To confide in wider family or not?

[hopelessmum1]

I was advised by a counsellor a few years ago to open up to my wider family about violence towards me by my late father, as my immediate family didn't believe me. This seemed like such a good, hopeful idea, as I believed they would be sympathetic. The reality though has been just a-w-f-u-l. They just don't know what to say to me, there has just been a long embarrassed silence and no response to my gentle attempts to build relationships with them in lieu of my immediate family. Was I wrong, was my counsellor wrong or are my family just unkind? The advice has exposed the horrible lack of intimacy within the family, and left me feeling very exposed and stupid.

I think it would have been a good idea for your counsellor to get a better idea of your relationship with your wider family first and maybe go through the potential downsides if it didn't work out

That's really tough as its now left you having to deal with another issue of your wider families reactions.
I would have expected your counsellor to talk through what might happen and what if any benefits to you this would have.
If your wider family includes your aunts and uncles then it will be tough for them to accept their brothers failings.

Hope you are ok its a hard situation for you.

That's really unfortunate OP, but they obviously don't know what to do with the very upsetting information you are sharing. They might be struggling to get their head around it as it doesn't fit with their experience, wondering why it's come up now, worrying about saying the wrong thing, wondering what you want them to do/say or they may have their own experiences of him being violent that they would rather keep buried.

What you did wasn't wrong at all. I think though that your counsellor really should have talked through the possible outcomes with you and how you could/would handle them. It seems like your relatives would prefer your abuse to remain unsaid so if I were you I would just pretend you never said it to them. It's clear they are not going to be able to support you in the way you hoped and you can't encourage, persuade or force them to be different. You just have to accept they are not up to the job.

It's disappointing but now you know the score. You need to always remember though that you are the victim here and you have done nothing wrong in looking for support from family.

The other thing I should have realised is that they don't necessarily get on with each other, so treating them as a 'family group' creates tensions. Exhausted by it all really. I would think carefully before following this strategy.