00 10:14

No. No, it's behind. And he wants us to sell it and get it done with. I've been trying to earn enough money to not have to do that or to give us more time, but it's not working. I'm not earning enough.

SPEAKER_02 10:28

We say more time to make a decision about it. Because it sounds like you both want to keep the house, right? I guess I'm also hearing that as much as you want to keep the house, you may not be able to, or you may have to sell it given the consequences of not selling it.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

Yeah, we both want to keep it, but it just doesn't seem realistic at this point.

SPEAKER_02 10:49

It may not be realistic, I hear you.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

Yeah. So ideally, I'd like to earn enough money just to save the house. I don't want to pay the creditors because it's not my debt, but to save the house, I would.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

You mean to save the house in terms of paying the mortgage or paying expenses?

SPEAKER_00 11:06

So basically, even if we pay the mortgage, we could still be forced to sell the house because she owed so much money elsewhere.

SPEAKER_03 11:15

I see.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

They could force us to sell the house to pay her debts.

SPEAKER_03 11:18

I see.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

So I don't want to pay those other debts because they're all big companies to take advantage of people anyway. So screw you guys, lose the money. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 11:28

But you don't want to pay it because you feel justified in not paying it? Is there what you mean?

SPEAKER_00 11:32

It's not my debt. So I don't want to pay it because to save the house, I would pay it. If we got to save the house, I would pay it.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

If you could. But if I could you could pay it.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

Yeah, I'm trying to earn enough to fix the situation, and it's just not working. It's just not earning enough to fix the situation. Okay so far. Not even close.

SPEAKER_02 11:57

Not even close. All right. So the trajectory that things are going on doesn't look real hopeful?

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Yeah, not at all.

SPEAKER_02 12:03

Oh, okay. I guess the way I hear you is you're in the middle of a quagmire where there's a lot of things to consider, the house and cleaning out the house and the hoarding stuff, and all the people that have a stake in it. And are you a place where you don't know what next step to take? Is there a next step to take in all of this for you?

SPEAKER_00 12:26

The next step would be one of the realtors said that they can get the house cleaned out and we wouldn't have to pay till closing. So the next step is that.

SPEAKER_02 12:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

It does mean conceding to sell the house because houses in that area are being sold quickly.

SPEAKER_02 12:50

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

It won't stay on even though it's in bad shape, it won't stay on the market.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

Worth getting cleaned out.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

We don't have a choice.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

They're making us Oh they're m oh I see. They're making you clean it out.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

I can't pay the mortgage, and I can't pay the mortgage, and I can't pay out the creditors. So they're making us if I don't do it, they're gonna claim I mismanage the estate, basically, is what it was. And they being the creditors and the court.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

I see. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

And the next step is to bring someone in to clean out the house so that we can list the house.

SPEAKER_02 13:26

I see.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

But I'm hesitant to take the step because once I do, I am conceding that there is no chance that we can save the house.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

We can save the house. It's a decision point.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

Yeah. It's the point where there's no return. Whereas theoretically, now if I could make enough money to get the house out foreclosure.

SPEAKER_02 13:50

How confident are you to make enough money? Do you have a high level of confidence that you can do this? Is this possible? Realistic? Or what?

SPEAKER_00 13:58

Possible, yes. Realistic, I don't know. It's a new job. Um so it's possible. It's very possible, but it's a new job, and I don't know that I have enough it's basically sales. So I guess I don't know that I have enough confidence to say for certain that yes, I can go in and I've only estimated how much we need to bring the house out of foreclosure because the number changes daily, so I don't even know for sure, but I estimate I would need 20,000 to bring it out of foreclosure.

SPEAKER_03 14:33

I see.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Theoretically, I could make that in a couple weeks. It's not unheard of.

SPEAKER_03 14:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

And then if I got it out of foreclosure, the creditors can't claim I'm mismanaging the estate anymore.

SPEAKER_03 14:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

So that would bias time for me to pay them so that we could save the house.

SPEAKER_02 14:52

Okay. Real quickly, so I hear you both want to save the house, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

I hear this is your childhood home, right? Your childhood home too.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

It's her childhood home. I don't consider it my childhood home.

