Family Therapy - Advice and Commentary Wanted

So! I have progressed to family therapy now, and had my first family session with my mother yesterday. It was horrible! I was really, hysterically upset for most of it, so my memories are kinda foggy of what happened!

Highlights include:
"I think we need to treat you like you're three, and have you parrot back everything we say to you." - my mother, at one point
"[Fiancee] is so bad for you because every since you started spending time with him, your social skills have taken a horrible dive."- also my mother. these highlights are almost entirely either direct quotes or paraphrasing I remember of her, lol.
"I thought we had a good relationship until you went to college, and I don't know what went wrong, but somehow [Ariel, ex-girlfriend] convinced you that we're horrible people." - again, my mother, and this stands out because her recurring complaint about all of my friends is that they convince me that my parents are horrible. additionally, every time we go to therapy, the date where our relationship "broke" gets moved back??
"That's news to me. I've never heard that you planned to do this. But when I hear you say 'no contact,' I hear you meaning that you don't want to deal with being an adult." - this one is heavily paraphrased but "you don't want to deal with being an adult" is an actual quote from somewhere during this session. The "news" was that, when I was 11/12, I made a (as detailed as I could at that age) plan of going to college and immediately going no contact with my parents. I updated this plan, and didn't decide not to go through with it until halfway through my senior year of high school. I know I talked about this publicly, because I remember having a huge fight with both my parents over it???
"I never said that. I have never been anything but supportive of your medication. I have never complained, never yelled at you, never used unkind body language to tell you I disapproved. I never said that we wouldn't pay for your medical care." - my mother, when I had a break down over what happened my sophomore year, where I texted my mother "hey can you send me money so I can buy my meds" and she said "no."

There's a tag for suicide mention, and I'll get to that later and spoiler it when it comes up. There's more but I have to go so I'll add when I get back.

Commentary on this please. I feel like I'm going crazy.

 

Fiancee was present at this session, and at one point I was pretty hysterical and she was soothing me, and my mother said, "[Fiancee], if you don't stop petting her, I'm going to strangle you."

 

I don't have an exact quote, but my mom also talked a lot about how I'm developmentally delayed, and how I'm stuck on seeing the world like a 12 yo, and how clearly it's all real to me but she can't see or understand it because she's an adult and can't imagine everything feeling so much. And she complained about how I choose friends that stunt me and don't let me grow up and be 21 like I should be.

 

you’re an adult

adults are allowed to choose their own goddamn friends

your mom sounds like a fucking piece of work

 

One: Applause for being willing to try family therapy with your mother! That is. Brave. Brave is the only word I can think of (because like heckie I'd ever agree to be in therapy time with any of my other family members trying to fuck with my therapist's head).

Two: Your mother is, indeed, horrible, and everything sounds like twenty kinds of #RELATABLE from my life. If you are going crazy, it's only because you've had to put up with her crazy for so long.

 

Okay, but since having this session - what if she's right? What if I really am terribly immature and selfish?

Just. She straight up denied every complaint I had about her. Told me that I was inventing a family history where I was abused. And what if I did? What if I just gave myself false memories of everything?

 

That was another thing. She talked about talking to my relatives about my assertion that I was ever unhappy, and quoted my uncle as saying, "Did she live her own childhood?" or something like that in response. Basically that I was never unhappy and that my belief that I was was invented by me at a later date?

Also I want to clarify, in the op I said the date our relationship broke kept getting moved back by my mother, and I didn't mean that it got moved back in time, but forward. Like when we did therapy in high school she talked about how middle school was really trying and communication broke down, and when I went to college she talked about it breaking down in high school, and now she's saying that it broke down my freshman year of college?

When I was in high school I got in a fight with my dad over the fact that I refused to be alone with my mother, either in a room or the car. Like. From my memory, our relationship broke down sometime between elementary and middle school.

 

Some of the most important advice I ever got, from one the deans at the college I attended, when I was having a breakdown about family stuff:

It's okay to have a different version of things than someone else does.

The dean's own childhood was miserable, according to her, but according to her sister they were exceptionally happy and well-treated, and... that's valid. Both that her sister was fine but also that the dean wasn't. People react to things differently. People think and feel differently. You don't have to have the same story.

