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Holy shit brother. You're going to get knifed.
To directly answer your core question, you definitely should be in therapy to help you process this. Your anger at the people trying to help you SAVE YOUR DAMN LIFE FROM A MURDERER in this thread is a pretty clear loud fucking red alert klaxon that you need some help processing this.
However, the more pressing issue is that YOUR BROTHER IS GOING TO KILL YOU IF YOU DON'T GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE and I do think you should consider prioritizing that in the short-to-medium term.
You're 23, you have to think on your feet in getting out of these kinds of situations.
The more time you're putting up with this and not doing what you NEED to do, for yourself and for what's best for the situation - it's YOUR fault.
If a therapist has to come in and do what YOU won't do, then that's a bad look too.
Do not listen to this person!!! This is terrible advice.
Therapists in OH are required by law to tell you the limits of confidentiality in your first session & likely have it additionally in writing. If yours didn't, make an ethical complaint & sue them.
Your "problem" isn't "heavy duty" for a therapist who is a trauma professional; It's a normal 7/8 hrs a day for a them. If you don't understand why mandated reporting is necessary my heart breaks for you.
Therapists in OH are required by law to tell you the limits of confidentiality in your first session & likely have it additionally in writing. If yours didn’t, make an ethical complaint & sue them.
They probably did do all of that, but it isn't exactly something you internalize immediately I imagine, unless you know right away that you're going to be talking about murderous relatives
Yeah suing his therapist is NOT what op needs to be doing here
The pattern your brother shows is familiar. It's the same as with serial killers, it's how they start. I've read a lot about the psychology behind these people and I've seen a lot of documentaries. First it's fantasies, then it starts with animals, until that won't be enough to feed the need.
Doing nothing has a high risk of animals and people getting hurt.
It's good you got into therapy, but especially your brother needs help. And monitoring.
And you need a safe environment.
Dude I replied to you in the last thread.
Walk out of the house. Now.
Better to be on your own than live under the thumb.
she stopped me before I mentioned the threats he made to kill people and told me that she is a mandated reporter
Your therapist will comply with her mandated reporter obligations, but does not consider herself to be in the business of tricking clients into saying things that will force her to breach confidentiality. You got close to her line, so she reminded you exactly where it was and gave you the option to either cross it and cause a report to law enforcement, or to stop short and talk about things that she can lawfully keep in confidence.
My thoughts exactly. She kept you in control of this. What you do with that is up to you, although it sounds like maybe this is gonna be awful whether or not the authorities are involved so maybe you should just stop trying to own his bullshit and focus on keeping yourself safe. Start by trying to record his threats or get him to text them to you in writing. Start building up any little evidence you can get. Make a protonmail and email all the evidence you can find to it so you have timestamps on everything. If you can get a long trail of evidence it should make it easier to both get him arrested and might make you more eligible to receive services. A sibling can also count as a perpetrator of domestic violence in a lot of places. Ask your therapist what tips they have for helping you work on securing safe and stable housing and having an emergency safety plan. Any therapist should know how to make a safety plan, they're usually for the outpatient management of suicidal ideation but they can be used for other safety reasons as well. Personal and interpersonal safety can be pretty interrelated.
Yeah that was my read as well.
Professionals are required by law, depending on state but I presume all of them, to report credible violence threats. Like if you say you plan on killing someone. Or someone else says that about someone. Or an abusive person is reasonably going to hurt someone. No doubt reactionary laws where professional ethics prevented doctors and physciatrists from reporting clients that later went on to hurt people.
The way to prevent that would be to remove the reasonable fear of harm to others. Then instill a reasonable fear that disclosing the information could cause harm, and cause a lawsuit and professional ethics complaint for violating your trust and harming your reputation.
If a professional is required by law to make these reports, and makes you aware of these duties at the start of your care, then there is no valid ethics complaint and no violation of trust. The therapist must tell you in their informed consent about these limits to confidentiality and should have done so before any personal information was disclosed to them.
While there is a potential of some harm due to this disclosure, therapists are not in a position to investigate and determine if abuse / credible threats of violence occurred and are explicitly not supposed to do so. They are supposed to make a report and allow other state agencies to investigate. If OPs family ended up hurting someone and the therapist was drawn into legal proceedings, they could equally be sued for having this information and not following their duty to warn.