SPEAKER_02 15:05

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

We lived a lot of places when I was a kid. By the time we got this place, I was 12. I don't have the same nostalgia factor that she doesn't.

SPEAKER_02 15:14

Okay. You don't feel as attached like your sister does.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:18

Okay. And then do you feel some kind of obligation to honor the fact that she's attached to the house and to need to keep it kind of thing?

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Yeah. I want her to have it. You want her to have it. Realistically speaking, even if I save it, we'd own it jointly because she can't afford it.

SPEAKER_02 15:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

But I don't have plans to live there.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

You don't see the so the only aspect I like of keeping it is that rent continues to get higher and get more and more out of reach. So it would be a place that my husband and I could go live if rent got out of reach. And that we wouldn't be homeless. So I like the idea of keeping it, but I don't have the sentimental attachment to it that she does.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Okay. So that would be some benefit for you, not just doing it through the street.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Yeah, I like the security factor of owning, knowing that it's there.

SPEAKER_02 16:17

Gotcha.

Chasing Security After Growing Up Poor

SPEAKER_02 16:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

I've never had security. So I love that. Never had security.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

I've never had security. What does that mean for you?

SPEAKER_00 16:26

No.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

Can you share?

SPEAKER_00 16:28

So I grew up poor. So I never had financial security. I've struggled with money my entire life.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

I see.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

I didn't have a secure childhood.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

And when you say security, like financially, you're talking about or having things.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

I'm talking in every way. You mostly financially we were always poor. How are we gonna make it to next month? How are we gonna make it through this year?

SPEAKER_02 16:51

I see.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

But my mother was an alcoholic. I did not have a secure childhood in any way.

SPEAKER_02 16:59

Anyway, gotcha. You grew up in an alcoholic environment with your mother. She was alcoholic and drank all through growing up, basically. Yes. Yeah, gotcha. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

She wasn't drunk when she died, but that's what killed her.

SPEAKER_02 17:12

When you reflect back on growing up in your family and your relationship with your mother and so on, what's the kind of feelings that you have about that? And can you get in touch with the feelings you must have felt back then being in this kind of environment?

SPEAKER_00 17:30

Anger, okay, frustration, bitterness, okay. A certain amount of fear that she would die suddenly and leave me in charge of my sister, which she did. My sister's an adult. She did exactly what I told her she would do if she didn't stop drinking. She died suddenly without warning, left me a big mess to clean up.

SPEAKER_03 17:52

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Just like I told her.

unknown 17:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

It happened exactly as I said it would. It just didn't happen when I was still a minor. I guess I was lucky enough that she waited till I was an adult instead of dying in the middle of the night like I predicted as a child.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

To do you a favor, but not much of a favor, it sounds like no.

SPEAKER_00 18:13

Yeah, I don't even need to get in touch with how I felt back then. I'm still bitter. Yeah, okay. All right.

SPEAKER_02 18:19

I gather that's understandable that you would have bitter feelings about growing up in an alcoholic environment. And I'm sure, you know, that by its very nature creates an environment of insecurity where you can't count on the people around you to be present to you and to honor you and so on. So that's all.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

Yeah, that's in it in a nutshell. She would put food on the table. I don't begrudge her that. That was always her justification, is that she was a functional alcoholic. Yeah, she was functional. She went to work. I can only think of a few times where she called out because she had been drunk the night before. So she went to work, she put food on the table. You know, she did those things. I don't deny that it could have been worse. But it wasn't great. I still had to raise myself and my sister.

SPEAKER_02 19:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

You mean all through childhood and up until a certain age, you had to raise yourself or have you ever heard people talk about where like the age that somebody becomes an alcoholic or a drug addict is the age that they stay forever? Have you ever heard people talk about it?

SPEAKER_02 19:28

Yeah, yeah. I think there's a lot to that. Right. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

She was 14 when she became an alcoholic and a drug addict.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

I see.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

I raised her. The degree that you can raise someone who's stuck at the age of 14.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

You were pushed or placed in that role, being her caretaker, being taking care of her.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Yeah. I was I was the other adult in a house that barely had an adult in.

