Does your therapist treat offenders?

Moosetracks, I think you might be misreading what I wrote because nowhere did I state that having a little bit of "them" in "us" means that we will cause that level of harm to another person. My point was that we are all human and we all do hurt others, intentionally or not. Survivors who hurt themselves DO hurt others by their actions. They frighten their friends and family, often making them feel just as helpless as the survivor was during the abuse. That IS hurtful even if it is not intentional. And to insist that we have never hurt anyone else in our entire lives and have absolutely nothing to apologize for assumes a level of righteousness that we do not have simply by virtue of being human. If we cannot accept the fact that we have hurt someone, that in and of itself is hurtful.
And there are no guarantees of safety no matter where we are. If a T does not want to treat offenders that is his or her choice, but to unequivocally state that their practice is 100% "offender free" assumes a level of knowledge that no human being has. The fact is that we only know what people tell us, and our intuition is prone to a number of fallacies that can cause it to be very erroneous at times.
Sure, I suppose it's theoretically possible to have a practice that is 100% "offender free" but it is not possible by the therapist's actions alone. It's possible by chance -- maybe an offender has never walked through that door. Other than that, it's only possible if every patient is 100% truthful about his or her background and has 100% recall of everything he or she has ever done. Many patients initially withhold information out of fear or an inability to recall certain events or even certain periods of their lives. In my opinion, no T should ever guarantee that his or her practice is 100% "safe" and "offender free." It's just not humanly possible to know that.

elliemay, a very interesting question!
I am certain my T has clients who are abusers in some way, just because it's an HMO and it's pretty egalitarian - self-referred and court-referred all get seen.

I liked WePow's suggestion of bringing a towel to cover the chair; really lets you address the kind of "ewww" feeling you are having but still keep working.

What has been hard for me is where I'm pretty unequivocal about the badness of a sexual offender, I know the T has to keep an open mind about each client's experience. He shared a poem "Call me by my true names" by Thich Nhat Hanh - trigger warning if you read it. I was unsettled by this, my heart is not that big.

"But for the grace of God, there go I" ?

There is a huge difference between raping a child or beating a child to a pulp and a "victim" "hurting" friends and family by hurting themselves.

It has nothing to do with being righteous, as you called it or "but for the grace of God, there go I" as someone else wrote.

These acts are outside normal human behavior and normal human fallacy.
Anyone that rapes a child or beats a child is in a different class completely.
And if you ask most people, they would agree.

Hurting others is on a continuum, Moosetracks. Of course there are different levels of harm. But before you assume that there is always such a huge difference between physically harming children and emotionally harming them through intentional self-injury, you might want to ask the children who grew up with a self-injuring parent. Do you really believe it is far less harmful to come home from school, filled with anxiety and fear because this time, maybe your mother couldn't stop the bleeding? Or that maybe she took more pills than she did last time, and you can't wake her up?
I have a close friend who also sees my T. She had a history of cutting and overdosing, but she hadn't done it in quite awhile so no one expected this to happen. She cut herself, overdosed and drank some rum in the parking lot and then came into his waiting room. By the grace of God I was there at the time, because nobody else even knew she was in the building since she wasn't scheduled to see our T that day. When I asked her what she had taken, she told me but then attempted to leave before I could get help. I managed to get the keys away from her, along with the rest of the pills and the razor blade she was carrying. After getting her to our T's office, he called the EMT's while I sat with her, holding her upright and trying to keep her awake while she vomited in his garbage can. She lost consciousness and came close to dying, but fortunately she survived.
That was 8 years ago, but when I remember it I still feel the fear I felt that day. I still see the worried look in our T's eyes as he asked me to hold her up so she didn't choke while he called for help. If it was that traumatizing for me, as her adult friend, imagine how much worse it would have been for her children if they had been the ones to find her. Imagine if she had gotten into her car in that drug-induced state where she was not able to think clearly, and caused an accident that killed someone else.
Do you still believe that self-harm doesn't hurt others as much?

Now THAT is a wonderful wonderful wonderful poem. It is the truest of all love and understanding IMO.

I hope to get there one day. I hope hope hope.

I think I will share it with my T too.

There are people that do not hurt others at all. If you have no relationships, you can't hurt anyone. And there are many people in the world that as a result of abuse from an offender have no meaningful relationships and live a solitary life. Some people have been so harmed by offenders that they can not trust a single person nor understand how a relationship can be safe.

You are missing the point.

An offender's intention is to harm others. They consciously make a choice to hurt another person. They CHOOSE to harm and direct their anger, sadness, pain, whatever at another human being.

