Hey, fellow travelers. I'm Lari Gottlieb. I'm the author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, and I write the Dear Therapist advice column for The Atlantic.
And I'm Guy Wench. I'm the author of Emotional First Aid, and I write the Dear Guy advice column for TED. And this is Dear Therapists.
Each week we invite you into a session so you can learn more about yourself by hearing how we help other people come to understand themselves better and make changes in their lives.
So sit back and welcome to today's session. This week, a woman's resentment of her financially successful brother threatens to tear apart their relationship.
They have a lot of freedom, they have a lot of time to spend, they have a lot of money. They just they have all these things and we don't have those things. Yeah, I wish I had those things too. I don't necessarily begrudge these people for having the things. What I don't like is the way that they're treating me.
First, a quick note, therapist is for informational purposes only. It does not constitute medical or psychological advice and is not a substitute for professional healthcare. Advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician, mental health professional, or other qualified health provider with any questions you may
have regarding a medical or psychological condition. By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let iHeartMedia use it in partworn and full, and we may edit it for length and clarity. In the sessions you'll hear. All names have been changed for the privacy of our fellow travelers. Hi Guy, Hey Lourie. So I'm really excited for this week's letter because I hear it has something to do with siblings and money.
Yes, it does, and money is one of those topics. It's money and sex that people have a very hard time talking about, so I'm glad we have the opportunity here. Here's the letter, Dear therapists. My only brother and I have been closed at times in our lives lives. We have kids the same age who absolutely love to play together. Since having children, time has been in short supply, and we don't connect very often. We spend holidays together and hang out in other ways, maybe three or four times
a year. My brother became a software engineer about five years ago and now makes loads of money. We on the other hand, are poorer than we've ever been because we have two children. I feel like we have less and less in common as this difference between us progresses and our relationship is struggling to stay together. Aside from our kids being friends, my brother's family seems to act like everything is perfect, and we want to be close with other families that are struggling with the same issue
we are. I'd like to have a relationship with my brother, but I need some guidance and how to navigate this difference so we don't grow further apart. Sincerely, Zoe.
Money brings up so many feelings in people, and they feel like they shouldn't talk about it because they feel like it's taboo or they shouldn't have these feelings, And yet it's all around us. We can't ignore it, and when it happens to somebody close to you, like a good friend or a sibling, it becomes kind of like the elephant in the room.
That's absolutely right. Some people feel that well, when somebody makes money that they didn't have before, it's going to change them. But really often what it changes are the feelings that person has. Jealousy comes up and becomes up resentment can come up and those things are not dealt with, it can really cause a rupture in the relationship.
And with siblings because there's so much history in their relationship, sometimes some of those old wounds start coming up in the form of this question around the money. So let's go talk to her and learn more about what's going on between them.
You're listening to Deer Therapists from iHeartRadio. We'll be back after a quick break. I'm Lori Gottlieb and I'm Guy Wynn and this is Dear Therapist.
So Hi Zoe, Hello Laurie, Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
Could you tell us a little bit about the relationship with your brother before this financial change, the history of it.
Sure. My brother is twenty months older than I am, and I am forty years old now. Around the end of high school, we became very close in our relationship. I would say that our level of intimacy at that time was similar to one of my closest friends, you know, through college. We lived together for a year or two, maybe even three years. We owned a house together in our twenties. We ran a business together in our thirties. It was his business when he closed down his business.
He became a software engineer, and then that was five years ago.
When you say that you got close in high school, what was your relationship like when you were younger children.
There was trauma in the home as children, and we were divided in that trauma.
What was going on in your family that created this division between the two of you.
So when I was born, my brother was twenty months old. My father had a lot of issues, and after I was born, my mother decided she didn't want to live with him any longer. She was afraid for her life. My father came and took my brother from her home and had him for I think close to a year, and my mother, I can only imagine what her experience was like during that year. So that was the initial trauma.
My brother came back, we lived in a completely different part of the country for the rest of our lives, essentially never seeing that man again, obviously in safety. My mother had a very close relationship with my brother, and my mother did not have a very close relationship with me. And I was the outsider as a child.
What did that look like their closeness in you being an outsider?
It looked like my family didn't really care that much about me.
What was actually happening between your mom and your brother that made you feel that way?
