Encore: Family Struggles: How We Move Through Them

to today's session. This week we'll get updates from last season sessions to find out how our advice worked out a year later. I was always taught that your parents will live with you and you take care of them for the rest of your life. There's no other option. So when you both presented something else to me and gave me permission of a sort, that that was life changing.

First A quick note, Dear Therapist is for information purposes only, does not constitute medical or psychological advice, and it's not a substitute for professional healthcare advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician, mental health professional, or unqualified health provided with any questions you may have regarding

a medical or psychological condition. By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let I Heart Media use it in part or in full, and we may edit it for length and clarity. And the sessions you'll hear all names have been changed for the privacy of our fellow travelers. Hey Guy, Hey Laurie. So I'm really excited for today because we're doing our second Where They Now episode, And in these episodes, we follow up with people who came on season one to hear how they're doing a year later.

And what we've noticed is that certain episodes fall under certain themes. In our first Where They Now, a lot of that was about what we've learned about love, and in this episode, we're going to be talking a lot about what happens in emilies. And so we were talking last time about how we get very attached to the people that we talked to and how invested we are in their lives and their situations. And we're going to start off today with someone that a lot of our

listeners have been asking about, and that is Molly. Molly is one of the people I thought about most throughout this year. And just as a reminder to you all, Molly was dealing with the aftermath of her father who had died by suicide, and her mother then blamed Molly for having caused this. And there was also quite a history with her mother that went back way before this had happened. There really was. Molly's mom was living with Molly and her husband and kids, so there was really

no escape for Molly. In addition, Molly was taking care of her mom still as she used to, by driving her to all her errands and appointments, and she wasn't I think, any gratitude for that, just more of the same hurtful comments she had been getting since childhood. So let's get a reminder from last year. So when my son was crying, I remember one time she came down the hallway pushed me out of the way to get

to his room and pick him up. At one point she would tell me, just because you gave birth to make your mother, So that was very hardful to me. You know, these these comments are so devastatingly cruel. Yes, it was very hartful. Sometimes when she made these comments and my dad would hear them, he was the one that would apologize to me because he was always the

one that apologized for her. What makes this even more painful is that it was your father who would be the voice of reason in this who could see you. He was the one who said, I'm sorry. She said that even if he didn't stand up to her, he acknowledged that it was not okay what she said. Wow, Lourie, hearing that brings back how distressed Molly was and how actually felt. Let's see what's happened in her life over

this past year. Hi, Laurie and Guy. So since the podcast, I listened to a couple of times, and the moment that you both told me that it was my call and that was my choice, that almost was a mind blowing moment where that option was never presented to me before because as a child and as an adult, I was always taught that your parents will live with you and you take care of them for the rest of your life. That's it. There's no other option. That was

the only option. So when you both presented something else to me, that was life change. So from that point on, with that mindset, I spoke to my mom again and I am I presented um an option for her where I will give her money and she can live comfortably in a different location. Help her out. So she did

not like that option, and she put some guilt on me. Ever, since I was a child, she took care of me, and so I turned the tables on her and I said, you know, I too, also took care of you, and that is longer than when you took care of me, because if you add all of those years up, I've actually started when I was a child helping them out. Wow, this is so amazing to hear that Molly truly understood

that she was not in jail. Right. Sometimes when we're doing these sessions, we don't know what the most important moment of that session will be for someone. We think it might be one thing, and then the person says, oh no, no, no, no, no, it was this. And for Molly, it was that moment when she realized that she had choices that she was no longer in jail. I think, as kids, we don't have those choices, and then we grew up to be adults and we think

that we're still in jail, but we're not. And there's this great cartoon that illustrates that. And it's a cartoon that I talked about in my Ted talk, and it's of a prisoner and the prisoner is shaking the bars desperately trying to get out. But on the right and the left it's open. There are no bars. All the prisoner has to do is walk around those bars. And I think that really relates to Molly and her situation.

