Regarding counseling for my Father

Dear Pastor Jim,

Wow, it's been a long time since I've spoken to you. I see Janet posting on Instagram sometimes and it seems like y'all are doing really well! I hear of lots of changes in the church from my family (some good and some bad) and it seems like you have your hands full. I really want to thank you for taking on my dad's counseling while you have so much on your plate, it means a lot. That being said, I want to provide you with some necessary insight from my side of the fence. I recognize that counseling primarily focuses on the individual, but my father's issues with anxiety and insecurity are most often taken out on me, my mother, and sometimes my sister. We have all been victims of his behavior caused by his mental health, so I feel it's important that you know how this affects us.

I don't exactly remember the first time my dad and I had a loud, screaming, dramatic, fight. It feels like one day when I was 12 we started seeing things differently. Conveniently, this aligns with the start of the pandemic, a period of financial issues, and my grandparents becoming more dependent on our family with worsening health. Lots of pressure, stress, and hardship fell on my dad that I believe he was not sufficiently prepared for (how could anyone be?). Add to the mix two growing daughters and one soon-to-be teenager and it's a wonder he's not on Prozac (although my mother, sister, and I are all on anti-anxiety/depression medication) I was certainly not an easy teenager. I came out as bisexual at 12, and completely lost my faith at 13. I disagreed with him on almost everything. I was a lost, depressed, angry, child who saw no love for people like me in the church and just needed to hear that everything was going to be okay and God still loved me. My mom knew this and tried her best. She researched, asked for help, pressed my dad to let me go to therapy, and even though she also disagreed with me on most things, somehow she did it without screaming, yelling, or throwing things.

When I was 13, my dad and I started to go on trips together. This was mostly to give my mom and sister a break from our fights and give us a place to scream at each other away from them. Most of our arguments happened in the car (they still do) and stemmed from conversation about the current social climate or politics and quickly got personal. While some of these car rides were down-right awful, we still have some of our best memories on road trips together. For my 15th birthday, we drove to the Adirondack mountains and climbed Whiteface Mountain together. To this day it is the tallest peak I've climbed. I know it was difficult for him. He wasn't in good shape but he knew I wanted to climb this mountain, so we did. Cut to 2024, and my dad had a stroke.

We thought he could die. He thought he would die. This is what finally pushed him to seek counseling from Pastor Anthony, which in a way was a true blessing from God. I don't think he would have ever willingly gone to counseling for his anxiety if he hadn't had a near death experience. After his stroke, I noticed he was angrier. He had a shorter fuse in situations he would usually have more grace for. I thought I was the only one who noticed it, but I do believe he was angrier after his stroke. Things got steadily worse until the end of my freshman year of college. We had a disagreement about something (I do not remember what) that ended in him chasing me through our house while I ran into our woods frantically calling a friend to come pick me up because I felt unsafe. Prior to that situation, I would confidently say my father would never physically harm me. I feel heartbroken that I can't say that anymore. I've seen what my dad is capable of believing when he is in such an anxiety-riddled, angry state. When he is so blinded, I feel scared of him like he could get physical. He will tell you that he made a promise to my mom when they got married. No throwing things, no f-words, and no hitting. He has definitely sworn at me, he has thrown things, and I feel like it's only a matter of time before he gets angry enough that he hits one of us without realizing what he's doing.

I thought when I moved out, things would get better. Logically it made sense. My father and I were always the ones fighting, so if we were separated the fighting would stop. As it turns out, I did get better. Living on my own, I made the realization that if anyone else treated me like this I would have cut them out of my life. Years of therapy and being on medication have given me the tools to master my anxiety and not let it rule my life. I came back to my faith on God's terms and started working on my personal relationship with Him versus the church (I have recently started going to a church in Saranac Lake, NY where I live called High Peaks Church) . I fully cut ties with the church my parents grew up in which had very cultic tendencies and little accountability. Overall, I grew as a person over the summer which was to be expected. I missed home so much, sometimes it physically hurt. When I came home, I was so excited to see some improvement in my dad and see if he had grown like I had. Instead, it seemed like nothing had changed. He drove me back down from New York, and in our typical pattern we were talking about something political and it got personal. I thought we ended the conversation in the car on a (fairly) good note and that was that. The next day he ended up accusing my mother and I of having no respect for him and purposely trying to humiliate him. We were trying to get donuts at the grocery store to celebrate my being home for the week.

My mom has two videos of his behavior that week. One taken by her, and one by me. The purpose of these videos was to have something to show him when he became more rational. We haven't shown them to him yet, but he knows they were taken. The morning after this (around 6 am), he came into my room to feed my cat. I had been unpacking, so there were things all over the floor. It was dark, and I had just woken up but I could see he was about to trip so I tried to warn him by telling him to stop. He then yelled at me saying I had "disrespect for him in my heart" and other nasty things. I had been awake for about two minutes. This woke up my sister and my mom. My mom tried to talk sense into him while my sister went for a run to escape. I went outside and just cried. Nothing had changed. So many times I have sat in a therapist's office, my living room, or Pastor Anthony's office and poured my heart out to this man, begging him to change. Each time some promise of change was made, but within two weeks it was back to his old sarcastic, mean, ways. Lately, I've been debating if he can change.

I know the abuse he endured as a child. It's something no one should have to go through. I know it affects him to this day. I know he wants to change. I just don't know if he's actually capable of change. All this time, I've been treating him as though he's choosing not to change, and that may just not be the case. I may be hoping for something impossible, and in that case I should lower my expectations for our relationship. He might know he needs to change, and wants to change, but if he is literally incapable of doing so then it doesn't mean anything. It is a very bittersweet realization that my dad may never grow to an emotional maturity where we can have a true, father-daughter relationship but it also is sort of freeing. I know that I have done all I can for this relationship. I've given so much of my peace and dignity trying to reason with him, and I can't give anymore. I've done my part. I've gone to therapy, I take my meds, I do everything I can to protect my mental health not only for my sake but for the people I love as well. I am passing the baton to him. It's his turn to do the work.

Writing this was not easy, but I felt it was necessary that you knew the other side to my dad or the side my mother, sister, and I see. Once again, thank you for counseling him. He's a good man, he just needs to accept help and heal. For his own sake and our sake too. Thank you for reading this.

God be with you,

Me

All names and places have been changed for privacy