On the Menu

You might be interested in seeing the food we ate in Puerto Rico. These are all pretty common dishes, and are quite exotic to our Stateside palates. But Sam grew up with his mother making several of these quite often. He felt right at home and I loved the food. Except....no vegetables! These (above) are called tostones. The Puerto Ricans drop the first s and say something that sounds like "to-tone-es." They are plantains that you hit with a hammer to flatten. Then they are fried and sprinkled with salt. Very starchy, very good.

This was what our Titi ordered: seafood salad. It had octopus, squid, and I'm not sure what else. It didn't look appealing, but it is typical seafood. Interesting, since Puerto Rico is an island, that there is lots of seafood. You can see that the tomatoes are served as pale pink and unripe. It doesn't seem that anyone grows vegetables on the island--tomatoes, etc. But there are lots of places in the island where you could easily grow them and have gardens. There are tons of banana groves and mango trees, but no tomatoes that I could see anywhere. Hmmmm...maybe if we ever live there I will try to have a huge garden with these veggies in it.

This vile looking concoction (above) is sliced, candied papaya con queso--with cheese. Not sure what the call for cheese is, but this is a common native desert.

This is red snapper that we ate on Isla de Cabras (Island of the Goats) where we had a wonderful view of El Morro.

More tostones. They are everywhere! Some are better than others: these were wonderful.

Here is more fish, from a meal at La Parguera--over on the West Coast of the island. It was a fishing village where the specialty is red snapper or cod. I never could get past the eye looking up at me. So I always ordered breaded fish and tried not to look over at Sam's plate!

We were introduced to these little fried breads by Titi Cuchi. They were wonderful, fattening little things that we slathered with some kind of sauce from a bottle (tasted like Russian dressing). I can't remember the name of them, but they were very tasty.

This is my favorite dish in Puerto Rico: Mofongo. It is made from pressed plantain with garlic, onions, and I'm not sure what else. Inside is the most tender chicken I've ever had. You can see that these tomatoes were more red. Not bad for imported tomatoes! We were treated to this lovely meal by Sam's cousin, Pachito.

Thought the food pics would be interesting. I came back about 6 lbs. heavier. Although the food was great, I missed my vegetables and fruit.

Mi Borinquen

Well, here we are once again in Puerto Rico. We have longed to come back after being here last spring break for 2 weeks. A year later, we find ourselves back in the house with Titi Carmen and Uncle Chici (pronounced "Cheeky"). This year we have brought Sam's 87 year-old father with us so he can visit his sister for a couple days and see his brother, neices, and nephews. He couldn't have been more thrilled. In fact, before he left Texas, he got very dizzy every time he contemplated coming. It could have been his heart medications, but I have a hunch that he was so excited that it just leaked out of him in that way. His plane touched down 10 minutes after ours did, here in San Juan. Off we went to the car rental, him talking all the way about how the language has changed and how different his country looks now. He is quick to add however, that he dislikes many things about life here including "la hora Latina" (Latin time--about an hour late to everything), and the way the language is spoken. These comments did not stand him in good stead with family members still living here!

So we have been rattling around the house here, trying to get our legs under us. I slept a total of 6 hours in three days, so was utterly spent when I arrived. The A/C didn't work in our room so we woke up the first morning in a bad mood and with swollen faces from the heat. However, we were so exhausted that we slept in that room for over 12 hours that night. We are now in another room with the A/C rattling and roaring over our heads. The little coqui (yellow frogs) are shrilly singing outside and we just enjoyed a rainburst while the sun shone brightly. There is nothing so enchanting as this. We are staying in a gated community that has a mountain rising straight up behind it. It is really more like a tall hill, actually, but it is covered with so much lush foilage that it looks bigger than it is. I'm told that there are a few snakes on this island but none of them are poisonous. Neither are there any wild animals that present any kind of danger. So it is the perfect place to go camping. It's just that it's too hot down here. The mountains in the central part of the island are about 15 degrees cooler than it is here.

We are being fed to death. Today we had bacalao for lunch along with rice and beans, potato salad, avocado, and yam root. The bacalao was briny and served with onions on top. It is some sort of cod fish that is dry and awful. The locals pour olive oil over it. I just puckered up and passed it along to Sam. Notice that aside from the avocado, no vegetables are served here. The yam root is a vegetable, I suppose, but it is grey-white, lifeless and fibrous. I need a salad and plate of carrots and broccoli pretty soon.

