I never saw therapy situations as faultable; I went to therapy because I was in pain; the ideas I had on how to handle thoughts, feelings, and actual situations in and about my life weren't working and I wanted someone to see if they could help guide me into looking at things differently so I could figure out different ways of dealing with them. One of the things I learned (I think it only took me 16 years) was that I had to get the thoughts, feelings, and situations "out there" to be looked at by both me and my T and not just having them inside my ijit little head where they weren't doing me any good. A collarary was that I had to learn to check with my T (and others) what they were thinking, feeling, and how they viewed the situation. Sitting and talking without listening to and truly hearing self or others doesn't do a whole lot of good. However, since the thinking, feeling and situations situation was painful already, it couldn't possibly get less painful dragging it out kicking and screaming for T to look at and then hearing what T had to say about it.

But, bottom line is that it IS all about me or whomever so yeah, one has to learn to own one's thoughts, feelings and situations. They are all that are in one's life. T can't own our stuff, we can't own T's stuff. T says or does something that hurts us, we have to look at it just like everything else, can't wallow in "Mommy! She hurt me!" The hurt is our feeling, not something inherent in the word/deed. Not everyone would respond to the hurt the way we choose to or, would even see what was said/done as hurtful! We have to sort all that out and decide what to do about feeling hurt. Do we check out why we feel hurt and whether the other person knows we feel hurt and what that hurt "means" and what we want to do about it or do we decide to shut down and/or retaliate (my favorite response with my stepmother)? Having a goal of what to do when pain is at its worst helps us ignore the pain some until we get to the goal. I remembered good things about my T and what happened to my favorite characters in books, what they said (like sister's Movie quotes post) that rang true for me and would help me. I like my signature line for that reason, it's the sort of "truth" I want to remember when it's getting hard to see anything except what is right in front of me and, at the moment, that really isn't nice :-)