Can therapy do more harm than good?

[JustKathy]

I was shaken up . When I went to the therapist, I told him about this. He said,"What did YOU do to make him do this?"

OMG! That's HORRIBLE. Ami, I'm not sure how old you are, but I'm 49, so was in high school in the 70s. Back then they didn't have child protective services and people looking out for abuse. So if I told someone that my N mom was doing horrible things to me, the immediate response was to report it back to M. Had I walked into my guidance counselor's office with visible cuts and bruises, it might have been different, but back in those days, abused kids were pretty much voiceless. I often wonder what it would be like if I were 17 today . . . if the reaction of my guidance counselor would be different in 2009 than they were in 1976. Or is emotional abuse still shoved under the carpet and considered "not really abuse?"

[Ami]

 We were in the same time period but this one incident reflected how the therapist was. For this guy(an MD) everything was Freudian.He really  messed me up. Then after I left him, I ended up with another Freudian MD who continued to take my common sense away and replace it with crazy intellectualism.
 There is a saying "Dont call running horses zebras". It means don't complicate the obvious.
  I am sure there are therapists that help people. I either was not able to receive or the ones I had were not able to give.
        Ami

[Ami]

Just wanted to add s/thing. The really bad thing inherent in therapy is that you are often too selfless to defend yourself and use your own gut.If you had a good sense of self ,you probably would not be there.  So, if you get s/one bad it can take forever or never to get out.      Ami

[sKePTiKal]

Kathy, I think back in the "olden days" there WERE people who knew about emotional abuse... and some of them were school counselors, teachers, nurses, even neighbors. Problem wasn't that the issue wasn't recognized... rather it was that parents were still considered "gods" over their children and the family was private & sacred... so people were socially - and legally - restricted from interfering.

In the late 60s/early 70s.... I found those kinds of people - but as I said, the help they were able to offer was very limited.

The keys to "repairing" ourselves are found right inside of US. And I found, that the way to do that was to learn what I didn't learn as a child. One of those things, as Ami has pointed out - is learning to trust myself. That said, some things are learned through osmosis, when a child in a healthy family... and much more difficult to learn as an adult because the brain has already established certain emotional/consequences pathways. We have to un-do those and learn healthier emotional habits... and establish new neural connections - somewhat like a stroke victim.

Well, that's a tall order - especially when a person is feeling overwhelmed by so many "symptoms" and emotions from the past and juggling the challenges of the present. Where to start? In my relationship with my T, she functioned as a trail guide... pointing out alternate paths (= healthier emotional habits)... fed me the validation I needed - then - when we backtracked over where I had been... and she also walked with me a ways down some new paths. She was my "professor", in learning healthier ways to BE.

But it was always MY journey. She was more like the sherpa that kept me from starving or freezing to death... pulled me out of the ravines that I fell into... and the best gift I got from her, was when she waved goodbye - saying I didn't need her anymore, because I had a clear sense of the path and had learned the skills I needed to keep myself safe. That experience was her telling me, that she had confidence and trust in me, to take care of myself... and while it's taken awhile... over a year... I've started internalizing that "gift".

I know I got lucky, in that we connected on the first shot. What I found out much later (my own blind-spot got in the way) is that she specialized in abuse victims. She was able to walk the fine line of getting me to trust her enough... to learn how to trust myself, without becoming another of my "substitute moms".