We work on what you are living with, not on a label for someone who is not here.
For adult sons of a self-focused or unpredictable parent. I will not diagnose your mother or your father from your description of them, and I do not need to in order to work on the vigilance, the doubt and the borrowed sense of worth you carry now.
A diagnosis of an absent person is not therapy. It is a conversation with no one on the other side.
You may well arrive with the word already in hand, from a book or a forum or years of thinking about it. I am not going to argue with you about it and I am not going to confirm it either. It is not mine to confirm.
What we can be precise about is what happened and what it produced. That is the material you own, it is the material that changes, and it holds up far better than a label when someone tries to talk you out of your own history.
Four adaptations that were intelligent then and expensive now.
None of these are defects. Each one was a reasonable solution to the house you grew up in, still running in a house that no longer requires it.
- Vigilance
You read rooms before you enter them
You know the temperature of a gathering in the first ten seconds, and you adjust before anyone has spoken. It is a genuine skill and it has never had an off switch.
- Worth on loan
You are only as good as the last thing you did
Achievement steadies you for a day or two and then the baseline resets. Praise does not accumulate into anything you can stand on.
- Your own reality
You do not fully trust your account of things
You second-guess whether something was as bad as you experienced it, and you find yourself supplying reasons why it probably was not.
- Anger with nowhere to go
Flat for years, then disproportionate
Anger was unsafe, so it went underground. It tends to surface either as long-running low resentment or as a flare that surprises you and frightens people.
Slow, unspectacular, and mostly about the present.
We start with your account, told without you interrupting yourself to be fair. That alone takes a few sessions and is often the first time it has been said in order.
Then the present tense: where the vigilance still fires, where you defer without deciding to, what happens in your body during a phone call, and what your partner or your children are currently receiving from a man who is scanning the room.
Then skills, which are less glamorous than insight and matter more. Saying a plain no. Ending a conversation. Holding your version of events while someone insists on another. Letting a good day count for something.
I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California and can see you in person in Long Beach or by telehealth anywhere in the state. If what you are describing needs specialized trauma treatment beyond my scope, I will say so and point you somewhere better suited.
You do not need a diagnosis for your parent in order to stop paying for your childhood.
Including the two about the word in the title.
Frequently Asked Questions
Bring the description, not a diagnosis
A free 15-minute phone consultation. Tell me what an ordinary interaction is like and we will work from there.