And once she understood that it was open on the right and the left, that there were no jailers, that she could just walk out, Molly said, that's exactly what I'm going to do. And Molly is walking out. One of the things that kept Molly in jail for so long was this feeling of guilt an obligation. And when she had this exchange with her mom and her mom was trying to give her another guilt trip about it, Molly was like, I'm not going on that guilt trip

to me. That was so much the proof that she truly understood that she's free, because not only she refused to go on the guilt chip, she didn't actually was able to nullify the mom's argument by saying, no, I've taken care of you for more years and you have taken care of me, which is true, and that's the real sign that she really is free now and she can't be jailed by guilt, right, And it doesn't necessarily make it easy, but I think Molly was clear that

it was necessary, So let's hear a little bit more so from that point I got ugly. Of course, she would call my relatives and bad mouth me, and they called me to yell at me, and of course I hung up. I'm not listening to that. But anyways, it really made me realize that I really have no family at this point. Because everybody was on her side. She somehow convinced them decide with her, and nobody wants to

hear from me. So I thought, well, if they think it's I'm such a horrible person, I'm not doing a great job, then they can help you out. They can help you move, they can help you with your medical care, with anything you need. So who decided to move and sell the house, and they gave her some of that money, actually a lot of that money for her to live and I actually haven't been in touch with her, and

life has been fantastic after that. I don't have to hear the complaints, daily complaints, insults, criticism, lists of stuff for me to do. It's it's been very free, so I've been enjoying that. The aspect that is hard on me is that the decision that I made affected my kids because I took away their grandma, her and their relatives.

So that's been hard to grasp. Molly's honesty here about what she lost as well as what she gained is so important because she did lose her extended family, and her kids lost their grandmother and their aunts and uncles and their cousins, which is really heartbreaking. And so with

those gains also comes some loss. The fact that despite these really painful losses for her for her family, she is able to acknowledge that she feels so much freer and that she's enjoying her freedom to me as a statement about how much she was suffering in her day to day life with her mom in the home, because despite losing so much, Molly still feels like I came

out ahead and my family came out ahead. And I think that the gain for her kids is that get a happy mother, because we all know that when you grow up with a mother who is depressed and feels trapped and is miserable all the time, that is not good for your kids. It's not good modeling for them, and it interferes with the relationship that the kids have with the mother and that the mother has with the kids.

And so in freeing herself, while her kids did lose those other relationships, it does get them out of jail too, because they get to see a happy mother and they get to see a happy family. Because what happens when people get free is that they find other people to fill in the gaps for them, they find a surrogate family. And so being able to hold the both and of this, the good and the bad of her decision, is a

real sign of emotional strength. And I think it did a real favor not just to her, but to her entire immediate family. And I agree because attentions in that household must have been so significant. It's not as if the kids weren't aware of them or the husband wasn't aware of them. So it must have changed the entire vibe and culture of the household for the better. So I think Molly had a little bit more to tell us. Husband and I with m we work everything out. It's

or we work together, and it's been going great. Our relationship is really strong. So thank you so much for opening my eyes up and getting me on that prison. Thank you. I am so glad. Molly mentioned her husband. One of our assignments for her was to lean on him. Clearly they were coming together to work as a team

to make these big, big decisions. And when you come together and work as a team in a very difficult circumstance, it always strengthens your relationship, right, And we're always saying, go where the love is. So her mother loved her in a certain way that was also very toxic, and with the husband, there wasn't enough attention being paid to that relationship where all of the good, positive kind of love was coming in and that there was potential for more.

And so they decided together, yes, we're going to sell the house and get a house. That really signifies our starting a new chapter with our immediate family here, this positive chapter in our lives. And I think that they are going to get closer and closer. And I think for the husband, he is probably so relieved that he gets part of his wife back and she gets part of him. That isn't all about complaining about the mother.