Yeah, I mean my mom and my brother were best friends, so they had an intimacy amongst themselves that that I didn't have with her or with him. He did not like me as a child. I was in his way. When I got to be an older child. We came to a year where we were going to go to private school, and I wanted to go to one particular private school, and I applied and I was so proud of myself. I got accepted into this prestigious private school,
and my parents were happy about the idea. But then they realized that my brother decided to go to a different private school and that they were going to have to drive him to that school. So they weren't going to be able to drive me to the school that I wanted to go to, so I had to go to the school that he wanted.
To go to.
When did your mom remarry?
My mother remarried around I was about eight years old.
And what was that like for you when this stepfather came into the picture. How did that impact the dynamics between your mom and your brother?
Your mom, and you you know, I think that it was quite equalizing. This idea that, you know, the people who were close to me and my home really didn't like me sort of calmed down a little bit. My mother has told me that once he came into the picture, she thought everything was fine.
You use the worst that your family didn't like you. Where did you get the impression that your family didn't like you.
My personality is very emotional, and my mother she did not consider her emotions to be a part of her life, really, and so I was raised with this idea that you know, who I am and how I functioned in the world is not okay. You need to turn that off.
Was that told you explicitly, like don't be so sensitive or you're too emotional? Or was it implied somehow?
It was implied in that I was not responded to in any way if I were showing emotion.
Could you give us an example of something that happened that you had an emotional response to that got ignored.
This happened from the time that I was born. I mean, you know, I'm talking about being three years old and understanding that my emotional reaction to things is not gonna matter so I hid my emotions from my family my entire life.
Did you have close friends during those childhood years?
I would say I had one or two close friends.
And what was that like for you? Because your impression was my brother didn't like me, my mom didn't like me. Step that comes in and so that even stinks out a bit, But you felt by yourself like there was no one there to support you, to understand you, to be able to respond to your emotions or your needs. What was it like when you finally started making some close friends and had someone who seemed to really care about you.
I would say that's about sixth grade. It was really a life changer for me. You know, I feel like I really became a person at that time. I was able to share my experience and be lighthearted and yeah, like really have the sort of experience of like, oh, oh yeah, this is who I am. This isn't how I act with my family. I don't act like who I really am with them.
What was different about how you acted around your friends that you couldn't do in your family comfortably.
Express myself, openly, speak openly.
And what were the kinds of things that you shared with them?
Simple things like, Oh, I really like this book that I am writing, or let's watch these particular television shows because we like them.
Were you ever able to share some of your feelings with them, like I have a crush on this person, or I'm really sad when I'm home with my family because I feel like an outsider.
I did not share feelings about my family with other people. I did not do that until I was much older.
What do you think might have happened if you had shared it? You say you didn't have a need, and yet you felt so isolated in your family, and I imagine hiding this big part of your life felt isolating too.
Yeah, anytime I expressed something like that within my family, I was given the message that that's not right. You're absolutely wrong. You are not treated that way. That's not how your life is. So I'm not sure why you're having those emotions.
So it sounds like they denied your reality, but your friends didn't, And so I'm wondering what held you back from talking about the reality of your home life with your friends.
You know, I never had the experience in my life of expressing some kind of uncomfortable feeling and having that communication help me or make me feel better.
You're describing your friends as people with whom you had the freedom to talk about your experience and your feelings as long as those were positive. And I'm not hearing that you were able to share with them anything that was actually more challenging or painful.
Yeah. I don't have much of any experience doing that kind of work until I was much older and in therapy. How old, probably close to thirty five, right.
You progressed from not being able to feel you can share anything about what you feel in your family to at least being able to share the good stuff with friends. But then you spent many, many years really feeling that if something is painful, there is no one with whom I can talk about it, There is no one with whom I can share it.
I spent my life that way.
What comes to mind is that when you were having some difficulty coming up with examples of what made you feel feel that way, that because you never got to talk to anybody about it, that it's just one big blur to you that there was never any processing going on at the time of any of these incidents. The one thing that sticks with you is the school situation.
But there must have been so many of them to make you feel somewhere deep inside that from a very very young age, you felt excluded, like an outsider, alone in pain, but with nobody to go to, your reality being denied in so many different ways. And I'm thinking of later when you were verbal and your mother would say, oh, no, that's not really what's happening in this house, or you don't really feel that way. When you're a baby, what you do to communicate some kind of discomfort as you cry?