(Necessary caveat that this isn't about factual events, such as "I was born in 1989" and someone going "No it was 1988". Not that kind of different version.)

 

she’s trying really fucking hard to pin the blame on you. she’s doing the whole “oh our relationship was fine until you started Being This Way, possibly because of Evil Other People Turning You Against Me”. She either doesn’t realize or is willfully ignorant to the fact that your relationship broke down because of her mistreatment

 

Wow, it sounds like she’s gaslighting you to hell and back, that fucking sucks. Have you considered writing some of these things down and handing them to your therapist before the session starts? Like the thing about how she keeps changing the date your relationship broke down, and anything else she’s telling you didn’t happen/happened differently. Just to make sure your memory of events will be heard and known even if you can’t communicate it clearly in the moment.

 

Yeah this therapist is also my personal therapist and has made it really clearly that even during family therapy, she is my therapist first and foremost.

Which is honestly so relieving. Because I'm trying not to think of this as me against my parents, but it kinda feels like it. And it feels good to have someone who's explicitly on "my" side, and whose said their interest in family therapy is improving the relationship for my benefit.

 

I think I'm also gonna try to take notes of family therapy sessions in the future, because what I remember most clearly of yesterday's session is my sick anxiety and panic and the sense of oh god why are you telling me the earth is flat. I have a couple quotes that stick out, but that's it. And it's not helpful.

 

Fiancee said that my mom was also infantilizing me the entire time, which I don't remember, but maybe?

 

I would make a note to pay attention for this in future sessions? I didn't notice a lot of how my parents treated me was condescending/narcissistic/controlling/etc until after someone pointed it out, because I was just... used to it. "Isn't that how you talk to your family?" (No, no it is not.)

 

Yeah, same. Fiancee's main point was how my mom constantly harps on me being "developmentally delayed" and talks about how I clearly only understand the world like a [3/5/12] year old, depending on her mood, mostly.

 

I probably am developmentally delayed? I'm autistic, I was a weird kid, I had a lot of difficulty relating to my peers emotionally, and it got worse as I got older, and my mom makes a big deal about how I like "willfully" delayed having my high school drama experiences until I was in college. (I had a friend who liked a boy, who ended up liking me and I liked him back, and she. didn't handle that well.)

 

you’re not developmentally delayed because you have by definition completed your development. autism may be disabling, but despite what your mother thinks you are actually no longer a child. you don’t see the world like [age], you see the world like a disabled adult. which absolutely shouldn’t be a cause for her scorn and it’s horrible that she’s basically accusing you of being disabled on purpose

also how on earth do you “willfully” delay something that requires like...the actions of other people and is entirely random...also that doesn’t sound like high school drama that sounds like a completely typical human social experience that could happen to anyone at any age??

it really does sound like she’s infantilizing you, probably with the goal of making you doubt your own competency

 

Nor is high school drama in any way crucial to ones development.

 

The whole thing with the friend was that she was trying to kick me out of the friend group, and they were the only friends I'd made at college (this was the first month/two months in) and I'd. never had friends like this, before. I had two childhood friends who were my friends from like age 6 until high school, and then I just kinda drifted in and out of friend groups. And I torched most of my friendships my junior year, anyway.

So I got to college, and suddenly I had friends??? Who thought I was normal and made efforts to include me? And the one girl was trying to get them to ostracize me and was all "me or idiomie" and I had no other friends in college at that point and I've always been the person who's picked last, so obviously I was gonna lose this, and ... it was really stressful. So I ended up calling my mom about it. And she didn't make fun of me! But she told me it was an immature thing to be upset about, and every time it comes up, she uses it as evidence that I never "really grew up" and was all "if they don't choose you, they aren't good friends" which, while true, didn't help the crushing anxiety that I was going to be a social outcast (which I'd never cared about before, but I did this time). I honestly wish I'd never told her because she didn't end up giving me any actionable advice, so I just handled it the way I thought of, and actually it went really well, but we don't ever talk about my really excellent conflict management after my initial freak out, no, we always harp on the fact that I had any freak out at all!

 

That´s bullshit and not at all immature to be upset about.