They can have aspects to their relationship that are about the positive things in their lives, so there's not so much emotional real estate being taken up by the daily problems that were there because the mother was living in the house with them. This was such a difficult situation that Molly was in, and I'm sure that people had different thoughts and feelings about what she did. Our perspective is that she was able to free herself from something that was so damaging for so long and really get

her life back for the first time truly ever. And the fact that she did it by working with her husband is a great reminder that when you have a partner who's willing to help you get out of jail, use their support to make changes. And this was a big change, but sometimes it's a little change, whatever the change is that gets you out of jail. You're listening to Deal Therapists from my Heart Radio. We'll be back after a quick break. I'm Laurie Gottlieb and I'm Guy

Wench and this is Dear Therapists. So Guy Molly's situation is so common, not in the specifics, but in the sense of feeling like you're in a situation with a family member and you're kind of trapped. And that was the situation and with the next person we're hearing from, who is Lenny, And here the situation was reversed. It was a parent who was trying to have a relationship with his adult daughter and they had been alienated for t years. That's gonna reminder of that session. She said,

I changed my mind. I don't want you to come to my wedding. And I just asked her. I said, I don't understand what you're doing. Why you're doing this? And she said to me, she said, you weren't there for my teenage years, the last several years that I was growing up. It just weren't in my life. I said, I wasn't in your life because you kicked me out. But then you did end up coming to the wedding. How did that come about? I spoke to a rabbi and he insisted that I go, and so we went.

What happened when Julia did see you? Though, because she must have seen you there, I can't even remember having eye contact with her. To be honest, hasn't been contact at all between you and Julia's since then? And what efforts did you make sense then to try and stay in touch in some way? No, I would write letters, I would send gifts at first, but everything was unanswered. So let's hear what's been happening with Lenny. Hi, Laurie, and guy, this is Lennie. You want to know how

I've done over the past a year. In the beginning, when I was reaching out two or three times a week, it was making an impact. At first, I felt very nervous because it was it was something very scary and it was something very different. Then it became once a week, and it became every other week, and as time went on, I guess I would say I got used to the fact that I was getting absolutely zero response to whatever

I tried to do. You know, Laurie, I'm remembering that last year when he did the exercise for two weeks. He was nervous about it, but he felt really good about doing it, and his wife reported that he was in a better mood and he felt more empowered, and it was even carrying over to other aspects in the home life, things he was doing proactively. And now we're hearing that as the frequency dropped, then he began focusing on the fact that he wasn't getting a response. And

I can imagine how disheartening. This was him doing that so frequently and not getting a response, and we asked him to do that. The point of the exercise was that one of the last points of contact he had with Julia was her telling him that he wasn't there for her, and he was living with those doubts and questions for twenty five years, and we wanted him to do something that would really eliminate that so he would know that he's done all he could so he could

truly get to some peace with what's happening. I think it's worth mentioning too, that some listeners felt that our assignment would feel intrusive to Julia, and in situations where there has been any kind of abuse, verbal, physical, sexual, obviously this would not be the assignment, And of course we should also take into account that we're only getting

one side of the story. But we also felt that because we had his current wife on the call, who had witnessed the events over the years, who had been there for all of these years and knew Julia, it seemed to be that this was a case of either parental alien nation from Julia's mother or there was a huge miscommunication going on between Lenny and Julia during a pivotal time in Julia's life when she was a teenager, when she was a young adult, and she felt that

her father wasn't there for her, and she was deeply wounded by that experience. And so we didn't have high hopes here, given how long the estrangement had been going on, but we did want Julia to know that her father is here for her and in no uncertain terms, and if she chose not to respond to that, she chose not to respond to that, it wasn't going to go on for the rest of her life, but it was going to be a full blown campaign of I'm your father, I love you, and you can engage with me or

not engage with me. And so again, this was really for Lenny to know that he did absolutely everything he could to try to let Julia know that he's there for her. One other aspect people considering was actually, Lenny does this for a living. He's an attorney. He deals with families that are going through divorce and trying to reconcile.