And we don't have.
Memories of this that are very articulate, but we have sense memories of where we responded to when we cried, How were we responded to, where we responded to in a perfunctory way, like someone did come and change our diaper and feed us, but they didn't really hold us and delight in us. During your first year or so of life, your mother was left alone with you. Your brother had been kidnapped. I don't know if she knew where he was. I assume she knew that. No she didn't,
you're shaking year head. No, so she had no idea where your brother was. And she must have been frantic, as any mother would be in that situation, and here she was trying to manage the child she did have at home, frantic over the loss of the child that she didn't know where he was. And I imagine that when she was reunited with him it was such a
relief to her. But also she must have held done very tightly to him because he had been taken away, and for all that time she was grieving a loss, and then here he is, and she doesn't want to lose him again. She had never lost you, And whether she meant to or not, it sounds like somehow that played out. And what happened in your early childhood when your brother was back? Yeah, when I was describing that, what was coming up for you? What were you feeling as I was talking about that.
The way you described it made it sound perhaps better than the situation actually was. I don't think she wanted to have that second baby in the house. And I don't think she wanted to have a second child.
What makes you think that she didn't want to have a second child? Did somebody say something about that later when you were older?
Oh, she has said many many times, but she didn't want to have a second child.
She said that when you were young to you.
She did not say that when I was young. No, she said that when I was older.
Because it's not just her that didn't want to have a second child. Your biological dad.
He did not want to have a second child either. He was very close to my brother. My brother was born and the three of them had their thing, and yeah, when I was born, I was not wanted. I doesn't want to buy any of them. And you know, they they just lived their lives like that was like, that was fine.
How did it come to light later on that that was the situation where they did not want to have a second child.
Anytime a conversation came up about having two children and my mother would put her foot down and say, you should not have two children.
How did that feel to you?
Oh? God, awful, absolutely awful.
Would you tell her as an adult mom? That is so painful when you say that my experience growing up was that you didn't want to have two children. It's so painful when you're saying that to me. Now.
Oh, I would never. I would never say something like that to her.
Why not?
I would say. Over the last maybe five to ten years, I have had a few instances where I was able to have a fright conversation with her about a situation like that. But before that, I would not say something like that to my mother because there's just there's a dynamic in the relationship that would not allow for me to be that vulnerable with her.
Are these fears because of your childhood when she was unable to respond to your feelings and your needs? Or is this that you felt afraid to get in touch with how painful it is to say something like that to your mom and then risk her again ignoring you, or again dismissing your feelings or again arguing with your reality. What is it you think that held you back.
I wasn't necessarily clear enough in my own feelings to be able to say, oh, Mom, you know when you say that kind of a thing, it really makes me hurt a lot. I didn't have the language skill to be able to say that. And also I had the fear that she would react to me in a way that dismissed what I said, or that she like what I said would make her upset, and then she would lash out to me, or she would treat me poorly because I caused her to have that kind of an emotional response.
So you said you did have a few conversations with her in which you were able to express things as an adult.
Yeah.
She told me one time that this particular year when I was a child, she said, oh, that was the best year. I just really loved that year.
And I said to her, wow, that was.
That was probably the worst year of my life.
Which year are we talking about.
I was in the fourth grade, and I said, wow, that was a really that was a terrible year for me, and she kind of laughed, like her initial response was, Paha, you know, I can't believe that was your experience. And then she realized that she had just said that, and then she said, oh, I'm sorry that I didn't know that that was the experience that you were having during that year.
So finally a moment of acknowledgment after thirty however many years at that point. What did that feel like to you to hear her acknowledge something of your experience.
It was a good moment. It was fleeting, you know, it was a small moment. It allowed me to feel like, wow, she can't actually see other people's experience.
It felt like, finally, there's a there there.
I could see her as a bit of a human being.
You even had a business together. And yet I'm assuming that you were never really able then to talk with him about your experience growing up and about your experience with him growing up, because you weren't having those kinds of conversations at that time.
That's true. We came to an understanding at some point around high school that we had both grown up in a home that was very messed up.
Who started talking about it.
I wouldn't say it was a conversation. It was more of a sort of passing acknowledgment of like, you know, tipping our heads to each other with a small comment of like, yeah, we've been in this together. Like if I was having a hard time communicating with a boyfriend.
