I'm worried, and feel like I've lost a friend. No what?

February 25, 2009 10:18 AM

I'm concerned about a relationship a close family member of mine has developed over the past year, and don't know whether to butt out and just mind my own business, or try to talk to her about it.

My relationship with my family member Ann is the closest thing to a healthy Mother-daughter relationship I know. Until this year, we had a tremendously close relationship, the closest I have ever had with an adult woman. That's no longer the case. Ann is a psychologist and she met Beth in a class she was teaching. At Thanksgiving, Ann asked another family member and me to do something on her computer which involved examining her emails and we came across some pretty disturbing emails Ann and Beth had exchanged.

Beth calls Ann "Mommy" and makes allusions to becoming part of her family, never leaving, and knowing that Ann's family (e.g. husband, mother, siblings, me, etc) was her "new, perfect" family. She begs Ann for personal, private time together and sets up "dates" for the two of them to do little things together- the kind of things I used to do with Ann. She, too, appears to have had a difficult childhood, and Ann seems to have responded to that with exchanges like the following:

Beth: Mommy, if you knew me when I was a teen, would you adopt me?
Ann: Yes!! 100%
Beth: What if my parents tried to stop you. Would you fight to keep me?
Ann: I would fight all the way up to the supreme court. You're my Baby and I wouldn't let anyone take you away from me.
Beth: You'd fight them to keep me, Mommy?
Ann: Even if I had to take you to a foreign country to keep you safe.

and

Beth: Everything was so perfect at Thanksgiving. I knew everyone accepted me. They're my new family!
Ann: It WAS perfect to be with you.
Beth: And I can come again, Mommy?
Ann: You can come forever and ever. You're a part of this family.

We confronted her at Thanksgiving, saying that we were really concerned about the emails. Ann was embarrassed and said she had thought she'd deleted the emails and that it "wasn't really serious", that Beth is just a damaged woman who is working on some issues. I suggested that perhaps those issues would be better worked out during counseling sessions and Ann said that that was probably true.

Beth has attended every family gathering since, and the ones where she isn't invited (one of Ann's siblings' b-day parties last week) she sends Ann text messages all evening. Beth has been given a key to Beth's house and spends two nights a week there (school-related).

Ann has had odd maternal relationships with other women in the past, but they have been clients- she has about 3 patients who call her some version of 'Mom' and say things like they wish they could crawl into her uterus and hide there (no lie), but until Beth, Ann has confined these relationships to her office.

I have just said nothing since the holidays, hoping Ann would think about what we had said, but I just don't know what to do. I'm worried about Ann both personally and professionally (and I know that part of this is that I'm jealous of her new relationship). I don't know what to do. Should I just accept that I don't have that special relationship with Ann anymore and mind my own business?

posted by anonymous to human relations (32 comments total)

There seems to be a lot of uniquely identifying information in this post that can be recognized by the parties involved if they saw it.
posted by Krrrlson at 10:23 AM on February 25 [4 favorites has favorites]

Should I just accept that I don't have that special relationship with Ann anymore and mind my own business?

If you don't have it, you don't have it. Trying to force it won't work.

The larger issue I'm more concerned about is the fact that Ann appears to be forming unhealthy relationships with vulnerable people. If this woman is a psychologist, maybe she needs to be told that these kind of relationships are unhealthy in the long term, if only for the people like Beth who have to deal with the fallout when it's over.
posted by Solomon at 10:25 AM on February 25 [1 favorite has favorites]

So, you read someone's private e-mail, second-guessed the judgment of a trained psychologist, invaded the privacy of one of her patients, and then confronted her about it?

This is about the dumbest thing I've ever seen anyone admit to on Ask.MeFi. You need to give it a rest: psychologists are trained to handle weird interpersonal issues, while you are not, and all you've done thus far is stir shit up. Tell Ann to please not bring Beth around to any more family functions because she weirds you out, and then figure out how you can possibly win back Ann's trust and return to behaving like a responsible adult.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 10:26 AM on February 25 [5 favorites has favorites]

If this was a consensual sexual relationship, would you say anything? Because, well, frankly, it sounds like it could at least be a romantic friendship of the Victorian variety. Reading those chat excerpts, I don't feel particularly disturbed--but I do feel like I'm intruding on something that's meant to be private.