And we didn't want Julia to feel like, hey, you know, you spent all your years fighting for other kids and their relationships with their parents, but you didn't fight for hours, and if that was something Julia was feeling, we really wanted her to know that now here he is, he is fighting. So let's see a little bit more about

what happened. So during the course of this year, I've sent Julia pictures that I dug up from the first ten years of her life, and it was showed the the times we share during those years, and I've continued sending your pictures right up until last week I sent your pictures. One thing that happens with parental estrangement or even just disagreements between parents and their children is that you have vastly different perspectives on what has actually happened

and moves towards connection. Bids for connection, we call them, are often misperceived as missing. The mark is being misunderstood.

So when Lenny says he sent pictures of the good times that he and Julia shared, I can imagine Julia thinking, you're trying to show that we had all these good times, But from my perspective, those were not good times at all, and it becomes this very all or nothing thing that I wonder if for Julia she can't hold both things at the same time that they did have these good times, and it was very stressful because her parents were in

this very contentious situation. Her mother was saying very negative thing is about the father. The mother was very hurt, and Julia might have felt loyalty towards the mother. So I can imagine that maybe these pictures did not land

in the way that they were intended to land. And I can understand from Lenny's perspective why it's so confusing, and it often is in cases of parental alienation, because you go back, you look at the pictures and you go, oh, wow, we had such a good relationship at points, and we had such good times together. How can you go from that to this? So it's very very difficult, and you really want to try to parent everything to try and get through. So let's hear how things ended up for Lenny.

In my career, I help other children, and I help other families, and I help them reunify and get through difficult times. And unfortunately, this is something that I just could not do in my own life with my own daughter, and for that, I'm very sad. It's it's but, but it's something that I've kept in mind now all this time, and I am very proud of the fact that I

can't help other people, and I think it's important. This past Sunday evening, I reached out again, and of course I got no response at all, and I've decided that there really is no point in continuing this. So at this point in time, I'm going to reach out to her again and I'm going to let her know that I'm not gonna keep doing this because frankly, it's just

too painful to me. But an important thing I got out of this is that I feel I've done whatever I can do and I've left no stone unturned, and I will be stopping this with knowing that I don't have doubts that I could have done more. So, I want to thank you for allowing me this opportunity with Julia to try one more time him and for a shot at reunification. I really commend Lenny for having the courage to do this. I know he was a little

bit reluctant. His wife was there for support, and I think she really supported it because she could see the toll that this was taking on him. And I think it's totally legitimate. After a year's worth of efforts to write to her and say this is too much for me, and say I'm not going to do it anymore because it's too difficult, it's too painful. But the sentiment is still there, and I just hope that this brought him peace.

One of the things that feels hopeful to me about this is that this is going to be a heartbreak that he's going to live with for the rest of his life. That's just what happens when you love someone and they have cut you out of their life. But at the same time, he had this wonderful relationship with his wife's children and grandchildren, and he got so much out of that. And sometimes we have to create our own families, and it sounds like Lenny did that. He

has a wife who loves him so much. He has the stepchildren and the step the grandchildren, and he will have to live with the both and of this, the not having Julia, which is heartbreaking, but also having this other family who can really see him for who he is, right And I think that that extra layer of the heartbreak goes on forever. But at least now he doesn't have the question whether he could have done more, or whether there was more to do, and I think that

makes a big difference. That would allow him to enjoy the family that he does have and his life going forward. So next we're going to hear from someone else who was also trying to redefine family, and that was Christine and Louis. There's so many dramatic stories these days with DNA testing being so popular. Here's what happened with Christine.

She was adopted and she knew that, and she thought she found her biological father when she became an adult, and she formed a very close relationship with him and his family. But then through DNA testing, she found out years later that the man she thought was her biological father in fact wasn't related to her, and another man was her biological father, and that shook every one sense of who they were and whose family and who cares about who, and what's going to happen from now. So

let's hear a bit from last year session. So now you know who both your biological parents are. What was it like to actually get that answer for you? Well, it's a huge relief. I mean, growing up was super important to me to have the answers as to who my pological parents were, and so it was pretty devastating in the period when then the person who was supposed to be my father wasn't my father, and I had another father there somewhere, So on the one hand, it

