Feeling differently towards a parent after counselling... what to do?

[Beanstalks]

I've been having counselling for some time due to a messy divorce, but we recently moved on to the topic of my parenting.

My mother has been a big emotional support during my divorce at times, however there have been some things that she's said which have made my counsellor gasp a few times. One of the them being an implication that she made that it was my fault for leaving home and moving in with my ex husband that she met her last partner who turned out to be an alcoholic.

Anyway, we've dug a bit deeper in recent weeks and now things that happened in that past appears to be impacting on my relationship with my mum in the present, despite us being close over the last few years. I actually feel at a point where I don't want to speak to her. We've unearthed feelings of neglect during my teen years, affairs which I shouldn't have known about but did, the times she got drunk and embarrassed me infront of my friends. Her spoiling my 30th birthday party by getting very drunk... etc

I have argued with her twice in two weeks and we never usually argue at all. She's definitely emotionally healthier than she used to be, but there are still things she says that don't feel very supportive at times. I am really struggling as the trips down memory lane have altered my current perception of her.

How do you deal with this when counselling has this kind of impact? How do I manage my relationship with my mum now that I'm experiencing these negative feelings about her? I know that if I talk through anything with her, she'll just become the victim.

how else do we teach the next generation about acknowledging when they hurt others without modelling how we make amends for when we hurt people.
I can act as a model for making amends, but I can't mould my mother into someone capable of acting as a model. What does it teach the next generation if I try to get my mother to apologise and she cries her eyes out, runs to her room, slams the door and doesn't speak to me for months? (That's what happened when I brought up some bad behaviour on her part, as I described above.)
My mother is terrified of criticism as she is her own worst critic already, and any sign of criticism from someone else makes her think that all the nasty things she thinks about herself secretly must be true. Part of her still lives in a black and white world of Catholic nun upbringing where if you do anything remotely bad, you're a sinner who will go to hell.

I can show my children how to be aware of my mother's poor behaviour and not to condone or copy it while also treating her with understanding.

"You can apologise and then…"
Having them recognise the validity of what you feel is all that an adult child wants. For the parent to make room for that without a blanket 'no one is perfect' defense because that's what hurts the adult child all over again, seeing that the parent can't make the child's feelings paramount at any point. And of course the adult child if they are a parent will have let their children down at times too. Is this a reason to not seek genuine connections and understanding? 'I won't acknowledge how this person hurt me because I will then have to acknowledge how I have hurt people' We can ALL heal and help eachother heal. What loving parent wouldn't want that?

"I can show my children how to be aware of my mother's poor behaviour and not to condone or copy it while also treating her with understanding."

You can only model for yourself how you want your children to navigate difficult relationships. How would you want your children to handle that behaviour in a spouse?

I showed my children how to deal with poor behaviour in a spouse by divorcing the spouse in quesion. That's an action I could take. I couldn't make their dad apologise for his bad behaviour, though.

@Cleotolstoy How have you gone about extracting an apology from someone who was not capable of/willing to provide one? As I say, I haven't found a successful method myself.

Some of the responses on here have made me very angry - the whole 'just forget about it, she's your mum' brigade is out in force today I see.

My mother blames me for my father having an affair and leaving her. I made him 'feel old' by getting married. He was 42, I was 21. I got married because both parents had threatened to 'disown' me if I lived with my fiance. My fiance wasn't even allowed upstairs in our house (because my bedroom was upstairs).

That happened 34 years ago. I've heard 'it was your fault' regularly since then. She said again, just in the last 6 months.

But apparently I should 'let it go' because 'she's my mum'.

Fuck that.

I think the discussion has been a little more nuanced and thoughtful than that.

What you wouldn't tell someone who wanted someone to acknowledge hurtful behaviour is tell them they shouldn't want it and that person is protected from consequences because we need to feel sorry for them. Do we want to model such one sided relationships to our children 'Now kids, in this relationship this person's feelings are always the most important' Isn't that just the script in harmful relationships. (Im not sure if your mother's reaction was in keeping with the history of your relationship or unusual for her)

We can only control our behaviour and willingness for open communication. I guess that's who I'm talking too. Parents who can change and do things differently and better. Many parents wouldn't even be discussing this issue of an adult child's feelings

I think the fact she is an alcoholic is very relevant. You are never going to be able to have a really good, healthy, functional relationship with an alcoholic. I definitely think taking a step back and putting in strong boundaries are good ideas if you want to remain in contact. That is how you move forward. Definitely worth discussing how you can move forward in counselling, how much you are willing to accept and where you draw the line. It might also be worth thinking about the future - how would you handle it if your mother became ill and expected to be able to depend on you to be able to do more and more for her for example.

