My upbringing was...interesting. It was very all-or-nothing/there was a lot of splitting. I was either completely ignored and neglected and no one cared what I did at all, or I got screamed at or hit. Never knew which one to expect. Usually I was ignored, though. My mom was too depressed from her divorce to take care of me and my dad abandoned me. I always felt really alone.
My theory is that I like this type of therapy because someone is finally paying attention to what I’m doing. She praises me a lot when I do good things, but then is very direct and harsh with me when I have doing self-destructive things. I think there’s a reason for the harshness. 1. That’s kinda just her style with all of her patients, and 2. Particularly with me, because last year my T would just ignore my maladaptive behaviors and so they kept getting worse and worse because my BPD took over and I wanted her to pay attention to me. So it got to a point where I was doing very dangerous things so that she would finally pay attention to me. I ended up in the hospital 4 times in 5 months, and I had never been there before that. I really, really decompensated. I think she’s trying to intervene before I can spiral, and she’s learned with me that if she doesn’t intervene harshly, I don’t respond well/her intervention isn’t effective. Probably because I’m about as stubborn and argumentative as they come.
I really do believe there is a method to her madness. I don’t see it as abusive at all.