Quote:
Originally Posted by blackocean
Yeah, I totally know what you mean about lists. I guess maybe a better way to put it is, When you look back with your new perspective, when should you have left? When should it have become obvious that the therapist was abusing you or had intent to abuse you? Sometimes I look back on my abusive situations and I'm just like, damn, it should have been clear and would have been if you weren't the frog in the pot.
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I look at it differently. I don't tell myself that I should have left at such and such time. I know that I left when I was ready to leave. I knew something was wrong for a long time, but I also knew that I was not strong enough to leave and so I allowed myself to hang in there for as long as I needed to get enough strength to break away. Meanwhile, I was observing myself and what was happening from a neutral place and I solicited some outside help - from other therapists and some other people. I look back at this and see it as an enormously important life lesson. I wish I didn't have to pay such a high price to learn it, but we don't get to decide how we learn things in this life. If we are forced to learn something the hard way, it means that there was really no other way to teach us..