Tomorrow we are going over to the East Coast to a village called Fajardo (Fah-hardo) where we will spend some time in the ocean and then have Mofongo: a delectable mixture of plantain, garlic,onion, and shredded chicken and tomatoes. I think it should be good.
If I can get my salad.

Love sucks

Two years ago Sam and I celebrated my birthday by going to a fresh fish restaurant in of all places, Beaumont, California. It has always been a little bend in the road, albeit the 5000 new homes that went in there recently. The restaurant stands on the "old" side of town right next to the Mexican meat market whose pictures on the sign outside makes me want forever to be a vegetarian. But this particular evening, we went there for fresh salmon, rice pilaf, and broccoli--a meal that we especially like there. Afterward, as we drove the 20 minutes back home, Sam asked if there was anything I needed at Walmart. We didn't really want to go straight home, so we ended up strolling, hand in hand, through the store, looking at things that we might want to get someday but really didn't need.
Then we came to the vacuum cleaners.
When we moved into our present home we brought our old Hoover with us. It was on its last leg and spewed out a fine layer of dust every time we used it. I hated how it smelled and I really doubted that the carpet ever got clean. This was an important issue since our foreclosed house had stood empty for eight months before we bought it. So goodness only knew what kind of germs, dust, and dander resided in the carpets.
We hovered over the new models in the Beaumont Walmart. I had hoped to get a new vacuum cleaner at some point, and now might be a good time. I steered Sam over to the Dysons. They were a bit more than I had paid for a vacuum cleaner, but we were tired of breathing in the dust in our old carpet. It had been problematic what with Sam's asthma and my newly acquired dust and cat dander allergies.
As I lingered over one Dyson model, I noticed that Sam seemed quite interested in it--much more than I would have anticipated. "Let's get this," he ventured, running his hand over the smooth yellow handle. The machine had all sorts of levers and moving parts. I hoped that I would be able to master it.
We paid the sale price for it and carried our Dyson home. Sam was triumphant. Funny, he had indicated that it was MY birthday present. But as soon as we got home, he carefully assembled it and began vacuuming the living room carpet. Then the guest room downstairs, then the stairs.
"Honey!" he shouted excitedly. "Look at all the stuff that came out of the carpet!" And he removed the collection cannister from the front of the Dyson and held it up for me to see. It was full of hair, beige dust, and all sorts of little bits--but mostly silty type stuff. "We've been breathing this!" he yelled over his shoulder as he ran down the stairs to the garbage bin outside.
I was exhausted from a long day, so I took a shower and climbed into bed.
Could I sleep? No. He vacuumed under our bed, in all the corners of our room, and then the ceilings and curtains, using the special attachment. All along, he admonished me about the excellence in that machine: how well it swiveled, the extremely strong suction, the special accoutrements to get in crevices and to use on the couch.
It was about 10:30 when he finally stopped vacuuming. The whole house had been cleaned and I marveled about how thrilled he was about it all. In fact, I joked the next day with my secretary about how you can get a man to clean the house quite easily if you have machines involved that have (a) lots of bells and whistles, or (b) contain an element of danger. We had both laughed knowingly, and I felt very fortunate to have a clean house and a husband who was obsessed with the vacuum cleaner.
In fact, Sam's enthusiasm didn't end on my birthday. About every couple weeks, he goes on a vacuuming frenzy, cleaning everything in sight and being sure to suck all the dust out from under our bed and off our bedside tables. I've teased him about how he sometimes chides me for not using a particular attachment if I'm cleaning up after my flooring work. He seems to think that he is the one who can and should master the vacuum cleaner. My efforts have not seemed to be terribly critical, as far as I can tell from his appraisal of my work.

Although I have made a mental note about Sam's eagerness to keep the house vacuumed, to do the laundry, and recently, to keep the kitchen scrubbed, I hadn't thought much about it. Until yesterday.

