Dear Lisa:

The success or failure of therapy is in the relationship between therapist and client. You “find her a little abrasive and sometimes hard to understand”, better tell her that clearly, see how she responds. She may respond by speaking slower so that you can understand her better, and she may change her abrasive style to a gentler style. If she responds in these way you will probably appreciate it and feel better about her. If on the other hand she ignores what you tell her and  doesn’t try to accommodate you, that would mean she is not a good therapist, and better not plan on another session with her.

I want to summarize what you shared on your thread so far: you recently exited a long and abusive relationship and started therapy. Your therapist suggested among other things that you were in that relationship for too long because you suffered a “lack of emotional connection to (your) mother as a child”.

She suggested when offering the Chair Exercise that your mother wronged you (“imagine the person who wronged you sitting there”), and that the exercise will consist of you telling your mother how she has wronged you and how you feel about it.

You were shocked, you wrote, when she suggested your mother didn’t meet all your needs, “I always felt I had a normal upbringing and have wonderful memories of both my mother and father”. You wrote that you knew they loved you because of what they did, “cooked your favourite food, bought your favourite colour clothing for you”.

You are worried that therapy with her, the chair exercise, will cause you to hate your mother and father. You would rather write a forgiveness letter to each, listing what you didn’t get but adding that you forgive them for “being impatient and rude with me” or “for comparing me to my sister”.

In the last year of your mother’s life, “She actually gave me what I needed. She spoke of her love and affection for me and she complimented me on my accomplishments. I feel I have already made peace with her”.

My input: if you made peace with your mother (and your father?) then there is no reason to shake a relationship that now rests in peace. Yet, your experiences as a child, during those Formative Years, did form you. It may be possible for you to keep your past relationship with your mother who  is no longer alive, I understand, at peace and, at the same time, look at what the child that you were experienced during childhood and on.

I suppose you worry about hating your mother because you already felt anger at her in the past. Children of minor or adult age most often feel guilty for feeling angry at a parent, especially the parent who was there most of the time,  usually the mother.

If you can bring up that anger little by little, without being overwhelmed by it, without feeling too threatened by it, then you will be emotionally healthier. Because what we resist, persists. You resist that anger, push it down, and it will push back, making itself known in one way or the other, often not in circumstances involving the very person you are most angry at.

What do you think?

anita