Is my therapist working against my recovery?

I confided in my therapist last week details about my family situation. I mentioned the following as far as I recollect:

• Mother distinctly said she loved my brother more than me since he had my sick aunt's "spirit" this when I was 8 and for no conceiable reason. She has continued to practise favouritism and has made it known that she no longer loves me
• Parents routinely described me as digusting; would stop and remark derisively that I looked a state etc they would also compare me to my brother and expound her virtues and my numerous flaws at every turn.
• Mother locked me in the basement during a panic attack and ignored my screams for help because my panic attack was inconvenient for her
• Parents bestowed load upon guilty load on me blaming me for the fall of the house of ..... the deterioration of their marriage etc etc

I made a huge point about the pain of feeling that I deserved the treatment above , but my therapist had nothing to say either for or against while on other issues not related to my parents she was the first to pipe up.

By the end of the session I was defending my mum and actually attacking myself and I left the room with the beginnings of a grand mal depression setting in

Im just confused utterly. I felt that there was a solidarity between my italian therapist and my italian mther a sort of kinship if you will. That night I went home and was attacked by my brother to which my mum responded "I told you that would happen get out of the house". My dad said that I was one of the most disgusting people he had ever encountered and that I was capable of harming my mum.

I broke down in tears naturally

Is this to be expected?

((goldshift)) a good question for your T would be why she had nothing to say when you spoke of your experiences?

Perhaps T wasn't sure what to say so T said nothing?????

My T1 would tell me that what they did was wrong, it wasn't my fault and I felt validated. I felt empathy. She would also try and have me see why they behaved the way they did (there background etc..) to help me not take it so 'internal' and as it being 'my fault'.

Perhaps your T is just 'sitting with it' to prepare discussing it next session?

Either way I would address this at your next appointment.

I'm in the middle of discussing things with my T2 and it ain't pretty!

god that's horrible! your parents are right pieces of work aren't they!

it's really tough to say whether your T is in the right or not. because i have no other experience of her. and your impression of her reaction and her reasoning for her reaction could be two different things.

for example; my T criticised something i said about someone, said that my comment was cruel. anyone i spoke to for the next week (if i had actually talked to them about it) would have heard me say that my T said i was a cruel person and that he hated me and wasn't it terrible of him to be so mean to me...of course you can see that's not the case but at the time that's exactly what it felt like.

i would go to your T and tell her how you feel. it does seem strange to me that she wouldn't say anything about your parents behaviour but maybe she had a reason? i don't know, maybe not. maybe she IS a terrible T. i just don't think i can make a judgement on that from just this information.

i do feel for you though. i realise you must be feeling really bad right now. xo

Cheer Geez! :-) I hope you're right. I guess that evening was so tough and my t's reaction just made me feel as if I had yet another voice of condemnation to contend with.

Her reaction to other incidents was clear cut but it was just to the parental issue that I got the impression that she thoughts that I was at fault. The question came up again and again i.e. this notion of blame fault responsibility etc. She never gave any definitre answer over the course of 50mins. This led me to believe that she may have been apportioning guilt to me.

Ive neverhad anyone apart from my immediate family justify it all when given the whole story and my t is the only irl person who knows the full story apart from our old family therapist. I suppose I anticpated something other than ... nothing

Cheers Kiki for the support too :-D. For 21 years ive lived with so much crushing guilt and to hear that that behaviour is wrong is a beautiful relief. For some reason though I cant shake this feeling that its still my fault. I guess I wanted real world confirmation and not receiving it confirmed my worst fears.

Were you talking really fast so she just let you continue?

(((goldshift))),

I am very sorry that your parents are presenting "their" problems that way to you.
And when parents do that, often that can become our inner voice that can make it hard for us to feel good about ourselves. This is something that is sadly very common in many teens and even adults that present with some kind of depression.

When your therapist didn't have a quick response to that presentation about how your parents treat you, please don't take it as her not wanting to validate you. I don't know how old you are, but a therapist is not going to want to say something about your parents that you can run home with and throw out at your parents. And they don't want to do that because they know you need help with this and they think about you staying in therapy so they can continue working with you.

It is a challenge being a therapist, and they have to be careful how they word their responses to their clients. People do repeat things in anger, and if a T says something a parent doesn't want to hear, that parent can stop their child from seeing the therapist. Remember, most parents think "their child is the problem" they often truely don't see that the Reality is that "they" are the problem and the child is just responding to that with psychological stress.

goldshift, so many people have children and have no idea the huge commitment having a child is. And so many parents are not even grown up enough themselves to have a child.

I was 28 when I had my daughter, and I did struggle with my husband whom by the time my daughter turned 6, I discovered he was a binge alcoholic. Wow, I had no idea that kind of alcoholic existed. So I had to learn how to manage a marriage and raising a child with a challenge that I didn't know very much about. I had to learn that my husband had the maturity level of a 13 year old too. So I had to figure out how I was going to raise a healthy child with that kind of challenge. And I never really felt safe, even though I demanded my husband get help to stop or I would end our marriage. Sure, my husband went too AA and stopped drinking that same day I told him to stop or he would no longer be married to me. But that did not cover him having to grow up from the mentality of a 13 year old. And all along he kept pushing my buttons to mothering him. I was told not to do that, but it was hard as he sure did keep pushing those buttons.