We were watching a television program about an individual whose loved one had cancer. The caregiver was trying to do whatever he could to cure the sick one who obviously was close to the end. He was doing something like painting her toenails and straightening the bed covers, fanatically. I happened to glance over at Sam just then. His eyes were brimming with tears. I'm so glad I married a man who wears his feelings on his face, I thought. We watched the program to the end and Sam muted the television as the credits rolled.
"I know how that man feels," he said softly. "You see, when my mother was dying of cancer, I didn't know what to do. So I drove for two days to her her house and took along my Rainbow vacuum cleaner. It had a strong filter in it, and I vacuumed the whole house. It was all I could think of doing to help her. Maybe it would make a difference, so I did it." His eyes filled again. "I know how it is to do whatever you can hoping that your mother won't die. That's how desperate I was." His voice trailed off and tears brimmed in his eyes again.
Suddenly I realized what it meant when he vacuumed the house, our bedroom, my bedside table. "Honey, when you vacuum the house like you do, it's so I'll stay well, isn't it?" He nodded gravely. "It's not much, but it makes me think of how much I loved my mother, and I want you to be healthy, too."

I have teared up several times since that conversation, just thinking over what it means to Sam to vacuum our house. It is an expression of love that I would never have understood, had we not had this conversation. I don't get flowers from him very often, nor fancy gifts for holidays. But he loves me through his vacuuming, and that is something I get almost every week.

I love you, too, Sammy.

New Life

This is my friend "Olga" whom I have written about in previous posts. I thank all of you who have prayed for her as she has faced rapidly declining health in recent weeks. This picture was taken last month on the day that her friends moved her belongings out of her apartment and into our guestroom. I had made a big pot of curry and put out dinner for Sam and her son, who had just set up her computer in our downstairs room, when I had a very strong impression that I needed to go see her--IMMEDIATELY. I told Sam that I'd be back later and drove over to her apartment, about 9 miles away. Olga was on her bed, and her friends from the Romanian church were trying to help her get comfortable--rubbing her feet and hands. She told me that her kidneys were no longer working and she felt horrible. Her hands and feet had excruciating cramps, probably from her electrolyte imbalance. Olga was too tired to talk much, and was short of breath. I did manage to get this picture of her with me, and we chatted a few minutes before I prayed for her and her friends, and went back home.

I had such an ominous feeling when I saw her: gaunt in the face but bloated in her belly. "I look 10 months pregnant!" she'd exclaimed, looking down at her fluid filled belly.

That night she went into the hospital and has not come out since. After nearly dying in a Los Angeles hospital, she was stabilized and transferred over to UCLA, in the intensive care unit. She was immediately placed on a respirator and stabilized further. We've been able to go see her three times since she's been there, and each time it's been really hard. I can only imagine how her sons must feel. Her middle son has texted or called me every day to tell me how she is doing and to ask questions about medical things the nurses tell him.

During the time Olga has been at UCLA thus far, she has received eight offers for a liver. Each time, she would be told that there was a liver available, and that the doctors would be examining it to be sure it was "a good one." Based on that, they would get back with her. But in the meantime, her nurses would start her on a regimen of IV medications, pills, and blood product infusions in order to get her body at peak capacity for the 8-10 hour surgery required for a transplant. Seven times she learned that the liver wasn't good: fatty livers, too small, too large. Finally, she got her transplant last night. Her son sent me a text message at 2:30 this morning to tell me that she was in the ICU and doing very well. Today she is extremely stable, on a ventilator and mildly sedated. She is following commands and relaxed. She has the very best care there is for liver transplantation, I am convinced. Her surgeon wrote the textbook that all medical schools in the country use for transplantation education. Her nurses have been nothing short of angels, every one of them: so knowledgeable, personable, and accommodating. Since I am on the list of individuals who is allowed to have information about her condition, I have spoken to most of them over the last few weeks. They have all been wonderful to me, but more importantly, to Olga.

Tomorrow she has another short surgery to "clean her up inside" as the doctor explained it to her son. Apparently, transplantation is a two-stage process during which the liver is attached during the first surgery, and the bile duct and surgical debris is removed during the second surgery. So she has that in the morning.

Meanwhile, we are so very grateful to God for giving her this second chance at life.

Olga now legally resides here, even though she is in the hospital. I don't know if she will be allowed to convalesce here since we have a cat and two dogs. But if she is, we will have church ladies staying with her here around the clock, since I will be working and Sam will be involved in other things. Those Romanian ladies have been absolute saints: massaging her feet, cooking for her, cleaning her house, taking her to the doctor's office and hospital, running her erands and giving her money. I have never seen such wonderful friends before. It will be a real honor and blessing to us to have her--and her friends--with us.