In your friend's self-harming story, she was not making a conscious choice to hurt another person.

Very different.

You keep neglecting the fact that offenders purposely choose and intend to harm. And instead focus on that "everyone hurts others."

The truth is an offender no matter if they were abused or not, makes a CHOICE to hurt someone and makes a CHOICE not to break the cycle.

Offenders intend to harm.
Offenders direct their "issues" purposely at other people to hurt them.

Moosetracks, many T's will tell you that some acts of self-injury are indirect expressions of rage that ARE intended to hurt others by "getting even" covertly. It's not nearly as black or white as you would like it to be.
Anyway we could go on and on about these issues but we're derailing Elliemay's thread without really getting anywhere.
I'm sorry, Elliemay.

Do you know any abuser(s) or offender(s) personally, Moosetracks?

Actually if you look at the research, the majority of people who chronically self-harm do so because they never learned good coping/soothing skills and they utilize this to handle pain usually caused by childhood trauma. Others use it to punish themselves because they feel that they are bad; since they were treated so as children. Others use it to "feel something" when they dissociate and feel dead.

Most people that are chronic self-harmers hide their behavior.

Interestingly I noticed your first post at PC had threads of this exact topic in it--offenders in treatment.
On that note, I am finished, because while you call it "black and white" I call it making a choice to engage in horrific behavior versus choosing not to.

thought I should trigger icon this just in case.

My father is and was abusive throughout my childhood. Him and I are both in therapy for it now. And I am so grateful for this.
While I have an immeasurable amount of anger towards him, therapy has allowed me to grow and see the situation a lot more clearly.
While I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive him...maybe not... my view of him has certainly changed. I don't see him as a bad person anymore. Just an incredibly damaged and flawed one.
I am certainly no longer a victim, but a survivor. And when I look at him (if I can bring myself to), I pity him and actually hope his T is doing all she can to help him. Even though I have feelings of hate for him.

And here's the kicker -
we have the same therapist.

This is just my experience and thoughts. I can definitely see where all posters are coming from. It's a complicated subject.

Take care

I am not sure what this question has to do with anything....do you know any?


And for your answer:
Yes, I do... very well in fact. Several in prison, where they belong for their actions against children. And if things go well, they will be there for another decade.

And guess what, during the trial, at times it sounded alot like this conversation -- it's not "black and white," "their actions were learned."
"they were hurt as children and were doing what they knew"...yadda, yadda, yadda.

Well, guess what? The jury didn't believe that....they believed in taking responsibility for their actions based on the CHOICES they made to intentionally inflict harm on children. Thus, they sit in prison.

And ironically, of the children that were severely abused, NONE of them made a choice to abuse; and in fact 2 of the 3 work in the helping professions after struggling through that childhood and foster care. NONE made the choice.

Lily, you are right and you are wise, and your story is inspiring! It is indeed a complicated subject. My previous T, who was also a survivor, encouraged me to hate my parents for abusing me. She encouraged me to cut all ties with them, even though they were no longer in a position to hurt me, and my kids had good though somewhat limited relationships with them. But that hatred wasn't at all healing, and I am very glad that I chose not to cut ties, and to forgive them instead. I was able to do that because my current T taught me to see the shades of gray that always eluded me in the past, and with his help I began to understand that the world and all its people are, to some degree, flawed and imperfect. My parents were human beings who hurt me because that was what they learned to do, and at that point in time, they had no one to teach them otherwise. They weren't horrible, evil monsters with no redeeming qualities; they were human beings who did some very bad things but who also did some very good things.
When my mother died a few years ago, my kids gave me a wonderful gift that I never would have received if I had cut ties with her. They gave me the gift of their own memories as we reminisced together in the days and weeks after her death... and in those memories I saw their grandmother as the mother she might have been to me if someone had shown her a better way.
Keep growing, Lily. Someday you might also find a way to forgive.

No worries on my end. I just don't want to this thread to get closed.

There is a lot of emotion and raw hurt here. It's a touchy, awful subject - one I so wish that NONE of us had direct, or even tangential experience with. But we do, so here we are.

I think pretty much everyone and everything exists on a continuum. Some things really are at the far far end of it. Without a doubt there is evil in the world. Horrible horrible things. Stuff that is really hard to recover from.

And, yet, that recovery is a continuum as well. I think we pretty much span that continuum here and express ourselves accordingly. It all merits respect and consideration. We all face a hell of a lot of work.

Yes: my mother.

I think that believing people should take responsibility for their actions is compatible with having compassion, and with understanding that people often do horrible things in part because horrible things have been done to them.

