Banging my Head Against a Wall

I wish there were a day of the week that began with "P".  Then, instead of Throwback Thursday, we could have Pet Peeve Priday.  Oh well, you can't have everything.  My pet peeve is therapists.  Some of my best friends are therapists.  Really.  I love therapy.  Especially here in the Trenches, therapy serves a very important role in helping our clients work their way out of the Trenches.  Clients feel heard and understood; therapists walk a really fine line to help them feel that way while at the same time addressing the hard issues.  Funny thing about many therapists:  even when they do couples therapy, they hate having conflict in their own lives.  Like many lawyers here in the Trenches, they work very hard to avoid it.  Which brings me to my pet peeve.

Sometimes, therapists have roles that are not confidential.  One of those roles is acting as a custody evaluator.  I'm not talking about those therapists here.  Another role is acting as a parenting coordinator.  Some therapists view this role as akin to parenting or couples therapy,  The problem is that it is not a confidential process, which means they can be called to court to testify about what happens in those sessions, how everyone behaves, whether one parent or the other cooperated and whether anyone broke agreements made there.  They are supposed to be able to be neutral third party observers who can provide helpful information to the court about the parental ability to cooperate and co-parent.  The therapists who are also qualified and have served as custody evaluators in other cases are not afraid to tell the hard truths, even with both parents in the room.  The therapists who are not are wishy washy, and flip flop.  They tend to try to paint each parent as bearing the same amount of blame and responsibility, even when that's not the case, and even when they have told quite a different story off the record on multiple occasions.  It's not that they're lying, exactly.   No, that's not true; they really are, and they get caught by the contradictions between general statements and specific observations of behaviors.  It's so frustrating, and makes their testimony worthless.  May as well call it therapy for all the good the lack of confidentiality does to help the court make a decision.  Ripping my hair out.  Here in the Trenches.