Not a Neutral Party
My therapist was at one point also my mother’s therapist. At first, he didn’t want to see me due to the conflict of interest. However, he felt bad for me because I had just received a harsh medical diagnosis and was reeling.
I had met with him before so I felt more comfortable with him than somebody I did not know. When my mother moved to a different city and stopped seeing the therapist, he started to see me.
At our sessions, we talked about my mom a lot. I’m not going to give details, but my mom had recently done something really messed up. It basically ruined our relationship. When I told my therapist, he wasn’t surprised because of how well he knew her, so he believed me when I told him about how cruel she was.
Though he was mindful to not reveal anything about his sessions with her, I got the sense that he understood that she was not a nice person (and that’s putting it lightly).
Anyway, my mother came back to the state a couple of months later, and I asked my therapist if he would be willing to mediate a conversation between her and I. He didn’t want to do it.
At first, I was upset—until he explained it to me. He said that my mother is a narcissistic woman, and by then, he had learned a lot more about her from me.
He could not be a neutral party in the matter. He said, “I’ll be honest. I would be on your side, and we both know how upset that would make your mom, and I worry it would just lead to more mistreatment for you.”
I had never heard him straight up call her that before, so it was kind of surprising and also very affirming. Story credit: Reddit / Craven_Hellsing