So, on Tuesday, after the session with my Mom, here is the note I emailed the therapist.
Thank you again for yesterday. I found it productive and calming! I know your time is valuable so I want to keep this brief and to the point. Here are some thoughts and backstory that might be helpful for future sessions/calls.
First, I think she will discontinue therapy before 3 sessions, not because of the drive or the expense (although she is incredibly frugal), but because she wants a quick fix, fears confrontations and generally avoids doing the work.
I think she was hoping you would validate her claims of being taken advantage of and feeling manipulated. She likes/needs/craves validation and currently has no one that supports her frustrations about her relationship with me. She probably wanted you to confront me and require me to be responsible and stay employed. If she knows you will “sort this out” and “get to the bottom of it”, and “not let delinquent adult children manipulate their parents” and that you require responsibility and accountability from me, she would feel respected/validated and it would help enormously in future sessions/calls.
Since she needs validation, you might also mention her good qualities.
Mom was an excellent cook, my favorites are her pumpkin bread, plum tarte, chicken in wine sauce and spinach lasagna.
She has excellent taste in classical music, art, European culture and interior design. She was a talented piano player.
She traveled extensively when she was young and came to America from Germany in the early 1960s to visit her sister (who arrived in LA around 1955-56) and eventually met and married my Dad at a Church in Hollywood. (I want to say here that Dad was an excellent father, and he was, but in the context of the current conflict, that seems like an insult to her as a Mother and she is jealous of the relationship/love I had for him. Her Dad died when she was 14 and the family was broke afterwards, my Dad died when I was 32 and left Mom financially sound.)
She can be incredibly kind, generous and outgoing.
She was very glamorous in her earlier years. She dressed well and was very well liked in my school and our neighborhood. My parents had some very close friends that gave us new experiences, sailing, horseback, riding, flying, a love of Nature and Astronomy and so on.
I had private school, ballet lessons, ice skating, tennis, swimming, track, braces, acne treatments and tutors for math.
In many ways, we were incredibly fortunate and lucky.
They were very good parents, mention that, she will appreciate that.
Lastly, I confided that I felt dysfunctional and lost. Please don’t be overly concerned with that. I’m not depressed, just discouraged, I am actively searching for full time work, still functioning, capable and responsible. I know it’s imperative that I regain my independence, not be a financial burden to her and have no plans for any future financial entanglements with her. I was fully independent and successful before and I will succeed again from my own efforts.
I want to continue with you and can do anyday/anytime/any location until my work situation changes. She probably prefers Afternoons, because her joints are stiff in the morning from Rheumatoid Arthritis and getting out of the house early is difficult. If you decide to do phone calls with her, she has old landline phones and sometimes the batteries run out mid-call, sometimes it’s an excuse to terminate calls when she doesn’t like what she hears.
