Quote:
Originally Posted by lolagrace
But learning how to work through my thinking, manage anxiety, etc. isn't about being broken either. It is simply about never having learned effective and healthy ways to work through those emotions and situations. I never felt what they were teaching me said anything about my "brokenness." In fact, I felt treated much more "broken" by those therapists who had absolutely no skills to offer and just sat there and seemed to feel sorry for me; that was MUCH more demeaning and useless. And I never felt being given skills in any way made the therapist the "savior." He just happened to have some knowledge of ways I could do things differently that might actually help me out and shared them with me, showed me how to practice those skills and use them regularly. That approach didn't say I was broken; that approach said "With a few skills you may find life a easier to manage when you run into these kinds of stressors." In other words, I was being treated as a person completely capable of managing my life with just some rather practical skills added to my toolbelt. I found that approach entirely validating and respectful of my strength and ability.
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I would say that the premise of all therapy - whether or not the therapist expresses it or makes the client feel that way - is that the client is "broken" and that the therapist is there to "fix" it. There's all kinds of things you can learn in therapy, and many are useful - I am talking about the view of therapy.
The way the question is phrased in the OP reminds me of this view. Say one goes to therapy as an adult to learn how to manage anger, for instance. The implication is that "normal" adults have already done this. That one needs to see a therapist to learn this task that everyone else seems to have mastered just fine does, in fact, suggest that that there is something wrong with the client, who has not mastered this skill. I simply don't think the profession can escape that implication; it is at the heart of mental health care.