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?
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.
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
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 their 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.
Dang mate you’re getting soprano claused?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah that was my read as well.
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.
If you’re disabled there are most likely programs to help you with food and housing.
Sure, but how does that help OP? They have to apply, wait, letters come in the mail, people start asking questions, and in an abusive household, that can be a problem.
And let’s say they get food assistance, what next? They still live with the problem people. Now they have to arramge for a new place to live. They’re handicapped, so they can’t work, so how is this getting paid for? What about expenses other than food or housing?
And the entire time this is getting arranged, dangerous people are going to be seeing clues.
There are a LOT of hoops to jump through to get safe.
I guess they should just give up and do nothing instead
No, but this is a complex problem, and I’m pointing out that your suggestion is not as easy as it sounds, and won’t really accomplish much. If she manages to get food assistance, the others will probably just take it away from her.
She needs a social services advocate who can get her into a shelter, while she waits for various assistance programs to kick in.
It’s usually not that simple. And “most likely” does not a foolproof logistical plan make.
Can confirm, disabled for 11 years now. You either rely on someone else, or die.
Depending on where they are, it’s most likely not enough, and that’s if they can even qualify in the first place. Even people will well-documented disabilities struggle to get on assistance programs in some areas
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.
What do they do then? Wouldn’t it be obvious that the person who just started therapy said something?
Therapists are there for your money, not for you.
Oh man, what a great helpful comment! I’m sure your days are as pleasant to experience first hand as your comments are to read.
Ignorance is bliss.
You must be the happiest person here then.
“A fool and his money are soon parted.”
Thanks Eeyore.
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 ?
This reply heavily deterred me from making it my go-to choice, and I haven’t seen anyone refute it:
https://sh.itjust.works/post/52834885/23011371
The entire system of shelter and aid for the homeless and at risk and domestic abuse victims and all that, broadly, its completely collapsing right now.
Trump’s having FEMA build comcentration camps for the homeless, that’s the new ‘model’.
Realistic advice for this person would be to find some friend or extended family member they can stay with for a while, there’s almost 0 chance that any of the organizations listed out in the comprehensive top reply will do anything other than waste this person’s time with intake procedures and then not actually be able to help them meaningfully.
I’m not going to completely discount these resources, but I’m looking at relationships with other people for Plan A. I’m working on getting outside of my comfort zone and figuring out how to get to places on my own so I can meet new people and become half-decent at connecting with them.
Life at home is mostly cold dullness punctuated by sudden flashes of violence. Months can go by without anything happening. But something will happen eventually. Things are in a cold period right now and I’ve had more time to think. I’m doing therapy to help me feel empowered to take measured steps to leave (and create a good emergency plan, which will involve contacting the shelters).
I think you have a good point though: I’m sort of tunnel-visioning on this mandatory reporting thing when I should be focused on creating an emergency plan that I can feel confident about. That way, if what I fear does come to pass, I’ll know exactly what to do instead of panicking. I’m falling back on old patterns where I waste my time worrying about bad things happening instead of taking actual steps to prepare for when they inevitably do. Thanks for calling that out.
I’ve been finding that trauma literally makes me stupid. It locks me into myopic fear-based thought patterns that don’t actually help and just keep me trapped for longer. People here are probably going to get frustrated because they want to help, but they see me making stupid decisions or focusing on the wrong things. I think I need to listen to them even if they’re mean about it, because the alternative is spiraling into the same logic that kept me complacent for years.
I’ve been finding that trauma literally makes me stupid. It locks me into myopic fear-based thought patterns that don’t actually help and just keep me trapped for longer.
Could it be that this dynamic has prevented you from contacting those organisations who literally exist to help you?
That commenter saying “its all collapsing”, might be right, and perhaps no one is able to help you. However, they could also be wrong, and those organisations are ready and willing to help.
To set your expectations, there’s probably not going to be a nice comfy free hotel room set up waiting for you. You’ll probably be assigned a case officer who will be able to give you strategies to manage the problems you’re facing, while you’re waiting for accommodation to become available.
Could it be that this dynamic has prevented you from contacting those organisations who literally exist to help you?
Definitely. My mind has tried as hard as possible to convince itself that nobody in the real world cares about me or wants to help me. And therefore there are no social programs, public services, or mutual aid groups because Republicans nuked them all or something. Going to see a therapist IRL was the first time I challenged that core belief. It turns out that good people exist and they want to help me because I’m human. I’m going to need more exposure than that to rewire my bullshit gut instinct, which is why I’m pushing myself to go out to socialize and use public services. I think that the ability to ask for and accept help is key to getting out of here, so it’s no wonder why my abusers aggressively push the idea that help doesn’t exist.
Yeah seems like maybe they should have followed at least one of those things in that post. I had commented there too, but OP only responded to the people telling them to do something obviously stupid. Any helpful response got no response in turn.
I’ve read a few of OPs posts and I don’t want to sound harsh but can’t tell if they’re genuinely looking for help or if they’re just stuck in a self-pity-I-need-a-savior loop. OP, are you a bird who is flying repeatedly into a window while there’s an open door right there because you’re too terrified and traumatized to realize you could just fly away, or are you truly locked in a cage? You’ll never know unless you ask for help opening the door. Maybe it’s locked and the key is unreachable, but maybe someone will hand you the keys. Yes, in today’s world funding is being cut, but it still exists, and there are still organizations that help victims.