was a big relief. But then I have to say when I called him, when I was making that first call, it took me a really long time to do it. It was very overwhelmed by emotion. So even talking about it now, it's a little hard. Um. It was also kind of acknowledging that Alan, the man who was my father for the past twenty two years, acknowledging that he's being kind of replaced by someone else is again. I want to have a relationship with him, and he'll always

be a dad. But it was really solidifying, like this is real. This other person is my father and not Alan. So that's what was going on with Christine when we had our session, and let's hear how things have developed since then, and just for our listeners, when she refers to her family in this first update, she means Alan and his family Halloween guys, Christine from season one, Well, my family is still dealing with the results on certain levels.

The reframing of the situation you offered me that they might be just as afraid of losing me as I was afraid of losing them. Continues to be really helpful. Sometimes on the show, we have these situations that feel very specific to that person, but they're actually quite universal. And here the universality was this concept of reframes and why they're important because often people will come into therapy and they will have a very specific idea of a

version of a story. And with Christine, it was important for her to reframe the situation not so much of well, now that I know that the person I thought was my biological dad is not my biological dad, and will I lose him? That he might be thinking will I lose this woman who I've considered to be my daughter for the last twenty years. And this principle is actually one that plays out in life in many, many ways,

will be usually much less dramatically. It's that Prince Suple of all right, a certain set of circumstances or a context brought to people together, and then that circumstance or context changes, and so what does that mean for their relationship? So that plays out when you've been in a workplace and had worked friends for the past ten years, but then you go or they go somewhere else, what does

that mean about the friendship? Or when you graduate from college and your college friends and college roommates are now going all over the place, what does that mean for

your friendships? And it's always the case that if it's a close friendship, both sides are wondering about, well, what's going to happen now that the circumstances have changed, And a lot of people make the mistake of saying like, oh, well, so we'll talk, we'll be in touch soon, but they don't actually talk about what's going on and having that conversation saying hey, I'm not going to be working here anymore, or you're not gonna be working anymore, but I really

want to continue our friendship, and I hope that's good with you, that we really make an effort to do that. It is such an important way to communicate to the other person. This is meaningful them to get the reassurance from them that it's meaningful for them to and those

relationships tend to survive and the change of circumstance. And when we talk about change of circumstance and families, there are so many changes of circumstance, people get divorced, and then what happens to those relationships, and then they marry new people, and what happens if there are kids, and

what happens between the people who were married. And it also happens with siblings that you have a certain relationship with your sibling when you're a child or when you're a teenager, and then circumstances changes an adult, and then what happens to the relationship. So it's really important that people have a conversation about it, and have many conversations about it, because if you're not intentional about it, you start making all kinds of assumptions about what the other

person wants or doesn't want. And that's part of what happened here with Christine, So let's see it a bit more from her having had the honest conversation about it with them. I also feel gave us a good foundation to work from and having conversations and what is a painful topic and having our fears out in the open makes them less scary because we're now dealing with it together.

And in a much bigger sense, that advice has built over into other areas of my life, as I can look at people from that gentle perspective that maybe they are scared of losing what they have. So thank you for giving me really great advice that not only helped with my family crisis, but has also impacted all of my relationships positively. When she says that it has impacted all of her relationships positively, it shows that when we make positive change in one situation, it almost always leads

to positive changes in other areas of our lives. Absolutely, you know, DNA testing amazing thing, but it's thrown so many families into crisis for all kinds of reasons. But it's also such an important opportunity to redefine our concept of family and to really expand it, because the principle is if two people feel like family, an act like family their family. You're listening to, dear therapists from my

heart rate. We'll be back after a short break. We've been talking a lot about family today, and so the last person we're going to hear from is Shannon. And Shannon wrote to us as the holidays were coming up and she was reeling from a divorce and she was having trouble navigating her first holiday season after this very messy breakup, and what we heard from her at the