Say, and you will tell him about it.
Well, he would know that it was happening because he was there. So no, I wouldn't necessarily have those kinds of conversations with him. We would have some kind of joke, you know, yeah, well we weren't really taught to be human beings as children.
So was the idea that he felt that way too.
So his experience of his childhood is not good. I can't speak to his to what his experience was I mean, we have not had these conversations. I think my brother is a wounded individual, not in the same way, but in a very deep way, in the way that I am a wounded individual in a very deep way.
And I think that when you acknowledged we were in this together, you were acknowledging yeah, we were both wounded here and in different ways, but you actually weren't in it together at all, because he was the baby that your parents wanted and you were the one they didn't. He was the one that was fused with your mom. He was the one whose choices were prioritized, and you were the one that felt excluded and left out and not part of the family. And he didn't like you either,
you said. And so you were actually very much not in it together. And so I'm curious when you say, oh, we were in it together, did you not feel that? But actually we weren't.
We were raised in the same home, we were raised by the same people.
Just because you were raised in the same environment doesn't mean that you you are experiencing the environment in the same way. And so that's why siblings can have vastly different experiences growing up in the very same household and so it sounds like you have this idea that, well, we both grew up in the same environment, so therefore we have the same kinds of wounds. I think you have very different experiences of growing up in the same household, like many siblings do.
Yeah, I don't doubt that we had a vastly different experience of the world. I know that's true.
You said that you got close as you were teenagers and young adults. You were close, but only to a point because you couldn't really share with him what your feelings were about your childhood, that he was part of that ecosystem that rejected you or dismissed you. You weren't able to share that with him at that time, and so the closeness was there comparatively, probably felt quite strong.
But I'm thinking also of the way when you started having friends, it felt like, oh, I finally have these friends, except they weren't friends you could share emotional pain with. Much like when you got close with your brother as a teenager and a young adult. It was despite the fact that you couldn't really share with him any emotionally
painful things. The closest that came to that is that when he would see you have an issue with the boyfriend, that'd be this kind of nod of recognition of yeah, wel we came from that house, and so of course we're going to have issues. And I'm wondering whether with your brother was he able to share with you his hurts from childhood in an overt, clear way rather than just that wink of recognition between two siblings have been through it.
No, he never shared those things with me. He spaid ten years in therapy his twenties, you know, mid twenties to mid thirties and therapy, so he, at a much younger age than me, found what I can assume to be a situation where he could have those conversations with someone, but they weren't with me.
But he revealed to you at the time that he was going to therapy, And did you think I might want to do that?
I did not at that time.
No.
Well, I think that I had a very hard shell. It didn't allow me to see that communicating these things could be helpful.
What was the impetus for you in your mid thirties for deciding to go to therapy.
I had come out of a relationship with a man, and that relationship ended, and it was very painful, and I came to the realization that if I was going to have a relationship with any man in the future and I wanted it to work, that I was going to need to change.
What were you noticing that was going on in this relationship that made it difficult for you to be in it?
That I had very big and very painful feelings that I had no way to communicate with this person.
About, meaning you didn't communicate them, or when you did, it came out in a way that made it hard for him to be there for you.
I didn't communicate them with him. I wasn't able to. I literally could not speak in those situations.
And so when did that start to change? When were you able to start talking about your feelings in a vulnerable way and to whom well?
I started seeing a therapist probably within a month after that relationship ended, and that that person taught me that if someone is open to and available for that kind of communication, that it is possible to sit and look at someone in the face and talk to them about your biguest, most painful feeling. I mean, I met my partner probably while I was still going through this therapy I was thirty four years old, and I was like, oh, yeah, never had a relationship with someone that I trust, so
now I have one. I'm only laughing because it just sounds ridiculous to me.
Given everything that you're describing, it would be practically shocking if you were able to trust someone.
I think it's ridiculous. It seems to me. I always intellectually understood what trust was, but I never had an experience of it.
I'm saying that, Zoe, because it sounds a little bit like you've internalized some of what you were getting as a child in which your feelings were being dismissed and invalidated, that you're still doing that to yourself, and just pointing that out, because when you grow up with so much blanket and validation, it's difficult not to internalize some bit and then it seeps out sometimes and you find yourself saying something, admitting to a feeling that is so natural
given the circumstance, but looking at it and going like, oh, but that's silly, and it's very much not silly. Do you notice that you do that, that you might still be invalidating your feelings.