It's a new life for Olga. We are grateful, and hopeful that her new liver will "take" and that she will have more good years ahead of her. That will by far, be a great miracle. Thank you again for your prayers. She still needs them, if you can remember to pray for her still.

Waiting and Watching

This afternoon as I loaded up the dishwasher, "the boys" rushed over from their bed to what I have started calling "the tasting station." Charlie took a couple licks at a knife with butter on it, and Baxter tried to lick the edge of a bowl with soup drippings left in it. (You will be relieved to know that we sanitize our dishes!) They did not want to miss the opportunity to get in a few licks of something good.

Then as I was makinc soffrito (Puerto Rican liquid seasoning for rice), they came right over to sit at my feet. Their eyes followed my every move, and they trotted behind me to the fridge, and back over to the blender on the counter across the kitchen. When I moved to the stove, they both came closer so they wouldn't miss anything. Maybe I would give them a bread crust, or a lick of the cream cheese wrapper. I do this occasionally, much to Sam's dismay...
If they are particularly good and my heart can't take not giving them any tastes of human food, I offer them puppy bisquits.
"Want a bisquit boys?"
Baxter yips in excitement and Charlie leaps up and down as if he has springs in his heels.
"Dancing, dancing!" I sing out, and they jump up on their back legs, dancing furiously in front of me.
I give them half a bisquit each.
"Now...." they look at me expectantly, Baxter trying to sit in front of Charlie so he can be closer to me.
"Now... lie down." They go flat to the floor in unison, and look up at me through their eyebrows. I can hardly bear how darling they are--so in earnest, and so eager to please me.
"Good boys!" and I give them another half bisquit.
I clap my hands together several times to signal that we're done with their tricks, and tell them what good boys they are. They wag their tails and nuzzle against my legs. Even though I know I'll have to wash my hands (again!) before I resume cooking, I rub their heads and cheeks.
"Good boys! What precious boys!" and they wag their tails before sitting down just out of range to see what I'll do next in the kitchen.

What strikes me is how vigilant they are. Watching and waiting. Just like Christians are supposed to do. Don't miss an opportunity for gifts from above. Be available for every chance to move in and take advantage of what is being offered. Watch and wait. The right thing will happen at the right time, and if you're not sitting there waiting eagerly, you'll miss out.

We Christians have been told to be ready for Christ to come back. We are to watch every development and with unflinching dedication, be ready for whatever opportunity there is. If you're anything like me however, you have spiritual ADHD. It's hard to focus on spiritual things for too long and difficult to avoid being sucked into other activities that grab at your attention more than sitting and waiting does. And yet there's Christ's command: "Be ye therefore ready, for the Son of man commeth at a time that ye think not." Like Baxter and Charlie, I hope to be steadfast, near at hand, and waiting for the Lord's blessings and most of all, His coming.

Good Night, Dear Friend

This morning I received a phone call at 5:45. Could I please speak to Betty? She had been taken to the hospital at 3:30 a.m. and it appeared that she had an intestinal obstruction with necrosis (dead bowel). She had refused surgery, and indeed, she was an extremely poor candidate for surgery as she has had numerous mini-strokes and back surgeries. Betty needed pain medication and had been told that this was a fatal condition that would end her life within hours or days. Before she was medicated could I please have one last conversation with her?

Betty, this is Barbara.
Oh, Barbara....Hello Dear
Are you having a hard go of it?
....yes
You've had a rough night already.
....Yes
Betty, I'm told that this doesn't look good for you.
...No, it doesn't.
Are you afraid?
...No
....Do you feel ready to go?
....Yes...
Betty, we will soon be together in heaven and we can talk together forever. Won't that be wonderful?
...Yes, yes.
I'm going to be there, and I'm eager to see you there, where you won't have any of these problems.
Oh yes. Me, too.

Are you having some trouble breathing now?
............yes........
Betty, I love you dearly. We've had so many good times over the years, haven't we?
Yes, wonderful ones.
But it's time to say goodbye and I'll see you soon in heaven.
..........yes.........(wheeze)


Betty passed to her rest at 11:00 this morning. Her young friends were at her bedside holding her and loving her right to the very end. They told me that she had been smiling right up to the last.