OP, these issues do belong in therapy and you should be able to get support for them.
Yeah you are right idk about scaring the therapist off honestly, the courts would always side with the therapist sharing information every time honestly, and the therapist would know that.
Something your therapist would not have to report is if you asked for her help to create an escape plan.
You've said the therapy is helping you hold a mindset that doesn't just accept your situation. So you don't have to go into more detail right now about why it's so bad.
You can just make your therapy plan:
Step 1 "Persuade my therapist to help me get myself into a safe and sustainable living situation away from my immediate family"
with the promise that then you'll do
Step 2: "Tell my therapist everything she needs to send in the authorities, in order to protect others in the family and community."
She may be able to connect you to support services you couldn't access on your own. Both because of her professional authority and because she's not stuck in the house with him watching, like you are.
I'm wishing you all the lucky breaks, OP.
If your therapist told you that, they have a moral and legal requirement to report it.
Your therapist is doing the right thing. Your family is actively harmful and you need to get out of there somehow.
Unfortunately, I'm disabled, jobless, and have nobody to go to. I would have left long ago if it were so easy for me to leave.
I agree with the principle, but in practice, the violence of American capitalism is what keeps me trapped here more than anything. If I end up on the street as a result of these interventions, I will freeze to death because the system doesn't protect from homelessness. This kind of intervention would work great in a socialist society with guaranteed basic housing and sustenance, but that isn't the reality right now. The reality is a system that brutalizes the most vulnerable and leaves them to die.
You can be honest: you really want to avoid police involvement. You can ask her what sort of things she'd have to report.
I work in mental health and what she did - stopping to make you aware of what she would legally have to do before you trigger it - that's in our training.
You've hit on a very broken element of the system, and you're right to point out how useless throwing cops at a situation is without proper supports. Many mandatory reporters know this, and will try to make sure you don't cross that line unaware. None the less, she could face severe consequences if she doesn't report something.
I've seen a number of your posts, and i think you need more than just therapy - help to access rescources, navigate the maze of disability support, find employment and housing that fits your situation.
If you explain your goals, hopefully she will have some referrals or resources she can direct you to. It sounds like you know you need to get out of there, and you know you need help and time for that to happen.
I just want to throw out the fact that many states have people whose job is to help people navigate the social programs that might benefit them. Usually it's with the department of health and human services (or whatever it's called in your state)
If your state doesn't have these people, find someone who does state sponsored addiction counseling. They often have direct contacts for people in those programs because their clients typically need more than just addiction help.
Source: My wife got her master's in HHS and did addiction counseling until the fact that it was all about numbers pushed through instead of helping people drove her out.
Want to point out that you can have this conversation with your therapist without triggering any disclosure alarms.
Find out what you can and can't say.
For example, you can talk about how "the stress of home" effects you without saying what actions of others are.
Might feel like tip toeing, could also get you through whilst staying on the fine line
If your therapist lets you slide with that weak ass bullshit explanation, fire them immediately.
Can I just say, that I fucking hate having to censor myself TO MY OWN FUCKING THERAPIST?
I understand the need to report certain things... But therapy feels like a chore.
Yeah, totally fair. Totally not the ideal purpose of therapy.
When they're caught between your best interests and the law, the best they can do it give you an informed choice of what to share and what not to share.
I was in a similar situation a few years ago. I was in a psych ward and my caseworker wanted to send me to a shelter instead of going back to my family. At the time I worried that would just make everything worse, but I’ve been questioning whether I should’ve done it or not for a while since everything got worse anyway. Obviously I don’t know your whole situation, but sometimes people are just unstable and will get worse with your influence or not.
As for how to hide it, I don’t know exactly what kinda wording you could use to talk about things. You could just avoid getting into detail about what your family actually does and just focus on how they make you feel.
Rather than seeking to avoid reporting, your objective is really to find an alternative living situation.
You had some great responses when you asked about this before, like this one:
https://sh.itjust.works/post/52834885/23007083
Did you follow up on any of that ?