I'm Laurie 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 real session where we help people confront their biggest problems and then give them actionable advice and hear about the changes they've made in their lives.
So sit back and welcome to today's session.
This week, a woman who has elaborate revenge fantasies about the people in her life wants to understand why she does this and how she can stop.
I have no training and how to have a positive conversation. I think it feel a shameful as a grown woman that I can't defend myself, and so I take all about hurt and I channel it towards these letters.
First, a quick note deo Therapists is for informational purposes only, does not constantitute medical or psychological advice, and is not a substitute for professional health care 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 iHeart Media use it in part or in 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 guests.
So Hey Guy, Hi Laurie, what do we have going on in our mailbox this week?
Today we have a rather interesting letter which I will just read and you will see why. Deotherapists, I have an issue in which I feel a great compulsion to write letters to people that are filled with scathing criticisms or that bring up long buried events. I am embarrassed to admit that I write these mostly to good friends, and I even think about sending such letters to the spouses of good friends that contain in that would be
highly damaging to the relationships at hand. I have never sent these letters because I know they could potentially cause great emotional and in some cases financial damage to my friends. But while I don't send these letters, I have to wonder, why do I want to hurt other people? Some of these people are friends of more than three decades? Am I jealous of them? Do I feel abandoned when they move and have their own families even though I am
married and have my own family too. Why do I weaponize certain things that were told to me in confidence? It's upsetting to take delight in crafting these letters when most friends have shown genuine support and love for me. Thanks for any help, Catherine.
You know, this is really interesting because so many times people come into our offices and they have these almost confessions of things that they're very ashamed of. They feel like they're very unique to them, and in this case it is. But I think that what we discover when we start exploring it with them is that whatever's going on underneath it is probably pretty universal, that's right.
And in this case, what's going on underneath is a lot of emotion. Clearly, she feels a lot of these feelings and then writes letters to express these feelings in some way. What's certainly not clear to me yet is what are these feelings about? What's causing them to come up? And it sounds like she's not entirely sure why she does it either, and that's why she's writing.
To us, and I think that as she starts to understand more about what this is, she will have more compassion for herself and then also be able to hopefully start to change the behavior. And so for anybody out there who thinks that they have some kind of behavior that they're embarrassed to share with anybody, this will probably be a very helpful episode.
So let's go talk to her.
You're listening to Dear Therapists for my Heart Radio. We'll be back after a short break.
I'm Lori Gottlieb and I'm Guy Wench and this is Deatherapists.
Hi, Catherine, Hello, thanks for coming on the show.
Thank you for having me.
It's our pleasure. We read your letter, and I'm curious to hear how this habit of writing these skating letters that you don't send, how that started, when it started? If you can give us a little context of how that got going and the development of it throughout the years.
I think it started probably about ten years ago. The first time I began to compose these letters. In my mind, it was to one particular friend, and our relationship had started to go through some rockiness, largely in part because she has a spouse who was treating me quite poorly.
The friendship sort of it lessened, but we've remained good friends, I would say, but it sort of started as a way of addressing wasn't said between us, and I would find myself waking up in the morning, and perhaps as I was unloading the dishwasher or taking a shower, I would begin to write these letters in my mind, either
to this friend or to her spouse. I've known this friend for a long time, probably about thirty years now, and in the course of that relationship, she shared a lot of personal details about herself and her relationship with her spouse, and I would use that information to write fairly scathing letters in my mind. In my mind, I've never sent anything, and I do it to other people too. It would be a criticism of the way that they raised their children, the way that they spend money. It's
just it's not healthy. I do it mainly for a couple friends, but also if there are people in town that I see that their children are treating other kids terribly on the playground, I'll think about writing letters to these people. It's almost become now something that's a part of my daily habit, and I want to understand why I'm doing this and what I can do to stop doing it, because I'm so aware of it not being productive.
When you described the first incident, you were upset because the husband was treating you poorly, and it was one of the ways to kind of express your beef. But you're saying that now it can happen with people you don't know, people you just even see that you don't have any personal stake in it, but it can activate you sufficiently to want to do that. Are you aware in those moments of what you're feeling that's making you think of writing the letter.
Yes, I'm aware of people who I believe are not taking responsibility for their actions or responsibility for how their children are acting towards others.
What's the feeling that you have in those moments? You aware of what you're feeling in that moment.
I think it's angry at feeling mistreated or disrespected and feeling like my friends are not sticking up for me and saying to their spouse, hey, that's not right to treat someone this way. I love this person and you're being awful to them.
There seems to be a real thread of injustice throughout these even when you see the kids that you don't even know at the park who are being treated in a way that feels unfair.
I do have a pretty strong sense of what is right and what is wrong, but I'm also keenly aware that not everyone has those same views. When I'm feeling angry and then I want to write these letters, it's a way of, I guess settling scores.
This sense of feeling misunderstood or feeling like you or somebody else is being treated fairly. Was that something that you felt growing up? Does it feel familiar at all?
It does. In my household, we really weren't allowed to express ourselves and what was decided upon by my parents, mostly my father. That was the rule, and there wasn't a lot of leeway to plead your case, to think differently, to express yourself differently. That just wasn't tolerated.
Do you have siblings.
I do. I have siblings, older and younger brother.
How did they react to that environment?