She would have been 87 years old in nine days. I have loved Betty for many, many years now. She has been like a second mother to me. There have been too many conversations and activities to share and I hesitate, because it would be hard to capture the essence of what she has meant to me in just a few words. But there are several things that must be mentioned.
Betty called me every single day for four years while I was alone in Minnesota, getting my doctorate. I knew no one there and it was a quite lonely experience but for her phone calls: "Hello Lovie, tell me what have you been doing today?" And we would launch off on an animated conversation, punctuated by lots of laughter. We had a wonderful friendship and I couldn't have gotten through that experience without her warm support.

Betty knew what it was to be middle aged and single. While my life went in a different direction than hers did in terms of me getting married eventually, she was a tremendous comfort and role model as a woman who had a full life. She was independent, full of pluck--"a brick" as her neice called her. She knew that I struggled financially just as she had, and as a result she provided things for me that I could not have had otherwise. For example, she bought me my first laptop computer when I went back to school, and she sent me to France to a Gestalt Therapy training institute one summer. She also was a constant source of encouragement and spiritual strength to me, which I have written about in an earlier post.

But perhaps what I loved most about Betty was that she was spontaneous and young at heart. One Christmas Eve when I was alone, I called her around 9:30 at night and told her that I had a yearning to drive up to the mountains and smell the pines. "I'll be at the front door in 10 minutes," she said without hesitation. And so off we drove, 30 minutes up into the mountains, chatting happily all the way. Once we were at a good elevation on the Rim of the World highway, we pulled off onto a turnout and shut off the car. With the windows open, we inhaled deeply of the crisp, pine laden air for several minutes. We were exhilirated as we drove back down the mountain to home. I was unprepared for an obligation the next day, but it is the memory of sharing this wonderful experience with her that is so much more important.

We howled with laughter so many times. Once she invited me over for lunch after church and as we were waiting for dinner to heat up in the oven, she complained that the oven door didn't shut very tightly. Seeing a latch under the door handle, I shoved it to the right until the oven door was snugly closed. "See?" I had proudly said. She was horrified. I had just started the self-cleaning feature of the oven which locked it, preventing us from taking out the food, whilst the temperature soared up to 500 degrees. And yet, the caserole and Boston Cream Pie survived it all. We laughed about that for days.

Betty was the eternal optimist. Even though she had struggled with many things during her lifetime, she had never given in or given up. Some people thought she was quirky, but I loved her. Since my own mother is quite negative, it was medicinal for me to be with her.
While I loved my mother, Betty was able to do things and provide for me emotionally in ways that I could not get from Mother. The many shopping trips we took, the laughter, the way she listened to me and cheered me on, the warmth and kindness in her generosity--all of these things were incredibly helpful to me.

I know that Betty is sleeping until the resurrection morning, and I am glad. Her life had become very limited, living in a board and care facility for the last few years. Her speech was garbled almost beyond understanding, and she was starting to experience minor confusion at times. But she always loved my phone calls and an 11 x 14 photo of me hung right over her bed. I know I was loved and as I examine my attitudes and feelings about many things in life, I "bump into" her influence. She was really a gift from God and I am so grateful that I have loved her and been loved by her.

Good night, Betty. Thank you for who you were and what you did for me. I'll see you in the morning, my dear, dear friend.

Wood Floors

We have wanted to put laminate flooring throughout the house for a very long time. This vacation provided just the opportunity to do that. So here you see Sam after he's placed the moisture barrier/underlayment down on the cement livingroom floor. This is the phase of work after the carpet and padding comes out (and after the flooring is leveled).

It goes in pretty well, but that right arm of mine got awfully tired, not to mention my knees.

This is what I was able to do in about six hours. I will definitely not give up my day job yet!

It's looking pretty good now. Just have to put in the baseboards, which we tore out so we could install 4-inch molding. Can't wait to get rid of the "moving look" that we've had in the house for weeks.

Hopefully, the job will get done tomorrow and my muscles can go back to normal again.

Update on the Boys

We are loving our puppies! Here is an update so you can see how they have grown and what they look like now. This is Baxter. He is such an emotional guy--whining, begging, and pleading was never so earnest nor unremitting as when he is crying. And he can really pout, just as much as he can charm and weasel his way into my heart.