SPEAKER_02 19:51

Real quickly, so where was your father in all this?

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Oh, they split up when I was two.

SPEAKER_02 19:57

Okay, so your father's out of the picture growing up, basically.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

Yeah. Okay. I know him. He sometimes calls me. He didn't come to my mother's service because he was at a bowling tournament. And then she never married my sister's father, but he was disabled from an injury, and he couldn't even drive. And she ultimately told him, If you move here, I'm going to have to do so much caring for you that I'm just going to become resentful because I'm not going to have another adult to help me. I'm going to have to care for you so much that it's going to ruin what relationship we have. So she basically refused to marry him.

SPEAKER_03 20:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

And I understand that because she was always overwhelmed. Like she tried to be an adult. She just wasn't very good at it.

SPEAKER_03 20:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

And she loved us. Okay. So you just wasn't very good at it.

SPEAKER_02 20:59

So can you say even though she was alcoholic, you felt loved? In some ways, yeah, you felt loved.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

She was vocal about it. Internally. She was also very vocal about how stressful it was to be the mother of two children on her own. Okay. And she was also very vocal about how it was our fault she didn't have a husband. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

So she wouldn't blame you for things.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

She was also vocal about how stressful her life was.

SPEAKER_02 21:30

Okay. And so again, I'm when I get the picture here. She spent a lot of her time complaining about things.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Oh, yeah. And complaining. She was very unhappy.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

Yeah, gotcha. Okay. But you were subject to that, it sounds like. You know, I was the only one there for her to complain to. Yeah. I imagine you must have felt or did you feel a certain sense of responsibility for her situation given that she was blaming you?

SPEAKER_00 21:58

When I was younger, I did. I felt like I had to be non-difficult to make things easier for her.

SPEAKER_02 22:07

Okay. So did you learn to be the good girl?

SPEAKER_00 22:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 22:11

Did okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:12

I was largely perfect and helpful. And then I grew up and realized that she was the adult in the situation. So if she really felt that a husband would have made everything better, it shouldn't have mattered whether or not my sister and I were upset that when she went out on dates. She should have just gone out on dates and found herself a husband. If she really felt that was the magic recipe that was gonna turn her life around, as the adult, she should have made the decision that was best for the family and done it. And at that point, it shifted from responsibility to feeling even more bitter than I already did.

SPEAKER_02 22:52

Oh okay. So this bitterness has an origin, right? In terms of the situation you're describing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

When I got old enough to understand this was not how every family lived, I got bitter.

SPEAKER_02 23:06

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

And have remained through my life.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

So I'm really interested in this. So the bitterness is there as we speak?

unknown 23:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:15

It's like you live with this bitterness, this resentment, right? Bitterness, resentment. That when you think about your past and your relationship with your mother and all the things that occurred and all the things that were missing for you, and so on. And now your mother is leaving you a mess to clean her mess up again. It's like she she's once again putting you in that role of being her caretaker. You're forced into this role again now, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Again, yeah. Yeah. I thought I was finally out as an adult, but spoiler alert, you're never out.

Boundaries That Turn Into Isolation

SPEAKER_02 23:47

Yeah. I'm curious about the the feeling of resentment and bitterness. Has this bitterness and resentment taken a toll on your life? Has it impacted your life living with this?

SPEAKER_00 23:57

I guess it's made me wary of being taken advantage of.

SPEAKER_02 24:02

Weary of being taken advantage of.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

Yeah. Like I set boundaries to protect myself, and I maybe sometimes hold them a little bit stronger than I should. The bound just how do I put that? I don't ever want to be in the position where I feel like I'm being taken advantage of again. Where I feel like I'm being forced into a role.

SPEAKER_02 24:24

I don't ever want to be in a position where I've been taking where I'm being taken advantage of again. You're saying that. I don't want to be in that position. But are you finding yourself in that position now?

SPEAKER_00 24:38

No, because I don't let people get close to taking advantage of me.

SPEAKER_02 24:42

So you push people away?

SPEAKER_00 24:45

Yeah, not completely. Like I'm varied.