Sometimes I do that, certainly from time to time, I would say that I make a choice to perhaps not connect to that pain in some moments.
What guys talking about is partly being able to acknowledge the pain, But the other part is what he was saying about self compassion. When you're talking about your experiences and you judge yourself like it took me this long before I could do this. Well, of course, because of what you experienced, and that's what happened in your family. You'd say I'm feeling this and they would say, well, no, you're not, that's not your experience, or that shouldn't be
your experience. You kind of do that to yourself absolutely. And it sounds like when you went to therapy, it was the first time that you were able to sit with someone and not have them dismiss or discount what your experience was. And I think it's not a coincidence that you met this person right as you started going to therapy, and here was this person who was able to be with you in a way that I think you longed for for a very long time. And so tell us a little bit about that relationship.
Yeah, it's been seven years since we met. My relationship with him started out this sort of beautiful way in a way that I had never seen a relationship happen, and that was very meaningful for me. I wasn't able to see the therapist continuously, and so at some point I had to say, this has been an incredibly powerful time for me, but I can't see you any longer
those for financial reasons, so I stopped seeing her. So, you know, situations would arise in my relationship with Mark that may be unhappy, and I would do whatever form of communicating I could that I thought would sort of pave the way for open and honest dialogue. Oftentimes, my communication tactics didn't work and we ended up not communicating clearly about things that made me unhappy in the relationship.
Is the reason that you and Mark haven't gone to therapy a financial reason?
Yeah, you know.
The first thing that came to mind when you were saying that your brother went to therapy for about ten years starting in his twenties, was this issue of finances. I wondered if there was some envy that you had of his ability to go and work through some of this stuff from childhood in a way that maybe you didn't have access to.
Yeah, I was worried about money in having children.
I want to get to your brother who said he became an engineer, I think you said, and started making money. And that's what you identified is creating a bit of a witch between you. Tell us how that happened.
When Derek met Carol, the primary reason that he was so attracted to her is that she's extremely well adjusted. She's very happy, she knows how to communicate her wants and her needs. She gets what she wants from her life. She's very satisfied, and that was the primary reason that Derek wanted to marry her. So my brother and I and his wife, we have had times where we spend
time together and we're great friends. What I have found over the last few years is that I don't have any ability to talk with them about things that are going on in my life that aren't positive. So it's like I am in that same dynamic again where I have these fair weather friends who I really like, I really love them, but I can't be honest with them about my real experience in the world.
Necessarily, what makes you think that you can't talk to them about what's really going on in your life.
Well, with Carol, she doesn't react empathetically. When I was in my last pregnancy, I was very sick and I was very socially isolated, and every now and then she would text me and she would say, oh, how are you And I would say, oh my god, I am doing terribly. This is awful. I can't believe how bad it is right now. And she would reply to my texts bummer.
Not like, hey, can I bring you something? Do you need help? Can I keep you company?
Nothing like that. She never once brought me anything or came to my house or offered to help with my child. I had a four year old child. She never once offered to watch my kid for five minutes.
What about your brother when you were pregnant and if you had said to him, hey, I'm really struggling, was he more empathetic.
I don't remember. I don't remember really even communicating with him during my pregnancy.
And yet you were so close. Weren't you running a business together.
We stopped running our business together right before he had his first child, so there were many years where we weren't necessarily seeing each other very often, we weren't talking.
Have you had an experience of sharing something painful with your brother, in which he responded poorly or without empathy.
Yes. Absolutely. I gave birth to my son in April of last year, and when he turned a year old, I said to my brother a number of times, you know, it's been really challenging for me. We've had twelve months of three hundred and sixty five days, twenty four hours a day of caring for this infant, and we haven't had a single moment during that time for someone else to watch him. And twice in a row my brother responded, Oh, you're gonna value this time. This is a really special
time for you, guys. It's really going to be meaningful someday.
Much like you got growing up.
Yeah, so that's how I feel my brother treats me nowadays.
Was there a time where you were able to share painful moments or struggles where he would respond with more empathy and compassion.
