I'm sorry, I don't mean to beat you over the head, but I really have to respectfully disagree here. I don't believe everyone's path is the same, I don't believe that what people are trying to do here is "wallow/complain/vent".

When you say that, it sounds very minimizing to me. Using words like "wallow, complain, vent" sounds to me like people standing around the water cooler, complaining about losing a parking space or something trivial, and making too big a deal about something that is not significant.

I don't think that's what's happening here. I don't want to speak for anyone else, but I find it hurtful and a little like you may not yet have the life experience to appreciate the amount of damage parents can do, even with seemingly small words and actions (or lack thereof).

The "venting" here isn't useless. The way I see it, it does a couple things: it's a way to get validation (i.e. "Am I crazy, or was this really a bad thing?") and a way to get in touch with these things, so that we can feel the feelings and process them. That's a huge thing for me, because (I'm just starting to learn) I really wasn't allowed to have "feelings" growing up - and it's a struggle right now for me to get to the feelings, and bring them into therapy. Part of healing is acknowledging the bad stuff and then *feeling it* - hopefully with an empathic presence (T) - so that it *can* be processed. When I read what you wrote, I see it as a directive to just skip over the "feeling" because "it's not that important" and try to jump to the end state ("see the good", "move on"). I absolutely *can* do that, I've done it my whole life... and it has not served me well. My therapist wants me to NOT do that at this point.

It sounds like you don't believe that being told "If you don't stop crying, I'll give you something to cry about" is an actual trauma? Am I understanding correctly? Because, I'm pretty sure that for a small child that is already hurting to be threatened with physical violence because they're expressing their emotions (instead of getting any sort of nurturing and caring) IS in fact a "trauma".

Might I respectfully suggest that this is not "doing better"? People here were discovering something about their history, relating, and sharing their pain. I don't think shutting that down is "better", and again, for some of us, it's actually the opposite of what our therapists want us to do.

I don't think it's the same thing at all. In your analogy, the baby bird is presumably healthy and able to fly, just naturally nervous about trying something new. Would the mama bird push a brand new baby (just born minutes ago) out of the nest, and let it fall to its death? Further, you're talking about "mama" bird who has a responsibility to teach the young birds to fly. At this point, for most of us, this would be our *therapists*. If my therapist, who knows my history and personality and current struggles, were to tell me to stop wallowing and move on, I'd take that seriously and give it some consideration. My therapist, however, is telling me exactly the opposite of what you're saying - he's saying, "Look, you had a really sucky family, you got screwed over, and over, and over, and it's not fair. And you can't move forward until you can start to experience your feelings around that." That's not wallowing, and it's not venting. It's moving forward and healing.

I'm sorry if I sound like I'm beating you up. Just my opinions. I'm probably going to go ahead and withdraw from this thread now, because it's a bit more upsetting than I can deal with at this point.

To everyone else, I'm sorry. I hope I'm not triggering anyone, or speaking out of turn. I don't mean to represent anyone's opinions other than my own. Forgive me is this is just me being crazy. Thanks.