They took it as well. I mean, you know, to be essentially iced out was just a really unpleasant feeling. It could be a couple days of your parents not talking to you. It could be feeling like you were the odd man out in sort of an already not terribly a motive family. It was. It was not fun.
That's what your parents would do. If they're upset with you, they would shun you, like ice you out.
Yes, my father would not speak to us for several days, or my mother would write us letters and either leave them on our bed, or sometimes she would even mail them to us, just we were in the same house. She would mail them to us, and you know she would express her anger by writing these letters.
So you have been the recipient of the letters that you compose in your mind, Yes, I have. What were the kinds of things that you would get iced out for.
Not bringing home perfect grades?
What would happen with the grades? Can you paint the picture of that?
So if I did not bring home you know a's or as it was just there was hell to bay. This was in the eighties and the nineties, and you know, if we brought home a report card with anything less than a's, it was it was ranting and raving that America is going to be surpassed by this country. America is going to be surpassed by that country. And we're not trying hard enough ever, any question about well do
you understand the material? Why are you getting b pluses as if there's anything wrong with that.
So you talked about them sending you letters, but it sounds like they also directly expressed you their anger.
Yes, my mother would send me the letters. My father would directly express the anger.
I'm curious, then, what were the letters about that you received from your mother.
I have one specific incidence where she gave me a jewelry box for Christmas, and I didn't particularly love the jewelry box and I put it underneath my dresser and it stayed there for a couple months, and she must have found it at some point and it was dusty. It wasn't broken, it wasn't used, it was just dusty. And so that afternoon I came home and there was a letter on my pillow just saying, you know, why
did you treat it like this? This was a gift I gave to you, and I don't think it's acceptable that you would treat something like that.
It sounds like she sent you a lot of letters over the course of your childhood. Did you ever respect to them? Or she would send you a letter and the two of you would never speak of it.
It was more of the latter. I would never speak of it, partially because I felt cowed by it, because it wasn't her directly addressing me, and partly I thought it was just ridiculous.
You know what's interesting to me in what your dad said is the disproportionality of you not getting an A and on your shoulders because of your lack of a is the entire future of the American country. It wasn't your future might be disappointing, it's about the whole country
now is on your shoulders. In other words, it's such a disproportionate response that it really kind of set the stage for you that it's okay to respond to these kinds of things in a hugely disproportionate way, and in a way from your mum in which people can't answer. So between the two of them, they're really teaching you that when you feel slighted or upset or disappointed even with someone, you get to respond in ways that are not direct but very disproportionate, like burn the house down
kind of thing. And that's what you're describing that you do in your letters.
Yeah, and I hadn't actually thought about that disproportional reaction, but it's right there, it's braided right in with the letters.
Can you tell us what happened with your friend's husband that started you on this process of writing these letters that in your fantasy world you would send, but you don't.
From the time I met her fiance soon to be husband, he was always very cold to me and very distant. He, I believe, felt threatened by our friendship. And at their wedding, they had some issues and they had a fight and it was very uncomfortable, and she had withdrawn to a room and she didn't want to be with him, and I tried to talk to him to go and see her. It was their wedding night. It was a beautiful wedding, And that was the most that I could do to help her was to just say to him, look, your
wife is waiting to talk to you. She's upset. And all he would say to me was, oh, well, you're very proper. Isn't it always important to have good manners? And since I've at that point really seen him, it's either been he cuts me short or makes a comment, and I want to preserve the friendship with her, so I really don't react, she'll tell me some terrible behavior he's shown to her. I try not to react because I get the sense she just wants to talk about it,
not necessarily get advice from me. So I can't point to you a specific run in that we had. I feel like from the beginning he just felt threatened by me and by our friendship.
You're saying that he would just be cold and distant. You're also describing that your dad's way of dealing with conflict was to shun to not speak to you for several days. Now, that's extremely painful when you live with someone when they're icing you out, when they're shunning you, it's an extremely painful form of rejection. And you're describing here with this husband of the friend that he also
was just a bit shunning and distant and cold. Because there's also something about your mum's letter writing that's so impersonal, and that she's not coming to talk to you. She's writing and even mailing a letter as if it's far away. There's something very distancing about that, and I'm wondering whether that's something that you're aware of that you have a specific history within reaction to it.
Could be I immediately. I notice it if I think that someone isn't being polite to me, or if I think someone's being disrespectful, I pick up on that, and all of my senses in almost every other interaction following that, are alert to it.
And your mother felt the same way. She was hyper aware of perceived disrespect. And I say perceived because of what you're describing, And so I wonder if it's hard for you to sometimes know whether this really is disrespectful or whether you feel like maybe I'm holding them to a standard that's a little bit stringent like your mother did.
I think you're right that I think that there have been some clear cut instances of disrespect. But also perhaps I'm just I'm primed for it and I'm reading into something differently. I think after about ten years of, you know, sort of coolness on his part, I've got it pretty accurately sized up. But yeah, it could be that I'm just I'm looking for it, or I'm interpreting it in the wrong way.
You said that you're married with a family. Does that mean that you also have children?
Yes? I do.
How old are your children?
Twelve, ten, and seven.
And you've been married for.
About fifteen years now.
Does this come up in your relationships with your husband or your children.
Well, yes, in the sense of I do get upset when I have to ask my children to do something and I'm asking them five and six times I've said it to them before. I do not like feeling as if I'm being ignored.
Because being ignored when you were growing up was extremely painful.
