For me there have been two benefits in this neighborhood, but not prompted by my T telling me something. The first one is that seeing things as they are (in the present) is an important value for me, I believe in making an effort to reality check in situations that involve other person and anything that might distress me or piss me off. I try not to distort other people's behavior or motivation or intention, and check in with people to see whether my beliefs are true. In order to be able to do that, I needed to be able to see things as they WERE. None of my work involved "blaming" my parents but labeling what happened and acknowledging the reality of it and in general not being in denial that everything was fine in my childhood and I'm fine now was the impetus to seeing things as they ARE now more clearly. I think there's no logical connection between calling what is so obviously neglect, neglect, and "blaming" the parents. I actually think that's a stereotype and a superficial analysis of what therapy is about. Although parents are responsible for the choices they made, even if it is true they are responsible for the problems they create in their children, also not an obvious logical link), everyone with a problem is responsible for a solution. For me part of the seeing things as they were was also developing some understanding for the pressures my parents were under and the limits they had as individuals on what they could see and what they could do. It is trite to say they did the best they could, but widening the lens to see them as whole people operating under difficulties is kind of the opposite of blame. So my therapy had the side effect of un-blaming my parents and as a result, I have had much better relationships with them in the past couple of decades than I did as a younger adult.

But the other thing that helped me in this vein was to understand how what happened in my childhood affected me-- which it did in all sorts of way. It colored the way I intereacted with people for a long time and still does from time to time. It seemed like there was piece after piece, or that onion layer analogy thing. The messages about not talking about things were particularly powerful, and it wasn't until I had relationships with healthy people who actually talked about what they felt that I came to realize this. For me this was some of the most important work that I did and it needed to begin with seeing what really happened in my childhood. I denied and minimized and rationalized and intellectualized what happened for the longest time, and made little progress. And the "what happened" was not limited to events, but the family pathologies around the events, and the dynamics that surrounded them, such as the silencing, the internalizing, etc. I couldn't link it up to my life in the present until I did. And then my world cracked open and I was able to begin to change and reap the benefits of that change. A friend of mine explained this as like a snake (not my favorite animal) shedding its skin and leaving the old one behind, free to roam around in the world with a new one. Free-- that's what it feels like. I feel free now. I like my freedom.

I don't say this with disrespect, and apologize if it comes across as anything but "this is how I see it." I can't possibly know what's true or right for you but there are some pieces of your experience in and out of therapy that resonate within me. But this thing you say "my father killed himself when I was a child and then I lost my mother because I had to cut her out of my life but I'm over it all", I just think that's b.s. Maybe you're at least partway done grieving, but the meaning of these two things as a collective seems like a big deal, powerful.

You're an orphan. And you have no problems with that? No need to page Dr. Freud.