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Could we begin on the theme of absent parents? Would that address your issues enough? I think I, and maybe for Tomi too, experienced not only the absence of nurturing parents, but at times abuse could even apply. I know you've mentioned bullying was a problem for you. Would that equal abuse on a therapy level? True, it's not parent generated, but some of the skeleton seems similiar. Aggression, non-validation, isolation, powelessness. Does it make a difference who the abuser was? On some levels I can see that parental abuse is more love critical, but don't we also rely on peers for acceptance, nurturing, companionship? Not meaning to say the two are the same, but is there enough we could go on the theme of oppresive environment, invalidations, isolations, anger, resentment, fears and anxiety in common?

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Yes, that works for me too. I actually didn't think of bullying being so much of an influence on my life until recently, and I probably overemphasized it a bit in that paper. Although every child has the right to expect their parents to be nurturing and not abusive, peers are important too, and abuse takes its toll no matter what the relationship of the abuser. I do consider bullying to be abuse.

And I do have issues with my parents too. No parents are perfect. Mine disallowed my individuality, which is psychological abuse. Psychological abuse often has worse effects than physical abuse. In one study mothers and children were observed and evaluated over a period of years (from pregnancy until the children were school aged). Those mothers who were abusive were divided into four groups: physically abusive, verbally abusive/hostile, neglectful, and psychologically unavailable. When the children were evaluated, all of the children of abusive mothers functioned much more poorly than children who were not maltreated, but it was those whose mothers were psychologically unavailable that did the worst of all.

I'm glad that the comments about having the potential to change gave you hope. Yes, I think that going back and working on past crises and issues with the hope of improving the outcome is exactly what we are doing here.

There are lots of different therapy styles, some that favor examining memories from the past, and others that stick to the here and now. My feeling is that the past still affects us and it will until we resolve the issues that still bother us. Besides recognizing what went wrong and reversing the negative messages, I think it is also important to look for what went right and give ourselves credit for that. Yes, I think we are pretty much on the same track and understanding each other.

I was also worried about you missing out by just asking the questions and not having a turn to answer. We certainly can switch roles at some point so that you get a turn too. I did look up the Socratic method. There are a few schools that use it as a teaching method. What I mostly got out of what I read was that rather than having lectures, they have discussions in which a facilitator asks questions and keeps the discussion headed in the right direction. The advantage is that the students are actively engaged in learning as opposed to sitting back listening, therefore the students are required to process the information and they gain a better understanding since they have to think about it in order to be able to answer the questions.

<font color=purple>"The real problem of mental life is not why some people become insane, but rather why most avoid insanity." -Erich Fromm</font color=purple>