SPEAKER_02 24:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

Like varied, and I have close friends, but I am very analytical about people's roles in my life. If I start to feel like they're taking advantage of me, I'm quick to remove myself from that situation.

SPEAKER_02 25:06

Okay, so cautious, would you say, with people? To be on guard, let's say, of not being taken advantage of. I'm curious about that.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

Can you recall the last time that you felt you were beginning to be taken advantage of and you short circuited that I started setting these kind of boundaries for how I allowed people to be in my life in college? I cut off a friend I had since elementary school because she was taking advantage of me and our friendship.

SPEAKER_03 25:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

I ended a 20-year friendship. She was taking advantage of me. And since then, I have only developed one good friendship outside of my college friends.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

Oh, yeah, even as we speak?

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Yeah. I have some superficial friends who I'm friendly with and I chat with, but I have only developed one like moderately close friendship.

SPEAKER_02 26:09

Since college.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

I'm 37, so 17 years.

SPEAKER_02 26:12

17 years, I gotcha. This is one of the things that I hear in what you're saying. It's I learned to anticipate that I can't trust people.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 26:24

I'm anticipating that I'm going to be taken advantage of, so I've got to be very careful and on guard. And so I hear that you approach situations that way. And so I'm wondering, what's the impact of that for you in terms of your freedom to be yourself? And your joy in life and your happiness. Is that impacting your sense of well-being and yourself?

SPEAKER_00 26:55

I feel like I'm isolated.

SPEAKER_02 26:58

Isolated, right? Yeah. Not only that you feel isolated, it sounds like you actively isolate yourself. Is that true?

SPEAKER_03 27:04

Yeah. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 27:05

I isolate myself out of fear that if I don't, I might be taken advantage of, and I don't want to experience that. So I'm going to play it safe and isolate.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Yeah, I'm isolated. I wouldn't say I have a ton of joy in my life. Okay. But the friends I do have were very close. And obviously I'm married and my husband and I love each other deeply. The relationships I do have, I'm very satisfied with, but it does not uh leave me open to many other relationships. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:39

You limit yourself, you limit the possibilities in your life to your relationship network of people.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

Yeah, I limit myself, not just on relationships, but also experiences. There's so much in the world I don't trust.

SPEAKER_02 27:53

Um people. Real quickly going back, so what am I mistrusting? I don't trust. I'm anticipating that people are going to take advantage of me. Is that what the mistrust is?

SPEAKER_00 28:07

That's part of it, but I guess more for me. I see so much bad in people.

SPEAKER_02 28:17

Okay. When you say bad in people, does that mean people you encounter or just people in general or humanity?

SPEAKER_00 28:24

These days, definitely humanity. Good lord. I don't think we've ever seen a clearer picture of the darkness of humanity than we're seeing right now in the United States. Um, so definitely humanity as a whole, but I think people as well see bad in them.

SPEAKER_02 28:42

Well, give me when you say bad in them or people, is there any specific them in your life or people that you're not anymore.

SPEAKER_00 28:51

But friends I used to have, I'd see how they were manipulating or attempting to manipulate me or other people around them. I saw how they treated other people around them, or sometimes me. And not just taking advantage, but also just being cruel or emotionally abusive, verbally abusive. I've seen so much bad behavior like that. I generally do not trust other people.

SPEAKER_02 29:21

Yeah. How did you feel coming into this conversation?

SPEAKER_00 29:26

Curious about which direction it was gonna go because I didn't know exactly what I wanted to talk about when I came into it. So it was curious.

SPEAKER_02 29:34

Did you anticipate? Am I gonna be able to trust this person?

SPEAKER_00 29:38

Am I gonna I guess not so much because this is just gonna be like a session. If it had been me looking for the more permanent like therapy situation, that definitely would have been a factor. But I guess I felt like a singular session was a relatively low stakes maneuver.

SPEAKER_02 29:57

I gotcha. Okay. All right. How do you feel so far talking about all this?

SPEAKER_00 30:02

Anything talking about this sense of unburdened a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 30:06

Okay, all right, a little unburdened.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

Sometimes it's nice to speak your truth out loud.

