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Originally Posted by BudFox
MP, we had some productive and interesting dialogue not long ago. I appreciated it. So I say this with respect… your last couple posts are demeaning and patronizing, as much as any I have seen here, and I imagine anyone harmed in therapy would feel that. Why? Because they are written in such a way as to suggest thoughtfulness and understanding but contain all sorts of veiled insults and presumptions. There is a subtext that seems to say -- here is how I overcame my difficult therapy, now pay attention as I explain how you can do the same. If someone posted in this manner, but with a message that was critical of therapy, there would be outrage.
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Well, I can't take responsibility for the subtext, because AFAIK I didn't write one. I at least believe I empathize with the position you are in, and my posts were extrapolated from my own experience, my motivation being that they help me to consolidate my own perspective and help me know how to move forward in my own healing. I do disagree with your interpretations, but I am not preaching, because I have no gospel to confer to you or anyone, because they are just my thoughts, and if you don't find them helpful for you like I find them helpful for me, or other people seem to have found them helpful, then that is perfectly OK as well.
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You seem to have undergone some transformation in your view of your own therapy, which is great. But to preach in such a drawn out and moralizing way about what you consider the "proper" way to view the experience of harmful therapy is just not cool.
Suggestions that therapy relationships aren't that different than others and are just a "s**t happens" sort of reality seems really odd to me. Therapy should at least aim for "first do no harm". If it fails there with regularity, it is not legit. People are paying large sums of money, unlike in social relationships. If we hold therapy to no higher standard than social relationships, I cant imagine why it should exist. And the sort of harm inflicted by bad therapy has a uniquely perverse, disturbing character.
You are equivocating and rationalizing about an experience that, for many, is emotional and visceral and psychological. If therapy experiences could be sorted out through intellectualizing and rationalizing, you wouldn't have people losing their minds and feeling lingering harm for years. Trying to make sense of destructive therapy by considering it objectively is like trying to soothe a crying baby by giving it book to read about psych theory. I have the sorts of awareness and self understanding that you are promoting, but I still am suffering greatly. Therapy conditions us to take a bullet for the process and see that our suffering is self-created and we just need to try again, and again, cuz the process is beyond reproach. My suffering is in part self-created, but therapy itself also inflicted suffering that is absolute and not just relative. Anyone who suggests otherwise is playing a dangerous and invalidating game. It's what most of the other T's that I tried did. It was cowardly and perverse.
As for therapy-childhood links, the entire biz speaks in a language that makes plain the connections between therapy dyads and mother-infant dyads -- regression, transference, attachment, dependence, etc. There are whole therapy approaches that even attempt various sorts of "re-parenting".
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I agree with some of the points you made and disagree with others, but I'm finding it difficult to respond, because your interpretation of my post doesn't feel accurate to me, and I'm also struggling to understand specifically what you are communicating here. In the first place, I have no power over whether or not therapy exists, or on what terms it exists, and my only interest is how I can make the best of it as a client.
Of course your feelings are your valid and genuine experience, but I personally don't think that your feelings mean therapy should not exist or can't be helpful to most people.
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Originally Posted by BudFox
I dont find what you said empowering at all. Nor disempowering. Rather i find it to be a gross distortion of reality. If someone has made numerous attempts at therapy, and has come away feeling consistently harmed or just not helped, the empowering thing to say would be -- you deserve better, consider the myriad other ways there are to heal, not least your own internal resources. The message that is pounded incessantly is that therapy is some sort of prerequisite to overcoming life's problems.
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Well, if someone tried therapy and found that it is not for them, I would think that's helpful for them to know and at least they tried. Personally I would encourage you or anyone to do what actually works and helps you accomplish your goals.