Echoes in the Living Room: A Story of a Father, a daughter, and an Inheritance"

Nesa, the therapist, had been practicing therapy for over a decade, and if there was one thing she’d learned, it was that children rarely walk into her office alone.

One rainy Tuesday afternoon, a man walked in, anxious and uneasy. He was in his late thirties, dressed casually, and carried the weight of someone much older. His name was Rajeev. He’d come, he said, because his six-year-old daughter had become “impossible to handle.”

“She doesn’t listen,” he told Nesa. “She shouts, throws things, cries for no reason.”

Nesa nodded, inviting him to go on. But even as he spoke, something in his eyes said more than his words did—something tired, bruised, hollow.

“And you?” she asked gently. “How are you doing, Rajeev?”

He blinked, surprised by the question. “I don’t know. Things haven’t been easy. I have diabetes… lost my job last year… and my wife and I… we fight a lot. She says I don’t care, that I’m never there for her. Maybe she’s right.”

Rajeev hesitated. Then added, “I get angry easily. I try not to, but it just happens.”

It was then that Nesa made a decision. “Why don’t you bring the whole family next time?” she suggested. “Let’s meet your daughter. And your wife, if she’s comfortable.”

The next week, they came. A quiet little girl, clinging slightly to her mother’s hand but curious, bright-eyed. Her mother, Simran, reserved but polite. Rajeev sat apart, as if unsure where he belonged in the trio. Nisa observed the child closely. No signs of behavioural disorders. No developmental delays. Just a child trying to say something, with no one quite listening.

After the session, Nesa gently told Rajeev, “Your daughter is not the one who needs therapy right now. But you do. Would you be open to that?”

He agreed.

A Deeper Story Unfolds

Through further exploration, the father shared that he struggled with anger, marital discord, and the emotional toll of unemployment and chronic illness (diabetes). He admitted to being emotionally distant from his wife and daughter, often immersed in his phone, and disengaged from family life.

Delving deeper, a pivotal theme emerged—his own relationship with his father. As a child, he had experienced a strict, authoritative parenting style. This unresolved trauma had left deep emotional scars and unspoken anger of being treated so harshly, manifesting now in his difficulty connecting with his own child and in his emotionally avoidant behaviour toward his spouse.

Therapeutic Intervention: Revisiting the Past

Nesa began working with him individually using elements of multimodal therapy, particularly an effective technique. He was guided to imagine speaking to his father, expressing unmet needs, anger, and grief. It was a revealing experience!

The Intergenerational Thread

This case highlights a critical truth in family systems: unprocessed emotional pain often doesn’t disappear—it gets passed on. The father, hurt by the authoritarian parenting he received unknowingly began to repeat on his child. His withdrawal from family life, difficulty expressing affection, and anger are not signs of a flawed character but symptoms of a wound unhealed.

Children are highly perceptive. The daughter, sensing the emotional distance and tension at home, began acting out. Her behaviour was not pathological, but rather communicative—a signal that something was amiss in the emotional environment around her.

The one-on-one sessions that followed revealed what Nesa had suspected.

Rajeev’s story was not about a defiant daughter—it was about a boy who had never been allowed to cry.

“My father was strict,” Rajeev said during one session, staring at the floor. “Too strict. He didn’t talk—he ordered.

He paused. “I don’t even know how to talk to my daughter. Or my wife.”

The therapy room became a space for Rajeev to remember, to grieve, and to confront the ghosts of his past. The sessions were intense yet Rajeev left lighter. Not healed, but cracked open. There was hope.

Nesa suggested that in the next stage, he and Neha come together for a couple’s session—to talk, to listen, and to find their way back.

As she wrote her notes on Rajeev’s file, Nesa thought of his daughter. Fathers like Rajeev—men who grew up in households where love was a command, not a conversation—were everywhere. Men who never learned to be vulnerable, who carried unprocessed pain into their marriages, and eventually, unknowingly passed it down to their children.

In therapy, the child is often the alarm bell and the healing doesn’t happen all at once. Sometimes, it begins with a single sentence:

"She doesn’t listen to me."

[Story written by Neha Saigal Beswal: The story and the characters in it are fictitious and sketched based on her experience and insights as a therapist]