I'm not in favor of a soppy sentimentality that excuses everything because of a past wound. But I do believe that the seeds from the past can influence one's present choices.

My xh was physically abusive. He genuinely believed he was a victim, and that he had to do things like that to protect himself. And, he was a victim. He was physically abused by his own father.

And actually, for a long time, I bought into the idea that his past experiences excused his behavior in our marriage. I forgave and excused an amazing amount.

However, eventually I realized that he in fact was making the choice to be abusive. (That was about the time I realized that I had the ability to make choices about my own thoughts and behavior.)

So I divorced him, because he was choosing to be stuck in his own past. I do have compassion for him, because his world is not a happy place. But, on the other hand, I don't think that allows him to impose his misery on others.

-Far

Hi Elliemay,
I don't want the thread to get closed either. Sometimes I have a hard time drawing a line between expressing my strong feelings and beliefs, and becoming argumentative because I want to be right. It's not an easy balance to find when emotions are running high.
But I think this is an important topic, because my T and life experiences have taught me to see that there isn't always such a clear distinction between offenders and non-offenders, and there is a danger in black or white thinking even though it often makes us feel better to make those clear delineations between good and bad, right and wrong, intent and accident, etc.
The gray areas are actually mind-boggling. My T and I talked a little about this issue yesterday, and he told me that after 30 years as a T, he has realized that in many cases it's not possible to classify survivors and offenders into 2 separate and distinct categories because there is overlap far more often than many people believe. There are extreme cases of willful and horrific harm, but there are many more cases that are less clear-cut. And if you look only at intent as the criteria, then how do you make people responsible for their actions if they didn't intend to hurt anyone but their decisions and actions still caused tremendous harm? What about drunk drivers who didn't intend to kill an entire family? What about the mine owners in W. Va. who didn't intend to kill miners? What about BP's lack of intent when the oil rig exploded? In all these cases it was clear that safety issues were intentionally ignored, but no one made an intentional decision to cause devastating harm. Yet the results are the same, so intent alone is not enough to classify someone's actions and decisions as harmful or not harmful.
And then there's the issue of abuse survivors making conscious or unconscious decisions that keep them in the role of victim throughout their lives. How do you help them understand that they bear some responsibility for their choices without coming across as though you are blaming them for being victimized?
Lots of things to think about here.

The sad thing is that you keep using other examples to justify abusive behavior. We are not talking about other examples. We are talking about abusers/offenders/perps that harm individuals and I am predominately talking about children, since most of us here at PC were hurt as children.
If we were talking about someone drunk driving or someone ignoring safety regulations, that is a different topic.

The other sad thing is that because of beliefs like yours, many offenders get very little prison time. And you if look at the rates for abusers, the recidivism is quite high, they do it again. Take a look at your local website for sex offenders and see.

I know of a T who treated offenders and victims. The T (actually well known) was seeing an offender. He seemed sorry for his crimes, wanted to work to "get better", etc. Well, he sits in prison now for child porno. In the trial, the T had to testify and she said "I was misled and his intentions were never to heal, but to put on a show to fulfiill his requirements, so he could do it again..."

You can try and "excuse" behavior stating that there is a gray area and people "have problems", but when it comes down to it, statistics also show that MOST people who are abused do not become abusers. Why? They made a conscious choice not to harm.

Forgive all you want. Justify all you want. Believe that is the best thing to do. Have your parents ever taken responsibility for their actions?
Do most abusers? No. They blame someone else, something else, etc. Ever been in court with abusers? They don't take responsibility. Most don't regret their chosen actions. Most regret getting caught.

There are different people in the world. And most that choose to harm a child is a different person.

I suggest you perhaps become a CASA volunteer for abused and neglected children (although with your justification for abuse, I am not sure you would be accepted, since the program is about defending the child and not justifying wrong behaviors)
You will get to see abusers in action and in court watch all the excuses, denials, and blame for why the abuser parents are not doing what they should be, why they are not working their case plans, why they don't think that what they did was "abuse," how they need more time, how they never really hurt their kids, etc.

"Black and white" --- it gets no more "black and white" than a parent standing before a judge not having gone to rehab, not having gone to parent training classes and telling the court, "it's my kid and I dam well will do what I want."

It happens everyday in Family Court. I see it.

Justifying abuse as you are perpetuates the cycle.
The cycle stops when people (a) stand up and say abuse is wrong and I won't do that regardless of what happened to me, (b) abuse is NOT acceptable and should not be tolerated and (c) there should be punishment for crimes of abuse.

