I’d love to be able to say that it was my choice with my choice of a therapist. It wasn’t. Rather, it was the exact opposite.
In my teenage years, when I was getting too ‘rebellious’ (according to my mother, and looking back on it, gosh, I was a strait-laced well-behaved kid) my mother essentially forced me to go to therapy. It wasn’t a licensed therapist but rather a pastor at the local Lutheran church (not slagging this) because it was cheap….as in, she didn’t have to pay for it. Furthermore, she essentially forced me to go three times a week and then once back at home sat me down and brow-beat me into telling her what I told the pastor.
This went on for three years.
At the time, all I really thought about it was that it saved me from going home right away after school. I didn’t give it much credence because it didn’t do anything for me. I didn’t feel unburdened or validated, and I didn’t feel like I worked through difficult things even though it caused me to cry. I certainly didn’t feel like my home life was getting any better because I was doing this.
As an adult, I have feelings about this first experience with therapy.
A pastor is one of those people who work with children regularly and fall under the auspices of ‘duty to report’ laws of Canada. Now, I wonder why he never reported my mother or if he did, why did nobody investigate it. For I remember clearly how I told him straight up all the abusive shit my mother did to me and my brother. Like, it would have been bleeding hard to ignore how awfully she treated me. So, as an adult, many years out of the situation, I have many questions about why did nobody do anything about it. To be clear I am not saying that the pastor did nothing, because for all I know he could have tried to do something, but he was ignored. It’s a clear breakdown of government mandated reporting system for somewhere along the line the report of what happened in our household got lost, ignored, or even simply kept being pushed down the list of a million things they have to do. But as a child who had no one else to go to because every other place I turned to for help failed me, frankly, talking to this man was a chance for something to happen. And when it didn’t, it confirmed that I was alone in the world with no one having my back, the altruistic kindness of people being naught but a myth. I don’t think the pastor meant to, but he definitely impacted my concept and understanding of the world.
Furthermore, any potential positives of talking to an adult about my life in a therapeutic setting was negated by the very fact that my mother was supremely interested in everything I told him. I had to do a delicate dance of not admitting everything I told the pastor (I wasn’t stupid and telling her the things I said about her would have been stupid) but also giving her a bone so she’d leave me alone. Eventually, it got to the point where I would say how much I hated myself, how stupid/wicked/evil I was, how my mother was a saint to put up with me etc. to her every time she asked because I knew that was what she wanted to hear. She put me in therapy because she wanted me to come around to her point of view (including the point of how badly behaved I was and how she was a saint), and I quickly learned if I told her that she felt validated and kept me going. So, it was two-fold, I told her those things she wanted to hear to keep myself out of trouble and to keep going because it was another hour that I wasn’t in the hell that was home. Looking back on it now, I can see how doing this delicate dance hurt my psyche. You know the psychological principle of how you say it often enough and with enough strength eventually you believe it? I think in a small part, I did start to believe what I was telling her, and it did affect my self-esteem for years to come.
Lastly, it was the first experience I had of a semi-private place to vent my spleen about life. The pastor didn’t really do anything other than just listen to me go on with a nod of the head or low murmur of ‘I’m listening’. So, while I didn’t get the experience of having a therapist ask probing questions as I did later in university, I did get something equally important: I got a taste of what it was like to have a semi-safe place to organize my thoughts, explore my experiences and come to terms with events in life. I don’t think she meant it as an experience that would open new doors for me in the future and a way to truly start the process of healing, I am pretty sure she wanted the exact opposite to occur and keep me in the same little puddle she had me in throughout my childhood.
All in all, this first experience of therapy is a contradictory ball of wax, and not from the usual reasons of having to work through trauma and issues which cause complicated contradictory ball of feelings.
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