How would you feel if someone didn't really "understand" the whole thing about your toxic parents?

[rainbowchair]

Talking with someone who knows I have had counselling and no longer have contact with my toxic parents. (I wrote recently about my mum blaming my genes for the "way I am" i.e. not putting up with her crap anymore). My mum was always very passive aggressive whereas my dad was very aggressive, a bully, always shouting and screaming etc. He once through my mum to the ground and she said afterwards she thought he was going to kill her.

Anyway, this person I was chatting to started going on about how counselling causes more problems then it solves, makes people see trauma where there wasn't any and is generally really bad. He said that people go to counselling end up not speaking to their parents anymore because they "didn't buy them that piece of cheese they wanted when they were 5". He said to me that I had gone NC with my parents only after counselling. He has previously said that he thinks I should just let bygones be bygones and ring my parents up and bury the hatchet.

I took quite a lot of offence to this and took it all very personally. He started to backtrack saying this was his view of counselling generally because he has lots of friends who have been fucked up by it. I'm thinking I don't really want this person as my friend anymore as I feel like they don't get it, or me, and like they don't respect my decision. My parents have gaslighted me my whole life and I don't like the feeling of someone not believing me etc.

I suppose this is a bit of an AIBU. I was interested to see other people's take on this.

Well he clearly doesn't "get it" probably either because he is lucky enough not to have anything that may have led to the need for counselling or because he's happy minimising or burying things. Either way he's entitled to his view like you're entitled to yours. The question is whether he should share his opinion with you and whether you can deal with his view.

If you can accept that he has a fundamentally different perspective on something important to you (and reconcile the fact that this perspective will lead him to disagree with some of your choices) then there's no issue. If you can't then let the friendship go. None of us have to share the same views on everything for a friendship to work but those differences have to be ones you can live with or it'll never be a proper friendship in any case.

If you do decide to step away don't feel awkward or guilty about it. It's a perfectly normal part of the evolution that relationships go through. Some evolve and stick, some don't.

errr sorry fro Perfectstorms post

IME there are not a lot of people who understand or even want to, unless they have been through a similar experience or dynamic themselves. I think as a whole people and society itself seems a lot less empathetic than it used to be.

On these boards there seems to be a lot more understanding than there is in RL Thats my experience anyway.