Yeah, that's kind of how I would characterize my whole childhood. My brothers included, is that it was we were just kind of bouncing around in a house and not really given the space to express ourselves.
You're kind of smiling and laughing as you're saying this. Do you notice that?
Yeah? I do, because I don't necessarily think it's funny. In fact, I don't think it's funny at all. But I feel like it's just so interesting to me how these patterns play out again and how certain things repeat themselves. I fervently hope that I'm giving my girls more space to express themselves and what I was given.
So with your children, you've talked about having some of these times when you feel ignored by them, and how much that triggers you. What happens with your husband. Have you ever felt ignored by him or what happens when you feel disrespected or there's some kind of conflict between the two of you.
No, my husband is incredibly open and a motive and does such a wonderful job of touching in with me. He's had a good deal of therapy and understands how to communicate. I am amazed at how he can talk so beautifully to our daughters. I wish I had that. I feel almost like, Oh, I let him do a lot of like the tough talk, I don't feel quite as well equipped to do it, and he is just he is a gem when it comes to conversations.
Sometimes the letter in your head is a way to kind of process all of these feelings, and it feels very solitary because that's what you had to do growing up. You really didn't have people to process your feelings with. Even when your mom wrote those letters, you didn't go then and talk to her about it or say I feel differently.
About this, yeah.
And so now you have someone in your life that you can talk to that way. And I'm wondering when something comes up, an incident happens where you feel slighted by your friend's husband, or you see the kids being mistreated at the park. Do you ever feel like if I talk to my husband that that lessens the impulse to need to then go ahead and write the letter.
Not really, And perhaps that's something I should do more of, to sort of speak to someone about it. I think something about me too, is that I really hold on to grudges. I really hold on to perceive slights. It's almost like it's a point of pride to keep going over these unpleasant interactions I had with people as a way of not I don't know, not forgetting as a way of saying, oh see they're really bad. They said this to me or they did this to me.
The thing that strikes me about letter writing when we don't send the letters is that there's a certain powerlessness that comes with it because the powerlessness feeling is that I can't address it with the person directly. I can't actually get satisfaction. I can't tell them that I feel slighted. If that's the case, the best I can do is have a revenge fantasy in my head. But to me, that is associated with feeling unempowered to actually have an
impact in the real world with a person themselves. Your mother did something similar because she wasn't looking for a conversation. She would have spoken to you if she was. She was looking to just throw it out there and then hope for the best. And I'm wondering about this aspect of the feeling unempowered to address some of these lights directly with the people who slighted you, and is that something that you tend to do at all, And how does that go when you try and actually have a conversation.
It's very awkward for me, It's very difficult. I feel like when I have to have a difficult conversation with someone, it's almost as if like I'm blanking out and I have a hard time keeping track of the conversation or making coherent points. I would attribute that to my father's anger when we were growing up, and what a great volume. There was no room for a conversation. And I think a difficult conversation like that now really cows me.
When you feel slighted or hurt or dismissed or ignored, do you also then feel frustration because of the powerlessness that you feel because you can't address it directly, so you won't be able to get satisfaction that way. Does that feeling stand out for you?
Yes, it does, because I know that it just sort of goes on a hamster wheel of I feel affronted by something, I'll write a letter. There's a slight release, you know, the valve is twisted a little bit, and then I'll ruminate on it again. So I write the letter and it's a little bit more of vitriolic. It's a treadmill, and it's exhausting and it's shameful. It's really shameful that I do this to people that I love and that have shown a great generosity to me.
Well, but you haven't done anything to them. From what they know. You actually really pleasant because you never bring up any issues, right.
And maybe I'm mad at myself that I'm not bringing up these issues. That's probably a portion of it too.
You mentioned resentment, and I'm thinking about what Guy was saying about how it really fuels more resentment. The way that you ruminate you think about it, it gets bigger, not smaller for you. And the more emotional real estate that you devote to this, the more land it takes up in your mind. Because it doesn't really feel satisfying. It doesn't really go.
Anyyeah, right, it really doesn't.
We think about resentment almost counterintuitively as related to grieving that sometimes when we carry around a lot of resentment towards someone, what we're really resisting is doing some grieving of maybe I'm going to have to let go of something, or maybe I'm going to lose this, maybe I can't have this kind of closeness in the way that I want to have it. So we hold the resentment thinking
that it's empowering, but in fact it's disempowering. And I don't think that you see a third way, which is is there a way that I can get more acquainted with what I'm feeling, get more clarity on it, have some perspective on it, and then be able to pick and choose what I approach my friend about. Once I have more clarity about what is historical and what is current, what is something that's getting magnified because of my experience as a child, and what is something that is really
very present right now. And those kinds of conversations could very well bring you more closeness and not have you feel the need to rehearse all of these scenarios in your head.
To say that word rehearsal is just so spot on. I find myself having these conversations where I'm almost trying to prepare for almost comeback, and it's like, why are you rehearsing a conversation that hasn't taken place.
It sounds like what you're doing is you're presenting a your case in court. Yeah, and there's a jury that's there in your head and you're trying to convince them. And the problem is that really the courtroom is empty.
But we do that all the time. It's so common where something happens in our lives and we have all these fantasies about what we'd like to say and why the other person was wrong and why we deserve to be treated this way, and often we don't tell the other person, but we're trying to prove our case in our head, and that is not very satisfying.