Not to be outdone, Charlie often sits on my legs with his back feet on my tummy and his head resting on my ankles (yes--he is a very long dog when stretched out). Here you can see him peeking at me around my laptop screen as if to say, "Can you puh-leese pet me?!"

These boys love Mother. When she comes to visit she tries to sneak into the house before they go nuts barking and jumping all over her. She has finally gotten them settled down in this picture and true to form, Baxter looks darling and snuggly (and martyred, somehow), and Charlie is smiling as he often does.

Charlie just loves Mother. After her cataract surgery, she came to our house and collapsed on the couch for several hours. While she was asleep the boys climbed up onto her and slept with her for quite awhile. Mother slept so deeply that she didn't feel their 23 lbs (apiece) climbing onto her.

When Charlie was only a couple months old he developed an ear infection, so the vet prescribed antibiotic drops that were to be administered via syrringe twice a day. The boys love to suck on the syrringe full of water. I think they feel special, which is quite funny.

So yes, I just love my boys.

And so does Sam. Thought you'd like to see for yourself.

Therapists--IV

So how then do family therapists (MFTs) intervene with their family members? Are they always "on" and looking for something to fix? Do they ever relate to their family members as just that: relatives? Do MFTs cross boundaries that they shouldn't? Should they completely avoid being helpful if they are able to help other families with similar issues?

Here is what some MFTs had to say about this:

I was seeing 65 people (clients) a week. Now that's frightening, right there. If a therapist sees more than 30 clients per week, assuming that each session is an hour apiece, that is bordering on emotional and mental burnout. I once saw 40 clients a week while I was still an intern, before I realized the truth of the advice I had been given not to see over 20 clients weekly. But this guy--seeing 65? He'd been at this for over 40 years. I wonder though, since he called one individual, "...a little s***" Sounds like burnout to me, which is a cause of and is caused by, boundary violations.

I do offer advice...when [my husband] runs into a people problem he runs them by me and we talk about them.

... sometimes the unresolved stuff from [my wife’s family of origin] gets in our way and then I will say, “this is what’s happening”. [Quoting his wife] “Well, you know you’re therapizing”, and I’ll say, “You know, you’re right, cause it’s affecting me and I need you to do somthin about it”.

This one always makes me laugh: ...If somebody will ask me about someone who looks like they’re having a break[down] and, you know, they’ll describe to me and I’ll say, “It sounds like they’re having a break you need to call somebody.” Well, actually, if I have a relationship with that person I’ll tell them what I think. Um, if I don’t have a relationship with that person, I don’t know how they…or what it is that they are asking me for, and I’m much more apt to suggest that they try seeing somebody professionally. Before I say much, yeah…cause, I mean, people can be really weird about that and very weird people can ask you about their very weird relatives. …people can want you to diagnose their relatives; that’s one weird. People wanting you to diagnose their relatives, all the while you’re looking at them and diagnosing them and that’s weird.


Most of the therapists talked about their family members in highly discipline specific jargon: My husband has a emotional dysregulation problem. I have to be very cognitive and [not] flood his amygdala.

Like I said, I think [my brother has] got some attachment issues um, and some beliefs, some core beliefs about himself that he really needs to take a look at.

This one is a classic: My seventeen-year-old daughter was ADHD, very strong willed, and so I did the behavioral chips system with her and she came home and was really upset and misunderstanding, thinking about that she was going to drive the [family car], my husband saying that she was not. She ...just totally threw a fit, and hated us and ran upstairs to her bedroom, and she was going to have her boyfriend taker her and run away. So I talked my husband into letting me handle it. He came in with me and sat down next to me, as she sat there and said what horrible parents we were and how we didn’t understand her, we didn’t care… So, I said, “So, what you’re saying is that you think we’re horrible parents, we don’t understand, we don’t care” [Start to laugh again]. She just went on and on, I just kept validating and, not agreeing, but feeding back where she was coming from. He watched her just calm down right in front of me, and ever since then he’s really started using the technique himself…

So perhaps there are times when it is helpful to be a therapist when interacting with some family members. Clearly, there are those who abuse the trust family members put in them, expecting that they will be regular type relatives who relate to them in ways that are typical of family members.

Therapy is an interesting business. Being a therapist is even more interesting. Thought you'd be interested to see what people other than me have to say about it all.