time was that the holidays went really well. She actually did an excellent job in reclaiming the holidays, but she was also coming to terms with her relationship and her divorce. So let's hear where Shannon was last year. So I got divorced Christmas time. We were married for three years, together for seven, and officially ended it all of months before the divorce was finalized. It was like a whirlwind. It felt like my world sort of just came crashing

down in a way. I mean, in retrospect, I can see how much I lost myself in the relationship, but going into it really had no idea. Let's see what's happened with her. But with the past year, Hey, Laurian guy, I am calling with an update. Gosh, so much has changed. It's quite amazing. I am just in such a different

place in relation to my marriage and my divorce. I think, frankly that has been the result of a ton of work in therapy, just overall processing what happened, the abuse that I experienced, but honestly, even more importantly in some ways, just the role that I played in that dynamic. This was a relationship that it was very emotionally abusive, and I think it was hard for her to come to terms with that. She wasn't sure whether she could trust her instincts about you know, was this okay? Was this

not okay? So there was the processing of the trauma, But then there was the equally important part, which is what was my role in this? What drew me to this person? And then what kept me there even when I was treated in a way that I knew I should not tolerate. And sometimes it's difficult to do that

work at the same time. You might first have to come to terms with really the extent of the trauma, with how bad things were, and then once you have that picture more accurately, then you look at okay, wow, so given that what kept me there for so long? And try and get that perspective on what was actually going on for you? And once you start getting that clarity, you can start to look at other parts of your life that have been neglected. So let's hear what else

happened with her over the past year. And there have just been so many other changes too. I've been really just building a life, I think for myself that's on my own terms. I realized I've never actually sat back and actually reflected on what routines make me happy and what makes me feel grounded. In some ways, I sort of feel like I'm finally an adult who knows what I like and what I need and what I want. I have hobbies outside of work again, running and reading

and writing. It's honestly sort of been like building a life for myself for the first time. I like what she said about finally feeling like an adult because she had spent the bulk of her twenties and I think early thirties with her partner, and those are developmentally very important years of moving into adulthood, and she had been so absorbed in her difficult relationship that she lost those years. So now she's doing the tasks of growing up, but

with a lot of intention and reflection this time. And we see this often with people who have been in either a single relationship or they have been serial monogamists in the earlier adult years, that they never really had the space to figure out who they are as individuals, what pleases them, and it's only even the break up happens later that they can then do that catch up and the heartbreak is terrible, for sure, but it gives someone an opportunity to get in touch with those parts

of themselves that they've never fully explored, right, And I think that she's going to learn a lot about herself, but I think she's also going to learn a lot about herself in relation to others, so that when she does start dating again, she's going to do it very differently. So let's hear more. And all that led me to start dating again, which honestly helped me to rebuild my confidence and has given me a really good idea of what I want and need and frankly, what I don't

want and don't need. And the great news is that all of that led me to meet someone who is wonderful and treats me with so much respect and kindness. I feel so lucky to have found that which is really wonderful. And then I also bought a new home. I wasn't kidding. There was a lot of changes, but all of this work on myself honestly really helped me to find what I want and need in my life. And one of those important things was a place that is mine, a place that's peaceful and happy and safe.

And I have right now. The research tells us that we often seek out not the same kind of person, but the same kind of relationship, and that's operating often a conscious level and an unconscious level. But what has helped Shannon here is the work she's done has made us so much more mindful, and so much more aware, and so much more in touch with what she wants and what she needs. She's commartely sought out a very different relationship to the one with her ex, and the

one that sounds much more nurturing and loving. And I'm so glad to hear that she avoided that trap of going back to something that looks different but in fact it's the same relationship. You know, often as therapist, we say change happens gradually then suddenly, and what we mean by that is that it might seem very sudden to the person to whom the change is happening. That so much has happened in Shannon's life over the past year, but it's not a coincidence. There was all this groundwork

that was aid and then the changes happened. One Shannon was willing to do the work to move through the pain and understand her role in the earlier marriage. She was much more clear about who she was and what she wanted. And when we get clear on that, often it feels like the right person just magically appears. But it's not magic. It's that you're ready and other people see that you're ready, and people who are ready or drawn toward each other, just like people who aren't ready

