Posted by Crooked Heart on February 1, 2004, at 10:29:28
In reply to Re: Definition of Progress » Crooked Heart, posted by DaisyM on January 31, 2004, at 15:31:47
> Interestingly, the only one of my children who knows I'm in therapy is my youngest. His Therapist dragged me into all this and then pushed me to tell my son to "normalize" what he was going through.Hmm. My youngest was the last of my children to know. He used to get very anxious sometimes about his own parents' wellbeing, so I didn't want him to know. But children just have antennae and they can pick everything up and he certainly did. So finally it just seemed better for us to take the line that I was in therapy and that that was no big deal.
Our older children didn't like too much the idea that I might need therapy (neither did I!), but they could readily see that people might want to talk about things with someone who wasn't a spouse, friend, relation whatever. My eldest son was away at university too, but after I'd been in therapy for a while my daughter told me she couldn't believe how much I'd 'chilled out'. (I guess that was a compliment?!) The next couple of years were very tough for her for other reasons, and I think that she was able to lean on me much more because she knew that I had that sort of extra support.
>He is a very sweet, sensitive child (part of the problem, the world eats kids like him) so it hasn't been a problem.
He sounds just lovely! And what you said about your 'self-involved, as they should be' teenagers, it's just so reassuring when you see your children getting on with the proper business of their lives at that stage in spite of the large amounts of undeserved crap that might be around.
Not sure where all this is going. Oh well...:)
poster:Crooked Heart
thread:307608
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040131/msgs/308079.html