There's no reason why you can't ask Ann to do more things with you, if you're close. But I don't know why you'd want to have "that special relationship with Ann" as a family member if having "that special relationship" with her entails wanting to crawl into her uterus and hide there.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 10:29 AM on February 25 [3 favorites has favorites]

My relationship with my family member Ann is the closest thing to a healthy Mother-daughter relationship I know. Until this year, we had a tremendously close relationship, the closest I have ever had with an adult woman. That's no longer the case.

This, right here, is the key. I doubt any of the rest of this would bother you (or at least as much) if you continued to have the same relationship with Ann that you have had in the past.

This is what you need to talk with Ann about. Not what she's doing in the rest of her life, but you need to sit down and say "Ann, my relationship with you has been the closest thing to a healthy Mother-daughter relationship I've ever had. Until recently, we had a such a close relationship - the closest I have ever had with an adult woman. That's no longer the case. I miss our relationship the way it was and I wanted to talk with you about why things have changed and what we can do to try and regain the closeness that we had."

Don't make this about other people. Unless you have reason to believe that a crime is being committed (ie: Beth is stealing from Ann) its none of your business.
posted by anastasiav at 10:38 AM on February 25 [2 favorites has favorites]

Ann is violating her patients' boundaries, and not just Beth's. She should be reported to your state medical board which regulates psychologists.
posted by Carol Anne at 10:38 AM on February 25 [25 favorites has favorites]

Ann is violating her patients' boundaries, and not just Beth's. She should be reported to your state medical board which regulates psychologists.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Best answer. Also, physician, heal thyself.
posted by fixedgear at 10:43 AM on February 25

How old is Beth? Is she a child? Or over 18? Not that it matters. I would say butt out and live your own life.

I'm guessing that you're old enough to make decisions for yourself. I recommend dropping this relationship. Ann sounds creepy and not normal. I know she might be maternal, etc., and you'll miss the relationship, but alarm bells are going off all over the place. I personally think whoever carries on relationships like these is unwell. Stick to having normal relationships with normal people.
posted by anniecat at 10:44 AM on February 25 [1 favorite has favorites]

Ann has had odd maternal relationships with other women in the past, but they have been clients- she has about 3 patients who call her some version of 'Mom' and say things like they wish they could crawl into her uterus and hide there (no lie), but until Beth, Ann has confined these relationships to her office.

If she confined them to her office, then how did you come to find out about them? There seems to be some doctor/patient confidentiality issues here.

She begs Ann for personal, private time together and sets up "dates" for the two of them to do little things together- the kind of things I used to do with Ann.

So, in the previous relationship, Ann was the 'child' and you were the 'mommy', and now Ann is playing 'mommy' to someone else in what you say is a similar matter, yet you still find it 'odd'? I think your self-realization of jealousy is your answer here. It also sounds like you might be shocked at how what your relationship used to be looks from the outside now that you're observing it between someone else.

Having said that, I would be far more concerned for Ann on a professional level... as a psychologist, it is totally unacceptable to not only become involved in relationships such as the one she's apparently in, but also to divulge information about her other patients as well. If I was going to a shrink and I found out she told her family ANYthing about our discussions - much less crawling into uteruses (uteri?) and such - I'd be REALLY upset.

