I (23M) started therapy today, hooray!
Only problem is, my family is too goddamn spicy. Once I got into my brother’s (25M) increasingly homicidal fantasies and animal killings, she stopped me before I mentioned the threats he made to kill people and told me that she is a mandated reporter and has an obligation to report certain situations to the authorities.
I think adding police to the equation will make everything worse and immediately paint a target on my back because I am the only one who would ever disclose the violence that happens under this roof. It might result in me being homeless if I have to flee for my life. I live in Ohio and it’s the middle of winter, so not a great start.
I wanted to work with a therapist because I grew up in this place and it traumatized me so badly that I’m scared of leaving this dump (not to mention, I have disabilities now that make that difficult). How much will I have to tiptoe around here? Is merely being afraid that someone will use violence against me reportable? What about if they fantasize about murder and domestic terrorism? What about violent crimes that they committed in the past? Or specific threats in the present?
Is therapy just not the right fit for this kind of thing? Did I end up with a heavy duty “fuck you” problem and therapy is just for “I feel sad sometimes” problems? It feels like bullshit to have to self-censor so much just because things were harder for me. How is throwing cops at the problem supposed to help when there is no universal basic sustenance or housing for the victims to escape to?
What are your experiences with mandated reporting, and how do you avoid triggering it?
following the law is so often, as here, not the right thing to do.
As someone who was a mandated reporter and made a sad amount of reports, the investigators aren’t idiots. They don’t knock on your door and say “hi, your kid reported that you hit them!” They know the risk and it is literally their entire life/job to avoid making situations worse.
How can they help OP, though? If it really is that obvious that it was OP who reported it, I don’t see how saying “Hi, we got an anonymous report, we’re here to investigate” would suddenly remove any suspicion by OP’s family that it was OP who did it.
Depending on where OP lives, disability programs can be very difficult to and backlogged to get into.
With that said, it sounds like OP is planning on leaving anyway.
For the latter part, it very much depends on the state and the disability.
In terms of helping, there are a few scenarios. First, forced psychiatric hospitalization. Suddenly, it’s no longer a “secret” problem with the brother. It’s known and he’d have a record in a court system and medical records. Extremely unlikely, but not impossible, is removing OP to a stable program. People with disabilities who have confirmed cases of abuse jump to the top of those waitlists. There are also many “light” versions of those scenarios that still make things, even slightly, better.
What do they do then? Wouldn’t it be obvious that the person who just started therapy said something?
You’d be surprised at the number of times I thought it would be obvious and it wasn’t. In fact, it seemed pretty rare that people could figure it out. And even when they did, it was just their hunch, you can never know for sure who reported you.