AITAH for still having a strained relationship with my mom years after she broke my trust in a traumatic way?
I (20M) and my mom (55F) don’t get along the best. I know that seems pretty obvious given that i’m neurodivergent and i’m a college student and my parents are very overprotective. I know it’s not malicious and it comes from a place of love but it’s still very annoying.
Anyways, the story that happened years ago, probably when i was around 14 or 15 and I had been seeing my therapist Mary (fake name) for around eight years and I had a very good relationship with her. We didn’t always get along the best but generally I enjoyed my time with her and found the information she gave me pretty useful. But when I was around 15 my mom started seeing Mary as well, not at the same time that I was, it was all still one on one therapy but me and my mom were both seeing the same therapist.
I had told Mary to promise me that she wouldn’t share any details of our sessions with my mom because i didn’t want my mom to attempt to encourage me to solve my problems by just telling me how easy it it for her, or question me about every single thing going on because she is a relentless questioner, and Mary agreed. it was then in the following weeks and months that i heard my mom asking me about things that had been troubling me that i never told her about. I began to suspect that Mary was sharing information of our sessions with my mom without my consent and my mom was doing exactly what I feared she’d do if she ever found out about the things i specifically held back from telling her. I confronted both Mary and my mom about this and they both denied it and made me feel like I was the crazy one for even thinking something like that could have happened. in the months to follow i came up with excuses to my mom about how i couldn’t see Mary because i didn’t trust her and i eventually stopped seeing her altogether because if anything it was damaging my mental health.
It wasn’t until this past school year that I felt enough distance between me and my parents that I felt comfortable seeking out a therapist on my own and that has been great but through it all i’ve still had a hard time trusting my mom and whenever i try to combat her about it she flips it onto me and makes me feel crazy for even trying to ask her something in the first place, and i often find myself thinking it was my fault because like that’s my mom’s way of thinking, deflection.