SPEAKER_02 30:13

If I could summarize what I'm hearing that refers to just about all of us, is that we make certain decisions in our lives based on past situations and circumstances. And I guess one of the decisions that I hear you may have made somewhere is basically I can't trust anybody. Or I guess I'm gonna be hurt because that's been your experience, and you couldn't trust people. But one of the things to consider in that is well, you're not in that environment anymore. You can decide in the moment whether this person is trustworthy or not. But I hear that you you've developed a view of people in general that basically says, I have to be very careful or guarded here, so I'm gonna hold myself back. And so in that, you hold yourself back from possibilities other than what you anticipate to discover okay, maybe this isn't such a bad situation, or maybe I can trust this person, but you base your decision on in the moment rather than anticipating that I can't trust

Intuition Versus Shutting Doors

SPEAKER_02 31:24

this person.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

Maybe a real well-defined intuition. It's like reading microexpressions and tonality, because I grew up having to do that to decipher what the situation at home was. But most of the time I feel like my intuition is spot on. But sometimes I worry that my intuition is dialed a little higher than it should be, and maybe I'm reading into things more situational rather than personality, and shutting doors too quickly because I'm perceiving warning signs that might really just be situational frustrations. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:00

Well, that's a great insight, especially to trust your intuition. You know, certain situations and relationships have an unfolding. It's like you don't know where things are gonna go until you experienced it for a few beats or something. And uh that's where your intuition gets activated because you feel things with people. Again, what you feel with people doesn't necessarily uh need to stop you. You can I'm sure you have a sense of do you have a sense of me, by the way? Just what's your initial impression if you want to share anything of this stranger that's sitting before me? Anything?

SPEAKER_00 32:39

My initial impression of you is that you're curious. That like you want to understand the full scope of things.

SPEAKER_02 32:46

Anything else? Any other just a sense of how you experience me. I'm not just I'm just curious how you experience this person that's entering your life for the very first time.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

You seem calm. Yeah, it it reminds me of a library.

SPEAKER_02 33:11

Okay, a library, okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

Curiosity and calmness.

SPEAKER_02 33:14

Curiosity, calmness that's your intuition, right? I say that's pretty accurate. Yeah, I can relate to that. Spot on. Good. All right, yeah. We're coming towards the end of our meeting here. I know there's always more that you can always focus on in yourself and your life, and so on. And sometimes these sessions can just activate self-awareness to come to terms with something, let's

Closing Check Out And Takeaways

SPEAKER_02 33:41

say. But so this is the way we end each meeting is to take just a moment to check in with your here and now experience sitting here right now. And just a word. So, what's my here and now feeling state coming to a close? And uh is there anything that I take away from this conversation at all?

SPEAKER_00 33:59

I feel lighter because it's been a while since I've gotten the chance to say some of this stuff out loud. To a third party. I say it to my sister, like she knows how I feel. We've talked a lot about how we feel this past year. I say it to my friends and my husband, but it's been a while, it's different you unburden yourself to someone new, someone outside of the group. So I certainly feel lighter, more unburdened. I feel maybe a little too self-aware because you hit the nail that I'm probably closing myself up too much, I'm shutting too many doors. And having that validated, I'm now feeling like too self-aware. Okay, we need to deal with that soon.

SPEAKER_02 34:47

That's great. Okay, good. Yeah, so one of the ideas here in therapy anyway, activates things that maybe try to bury, let's say. And yeah, so if something gets activated and verifies your sense of what you already feel, yeah, maybe I'm limiting myself, right? And then I can open up a new possibility for you, just in terms of making a decision. Maybe connecting with someone that comes into your life and see where that goes, let's say. Our lives are a series of relationships and encounters anyway. Some people come into our lives, but all an opportunity to, yeah, just be aware and see what's possible. All right, okay, all right, coming to a close here then. So, yeah, so it's good to have met you and get to know you a little bit here. Just want to wish you well in your ongoing life journey. And uh appreciate that. That's my hope.

SPEAKER_00 35:43

Thank you so much. Okay, sounds good.

SPEAKER_02 35:45

Okay, very good. Okay, wish you well. Take care.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

All right, have a nice day. Bye bye.