Yeah, I think at the heart of the matter, what it is is what you said. It's that there's a closeness that I'm longing for that has disappeared since she married this person. And I know logically friendships they wax and they wane, but I really miss that friendship of how we used to be before this person showed up. And I know I can't ask her to throw away her husband. That's not reasonable.
But there's a lot in between asking her to throw away her husband and not having closeness with her, right because.
Right now you're the one that's creating the distance, because when you write these letters to her and to her husband, and as Lori said, when you take the case to court, to the empty court, because unfairness is what makes us do that. We want to get validation that things are unfair. So we prepare in our head the case that we will present the court in which will be ruled, and indeed, something unfair was done to us, and there's our validation
because we're not getting it anywhere else. But when you do that, the anger and resentment towards the husband and towards her for having that husband does create a distance emotionally between you and her. But that's coming from you, which you then have to overcome that distance whenever you're together or talking with her to be able to reconnect, And so it makes the friendship less satisfying for you. Yeah, in other words, you're the one that actually pays the price rather than her.
Or her husband, And that's that's exactly how I would characterize the friendship. You know, we see each other sporadically. It's by as high high kiss case, the quick lunch, and then it feels pretty empty. Again. It's not satisfying.
Because it's hard to have connective tissue and conversation with someone toward him, you're holding so many grudges and resentments and history. It's hard to open up to feel vulnerable because there's so much stuff in the way.
Yeah, you said that you're very uncomfortable bringing up difficult topics with people. Can you do that with your husband?
Yes? I can. I don't very often, but I know I can. I know he would make space for me. I know he would hear just about anything and really try to approach it with an open mind.
You're saying that he would as if you imagine that like the letters that you write, you imagine a scenario. But I'd like to hear if you have had a difficult conversation with him that you brought up, and can you tell us about that.
You know, we don't fight terribly often. If we have a tough topic to discuss, it's my husband who brings it up. He's really the one that sort of leads that conversation. I often feel so like my hands and arms are cut off when it's a difficult conversation. And he's helpful, never in a way that's like he's telling me what I think or what I feel. But I
find him very helpful to help me articulate things. But to answer your question, Laurie, I can't say that I've ever brought up a difficult conversation.
Yeah, and even there with someone that you feel very, very safe with, it's hard for you to bring something up. In fifteen years, you have never brought up a difficult topic between you. It's always been him. Yeah, what's your fear with your husband? If you were to bring something up?
I guess my fear, and I think this is a fear that applies to almost any difficult conversation with anybody, is that I won't be able to, I guess, stay on my ground or articulate my voice because you'll feel too flooded to do that, or because they won't listen. I think I'd feel too overwhelmed. I think i'd feel fearful that that the floodgates would open, and that a lot of hurt would come spilling out. And you know, as I said before, when I fight with people, I
almost can't think. When I have a difficult conversation, I lose the thread a lot, and I lose my thoughts, so you dissociate. Yes, And I have no training in how to have a positive conversation. I have no experience, and I think it feels shameful as a grown woman that I can't defend myself. And so I take all of that hurt and I channel it towards these letters. And I'm sure that you know these letters are not just toward that one person, but it's towards all of
the people that I feel angry about. It's just easier for me to sort of sift it down into one person. But yes, fighting is very, very scary for me.
See, we weren't even talking about fighting. We were talking about a conversation. But for you, in your mind, there's no difference between bringing something up to help prepare something and fighting.
That's right. I can't see them as being separate.
And yet when your husband brings these things up to you, do you feel that that's fighting or do you feel like you're having a conversation.
I feel like we're a conversation. I trust him, and I never feel like it's going to be combative. I know that I can always get to the words somehow, but with other people, I don't know why I sort of revert into this like I'm cowering in a corner. I know what I feel and I know what I think, but somehow to express that to people it's so tough for me.
Can you give us an example of something that happened recently with anyone? Is that it's not just with this friend? Yeah, where you said you know exactly what you're feeling.
Sure. I was talking to a fellow mom on the playground a few months ago, and she was ranting about someone that we know in common, and the person I was talking to she has a dusk job, and she was all of a sudden making snide comments about this third party not having a job. She was just a stay at home mother, and she was really denigrating and pitting sort of the work moms and the stay at home moms, pitting them against one another. And I said to her, well, you do realize that I must stay
at home mom. And I can't remember exactly what she said, but she glossed over it, and she kept talking in a very condescending manner about this woman, implying that she does nothing. And I've stowed about it for days. I continue to doe about it because she knows full well that I'm a stay at home parent. And yet even as I told her to back off that I found this offensive, she kept going. And in the moment, for me, it was easier just to sort of walk away from
this person rolling my eyes. But I still feel that smart and I've sort of spun that interaction into her being a horrible person, a neglectful mother, inconsiderate of other people, and it just has sort of become this hurricane.
But I was asking what you felt, so I'm hearing a lot about what you thought. Yeah, tell me what the feeling was.
Yeah, I felt disrespected and unheard, and those I think are my trigger points. I felt small.
What do you wish you would have said to her in that moment?
I wish I could have told her to I mean, buzz off. I mean, she probably shouldn't say this to me.
What occurred to me also is that you can think about it in hindsight and you can articulate it very clearly in the moment, the anxiety you feel is so severe that you truly dissociate. And I'm just was wondering whether you had any knowledge about whether that's something that happened to your mom, And maybe that's why she would write letters, because she too might not have been able to handle a direct conversation.