Therapists III

How do family members relate to their therapist sibling, child, mother, or father? The MFTs had some interesting observations about this and identified at least four patterns of behavior that they had experienced:
1. Silencing. One woman stated, It’s okay if [husband] wants to make observations about people, but if I do, I’m therapizing!
The family turns to me in crisis to sort things out, but they also keep secrets [from me] because I’m a truth teller . . . It matters to me to find the truth . . . they would probably say I’m the problem maker because I’m the one that points out things that nobody wants to hear… This therapist had watched her family go through some very difficult times around the event of their mother's suspicious death while in the care of one of her siblings. The therapist asked questions that no one was willing to answer. As a result, she was shut out and only given a guest pass to family membership. While this example is a more extreme family situation, other therapists reported the same kind of experiences. It seems to be a way that family members maintain some type of control over the unknown of the MFTs contributions to the family. This feels very odd, but it is a common dilemma.
2. Some therapists pointed out that their family members did not understand the legal and ethical issues that undergirded their therapeutic practice. Various family and friends expected that the therapist was "on" at all times and would provide therapy services for anyonee--particularly their friends and neighbors. …my husband…said “Come [to the house] and talk [to my MFT wife], if you want to talk about this.” And I said, “You know, I can’t do that because… that puts me one step closer to an unethical position.” It's an honest mistake on the part of our loved ones and a common situation that most of us have experienced.
3. Several of the therapists reported that their family members were interested in learning more about their insights and the theoretical underpinnings of their professional opinions. Once they began to understand these things, the family members began to apply them to relationships in their circle of friends and ask for the MFTs input: [My husband] will spend hours talking with me about this family or, or my family’s similarities or differences and that kind of thing...”
Other family members took an interest in the general psychological areas of study that the MFTs had; began their own study and then felt that they understood more of human nature and clinical issues than the MFT: I had a brother-in-law, my husband’s brother, who [laughs a little to herself] ...um, he’s always floundering about--in telling about the books that he’s read, and the “great insights” that he has had. Many of them are some “pop” psychology, without a lot of footage. As far as he’s concerned... I’ve never heard any remarks out of his mouth that I might know anything... Because popular psychology, Oprah and Dr. Phil shows are the extent of many people's psychological/relational education, it is hard to know whether citing these are a way to engage with MFTs whose work family members often don't understand, or if they feel that what is viewed on TV is all there is to family therapy. Many people seem to believe the latter.
4. Unhappiness about how the MFT engages with the family. One woman related how her fmaily asked her to be part of a family process for their alcoholic relative: Well, the whole family is going out for dad’s intervention meeting or whatever, and it would sure be nice if you could be there so that you could help us along.” I said, “Well, I’ll be there if you want me to, but I’m not helping anybody along. This is his treatment. These are the people that he’s working with; it’s not me.” It didn’t please a lot of them. Most of them have kind of, um, [Long pause]. I’m a little beyond tolerated, but I’m sort of the-I didn’t quite do what they thought I should have and there’s a lot of them that haven’t totally let go of that. Basically, I’m tolerated. No, it’s more than tolerated, but it’s not like… it’s okay for me to be not in the inner circle. The result of that has been that my husband isn’t in the inner circle like he used to be either.
Another MFT described what she thought was just a conversation that turned out to have been perceived as much more than that: We had a discussion one time about [his brother’s wife’s dysfunctional family that impacted brother’s marriage] cause she brought it up, and she has never liked me since and tried to keep my brother from connecting with me, and that was a real painful one.
An MFT whose extended family had a member with serious difficulty with the law made a suggestion to his father about what he would do if the family member in question was his son. He was pained by the response: and he said to me, “Well, doctor um, I-I understand what you’re trying to tell me”...you know, if he had said my whole name or something like that, that would have hurt me in a different way cause I would have felt like I was a twelve year old or a ten year old, but “doctor” was that then smelled of, “Your degree doesn’t matter. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You, you know, don’t have any real business of being a doctor anyway, and here you go riding in on your moral high ground, telling me what to do”, ...I felt really undercut. I felt deskilled, and I felt that he was going right for-right for the heart.

It is probably unsettling at times for family members to be related to someone whom they feel can "see right through me", or who is analyzing the daylights out of them all the time. Indeed, there are MFTs who do these things and who don't know how to turn off the therapeutic/analytical brain. But this is not typical of most of the people with whom I work. Newbies do this as well as those who seem to have no life of their own.