I did everything I could to raise my daughter right. But was it perfect? No, it wasn't, it was a challenge, but she always knew I loved her. She is now 28 years old and she has her claim to whatever I didn't do right as a parent. But she doesn't really know how hard I tried to do as much right as I could for her.

So many people have children and they truely don't take note of how they themselves have issues that are just not fair to present to any growing child. Parents tend to think children don't pay attention or understand the problems their parents have. They don't realize that children sense the unhappiness and disfunction their parents present to them. Parents just seem to think children just need to be fed and have a home and that they somehow grow up to be whomever they are destined to be. Like you parents that say those things to you, children are often blamed for what is really the "parents own issues".

What you have to do for yourself is learn how to let go of your "parents" issues and how they get into your head and guide you to negetive depressive thoughts. Ah, but before you begin to think you are all alone with this issue? Sadly you are amongst so many that there are drug companies that make Billions on the magic pill to help so many resolve psychological issues resulting from poor parenting skills. And there are not enough therapists to truely address the flood of so many that struggle due to this problem.

What you have to do is finally recognize that you have to make the efforts to "love yourself" and now "invest in yourself" and learn some skills so you can take care of yourself and let go of these negetive people that are too ignorant to see that they are "your main problem". Because even if you told them? They are not capable of seeing the "truth" and you are not alone in that either.

Are your parents unworthy people? No, they are just a product of bad parenting too, and they go along in "ignorance" along with many others. We do not spend enough time on educating people what it takes to raise a healthy minded child. We keep continuing to pay the price of that on the other end with so many struggling teens and adults that simply didn't get the right kind of nurturing to enable them to actually feel they CAN live a happier productive life.

I stand in validation of you in saying the list you have above is not your fault. The list of things your parents say to you means they are ignorant people as well. And what you need to do is to let go of their negetive input and find ways to help yourself present some much healthier positive input for your brain from now on.

(((Hugs))))
Open Eyes

My thought is that your T was just letting you tell your story and express your feelings without interrupting or commenting. Sometimes they just let us get it out. Try not to consider the lack of comment a judgement until you ask your T if that was actually the case. Maybe your T is processing your story a bit first before he chooses to say anything. Who knows? This is where you need to really talk to him about what you thought his reaction/response might be compared to what response you actually got and what that means to you.

(((Hugs))))
Open Eyes[/quote]

Thankyou sincerely:it means so much to me :-)!!!!!!
Its the hardest thing letting go of the guilt. I read an article about scapegoats and realised that it described our dynamic perfectly, so perfetly that it was haunting to read. All my life ive been punished for things I couldnt really help. As a child I had very pronounced add symptoms. I couldnt sit still, I kept talking and wouldnt put my hand up, I was also very active. I spent 90% of my schooling outside the classroom and my mum essentially homeschooled me (I went to a private school too!) when I would forget my homework and remember at the last minute my mum would take make me work with her standing over me and boxing me for every wrong answer. Once I left my saxophone at school and she whipped me with a belt buckle which scarred my neck so severely I had to lie about what happened.

Thst kind of thing defined me and I was bullied for being a freak and being ugly when in fact I was very good looking. I was punished for my addiction, for being terrified to leave the house because I thought I was ugly, for dropping out of uni because I ended up making myself a social pariah for a situation my parents believe oddly enough wasnt my fault (thats another story and I believe it WAS my fauly)

Basically my entire life for some reason ive been made to feel guilty for being defective. My mum would even outright say that im weak and I need to be strornger. She praises my brother for being strong too, and seems to forget that he just hasnt inherited the same problems as me and as a result is alot more stable

Maybe the parent/child dynamic is too complex for her to have a quick and clean reaction? I've had experiences similar to you, though.. where the legacy of the dysfunction I grew up with served to guide my impressions of what others - especially my therapist - thought. If I didn't get a crystal clear reaction, I "read into it" all the messages I'd grown up with. What I've learned to do, though, is to just ask! Tell her how you interpreted it, and acknowledge that if your interpretation is incorrect, you need help adjusting it.

She may have been giving you room just to "be" together in that moment?

I don't understand how this could happen; where and why were you defending your mum if you were not talking about your parents anymore?

It sounds like you are on the brink of a good breakthrough; you know your mum did not adequately care for you, did not like you, etc. There is no defending her! Move on away from her, you cannot get blood from that turnip.

Oh no I meant that she was plenty vocal on other issues not relatred to mt parents, but when it came to my parents she clammed shut. Her allegiances lay with all italian motherhood.. least it felt that way. Her maternal instincts seemed to take precedence and I appreciate that she probably has years of experience commiserating with heckled mothers and their no-good prodigals.

I hate it when that happens.

Gold shift, I am sorry your parents were so mean to you! I think if you were to remove yourself from this abusive situation it would make life easier for you and might actually make them realise that they treated you wrongly!
They would probably start to pick on their beloved son if you weren't there! Some mothers just need to vent their anger on someone and unfortunately it is usually their daughter as people seem to think girls can handle it better! What they don't realise is the permanent mental scar they create!
As for your t what approach or therapy does she practise? I ask because my old t was a humanistic and she said she doesn't give advice or she never commented on my parents behaviour , she preferred for the client to find their own solutions to their problems which is incredibly frustrating! Since then I am going to a counselling psychologist and she. Tells me why she thinks my gaseous acted this way and why people do this and that and I find it much more helpful now that I can understand it a bit better so maybe a new t with a new style might suit you better! None of this is your fault though