Therapy Thursday: Role Expectations

Hey pals! 

I thought I would start a new weekly (ish) post called therapy Thursday. I go to therapy almost every Wednesday and usually during that drive home really decompress and often find myself voice recording any sort of breakthrough that I had during my session. This session was filled with an unexpected amount of crying. 

If you know me or have read my blog at all, you probably know that eight years ago my fantastic grandfather passed away. I actually used to talk about him a lot in therapy and particularly about how long ago he had passed away but how heavily it’s still affected my day-to-day life. His passing is one of the main times in my life where I should have absolutely been getting professional help when I wasn’t. Looking back with my psychiatrist, I have realize that I was incredibly depressed and what I thought was normal grief was not normal at all. However, it’s amazing how so many topics that are very unrelated to him bring me back to his death during therapy and then obviously bringing me to tears. 

“This week I had a bit of a breakthrough in terms of roles and expectations. I think that something everyone struggles with is when we have one person in our life that although they fit a particular role, the relationship we have with them exceeds that role and those responsibilities so much. In turn, I think what can happen is we then put the expectations of that person on to anyone else that fills that same role. “

For example, we may have 10 friends and I think most of us can say we have one best friend or maybe multiple best friends. That best friend is a different role than those other friends or acquaintances we have and we acknowledge that and I think if anything are gracious that we might be lucky enough to have a best friend or multiple best friends and then other friends on top of that. AND at multiple stages in our lives those friends and those best friend have been and looked different. 

I think about these roles and expectations I have for some people in my life and realize that the definition of, for example, an aunt, is a person who is a sibling to or married to a sibling of your mother or father. We might have an aunt that also wears the hat of a best friend, confidant, or even more of a mom. And if we have that we are lucky, but that doesn’t mean that every other aunt we have deserves to be directly compared to that one person. 

I promise I’m not actually talking about an aunt that I have. I’m just using that as an example. I think it’s interesting that at least with myself, I understand in terms of friends that you have different types of friends and friends that are there for different things and long-distance friends and your next-door neighbor friends and nobody is being compared to anyone else. But, With other roles in my life I can’t do the same. And I don’t know if any of you can relate to this but while I was talking to my therapist yesterday my mind was just blown when I realize that it was not fair to hold anyone else to someone else’s role in my life and that they have to meet those same expectations.

And I recognize how obscenely lucky I am that I have countless people in my life that I love and cherish and fill these amazing roles. Not only do I have a wonderful grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, cousins, uncles, and friends, I also married a man who has wonderful family members and family friends that I never realized I even needed in my life until I had them. I never knew I would get to be one of those people who had an aunt Dina who “wasn’t really an aunt but was pretty much my aunt”. But, now I have exactly one of those!

This was my takeaway: it’s unfair to put unrealistic expectations on people in our lives. And whether we have one person or 40 people who we could call in time of crisis or time of joy, we are lucky to have those people. And even if those people don’t fill the exact shoes we wish they would fill, I think we are lucky to have them at all if not to have them exactly how we want.

I also feel incredibly privileged that I even have one special person. So I hope if you’re reading this you can think of two or five or 20 special people that you have. And if you can’t, you really should know that you have one because it’s me.

And you also know now, that I am the most cheesiest of cheese🙂