Yes, I believe so. She had a very hard, charging mother who would tell you exactly what she thought, tolerated no other opinions.
So your grandmother would express herself in a very unthoughtful way, yeah, and then your mother would express herself also in a very rigid way and maybe unthoughtful, but never directly to later.
Yeah. I've often thought about that.
And when we talk about intergenerational trauma, this is a way of being that has been passed down through the generations, and it's always the person who comes and says, I'm having trouble with this. Who can put a stop to it, who can really end the cycle? And I think it's interesting that the word you used when you said this woman was talking to you and I said how did you feel? And you said I felt very small, because you probably did feel small, literally like you felt as a child.
Yeah, totally, totally.
Is this something you've ever spoken about with your siblings. Is it a conversation you've had about the style your parents had with the shunning and the letters, and the impact that had on you.
It's interesting you say that because I recently saw both my brothers over the holidays. My father is in the middle of dementia and he really can't handle having grandchildren around him because he doesn't know who is who. He had an outburst yelled at some small grandchildren. But my oldest brother said to me, she just like being twelve again, And I kind of thought, like, oh, look at you.
That's right. Like if anybody has been more forward in talking about our father and how sort of oppressive he was, it's me. I felt like a little glimmer of hope hearing my brother say that, an acknowledgment that, like his childhood had been kind of miserable too.
Have you ever directly talked to your brothers about the experience of being children together and your father's outbursts and your mother's letters.
No, we haven't. We've had some comments where I know that they felt similarly, but no, we've skated over it and made comments. I think because it was traumatic for us. All we try to put it behind us.
That comment, though, about oh, which just like being twelve again, feels a little bit like an acknowledgment and opening.
That's how I read it.
Can you give us an example of the most recent letter that you've written in your head with this friend.
Sure, I'll give you an example of a letter I would write to the spouse. I would probably say something about how my friend had an affair because she was so frustrated and bored by you, And I would probably end it by saying, that's how everyone finds you boring and frustrating. They're just written to eviscerate, and no, there's nothing really about them other than to hurt.
But you don't convey your hurt. In other words, the letter isn't I'm very upset with you because you took my friend away from me, and you cost me this bond that was so special to me for so long, and you created such resentment in me that it's difficult for me now to really connect with her and to reach the depths of friendship that we used to have. That's not what the letter is. Have you ever written a letter like that that actually just speaks about how you feel. No, no, why not do you think?
I think because it's harder for me to express myself.
I think it's because it's more pained to do that, to confront yourself with how you're really feeling, with the loss that you really experience, with the sense of injustice that you have, with that sense of powerlessness and frustration. I think it taps into that. Yeah, and I think you're trying to stay away from that, even though you do have access to it, because when we speak about it,
you get tearful. But the letters are not just the venting there to keep you away from the real painful stuff that's going on underneath.
Yeah, I see that, and I agree with you.
Are you wanting something to change with your friend or with her husband, because you were talking about a letter to her husband. What are the letters that you write to your friend?
The most recent versions would have to do with how she's raising her children, or who are all lovely by the way, I would perhaps see the child and the child in completely the normal course of being an eight year old or a nine year old has a moment where they act out, so I would probably say something like, well, your child is disrespectful to you, and everyone thinks is
a brat. Really, the crux of my letters are written to this husband, So you know the letters that I write to my friend, I would probably also point out how awful her husband is.
It sounds like she shares her own difficulty with her husband with you, Yes, And I wonder what that's like, given your own feelings toward him. What role do you play in that when she brings up something difficult about her husband.
Well after they were first married, there was a very rocky period immediately following their marriage, and it looked as if the marriage would be over very quickly. And I remember being out with her one night and she was telling me his terrible treatment of her, and I offered her a place to stay, and I said, you know, you can always stay with me for however long you need,
but I don't believe that you deserve this treatment. Within a couple weeks, things were repaired, they were back together, and it was as if sort of an iceberg had come in between us. I think she was greatly offended by me saying, based upon what she told me, that if you want to leave him, I will help you. I think she wanted to vent and the fact that I gave her advice put a wedge in between us.
But she still shares things that happen with her husband with you.
Yes, And now what I say is I just say, do.
You share any struggles with her? Since she's sharing such personal things, do you?
She never asks, And when I try to bring something up that has happened to me, something about my family or my father, it almost always reverts back to her. And I'm certain that's feeling. Some of my anger in this situation is that I don't feel heard.
It doesn't sound like there's a lot of reciprocity in the friendship.
You're absolutely right. The way that the friendship is structured, there's very little reciprocity. I'm aware of the imbalance of it. And I have tried to talk about, you know, my children, not in a way that feels forceful, but just to sort of even things out, and it always seems to go back to her and her situation or her life whatever it is.
You know, of all the letters that you write in your head, I haven't heard you write a letter in your head to your mother or your father. Yeah, when you were young, did you do that? Did you make your case. Did you have your courtroom in your head when you would feel misunderstood or mistreated.
Yes, in my head, I would definitely write them letters. It was too scary, though, to think about having an actual face to face conversation with them. My father would just walk away. I'm almost positive of it.
So you've been writing these letters, in fact, for a very very long time.
Yes.
Tell us a little bit about what your relationship with your mother is like now.