Definitely when we were working together. If I had something happen with a friend that made me upset, I was able to talk with him about that and he was able to say, I understand why you're upset at this moment.
What was that like for you to hear that, To finally hear someone in your family say yeah, I understand that you're feeling that way. It makes sense to me.
Fall pleasures, you know, yeah, I could take that moment as this is a genuine experience in life.
In your letter, you indicated you thought that what has caused some of the emotional drifting between you is the financial disparity or the change in his financial circumstance. Tell us why you think that is what was under allowing some of this change.
What I see as what happened was when I had my first child. Once that child went to childcare, we were literally spending all of the money that we made every month on living, child care and our lives. Literally every dollar that we brought in went out to pay for things. And so I think there was a time period where if we were hanging out, you know, I would say something like, yeah, we can't afford that kind
of a thing. And maybe some time went on like that before I realized that Derek and Carroll, or Carol specifically, was really annoyed. She was really annoyed that I would talk about money like that in that way.
In other words, they would say, hey, we went on this vacation, or we bought such and.
Such, We would say, Oh, have you guys tried this new restaurant. It's really you know, everybody's talking about and it's really great. We went and it was really awesome, and I would say, yeah, you know, we're not eating at restaurants right now. We don't have the money. When I realized that she was displeased with those kinds of comments, it made me want to hang out with her less.
And it also made me hyper aware of the fact that, Okay, I'm going to make an effort to not say those kinds of things.
What about how your brother would react.
I don't know that he was annoyed by it, but what I noticed around that same time was that they were often communicating about how they were spending so much money. So the conversation would be, oh, yeah, we just went to Hawaii for five weeks. It made me feel like, are we not allowed to be honest with each other
in this relationship? I feel like if I communicate openly about the things that I'm struggling with in life, that those conversations are shot down, And you know, it's come to the point where these people are acting like annoyed with me.
That sounds so familiar that when you would bring up something that made other people uncomfortable as a child, they would get annoyed with you. Yeah, And the other commonality is that theme of exclusion that they are able to live in this way. While you said twenty four to seven, you're thinking about money and what you don't have and your brother does have it, And I think that that somehow brings up that very old feeling of he's in and I'm out.
Yeah. They have a lot of child's care, They have a lot of family close by who takes care of their children for them. They have a lot of freedom, they have a lot of time to spend, they have a lot of money. They just they have all these things and we don't have those things.
So are we talking about envy because I imagine when you were young you felt very envious of your brother's position in the family and what he was getting, even if it had its problems.
It certainly is envy. I mean envy in a way that's like, yeah, I wish I had those things too. I don't necessarily begrudge these people for having the things. What I don't like is the way that they're treating me.
And that's the third part that's familiar is that when you feel that, what you do is you have a hard time addressing it and talking about it directly and saying to your brother, can we please talk about the tensions that happened between us when we talk about finances, and you in caase what you have in my guess what I don't. That's the other pattern that continues that your response to that is to kind of close up and withdraw.
Perhaps, Yeah, it's definitely what I'm doing is withdrawing from the situation.
What would you like to see happen if you were able to talk to him? Meaning, what would you like to see go differently? Maybe it's more about wanting your brother to recognize that maybe this is hard for you.
Yeah, I think certainly them recognizing that my life has become much more difficult over the years while their lives has become much easier. So I would like to see them, yeah, be able to accept.
That, accept that or acknowledge it.
Yeah, to acknowledge the fact that my life is much more difficult now than it was before would be nice, and to give some room in the relationship for the fact that everything is not perfect in my life, and perhaps.
To have some sensitivity to that that maybe you're not the best audience for how fabulous Hawaii was, or you must try the snee restaurant. Everyone's raving about it when you're like, we're not trying with duns right now. To have more sensitivity.
To have some sensitivity would be great. Yeah.
And the other part of it that I think is important is less about them and more about you, which is you're not the child who's at the mercy of what people in the family are deciding in terms of who's in and who's out, and who gets something and who doesn't get something, and who gets to go to the school they want, and who doesn't get to go to the school that they want. And I wonder if you've internalized some of that messaging that you don't get
to have and so you don't try to have. In other words, you kind of accept, well, my relationship isn't where I want it to be, but oh well, and we're really struggling with money, but oh well, as opposed to really opening up your imagination to what might I be able to do now that nobody's holding me back to have the kind of relationship that I want to have.
