Confronting Family and Antwone Fisher
Among the topics that bring people into therapy, one of the most prevalent motivations involves the client's wish to seek closure with issues they face with their parents and other family members. Typically, the client feels wronged by a parent (often for legitimate reasons) and wants to finally tell the parent what a lousy job they have done in rearing them.

As a therapist, I feel very good about client's who would like to resolve issues with their family. I believe that in order for us to move on to other challenges in our growth as an adult, we need to confront our pasts and to discharge the energy that they take from us. All of us--regardless of the health of our relationships in our families while growing up--have some issues to clear up (in fact, given the complexity of family relationships, it would indicate a problem to me if a client told me that he or she did not have some lingering issues with their parents or siblings).

So, confrontation is good. But, the form that this confrontation takes requires some delicate thought and planning. In general, while clients often know that they want to take some steps in approaching their families, they also don't have ideas about what will produce results.

I recently watched Antwone Fisher, a Denzel Washington film from 2002. In the true story film, the title character (played by Derek Luke) must grapple with how he can approach his family and confront childhood experiences of abandonment and abuse. In doing so, he sets a fine example for how a character can succeed at achieving closure with his family.



Shortly after meeting Fisher, we see him running into problems serving in the Navy when he repeatedly becomes violent with other soldiers in his unit. As a result, his commanding officer sends him to a Navy psychologist (played by Denzel Washington) to evaluate his worthiness to stay enlisted in the armed services. Fisher builds a relationship with his psychologist and winds up confronting some of his experiences from his past, including physical abuse by his foster mother and questions about why his parents failed to play a role in his upbringing.

In the work that Fisher does with his psychologist, he demonstrates the first step in confronting one's family: he confronts himself. By revisiting his past and describing it to somebody else, he makes the his first move in confronting other people. To succeed in this step, we need to bring to awareness what realistically happened to us. We also need to come to grips with how these events effected us in our ability to live our lives as adults.

Frequently clients face difficulties with their evaluation of the effects of these past events on their current lives. They believe that they have been damaged by these events and that it holds them back. In some cases, prior events have indeed impeded my client's life, but more often, I find myself impressed with how my clients have already gotten beyond some of the pain that they experienced while growing up. Admitting to this progress feels risky. It seems to exonerate the people who caused this pain. Thus, a second facet of work in the phase of working with a therapist involves seeing oneself as strong and normal and intact (despite the things that have happened in the past). This healing occurs through the positive relationship formed with the therapist, and Antwone Fisher demonstrates this phase quite well.

After Antwone Fisher begins to accept himself and his experiences, he moves to a second phase of approaching people from his past. Again, Fisher sets a great example in some of the appropriate steps for succeeding in this phase. Two details stand out in his discussion with his foster mother, as a way of example. First, he does not hide that he has overcome his pain. He, in fact, declares that he is strong and has grown to be a good person. Second, he separates his discussion with his foster mother from a sign that he forgives her. Nor, for that matter does he try to get any form of apology (this relates to the first point, in that he does not feel that she owes him some compensation).

I have noticed, among my clients, that initial confrontations with family members fail because they do not follow Antwone Fisher's approach. First, they emphasize how their brokenness. Second, they demand an apology and an acknowlegement of the evil things that their family thrust upon them while growing up. It makes sense that clients will want to take such an approach. They define their goal in confrotation as getting retribution and punishing the people who hurt them in the past. Coming across as whole and functioning undermines the message that the prior pain had an effect. And, the desire for an apology allows the client to rightfully claim a role as a victim of their parent's hurtful behaviors.

Such an approach, however, rarely produces a positive result. When we see somebody as broken or as a victim (trying to pin their brokenness on us), we can put the blame back on the victim and free ourselves from feeling responsibility. Particularly when we, ourselves, feel like victims, we don't have a lot of sympathy for victimhood as an excuse for poor behaviors. So, a key aspect of confrontation involves come across as worthy of respect.

Finally, in Antwone Fisher's confrontations, he refrained from showing anger. Admittedly, he felt a lot of anger to his family for the troubled youth they created for him. However, at the time he confronts them, he does not come across as angry. He is honest and not willing to tolerate twisting of facts by his family, but he does not approach his family members to show that he's enraged with them.

This too, seems like a common pitfall of the confrontations that I see in my practice. Clients want to unleash their anger in their communicatin with their family. Once again, this has a counterintuitive effect. I consider anger a "hostile" emotion. Thus, when we show people our anger, we give them a message that we want to overpower them. We want to win. And, we want them to see us as capable of winning. Antwone Fisher demonstrated that he didn't care about winning. He had already won in accepting himself as a good person and he no longer needed his family members to confirm this for him.

In working with clients as they plan confrontations of family members, I encourage them to tone down their expressed anger to their family members. Instead, I help them to experience and communicate some of the more vulnerable emotions like sadness and shame. These emotions better reflect the actual experience of living with hurtful behaviors of people who are supposed to love us.

If you have issues that you would like to address with your family, I highly encourage you to see Antwone Fisher. It's both entertaining and exemplary in its handling of human relationships and the role of therapy in healing family pain. After viewing it, I'd be happy to talk with you about your particular situation or to set up therapy in Seattle for your particular issues. If you don't live in Seattle, we can arrange a phone conversation or an online chat as well. You can find my contact information on my website (see links at left).
- posted by Eric @ 5:05 PM