Quote:
Originally Posted by Wonderfalls
That's an easy way out for the therapist. All they have to do is convince you that everything is your fault. There was a post on a different forum I was reading, a reply to someone very depressed. Her response was: get out of bed, shower, get dressed, clean your apartment, and then go for a walk. Hello? If you could pull all that off then you're definitely not all that depressed.
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I don’t think reminding someone they have choices (not talking about OP’s therapist specifically here, just generally) is the same as saying, “everything is your fault.” It’s not blame or criticism; it’s a truth that we do have choices, maybe more than we think, and we should remember that. But with choices come responsibility—again, not the same as blame, fault, or criticism.
And depending on what one is in therapy for, one might well benefit from being reminded that we have choices. No therapist blamed me for staying with an abusive husband, but they did remind me that I had choices—maybe I wasn’t strong enough to make them yet, but when I was I should remember there was a choice. And that was a very helpful thing to hear and recognize. In scenarios like that I think it is beneficial for the therapist to remind the clients that there are things they can make choices about. They are not helpless.