She’s a problem drinker. She embarrassed you in front of friends, presumably as a child, and also at your 30th. It’s not a new thing. Her ending up in a relationship with another problem drinker is everything to do with her and nothing to do with you.

We don’t tend to closely examine family relationships until someone or something prompts us to do so. When you do, you realise that you haven’t looked at them properly as an adult with an adult’s perspective. It can be shocking.

It doesn’t mean that the relationship ends but it can mean that you are more aware of wrong notes and you might want to change the way you interact.

I think that estranged parents sometimes flood threads like these and give a very one sided view. There’s nothing wrong with therapy.

I'd be delighted if my mother apologised, but hopelessly focusing on wanting her to apologise makes me feel worse, whereas understanding that she is not capable of apologising makes me feel better; calmer, able to let the old feelings of hurt heal. That won't be the same for everyone. We all react differently. But as that way of thinking about it has helped me, I can offer it up for OP to consider or reject, too. Maybe it will help her, maybe something else will.

What do I want to model to my children? That you do have to develop a certain amount of resilience, yes. But also that you don't have to ignore things: you can talk about poor behaviour, and talking about it helps. For me, that alone is a big step forwards. My children are already in their 20s now, though, so they're well on their way to developing their own attitudes. Hopefully they'll be another step removed from the Catholic nuns' doings than I was.

I don't think its about receiving an apology, although this would be nice.

its about acknowledging that whatever hurt someone has experienced themself does not excuse the hurt they inflicted upon others

the one thing I've learned in my adult life, that I wish I knew when I was younger, is that we dont have to forgive people and maintain close relationship with them just because long time has passed or because they're sorry. Especially if they're still do the same thing over and over again

@FreeRider , what you are describing is something ongoing. I dont think anyone has said we should just forget about it. This is happening now, this needs to be addressed.

What I and some other posters have talked about is stuff that happened the past. Let’s say your mum was shouting and getting angry all the time. It doesn’t happen anymore but it’s still affecting you (as in you still tend to be a people pleaser and avoid confrontation). That’s different. The anger and the shouting isn’t there anymore.
Do you want to let it go? Well I think it’s a personal thing and will depend on a lot if other things going in at the same time. I have let it go. You might chose not to. Both are ok.

@Cleotolstoy the way you handle situation between you and a parent and you and a spouse are very different imo. The relationships are different.

And, to go back to the same stuff, you don’t address historical issues in the same way than you address present ones.

"I couldn't make their dad apologise for his bad behaviour, though."

80s, you don't have to answer of course but could there be a link with how your mum behaves and why you chose your ex?

"the way you handle situation between you and a parent and you and a spouse are very different imo. The relationships are different."

Who decides the rules? Shouldn't we expect respect in all relationships? I would argue that the closest relationships should have the most robust expectations of respect and kindness, not the lowest. And the problem with saying that the parent/child relationship is somehow sacrosanct is that it really sets the tone for ALL the relationships that child will go on to have in their life. A child who is manipulated by their parents through guilt and shame won't magically become an adult who has healthy relationship boundaries.

could there be a link with how your mum behaves and why you chose your ex?

Well yes, in that I thought he was the source of all wisdom because he grew up in an apparently healthy family where the parents did not have screaming fits, sulk or constantly put one another down in front of the kids. Turned out they swept everything under the carpet instead, which was his choice of personality issue, too. Eager not to reproduce my own poor parental model, I misinterpeted his refusal to argue in a perfectly normal, healthy way and thought he was a peace-loving angel rather than conflict avoidant 🤦‍♀

''@watchwhich
This shouldn't really happen in therapy so I would kindly suggest maybe you shouldn't see the counsellor any more. Perhaps consider a psychotherapist?''

Daft...