I touch base with her usually every day, every other day. She is recovering from about of cancer. We talk, but we don't talk about anything that's you know, I had a fight, I'm feeling very closed in today, or something like that. We just would never talk about that. My mother is relentlessly positive, relentlessly positive, and you always look to the bright side. If someone offends you, you just shake your head and roll your eyes and move on, and you don't waste time on stuff like that.
Well, you write them a letter, really, yeah, exactly.
She has her own ways of dealing with it. So I'm close with her, but I'm not emotionally close with her. I want her to be a part of my children's lives, and she's a wonderful grandmother cozy in a way that I didn't have the grandmother be cozy with me, And I'm really happy for that relationship. She loves those girls so much. But she just is not an emotional mother.
She never has been an emotional mother that would give me advice or I don't feel like she or my father ever taught me how to navigate difficult conversations.
I want you to notice that you said she's cozy with them in a way that I didn't have that with a grandmother. But you didn't say she's cozy in a way with them that I didn't have with my mother.
True.
Do you see how far away you stay from those painful feelings?
Yeah?
Yeah, I have to tell you that there's been one time in my life that my mother called me sweetheart. She called me something other than Catherine. And when she called me sweetheart, I remember just freezing and just I couldn't believe that she used a term of endearment towards me. It was so strange. I still remember where I was and just kind of thinking, like, I can't believe she said something to me like that. It was almost like being slapped.
You kind of dissociated too, you kind of froze.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Have you had a friendship that's been reciprocal and satisfying.
Yes, Yes. It was somebody I met through work and it's been a friendship of about twenty years or so. This person has subsequently moved to another state and we don't talk very often, but it's an immediate and deep friendship when we do. I feel very comfortable with her, sort of like my husband. I feel like she has an emotional adroitness that I admire and one that I know won't be used against me.
So you don't freeze with her. You're able to bring up things with her, although it sounds like probably not a lot comes up because you're not in the same location.
Yeah. Yeah, I do feel comfortable having difficult conversations with her.
Have you ever done that?
Yeah? I think at one point it was probably in the lead up to her wedding. It was all we talked about, and I asked her for a little bit of space because I couldn't talk about this wedding anymore. I just needed a break, and she was very respectful of that.
And it didn't make the friendship go away.
No, it didn't make the friendship go away. I still count that as one of my most important friendships, and I'm very thankful for it.
Does she know how much you appreciated that?
I don't know. I should probably tell her about that.
Does your husband know how much you appreciate him?
I think he does. I think we have a good a good way of just sort of day in day out, you know, a touch on the shoulder. He is. I will say this very good about every day saying I appreciate you. I am less good. But I will tell you something. The big difference between my husband and I. My husband lost his father in a terrible boating accident, so he understands far better than I do about losing people.
He has done a great deal of work emotionally processing that loss, and although I know it has been the defining moment in his life, it has brought him a real emotional clarity and a facility with saying I need help, who can help me? And and taking that help. And I have not had that experience of loss.
I think you have had an experience of loss. It just looks different. You mentioned when your mother called you sweetheart, it you froze. Yeah, what do you do when your husband tells you I appreciate you.
Well, he usually comes in for a kiss and it's very sweet, and I love that he does that.
But what happens inside your body?
Well, I think it's a little bit still of an unfamiliar feeling, but it's also quite sweet and welcome. Does your body freeze, well, a little bit, But you know I return his kiss or his hug.
Yeah, but verbally you don't. Oh, yeah, very turn the sentiment.
You know what I usually say. I usually say we have a wonderful life together, because we do do.
And I really feel that I'm laughing because it's like if someone says I love you, and you say things are very nice, right, it's not personal, it's not intimate, it's not about you specifically. We have a nice life together is a very safe response.
Yeah, I appreciate you too is a less safe response.
Right. It's just it's wildly unfamiliar to me to be I guess more of vulnerable.
Do you say I love you to him?
Oh? Yes, yes, we say that quite often. I'm very comfortable saying that to him. I'm very comfortable saying it to my children. When my mother calls, she never says the word I, but she just says love you, you know, and I notice that, and I don't want my husband or my children to feel that because there's a lot of space missing from that word.
There's a huge space left by the lack of the eye.
Yeah, so, Catherine, we have some advice for you. When here's the first part. We spoke about the fact that when there's something intense emotionally going on, you tend to dissociate. That's what keeps you, in part from being able to have confrontations or even difficult discussions with people. But it also happened when good things happen, when your mom calls your sweetheart, or when your husband says something very loving to you, then you also have a little bit of
a freezon that moment because it's intense. So the first thing we'd like you to do is we'd like you to express to your husband. And we think the best way for you to do this would be to write it out, not as a letter, but just write it out and then read it to him. He says to you that he appreciates you all the time, you said, and your response, people areking the said is like, yes, we have a nice life together and we want you
to make it more personal. We'd like you to express to him how much you appreciate him, and we'd like you to make it very personal about how he makes you feel, that you feel safe with him, whatever the things are that are specific that he does that is so emotionally expressive, that you admire how well he recovered from the loss of his dad and how much work he did in therapy and work on himself and be
such a loving dad after that kind of loss. We'd like you to write it out, because we think that'll be easier if you wrote it out ahead of time, but then we'd like you to read it to him and see how you feel doing that. But we'd like you to not only do that, but then also be able to sit with his response and sit with how he's receiving it, and especially if it's meaningful to him, to be able to take that in as well, because that's connective tissue we think you can have even more of with him.
