I don't think whether T likes us or not is inherent in our stories? If we do not like ourselves, the stories don't tell that, they are just what happened to us, what someone else said or did to us and how we felt about it? "My stepmother beat me" is not about me and what a loser I might be but about my stepmother.

If a therapist were to talk to another and say, "Gee, I have this client whose stepmother beat her. . ." that sounds impersonal enough to me; why would the therapist add, "her name is Perna" and/or, (my name actually being Margaret) how is the other person to know it's "me"; I'm hardly the only Margaret in the world? The telling and negative spin would be from the therapist, not from the incident but that I'd "imagine" a therapist being negative is perhaps our own self-esteem problem?

The worst that can be said of me, stripped of the "meaning" or reason behind my story might be, "Margaret pooped in her pants in 2nd grade and the teacher literally had to sniff her out! Can you imagine being that poor teacher?" But, hey, (a) I'm not going to know what was said about me to my T's random other person and (b) I was 6 or 7 and am 61 now and have had many other, more important-to-me-now life events (that I can tell you this one in public all over the Internet and have it not bother me now?) happen.