It's just me and my opinion -- I haven't trained as a therapist but I have read a lot of books and was in and out of therapy for 50+ years-- but I think the problem for me wasn't just "feeling" hurt but being ACTUALLY hurt/damaged by therapists. For instance, the failure/rejection/shaming by the last therapist re-damaged my sense of self that had been damaged in my early family/social life. It's hard to describe, there isn't anything in any of the books that I have read that are very good descriptions or theories about the way my experience seems to me.
And then, in therapy with the last therapist for 6 years, a healthy me or sense of me was trying to emerge or something, and she smashed, dashed, damaged it AGAIN. This isn't something that just "feels" hurt -- it IS hurt. It is additional DAMAGE to my ability to function well psychologically. It feels horrible, too, like pain does with actual damage in other parts of one's being, too.
I could explain, using Kohut's theory, how and what I think happened -- but that's just cognition. It helps me feel a little better but doesn't do much to help the damage. For that, I would need a therapist to try to listen to me and understand where I was coming from and how I think the theory explains what is going on. And then a "therapeutic alliance", on a cognitive level, to try to come up with ways to help me at an emotional level. I've tried -- they don't get that, it's outside the paradigm that they are taught and trained in. Even a Self psychologist who I thought surely might get it. But no, I'm a client, a mental patient, how could I possibly have any useful idea about a way to relate to a therapist that could actually help me?
So, in my view -- how do therapists recognize people who have this level of damage coming into therapy, before a "relationship" develops? And -- what IS a "relationship" to someone who has a damaged sense of self anyway? Why not try to figure that out and meet the person on their own terms? Or, what do the therapists do, or how and to whom do they refer, when they discover a person has that level of damage -- without retraumatizing the sense of self through rejection or treatment "failure", etc. -- which is really a NEW trauma because, for instance, if I hadn't been in therapy trying to "find" it, the self might possibly have stayed "safely" dissociated or hidden/protected within its defenses. Which, yes, is another kind of problem but "First, do no harm" needs to be the motto of the "mental health" profession IMO. I was doing the best I could for all those years, trying to find "help" where, I now believe, it isn't to be found -- or, if it is, nobody can really say why or how or with whom. And that, too, is DAMAGING to a life. Yes, others can put it all on me and the "choices" that I, with my damaged sense of self, made. But I think that view is SOCIALLY damaging and short-sighted, too. Because, I've been pretty d...m dysfunctional, socially, despite my best efforts. It's been a waste for me -- but also to the rest of society, too. Of course, who cares. . .we have had a thriving materialist economy which doesn't need me to function or contribute anything. . .
And yet, for me to
is something else to blame me for because it would "hurt" other people. Huh?