What might need to happen there, or what might we as a couple do to change our financial situation so that we can have some of the things that maybe we want, so that you're not always pressed up against the glass saying, Oh, I'm stuck in here and my brother has all these things that I want.
I appreciate you saying that it's definitely some of those things are things that I am addressing, and some of those things are things that I had thought to address.
We have this saying follow your envy. It tells you what you want. And sometimes we don't like to acknowledge our envy because we feel like it makes us small or petty, but actually it helps us to get in touch with our desires. It helps us to say I want that. So when you were young and you wanted what your brother had in some way, even though it was dysfunctional in a different way, there was some elements of it that you wanted.
Yeah, my brother seemed to have a healthy relationship with my mother.
What he had was her love in a way that was different from her love for you.
And now he.
Has somebody that he's married to who seems to have had so much trauma growing up, And I think that on the one hand, you feel like that makes it hard for her to connect with you or you to connect with her. But on the other hand, I think there might be some envy there that she's had it easier, and that might make you put up some walls where maybe there could be more of a relationship there it
feels better. And then you have your brother having more help with the kids and more financial freedom, and maybe there's a way that you could have a better relationship and more financial freedom.
Yeah, and so we think that there are ways perhaps that you can shape off still some more of the old habits and perspectives which were very paralyzing. And if you're very helpless and realize that you can take certain actions and speak up about certain things now in ways that you truly agree in your childhood and even an YOURNDI adults.
So, Zoe, we have some advice for you, and it's in a few parts. The first part is that we would like you to have a conversation with your brother in which you say to him, I feel this tension between us now as adults, this distance that's growing between us, and I think part of it has to do with the fact that your life looks different from my life financially, and I think that that's bringing up some old feelings in me around exclusion and other experiences that I had
growing up. And I would love to be able to talk with you because I think that it will help me to feel closer to you, and it will will help with some of this tension and distance that's going on between us now, and then to really be able to talk with him about what it was like when you found out from your mom that they didn't want a second child, and what it was like to see that closeness that he had with your mom and at the same time feeling like, but I also want a
relationship with my brother, and even as an adult, really wanting a relationship with him, and how a lot of.
That is coming up again because you're seeing this difference and it sort of magnified something that you feel like would maybe not feel so big if you could talk about some of these things that you've never talked about, because he's really the only other person that was there.
I like that idea.
The second part of that conversation with there, it is to say and I do want to address to find outential difference between us because right now. I think it's a point of tension that you guys talk about what you do and we talk about what we can't do as a response. But I think there's room for both.
I think there's room for us to be excited for you about the things that you can do, about your trip to Hawaii and the great new restaurant you tried, and there's room at the same time for you guys to be compassionate toward us and sympathetic that we're not in that place where we can do those things. The two can exist together, and I think we've kind of been dancing around it and feeling tense about how do you talk about your lives without upsetting us and how
do we talk about hours without upsetting you? But there's room for both, and perhaps we can agree that we can be supportive and excited for you, and that you guys can be sympathetic to us, that those things can happen at the same time.
Maybe if there was a little bit more acknowledgement, because when we were growing up, there was not a lot of acknowledgment around my pain, that if there's a little bit more acknowledgment that we are in different situations it would free me up to truly be excited and happy for you.
And the last part is we would like you and your husband to find a low fee clinic, which is much easier to do these days because it doesn't have
to be something that's geographically possible because of Zoom. But there are in many teaching institutions, universities, all kinds of low fee clinics, and you would like you to find one that does couple's therapy, and if your husband would agree, because we think you do need a facilitator to help you talk and for you to feel safe, because we think that's quite important that you can talk together, not just about the relationship, but what changes can you make
in your lives to gain a little bit more financial breathing room than you have at the moment.
Yeah, there was this sense as a child, because it was true that you were trapped by those circumstances. You might feel more comfortable in the old story, but we want to help you to feel more comfortable moving into this newer.
Place wonderful and so we look forward to hearing how that goes.
So this was one of those sessions where it seemed like the issue was about money and it is, but there was so much from the past to unpack as well, and we gave her a lot to do in terms of opening up those conversations, and that might be a little hard for her to do.