Now this part is harsh and maybe it’s unfair to you and if so I apologize, but you can either start to be an adult, start to help yourself and ask for help and see if you find any, or you can realize that you don’t actually want help, that you’d rather stay in your miserable situation and aren’t actually looking for change. Because I see people who hate the awful situation they’re in but are so trapped in a victim mentality to actually want to stand on their own 2 feet and escape. I grew up in an abusive home and it was nowhere near as bad as what you are living in but it’s hard getting out and re-acclimating to the world, but you can either be miserable and trapped for your entire life or you can start to do scary things and take the chance that you find a way out of this.
can’t tell if they’re genuinely looking for help or if they’re just stuck in a self-pity-I-need-a-savior loop.
It’s both. I’m genuinely looking for help on a tough situation, and I possess a weak learned helplessness mindset that causes me to give up too easily. The replies I get here are helpful, but at the end of the day, the biggest difference will be my own ability to change the way I think through a combination of self-reflection and therapy. Nobody can help me with that except for me.
It’s true that I live with violent and controlling people, but that doesn’t mean they can control me 24/7. It’s true that public services are being eroded, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any left. It’s true that modern society alienates us from one another, but that doesn’t mean people can’t care about me.
My abusers are incredibly stupid, weak, and short-sighted in a lot of ways, and it may well be that the reason I’ve been stuck is because I have also been stupid, weak, and short-sighted. My stated goal of therapy is to get rid of my fear-based mindset and start using my brain more, because fear is stopping me from being rational. That’s why my words and actions appear to be so contradictory: I’m in the process of recognizing my own agency and their weaknesses, but I keep snapping back to old patterns where they seem all-powerful and I feel helpless. It’s probably frustrating for the people reading.
How do any of the readers here know that my situation is as dire as I make it out to be? Could it be that my fear is painting a far worse picture than reality? If so, how can I possibly be a reliable narrator for what’s actually happening in my life? If things were truly hopeless, my abusers wouldn’t have to constantly tell me that all of my ideas are stupid and everything I try will fail.
I think if I ask any more questions on Lemmy, it should be while I’m in the process of getting out, not asking people to plan my entire escape. Like, asking for advice on step 23B after I’ve figured out and completed steps 1-22, instead of asking for steps 1-100 before I’ve done anything.
The therapist needs to have some reason to believe that a person is a threat to you or someone else. One purpose of the law is establishing community standards. Even if a single family all prefer to do nothing about the abuse, the community as a whole does not want to tolerate that kind of behavior in it. So really, it’s not supposed to help. It’s supposed to punish, to try to stop the behavior.
So really, it’s not supposed to help.
That sounds like therapy isn’t ideal then… the first goal should be to help, not to punish… lol…
Real talk. It sounds like they’re trying to help. So use their help to focus on the main problem, which is extrication from this horrible situation. They can help you navigate the many hurdles on the way to independence. It is probably possible. But will involve a lot of applications, appointments, networking, etc. You definitely need a contingency plan as well if things get too spicy quick. IE bug out bag and church basement/shelter/friendly business/friend where you can crash til you get your systems sorted.
I’d also ask them to let you know if you ever get close to that line where they have to report, if you don’t want them to. Help them play the game. They have signalled that they are willing. Work through the logistics of independence first, trauma later.
Any therapist or licensed professional (doctor, social workers, etc) will have to report something if it’s a credible threat to someone’s life. If your brother has homicidal ideations and makes threats, an investigation might not be terrible. Unless he literally never leaves the house and you are the only person that would know he’s ever made a threat, then your family will probably never know that you have anything to do with this. Strangers call the cops when they hear shit. If he’s loud, it could be a neighbor. Unless he’s agoraphobic, it could be anyone in your town who reported something weird.
Im not mandated reporter. I wouldnt turn you up. not… Not right away. But this sounds fucked. Get the fuck out.
Oh I totally get this.
I’m in an immigrant family and I just never felt safe to “report abuse”, especially during the first 5 years in the US… I was a non-citizen and I just feared deportstion… I did not like China from my memory…
I mean my mom just instilled the fear of CPS onto me, plus I felt very “foreign”, just couldn’t trust anyone… so none of my teachers really knew the true extent of what happens at home, I never told them.
Now I go downstairs and feel my heart tremble… despite my mom repeatedly telling me “how much she loves me”, I just never really feel safe.
My older brother made me run away from home when I was in China…
When I was in Philly, I ran away from home again, again because of my brother.
Both times I just ran to my mother. She was my best protector, simultaneously she’s also my abuser.
I love my mother, and I also hate my mother. But I also need her approval. Idk wtf is wrong with my brain…
Even now with citizenship, I’m TERRIFIED of venturing out in the world… I don’t know how to like… “survive” do basic “adult” stuff… I feel scared when I go outside by myself. I don’t even feel like anyone can really help me.
I’m just alone.
In China, police don’t do shit about domestic violence, it’s just “private matters”, nobody ever involves police.
So this sentiment followed us here.
Also like… I doubt white cops even give a shit about us minorities, we’ll all just get shot to death.
Loving an abusive mother is a very natural response. Children need their carers, so the brain has an evolutionary response to seek comfort from those carers. When carers are unreliable or abusive, those attachment patterns become disordered. Your attachment pattern sounds anxious-ambivalent, but the anxious-avoidant pattern of not loving your parents is also a cause of problems. So it’s not your fault and it’s not a broken response to your situation. It’s a broken situation.
