Sometimes people who are supposed to listen to us, are too tired, and don’t

The dominant culture has sold us the Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving dinner where we all tell our “truth” and everyone listens carefully and sympathizes. The movies give us the pivotal “confrontational scene” where there is a big fight, and everyone tells everyone off, but by the end, they all start crying and hugging each other. The dominant culture tells us that others are suppose to be interested in what we ‘really think,’ that families are supposed to be ‘close’ and that friends are supposed to be ‘good listeners.’ And we are narcissistically wounded and furious when it doesn’t turn out like that. This is an insane expectation, and a good therapist tells us, in a way we can hear, that the real world just doesn’t work like that.

clipped from energybulletin.net The lies told by the dominant culture, and its media apparatus doesn’t tell the whole story. It is selling this lie, and it’s popular, because it is designed to be. The truth is a whole lot more complicated, and doesn’t sell on daytime television. Complicated truths make lousy ‘edu-tainment.’ The truth has no happy endings. Real therapy tells the truth, despite being unpopular. It tells us that our expectations, carefully shaped by the dominant culture, are unrealistic and are implicitly designed to benefit the dominant class and the status quo. It tells us that we all don’t have ‘equal’ opportunities and we aren’t supposed to, by design. It tells us that when we expect our parents or our kids or our families to give us what we think we’re entitled to, and when we rage at them when we don’t get it, they may lash out and try to put us in our place.