I can do that.
And as we're talking about having a more direct connection with your husband, we were thinking about your friend about how many of the letters that you write in your head around that friendship are actually directed toward her husband. We would like you to focus more on the relationship between you and your friend, regardless of what's going on
in their marriage. And one of the things that was interesting was you talked about how close you are, but at the same time, there doesn't seem to be a lot of room for you to get support from her. The conversation kind of drifts back to whatever is going on with her.
You have this.
Idea that either you confront somebody and everything could blow up, which is why you don't confront people, or you write letters in your head and you plot revenge. And those are the two alternatives. We want to give you a third way. We would like you to call your friend and say, is there a time that we can talk, And we'd like you to talk about something going on in your own life, and maybe it's your father right now with dementia and some of the difficulty because your
family doesn't really talk about things. And if she readirects and says, let me tell you about what's going on with my husband instead of just sitting there and then writing a revenge letter later in the moment, you can say, you know, I'm happy to talk about that later, but right now, I'm really struggling with this. Can we talk
about this a little bit more and see how she responds. Now, she might not be able to do that with you, and that's good information, and the information is, oh, okay, she's not a person that really has the capacity for that, And that might motivate you to look at the other relationships in your life and other friendships so that you
don't lose this friendship. But maybe it serves certain purposes for you but not others, so you're not simmering all the time with this feeling of being unacknowledged or unseen or unheard. The other possibility is that she might respond well, and she might really be there for you. And now what you're doing is you're changing that assumption you have that she just doesn't have an interest in you, and
you're saying, oh, I haven't been stepping up. I haven't been sharing myself with her because I was afraid to. But when I do insert myself into the conversation and I tell her what I need, she's actually quite responsive. And this takes you away from the whole obsession around the husband and all the revenge fantasies around him, and it puts you right there in the friendship to see what this friendship can be.
Yeah, because that's entirely what I want, so that you're not sitting there feeling helpless like you experienced growing up, and then you feel like you have no recourse other than to have these court cases go on in your mind.
Yeah.
And our hope is that once you establish more trust, that you can be in this friendship differently. Maybe you guys will start talking about the friendship itself at a certain point to be able to say to her, Hey, I miss you, can we get together, or even positive things like I've really enjoyed how we've been talking lately. It makes me feel really close with you. Little statements like that really can have an effect on the entire feeling of what the friendship is like.
Yeah, yeah, no, I like that.
One more thing we have for you to do. We were thinking about your childhood and how unseen you felt, and how unable you will to speak up because your dad would just bark and your mom wouldn't communicate. You'd send a letter but not have the conversation. We'd like you to get in touch with how that felt to grow up in that house because your letters tend to be an attempt to, in fantasy hurt the other person, but you're writing them because you're not looking at your
own hurt. And we'd like you to get in touch with some of that hurt from childhood. So we'd like you to actually write a real letter. Now it will be one you don't send, but we'd like you to write a letter to your mum in which you tell her and describe to her what it was like for you to grow up in the house, what it was like for you to receive that letter from her about
the box that you didn't love and gather dust. We'd like you to tell her what it was like to not be able to speak up, what it was like to be told that the weight of the future of America is in your hands and that a minus is going to cost us Aul dearly. You know, we'd like you to be as honest and as open as you can, because you won't be sending the letter to her, what
you will be doing with it after you're done. We want you to be seen, So we'd like you just to share it with your husband and say, this is a letter I'm not sending to my mom. Someone has to hear it and I'll appreciate so much of that with you and read it to him and be able to express it and be heard and be seen by someone.
Yeah, that's beautiful. I love that idea.
And then we'd also like you to sit with what it feels like when he resis what is it like not only to be able to let your feelings be seen by yourself, which we think you don't do enough because you're so focused on the other people and the revenge fantasies, but what is it like to be seen by someone I'm close with? Yea, those are the three tasks for the week, okay, and we're really looking forward to hearing how those go for you.
Oh, thank you. This has been something more than I could have imagined.
I really feel for Catherine because growing up feeling so unseen and dealing with that silent treatment and the shunning, it's so painful, and then experiencing that in her adult life over and over again because she can't speak up and so she feels so unseen and then so powerless. It is just very difficult to deal with for so many decades.
And what's interesting is that sometimes people don't realize that there's an intergenerational transmission. We saw that it might present differently, where her grandmother was very critical and outspoken, and then the mother was very critical writing letters, but we're not going to have a conversation about it. And then you come to Catherine and she's just dissociated, so you can see that she wants to stop it. I was very encouraged by how open she is to taking risks, even
though it scares her. She's very interested in trying something new. She's gotten to the point where she said, this is very exhausting. I don't want to live this way. This is emotionally draining, and so I really hope that the assignment we gave her will help her not only to feel more seen and heard around her experiences, but also opens her up to the positive experiences. We always say that if you're going to mute the pain, you're going to mute the joy, and I think that's what's happened here.
When her husband says I appreciate you, she says, well, we have a nice life together. So I think it'll be really interesting to see how these exercises go this week and what kind of shifts she can make from them.
You're listening to dea therapists. We'll be back after a short break.
So guy.
We heard back from Catherine and let's hear how her week went.
