When I was a boy in my pre-teen years my mom went to school to get her masters degree in therapeutic counseling and changed professions to become a therapist. While she was fresh out of school and when I was in my teenage years, around the age of 14, my mother starting getting in my head and it felt like she was violating my privacy; she encouraged me repeatedly (even when I was a pre-teen) to talk about my "vulnerability" and my feelings first rather than focus on external matters outside myself. I opened up to her and the rest of my family at her encouragement (I think this was harmful in hindsight). When I started at the public high school I began to have some problems: mainly boiling down to being unhappy because I was unable to fit in. I didn't know who else to turn to so I tried to talk to my mom about this. Her parenting strategy was to offer me counseling. I didn't know any better (I wanted help) so I accepted. In our living room she did "body-centered psychotherapy" with me. During these counseling sessions (there were many), she got even more in my head and in my personal space in a way that was even more harmful and destructive to my self-confidence. I am in my mid-thirties now and for my entire life I have been unable to hold down a serious relationship for more than a year and my most recent two relationships were very messed up and short-lived. Today I also have problems with building close relationships in my life in general. I am now trying to decide what to do in order to move on and build a life (and possibly family) of my own with good relationships. I'm not sure what to do. I explained to my mother many times how her role as a therapist with me, her son, caused me much strife, but she still doesn't get it. I am very confident that if I asked her to do counseling with me even today she would still accept because I believe she somehow enjoys the dynamic. I want closure and justice to this harmful relationship. The only way I feel I can get through to her and my family that what she did was wrong is to sue her and ask that her counseling license be revoked for unethical use of her license. Is suing her a possibility and could it be effective in getting her counseling license revoked, or having some form of reparation for what happened, realistically?