tend to be drawn toward each other. We say that people at similar levels of emotional and relational development often attract. So when people say, oh, I always have bad relationships with bad people, maybe it's time to look inside and say, what is my role here? Shanna did the work and her world opened up to the people that she wanted to be with, and then she met someone great. But wait,

there's more. Let's see. You both really helped me to see how much I have never defined my own needs, and frankly, you pushed me to confront the reality of my experience and recognize that I actually have the power to set the terms of my life, and that I needed to do some learning and discovering of that to

be able to get there. Um At one point in the conversation, Guy had said that he didn't think I understood how bad it had been and then Lori actually later on said that oftentimes people are hesitant to confront those painful experiences because of what it might say about them and why they stayed. And I'll be honest, that was a really hard one. It's taken a lot of work in therapy to crack that box open, honestly, because

it's really painful. And I think it was really painful because I've had to recognize the role I played in the dynamic and why I operated in that way, and I've realized now I think where some of those tendencies come from, and myself in terms of my own upbringing, my family dynamic and so letting go has been excruciating, But getting unstuck in that way also what's opened myself a lot more to finally feeling happy and hopeful again.

So thank you, honestly for for absolutely everything. It was just a true privilege to get to speak with both of you, and your words and your advice have been a really big part of changing my life. Thank you so so much again. Shannon is really drawing direct lines from her early experiences of her parents divorce and what that did to her and what impact that had on her and the family dynamic and how that impacted the

choices she made in her own relationship. And I think it's so powerful and you can actually draw those lines for yourself, which I think everyone should do, is to look back and understand your earlier experiences in life. But do it from a place of self compassion and empathy for our younger selves in a way, because kids tend to think that they deserve what happens to them, and then as an adult that makes you comfortable, and so

situations in which you are not being treated well. So looking back with self compassion is crucial to undoing that underlying feeling. Yeah, and that's why therapy is different from getting advice that I'm sure when she was going through this divorce she got lots of advice, which was helpful because people were giving her a reality check about what kinds of behaviors were thinks she should tolerate and maybe

thinks she shouldn't. But the part that wasn't happening was making that connection between the why of what she was willing to tolerate and when we really started talking about her family and what was going on with her parents when she was young and she had very loving parents the The issue was the predicament she was in as a child, where you don't really have perspective on it,

and you carry it into your adulthood. So Shannon had to look at what happened both in her marriage but also what happened before she even met her ex wife. And if we don't understand those earlier experiences, we end up repeating them without even realizing it. Shannon kept emphasizing how much work she did in therapy. She is such a testament too, when you do that work, how much it can truly change your life and change your choices

and give you an opportunity for true happiness. I think what we've seen in these follow ups today is that life is complicated and change looks different in every situation. But I think in all of these situations there's something that has helped people to move forward in some way. And I hope that our listeners are able to take something from these follow ups as well and apply them to their own lives and their own situations. And if you do that, we'd love to hear about it. So

write to us and tell us what happened. Next week, we'll be back with the regular session and we'll be hearing from a woman who wonders if she should end a relationship with her childhood friend. I don't know what kind of value I would get out of a friendship with her right now, because it feels like I haven't

gotten any value from that friendship for a while. Hey, fellow travelers, if you're enjoying our podcast each week, don't forget to subscribe for free so that you don't miss any episodes, and please help support Dear Therapists by telling your friends about it and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. Your reviews really help people to find the show. If you have a dilemma you'd like to discuss with us big or smooth, email us at Lorian Guy at I

heart media dot com. Our executive producer is Noel Brown. We're produced and edited by Mike John's, Josh Fisher and Chris Child's. Our interns are Dorik Corwin and Silver Lifton. Special thanks to Allison Wright and to our podcast fairy godmother Katie Courrek. We can't wait to see you at next week's session. Dear Therapists is a production of I Heart Radio. Thre