Hello, Assignment number one. My husband was very touched to hear my letter. He listened and cried at times. While he knows how hard it is for me to express my feelings, they really felt as if I saw him. Overall, he was very supportive and cited my kindness and the fact that I reached out to your program the signs that despite having had an unhappy childhood, I still want to treat others and myself well and want to find a deeper understanding about my childhood so I can have
better relationships. We had a great conversation that lasted about an hour. I didn't blank out, but I do feel that because it was just a lot to process, I will remember more about it in the coming days. It was a very positive and loving experience, and my husband noted at the end that he doesn't doubt my love for him, but he would like it if I expressed that love more, which having heard that from him, I
will do for me. The atmosphere was sort of charged in a very unfamiliar but I think positive way, and my body felt relaxed for assignment too. Speaking with my friend, it certainly felt unfamiliar to pick up the phone and call her. We chatted for a few minutes, and then I asked her if she had the experience of seeing her childhood in a way that significantly differed from her siblings. I could hear the surprise in her voice, maybe because we text far more often than speak on the phone,
but she answered my question openly. We laughed at parts and we commiserated at others, and I felt a connection through that. I'll see her soon, and I'm going to tell her how much I enjoyed that conversation, and that I think about our friendship a lot. Assignment three. Writing the letter to my mom, but reading it to my husband,
this letter came flowing out of me. I noted how she could see my father's ragey behavior dictating the atmosphere of almost everything in the house, and how that left very little room for anyone to safely express their feelings. I wish that she could have taken me aside, somewhere safe to have these conversations, if only to say, you may not feel comfortable speaking with your dad around, but we need to do it for your sake and your benefit. My mom has often said that she's so thankful that
I've never had something terrible happen to me. But I wrote to her that although I look okay, they are hollow parts inside, and she had a role in that. My mom often spent time with her best friend, with whom she had a deep friendship. She got to escape my father, and she had a confidant to discuss his behavior. But I realized last week after our talk that she didn't provide that escape for me, and that's a real failure on her part. Reading this letter, I noted I
kept crossing my arms. I felt flat while I was reading it, but less so when I discussed it with my husband. We agreed that if I sent this letter to my mom, she would never respond to it, so fixed is she on only seeing good things. I feel very thankful to have had these three experiences. At the end of the day, the thoughts were right there, and I really didn't have a tough time expressing them. Made a couple interesting connections in my mind since talking with
you both. Most of all, I've taken from it that a conversation won't automatically scale up into a screaming match. Thank you.
So let's start with that conversation with her husband where
she read to him how she felt about him. That sounded like such a powerful moment for the two of them, and as we suspected, he really needed to hear it, and then he even asked for more of it thereafter, and he was so moved by it, And to me, that just confirms what we suspected that although she has these internal emotional experiences, they don't get expressed outwardly enough the good or the bad, as we said, and here the good wasn't coming across as overtly as it might.
So hopefully this opens an entire new way for her to communicate with her husband that will allow them much more closeness as a result.
I like what you said about the good and the bad because I think sometimes when people are really afraid of sharing their feelings, they also aren't comfortable sharing the positive feelings, and that really keeps a distance in a
relationship even when the positive feelings are there. And I was so moved when he was able to tell her, and it sounds like in a very gentle, loving way, I would like more of this, I think that will bring them so much closer, and I think she will get more as well from the reciprocity that's going to come from this.
The second assignment that was a little confused, to be honest, what we asked her to do was share something about herself with her friend, whatever it is, and make sure that her friends can stay on her, rather than revert the conversation back to the friend's feelings or needs. So she said she brought up this question about whether she
or siblings had different perceptions. If she then followed that question with because for me, and she spoke about herself and the friend listened, great, But if she just asked a friend to do that, then there was a miss in terms of the point of that assignment, and I'm just not sure which it is.
There was something else that was interesting in her update, which was that her mom had this confidant that she would go to to complain about Catherine's dad too, And it sounds a little bit like a mirror of Catherine's friend coming to Catherine to complain about the friend's husband, And I think that some of the resentment might be
wrapped up in that parallel dynamic. That's going on that we hadn't heard about during session, So it's just another thing for Catherine to think about as she thinks about what the source of her anger and resentment really are when it comes to this friend and her husband.
Right her third assignment, writing the letter to her mother, I was glad to hear that she was commenting on how she feels hollow internally and that her mother has something directly to do with that, and wishing her mother had taken her aside and legitimized conversations and talking about feelings with her. I think those were very important things.
And I think the important part of this too was being able to share it so it's not just something that she is holding inside, because I think that's where all of those letters were coming from. And we always say choose your audience well in terms of who you're going to share yourself with in a very vulnerable way, and her husband was it sounds like a great audience.
I also think about that friend who lives in another city that she also feels very close to, and one of the things we also wanted her to do was to see about cultivating friendships that feel better to her, and I think that the exercises that we gave her our first step to cultivating all kinds of relationships, including a closer relationship with her husband, a better relationship with her friend, and maybe cultivating other friendships and mostly a better relationship with herself.
I agree, and so I think that in the one week, she's taken quite a few steps and gone quite a journey.
Yeah, as you said, it's an opening, and I think it's a fantastic place to start. Next week, a woman who loves her husband worries about his anger toward their young children and considers whether she should leave him to protect them.
It's not healthy for our daughter. You need to get therapy or we're going to leave so that I can protect her.
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