And we always find that money is such an uncomfortable topic for people to address, and so I think, both for her and maybe for her brother, that might be difficult to actually talk about. But I do hope that they at least talk about the relationship, or at least start to communicate in some deeper way, because I think that would be very useful for her.
And one of the things that happens when you start looking at opening up a conversation with somebody close to you is you might start looking at the other relationships around you, like we did with her husband, And I really hope that she follows through and is able to open up a conversation with her husband so that she can focus on that relationship as well. The issue with her brother doesn't supersede this really important work that it seems like she has to do in her marriage.
So it'll be interesting to see if once she has one of those conversations, whether that gives her confidence to be able to have the other you're listening to deo therapists from iHeartRadio. We'll be back after a quick break.
So we heard that from Zoe, and we asked her to have two difficult conversations, the first with her brother and the second with her husband. So let's hear how they went.
So I didn't make the call right away because I was so anxious.
I did allow some time to pass, which allowed me to really process my own experience.
Which was good.
So when I talk to him, we had, you know, our standard chat at first, which has really made up all of the time that we have spent together. I would say over the last probably two years, has been just standard chat small talk, which I feel like small talk just makes me feel small all But anyway, our conversation was able to go to a very open and
honest and vulnerable place, which was really wonderful. We talked for about two hours and I was able to speak with my brother about my own experience of childhood, and he definitely had a few moments where he was like, yeah, you were ridiculously emotional, which could not make me feel good. But I was able to be clear with him and let him know, yeah, I'm an emotional person like to me,
my superpower is having very strong emotions about things. So we were able to talk about or experienceeriences in childhood, and he tried to make it clear to me that he was equally unhappy about our childhood as I was. After I had the conversation, I felt a huge load off of my shoulders. I mean, I realized that my brother I was just doing the best that he can and honestly, to hear him talk about how difficult.
Life is for him.
You know, he still very deeply carries the scars of his childhood and they really affect his day to day life. It made me happy that he was able to be honest with me. I feel like, for so long he puts on this smiling, happy face every time I see him, and I just.
Feel like it's I feel like it's bony.
I feel like it's fake.
And so to have him be real with me and tell him what his real experience of life is, that felt really good.
With my partner.
You know, it's really the first time that we sat down and had lunch together, probably was the day after we've had this conversation in the past where I say, you know, I really think that we need to have professional help, and we've both agreed that it's a good idea and that we should do it, but we haven't done it. So there's a lot of fear involved with just sort facing this issue. But I had a conversation with him and went, well, you know, he he's open to the idea.
I perhaps even saw a flicker of excitement over the prospect. There's a little bit of a sort of a sunny possibility, like we could have a better life. So yeah, I am happy that we.
Are doing this thing right now.
So it feels good to be like we're both on the same pie.
There is a possibility of something good happening.
It's different in our lives.
So when Zoe says that small talk makes her feel small, it's because she is yearning to feel that connection. And connection does not happen with small talk. It happens with meaningful conversation, with actually talking about the relationship between you.
And I'm glad she's uncomfortable with small talk, and I'm glad that she feels like she doesn't want that anymore with her brother, because she really does need to connect with him, And it sounds like they took a good first step in that direction.
Yeah, and I'm glad that she stood her ground and was able to say to her brother, feelings are my superpower. The fact that I can feel things is a strength of mind, and to reframe that and to use that as a starting point for these conversations. They didn't get to the money part of the conversation, and I think that's okay, because right now, what was important was they
started to acknowledge the reality of their childhoods. I think will give them some common ground from which to have these other conversations that bring them up to the present.
And it was so encouraging to hear that when she spoke to her husband about going to therapy, she saw that spark of excitement in him, because it's so important that he be on board with the work she has to do. When somebody's been through a lot of trauma, there's a lot of healing they need to do, and it's wonderful that she can work on that with somebody safe like her husband, who knows her, who loves her. That will make that work easier for her to do.
And at the same time, she found her voice with her brother as well. And I think that finding your voice and then starting to use your voice is always the first step when you're trying to heal.
Next week, our fellow traveler is haunted by the ghost of his last relationship as he tries to move on with a new partner.
It's really hard for me to.
Open up to him because every time in the past that I've opened up about my feelings, it's either ben met with rejection or met with OCD. So it's really hard for me to trust that I can have a safe person to open up to.
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