Towards the end, when I started to realize that I shouldn’t be taking the abuse I was taking from my therapist – even before the abuse became extreme – I stopped using the DBT skills I had acquired over a year of DBT with her.

Now that I am with a new therapist, I am still not using the skills and I’m continuing to decompensate getting worse and worse week after week.

Even though my prior therapist was abusive, I did grow and learn helpful things when I was with her (no one is completely good or completely bad.) Now it appears as though I am simply refusing to use the tools I acquired to help myself.

I’m wondering if subconsciously I’m refusing to use the skills I learned while with the abusive therapist because I believe that those tools are now tainted and can’t be used, particularly after the awful things she did to me at the end.

Does anyone else feel as though the positive things they learned while with their abusive therapist are now, in some way, invalidated?

Does anyone else feel that thinking about and/or using the positive skills you learned with the abusive therapist bring back painful memories of the therapist and now you avoid using them even though the skills themselves are useful and good?

Has anyone figured out a way to get through a block like this?