Solomon is spot on - it sounds a lot like Ann is using her position to take advantage of these patients to satisfy her own personal needs to be in this type of weird 'relationship'. As for the comments about prying into private into and 'none of your business', it appears to me that the OP isn't going around doing any nosing... this is all stuff that has been more or less presented / shown / told to her unsolicited.
posted by SquidLips at 11:00 AM on February 25 [2 favorites has favorites]

Maybe I'm confused, but (while the power dynamic is slightly effed since Beth is a former student), is there any reason to think that Beth is Ann's patient? I admit that I know little about this--but is there any reason why Ann's actions with Beth, specifically (not her relationships with her other patients) would necessitate a call to the state medical board if Ann isn't a patient at all?
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 11:17 AM on February 25 [2 favorites has favorites]

Beth, rather. Apparently I'm no better with real names than I am when people just use letters.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 11:18 AM on February 25

Relationships like those described above between unrelated adults seem very strange and unhealthy to me, as well as a gross violation of patient/psychologist boundaries and confidentiality for which Ann should lose her license. But I can't help wondering what your relationship with her used to be. You seem deliberately vague about your relationship to her, not divulging the degree of relatedness or even who was in the role of "mother" and who was in the role of "child." It think perhaps you should analyze what you want from the relationship and whether it might be unhealthy, and perhaps consider consulting another professional, ideally a psychiatrist.

Be patient and honest with Ann and with yourself, and try to foster loving relationships that do not involve dependence of one party on the other. Good luck!
posted by Cambrian_Sea at 11:23 AM on February 25

SquidLips, I think that passage you quoted just meant that Ann was a mother figure for Anon before she refocused her energies on Beth.

This whole thing smacks of New Age-y therapy, specifically one that brings adult patients back to an infancy phase where the "baby" is an extreme state of vulnerability and seeks a more nurturing source of attention and maternal love than their what their real mothers provided. I have no idea how certified this therapy is, but Ann's dynamic with Beth sounds way beyond the pale. Psychologists don't text patients and invite them to family gatherings, and they definitely don't use themselves as stand-ins for new mother figures. Barring pop culture instances of wacky patient-psychiatrist relationships a la What About Bob? and "The Sopranos," the vast majority of psychologists use their offices as neutral zones and wouldn't dream of breaking down those barriers by allowing their patients to become friends, confidantes, and (egads) surrogate children.

Ask Ann what her specialty practice is, and read up on what she does. If she's a board-certified psychologist pioneering some crazy new mommy-therapist technique, maybe you should butt out. But if she's abusing her credentials to "help" a troubled patient while satisfying her own needs, then you need to report her.

And yeah, don't read other people's emails.
posted by zoomorphic at 11:26 AM on February 25

Agreeing that these e-mails are pretty screamingly out of context for you to make any sort of reasonably educated opinion about Beth and Ann's relationship.

Talk to Ann about your relationship with her, which is what I think is really bothering you. Leave Beth out of it. Completely.
posted by desuetude at 11:29 AM on February 25

Unless Beth is underage, you should butt out. Theraputic relationships are often strange.
posted by chairface at 11:37 AM on February 25

At Thanksgiving, Ann asked another family member and me to do something on her computer which involved examining her emails and we came across some pretty disturbing emails Ann and Beth had exchanged.

Folks, SROPE does not apply here, as the OP was explicitly asked to read them (according to the question at least).
posted by Grither at 11:47 AM on February 25 [3 favorites has favorites]

Maybe I'm confused, but (while the power dynamic is slightly effed since Beth is a former student), is there any reason to think that Beth is Ann's patient?

No, Beth is pretty clearly NOT Ann's patient. it's that thing where the first few responders don't read the question very carefully, and then a bunch more people take the misinterpretation as gospel.

That aside, Ann, sorry to say, seems like a freaky, controlling person and you'd do better to avoid her. She seems to enjoy controlling people in the guise of mothering (I can't believe many people would spontaneously voice a uterus-crawling urge to the same person without some prompting).

And if she is telling you things her patients say to her, that is probably a serious ethics violation, whether she uses names or not.
posted by drjimmy11 at 11:47 AM on February 25 [1 favorite has favorites]

These aren't patients. Maybe its some sort of weird same sex D/s kind of thing?
posted by Justinian at 11:51 AM on February 25 [4 favorites has favorites]

I call bs on this, but if the situation is as you say and Ann is a practicing licensed psychologist with a PhD or MD, she must know this is all way out of line, but reporting her mishandling of patient relationships will be difficult. If she's just some whackjob counselor who calls herself a psychologist, stop seeing her. She shouldn't be calling herself a clinician or even insinuating that she practices a legitimate form of therapy. She doesn't.
posted by slow graffiti at 11:59 AM on February 25 [2 favorites has favorites]

So, to clarify, it seems to me that:

- The OP and Ann are "close family members" NOT therapist/patient
- Ann met Beth "in a class she was teaching." It's not 100% clear that Ann is the teacher, but context suggests this is the case.

