My therapist asked me to imagine my emotionally neglectful father being everything I needed him to be in order for me to heal. I can’t do this. Is this necessary for me to heal or can I try something else? I feel like don’t need a fairytale!

I want to help you take a step or two back from this situation and look at it from a certain perspective that I think might be helpful to try out.

One thing to keep in mind is that in therapy any kind of “assignment” like this is not meant to be completed like schoolwork for a grade, where you have to answer the question exactly as it’s asked. In therapy it’s a prompt and the purpose of the prompt is to help surface some real thoughts and feelings and then explore them. There aren’t any “right” or “wrong” thoughts and feelings here. The point is to discover the actual ones.

So in this case your therapist gave you a prompt, and boy did it bring up some thoughts and feelings for you! Mission accomplished. The next step for you is to express those thoughts and feelings to your therapist and next it’s off you two go exploring them to see what they mean to you.

It’s natural for the client to get hung up on the prompt itself, so I’m telling you it’s all about the thoughts and feelings it’s brought up. If your therapist responds to you by being all hung up on the prompt, then that’s a potential red flag to note. A competent therapist wouldn’t do that, but would go with exploring the thoughts and feelings that actually came up for you.

Nice work!