The whole point of therapy is to address difficult issues. Of course things are going to come out that will be unsettling for the client and it often helps reassess the relationships you have with family, friends and so on and be able to better understand whether these relationships are healthy or not.

So the counsellor is simply doing their job as they should.

watchwhich meant that the gasping shouldn't happen (she explained later).
If it was just a slight intake of breath and a surprised look, for instance, I think it's defensible, as I explained above.

the way you handle situations between partners and parents if different if you are very self-aware.otherwise people tend to fall into the same patterns of behaviour regardless on the person they interact with

for example: if your parents has taught you that you should be forever forgiving or that its ok to get wasted in front of kids then accepting this behaviour as an adult when performed by another adult will be even more obvious

My therapist helped me see my parents not in relation to myself but as people in their own right with their own flaws and mistakes. I still went NC but it helped me find a bit of peace with it.

I think your parents are important because they are the blueprint for how we see relationships and how we behave. I think it’s reasonable to discuss your relationship with your mum to understand yourself.

One of the key things to remember with therapy is that it doesn’t reveal the objective and complete truth about the past- it reveals your feelings about the past. These are valid and important but don’t mistake them for the complete picture.

Take one incident, for example- your mum getting drunk at your birthday. Therapy can help you access your feelings about that and process them and that’s really useful. What it can’t do, obviously, is give you a complete and comprehensive objective account of what happened that day- how could it? There will be bits in there where you misremember, where your perspective is coloured by your own mental state, plus of course everything going on in your mum’s head which you don’t know about…that’s not to say that what the therapy is revealing is untrue or unhelpful, far from it, but it is partial and incomplete. A therapy session is not a trial designed to determine who was in the wrong- the aim is to help you process your experience.

It may be that the issue is simply that you’re only part way through the process. You’re gradually realising that your mum did some things that affected you when you were younger- which she did- and you’re part way along the path of understanding that effect. You’re also part way along the path of understanding your mum as a flawed and imperfect person, like the rest of us, and this all takes a lot of time. This is one of the reasons therapists ask you not to quit suddenly- it’s a bad idea to open everything up and then just leave it like that. The idea is that you can then put it away tidily and accessibly, so that those feelings are something you are aware of and can access but don’t have a negative effect on you day to day.

I do think there’s a question mark over whether this is the right time to be digging into the past with your mum. If you’re struggling with the divorce, it may not be the right time for you to be going through this process. I think in your shoes is raise all this with your therapist and explain how you’re feeling and the impact it’s having on your ability to accept support from your mum now, and agree the best way to proceed, which may be to step back a little from this area for now. (I’m assuming here that you are seeing an experienced and qualified therapist or psychologist who will capable of dealing with this.)

I don’t think you should confront your mum- see my points above about what therapy is uncovering not being an impartial picture. When you say your mum would “play the victim” it seems you mean that she would want to put her own side of the story, and that would be fair enough. I can’t see that this would be helpful to either of you at this stage. You need to give it all a lot more time.

Sorry, what an epic.

I do think there’s a question mark over whether this is the right time to be digging into the past with your mum. If you’re struggling with the divorce, it may not be the right time for you to be going through this process.
I looked into my upbringing with a therapist in the context of my separation because my upbringing played a key role in the issues in my marriage and in how I felt about my exh and the separation. I had to deal with the older issues to deal with the current ones.
It's true that it may not be a great time for a showdown, though!

Oh sure- not saying that it’s never right to be looking back while also dealing with current struggles, only that the right timing and pace depend on the individual. Something to talk about.

80s what will you say to your adult children if they tell you their dad runs off and slams doors and won't talk to them for months when they want to talk about things he feels uncomfortable about? Do you tell them to never bring up things he is uncomfortable about? Do you coach them to put his feelings first? To not have a voice and to just accept that he is too fragile to have to face difficult feelings? That he had a hard life and that if they care for him they won't have their own needs in the relationship?

I'd sympathise with them and say that his behaviour is shit. What would you do?

Without my therapist gasping on occasion, other times expressing anger and even tearing up once or twice, I would still be stuck in a toxic shame spiral, blaming myself for things that were not my fault. When your own view of things is distorted, sometimes you need somebody else to model the appropriate reaction.