Moosetracks, I know all about CASA. I have children who were abused by their father. But I do not wish to argue any more. You have your beliefs; I have mine.

It occurs to me (partly because I have seen it in myself) that people are more upset by the behavior of others the more they are uncertain about their own beliefs... If you want something from someone and they don't give it to you (in the way of behavior that you want), you are likely to not be able to cope with the disconnect in your own thinking. It can be highly confusing to have two seemingly-contradictory feelings (wanting love/connection and not liking) at the same time .

Arguing? You actually derailed the thread with your second post.

What I do know is that you are bent on justifying abuse. It makes me nervous in a community such as this that is filled with people healing from abuse that you do that. It also makes me nervous that your first post was about the same thing...frightening your T and secrets and then you bought up the same topic in that thread.
It makes me nervous that in that post you justified your impulsive actions because you dissociate -- which is similar to not taking responsilibity for your actions.

I will argue to the end of the world that child abuse is wrong and NOTHING justifies hurting a child. Nothing.
And people that do so, need to be held accountable for their actions.

There is a difference between understanding something and justifying it. To understand how things work makes it easier to devise actions which will change the situation, rather than doing something which makes one feel better temporarily, but in the outer world does not correct the situation.

Moosetracks, I am not trying to justify anything. I am simply writing about what I've learned from my T and from my own and other's life experiences. I understand that gray areas are uncomfortable for a lot of people. They were intolerable to me as well until I became more comfortable with the idea that I did not need to fear the truth about myself or anyone else. I expect and want my T to hold me accountable for my behavior, and he does hold me accountable. It's because of his ability to be both compassionate and firm that I am able to look honestly at myself and my behavior and accept the consequences.
You say that abusers refuse to accept responsibility, but you refuse to accept the possibility that some abusers -- and you can feel free to call me that if you wish because I won't deny that at times my behavior has been abusive -- really do want to change and unlearn what we learned as children and young adults. I wouldn't put myself out here like this if I were trying to avoid taking responsibility, because I know that I am setting myself up for other people's anger and I need to accept that. But I'm here because yes, there is a little bit of "them" in "me" and if you knew my T he would tell you that he respects my courage and strength to face these issues. I'm sorry that this upsets you so much. And I am equally saddened by the realization that you apparently have no compassion for those of us who are willing to look honestly at our own behavior and who really do want to change.

Moosetracks -- to answer your question about whether my parents ever took responsibility for their actions -- I highly doubt that they even saw their actions as abusive. My mother, and also her mother, were born and raised in Germany during an era of childrearing known as the "black pedagogy." You can read about that here: http://primal-page.com/childabu.htm
As a child and young adult I had intense hatred toward my mother for the way that I was treated because I had no understanding of the possible reasons. But as I got older and worked toward understanding my own behavior in relationships, I realized her behavior toward me finally made some sense in light of her own upbringing. That was what she knew, and she really didn't learn anything different until she had grandchildren and saw that her own children were doing things much differently. Does that justify her treatment of me? No, but it sure does make it more understandable and forgivable.
As for my father, his mother died when he was 6 or 7 years old. Due to a large number of children in the family (17 or 18 I think) only the oldest and favorite ones remained with their father while the rest were sent to foster homes. My father did not fit into either category, so he spent the remainder of his childhood and adolescence in foster care under terrible conditions because in those days farmers could take in children to work on their farms. That was my father's life as a child. I remember he told me a story once about wanting a sled for Christmas. It was the only thing he wanted. But on Christmas morning, when the rest of the family he lived with opened presents, he had none. Not one. He was 9 years old. Should I not have compassion for the child that he was?
When he married my mother at age 18 he was still very much a child emotionally. In many ways that has never changed.
Now I suppose I could spend the rest of my life feeling hateful and resentful because they never took responsibility for their actions, and now I have to pick up the pieces by unlearning what was taught to me. I have chosen not to live that way. Refusing to understand and forgive won't undo the past and it won't make it any easier for me to change my own behavior, so why hold onto it?

You have every right to discuss this with your T. You may also ask that your T not schedule offenders on either side of your appointment, as you don't feel safe. I don't know any Ts that wouldn't work with a patient on this (but then I only associate with really good Ts ) Therapy can't occur if the patient isn't feeling safe and can't trust the T for good decisions, imo.



I wasn't there for the session, but I am sorry that you're sorry you asked your T. I hope your T investigated as to why you were asking before he answered, but if not, then your continuing the discussion will help him think about it the next time a patient asks. Therapy should be all about you, and that includes the day to day "mundane" issues that affect you and how you deal with them.