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When seeing families in my office for parenting work, I have observed that in heteronormative families, more often than not, the father takes a backseat role in the therapy sessions. This same holding back (even inhibition) often plays out at home in the family dynamic as well. Mother dominates. Father defers to what he considers to be her greater knowledge and leadership position in the work of parenting. This pattern supports the father’s inhibitions around his emotional life. In this excerpt from my book, How Are You? Connection in a Virtual Age: A Therapist, a Pandemic and Stories about Coping with Life, I offer an inside look at a family therapy session in which, after several months of work, that classic dynamic shifted, to the great benefit of both parents and their son.
In Session
The Hayes, a family of five, are also on my schedule for the day. The father starts out the session with a concern about his son. His son is not cleaning his room. The father speaking first is atypical. In fact, his is the main voice of the whole session. His son, who usually protects his father (a man who normally can do no wrong in his eyes), gets activated and cries out, “You hurt me.” He points out all the ways he has become more responsible for himself, and he asks his parents to stay out of his room, his life, and his self-care. He says he can handle it on his own terms. After suffering a major depression, this new attitude is an accomplishment. His mother steps in briefly, to say that the father also scolds her for house clutter. The brevity of the mother’s participation is atypical for her. The father, normally restrained, sitting in on the sidelines, protected from the family drama, says, “You two are so emotional.”
Here we reap the fruit of many months of work. I point out that after stepping into the family drama for possibly the first time, he has pushed all the emotion in the room onto his wife and son. Even though he clearly has strong feelings. I explain that his son was set of by his intrusiveness and covert criticism, not seeing the son’s recent great strides in being more independently responsible for himself. The son calms down in response to this intervention. I encourage his father to continue with his closeted feelings. He is emboldened, expressing the emotions that lie behind his worry, his fears that the messy room would cloud the son’s thinking process. In the process, he discovers the associations with the scarcity of the emotional life in his family of origin. He reveals that early in his life, he identified music as a way that he could connect to his passionate internal life. As a result of his opening to his own emotions, his wife can remove the target from her chest. She has always been the emotional center of the family. She is the one who does the heavy emotional lifting, particularly for the son’s needs. This has made her the target of everyone’s frustrations.
This session takes a big step toward putting each of their feelings and roles in their proper baskets. The father’s instrument has finally started playing in the family’s emotional orchestra. The mother section quiets. The son section fades out softly.
Conclusion
Notice how the son’s emotional outburst stirred up emotion in the room and how the father tries to retreat and to sit on the sidelines of the emotional drama, assigning the emotions to his wife and son. This is where I step in to steer what becomes the essential work of the session. I keep the drama centered where it belongs – between the father and the son. By pointing out the father’s undermining of his son, the son is soothed and steps out of his father’s way. Notice, too, how the mother’s uncharacteristic quiet allows the father to venture out with his voice. With some encouraging words from me, the path is now clear for the father to get in touch with his emotional life and become more of a presence in the session and in the family dynamic in general. Mother is relieved of the tiring constancy of her role of emotional bag carrier. Father comes alive.
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