Neither one are therapist/patient relationships. I'm not sure if the student/teacher relationship is ongoing or over, although it seems to me that it's over. Given those things, I'm not sure that Ann's profession is even relevant.

That being said, I think the OP should leave Beth out of any conversation with Ann, and focus solely on the changes in their relationship, as many other posters are suggesting. Although the OP'd be within her rights to refuse to have anything to do with Ann's email ever again, as that shit is fucking disturbing.
posted by restless_nomad at 12:17 PM on February 25 [3 favorites has favorites]

These aren't patients. Maybe its some sort of weird same sex D/s kind of thing?

This was my first thought. Either way, it's bizarre and you're part of it. If you want to remain part of it, talk to her about it (even though I don't see any indication that that would be productive).

Better yet, walk away.
posted by coolguymichael at 12:38 PM on February 25 [1 favorite has favorites]

Folks, SROPE does not apply here, as the OP was explicitly asked to read them (according to the question at least).
The frequency with which people on AskMe "inadvertently" discover stuff in other people's email is...well...suspicious to me.
posted by DWRoelands at 1:14 PM on February 25 [1 favorite has favorites]

The frequency with which people on AskMe "inadvertently" discover stuff in other people's email is...well...suspicious to me.

This doesn't really seem like one of those cases. Ann knew the OP was reading her email, she just thought the "incriminating" messages had been deleted.
posted by 912 Greens at 1:22 PM on February 25

So why would Ann delete the incriminating messages if the relationship is really above board, as Ann says?
posted by Dragonness at 1:52 PM on February 25

They're kind of embarrassing, that's why.

The more I consider it, the more I think it likely this is some sort of sex subculture. Mommy play? I assume there is such a thing?
posted by Justinian at 1:54 PM on February 25

Ann is almost certainly violating her professional code of ethics by carrying on such intimate relationships with her clients and her former student (Beth).

Just because she is a psychologist doesn't mean she's immune to developing pathological issues of her own (in fact, there seems to be some evidence that people with mental dysfunction are actually drawn to the field). For her sake and for the sake of her clients, she should be reported to her professional association - she needs to receive some sort of counseling or therapy because this cannot continue.

My Bachelor degree is in Psychology, and I can assure you that these weird mommy/baby interactions are NOT a recognized form of therapy with some underlying beneficial purpose. She's using them to fulfill her own twisted personal needs to the detriment of her clients. Her job should be to enable and empower her clients to stand on their own two feet, not cause them to revert back to infantile dependence.

SHE NEEDS HELP. THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU.
posted by keep it under cover at 3:33 PM on February 25

The more I consider it, the more I think it likely this is some sort of sex subculture. Mommy play? I assume there is such a thing?

Having known a "daddy" (not my "daddy", I assure you), that was my immediate thought as well.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 3:35 PM on February 25 [2 favorites has favorites]

Ann is a psychologist and she met Beth in a class she was teaching.

Somehow, some have made a flying leap to the assumption that Beth is Ann's patient, and that Ann should lose her license over these confidential emails.

Imagine how many professionals could have their licenses questioned and reputations damaged if "almost-family members" perused their most personal musings, letters, and photographs, and decided, based on a single sensational discovery, that these people were unfit to practice their trade.

