What "I" have found that has "helped" me is that my revisiting the past isn't about "changing it", it is about "understanding how it affected me" in ways I didn't really "realize" before. I "compensated" in ways where, some were good and some were not all that healthy for me, I just didn't "know" it.

When I first developed PTSD, I never wanted to talk about my childhood. I had really thought I had "made peace with it", I didn't realize it affected me more than I thought it did.

It is true that "we "learn" to "fix" ourselves while we are in "therapy" and no a therapist "doesn't fix us", however, what they "do help with", is they become that person we always needed in our lives and just didn't have".

A "good" therapist is someone who really "understands complex PTSD and how the average person is "hurt" when they suffer from PTSD. They "learn" how to "guide" their patients as their patients slowly learn about whatever they may have been "injured" by that harmed them more then they realized. Often people grow up in "dysfunction" and they have been hurt by that more then they realized. In therapy, probably for the first time, they get that "hurt" validated, learn they are not as alone as they thought, and then with time they learn how to finally "grieve" whatever they have lost (sense of value and safety) and begin to learn "to overcome in spite of it".

So, in a way, a therapist becomes a "good friend" but is more knowing, and they are also supposed to be "someone we can trust" to finally just open up with. They are not there for us to "please" either, and that in itself takes time to understand too.

Therapy is really more about finally "learning about yourself" and have a willingness to be open with not only the therapist, but "self" as well. It is really more about "learning" more than anything else, learning how to finally "help self in new ways" other then whatever "dysfunctional" messages the patient received in their past.

OE