Your quintessential concern is your relationship with Ann. Fix it or end it.
posted by terranova at 5:00 PM on February 25

I agree with those who say that the real issue here is Anon's relationship with Ann. However, this looks like something I've seen before in therapists - they take on patients whose problems meet some need of their own (and get others in their life into a similar dynamic). This sounds like Ann has lots of patients with borderline personality disorder - in a nutshell, they are pathologically needy. Most therapists would limit themselves to one or two of these. (Whether Beth is actually her patient or not, she's in a therapist-patient relationship with her.) Being needed by these people serves some need of Ann's, so they get stuck in a co-dependent cycle. It's not healthy for anyone, no one's therapy will progress much, and Ann will eventually get sucked dry. But it's not a crisis and it's not an ethics violation.

If I were you I'd work on my relationship with Ann and in that context, eventually, maybe gently say that you're concerned about her burning out when she is so deeply enmeshed in her patients' emotional needs. But I sense that you'd find that scary - you don't have a real mom, Ann filled that role for you, and she is not supposed to not be okay or to need help from you, or to not be fully on top of her own life. And you worry - what does it mean about the nurturing and mothering you got from her if she gives that out to every sad case to serve some need of her own?

These issues all have to do with you, not with Ann. If you can have a loving relationship with her that accepts that she is flawed and needy herself, and that isn't burdened by your idea of what you need her to be, you should pursue that. And incidentally that is something all mothers and daughters have to do.
posted by Betsy Vane at 6:08 PM on February 25 [1 favorite has favorites]

This is fascinating.

Is there any real replacement for a real mother-daughter relationship? It appears.. in this case, the possibility is.. fraught. This question has so much incomplete and perhaps unreliable information, I don' t know how anyone can give definitive advice.

If Beth is Ann's patient, there is a very serious issue with a boundary here. If Beth is Ann's student, that may well be an issue, if there are defined boundaries of appropriate student-teacher relationships in this context. For instance, a university professor/student relationship - the university has rules about that sort of thing, a code of conduct. But if Beth is not Ann's patient, and not or no longer her student.. if the letter of the law doesn't show that Ann is doing anything wrong.. people are free to be weird for the most part..

I feel sorry for Beth. Maybe Ann got sucked into constantly reassuring Beth, who seems terribly insecure and needy and prone to.. imagining that other families are perfect even though none of them are.. and now Ann can't/won't reassert normal boundaries, perhaps for fear of hurting Beth. I don't see why you couldn't ask Ann about it, see if she wants to talk. And if Ann is telling Beth she is part of your family and can come over any time, isn't this something the whole family should talk about? Because what happens if.. Ann is away or unavailable and Beth has some kind of crisis, psychological or otherwise, will she have an expectation (encouraged by Ann) that she can depend on you, since you're her new family? Something you all should talk about.
posted by citron at 9:42 PM on February 25

I'm concerned that this woman has a maternal relationship with patients, but then again, in therapeutic relationships the phenomenon of transference can occur, where the patient may see the female therapist as a maternal figure, and the therapist uses this as part of the treatment. The fact that she encourages this in her friendships as well is interesting and makes me wonder if these maternal tendencies serve her needs as much as anyone else's. As far as Beth, if this person is a student or patient of Ann's rather than just a friend, that exchange is certainly worrisome and possibly unethical on Ann's part. And icky.

I do detect some jealousy in your message. Ann apparently is in the habit of developing a maternal interaction with people she cares about, and you were obviously one of these people. Mother-daughter relationships are pretty special, and to discover that someone else is just as special to this woman as you thought you were can be disconcerting. You don't seem to have been concerned about her maternalism or judgment until you saw it played out with another woman.

I think the real issue is your concern about losing your special status with Ann. I suggest you talk to Ann about this rather than trying to find something wrong with her.
posted by Piscean at 11:11 PM on February 25

I agree that it's probably a D/s relationship (although not necessarily a sexual one). Mommy/child roleplay is more common than you'd think. People sometimes just see it as a way to replace bad childhood memories with something positive.

If that's the case, though, I'm a little bit alarmed that Ann dismissed Beth as just "a damaged woman who is working through some issues". Beth certainly seems to see it as more than that. I don't think it's possible that Ann is being completely honest about the nature of this relationship.
posted by arianell at 5:04 AM on February 26