attitude toward abusers

I never said or suggested a therapist would be incompetent for suggesting a client consider something abuse or not. I am of the position if after that suggestion, the client does not agree the label of abuse applies - that does not then equal denial on the part of the client.

Hearing T's (mental health workers in and out of the hospital) attack my biological parents and call them horrible people has been super validating. My mother made me believe that I was the one that was wrong and they were totally right to do what they did. It hasn't led to any more self hate than what was already there. Especially when they say "how did someone like you come from monsters like them?" Separating me from them. I feel no connection to them at all besides some DNA but I share DNA with everyone who is reading this along with all of their pets and all of the food in their fridge. Granted, I share more DNA with them, but in the grand scheme of things, it's really not that significant. My personality doesn't have to be connected to theirs at all and I find it actually more invalidating to imply that it does than to rip on my parents.

hi feralkittymom I am so intrigued by your theory about T's showing dislike for a clients abusers may cause more self hate. just wondering how that might be.

I know for me growing up the abuse was ignored by lots of good people . I was never told that this was not ok or not normal. for the longest time this was my norm. I knew no different. most of my teen and young adult life was spent teaching me how to live in this very different world when I was taken away from my family .but I was still never told it was not normal I was just that my behavior was not ok . but it was what I knew. I did learn that the abuse was not ok but I still never talked about it at all and after a life time of people accepting and ignoring the abuse the feeling that it was normal ,deserved, and all my doing run quite deep. although I can look at a child being spanked and say OMG that is not ok I have a very different set of standards for myself. no it is not ok for that child to be unless it is me because I am horrible and that child is not . my T saying I am not horrible and the mother was horribly sadistic and this is why I feel this way . although is uncomfortable at time can be validating. or her saying no it is not ok for any mother to scald a Childs hand on a burner for any reason ever no matter how misbehaved they were .etc...

Granite - I find it interesting you only feel that way about yourself, but if you saw it happening to someone else, you would react differently.
I don't have that sense about myself. I don't think certain things are abusive and if experienced by someone else in the same way I experienced them - it would not be abuse either.

This is such a fascinating thread. I can totally relate to and understand the confusion you had as a child and now as an adult, Granite. Abuse does warp and twist our perceptions of what is normal. And like Stopdog, I would believe that you would react with concern and anger if someone else was being treated as you was treated as a child. Your posts indicate someone who recognizes and speaks out about mistreatment of others.

Stopdog, I hope you don't mind me asking and if you don't want to respond, I understand, but if you saw someone treated as you were treated as a child (in a manner that your therapist seems to consider abusive but you do not) and the person talked about how this was abusive and damaging to them, would you voice your disagreement with them and tell them that the same had happened to you and you didn't and don't consider it abuse? Just curious.

stop if you knew me as a kid you might understand. I was not the easiest kid to raise. I was selfish,demanding thick headed ,and not particularly the sharpest knife in the drawer. for many years I had absolutely no idea if anything was wrong. to me truly it was just my life. it wasn't until I was in the 8th grade that I saw things might be different and that was mostly about the SA. I never saw any of it as abuse until I was taught differentially as a teen and young adult

hi jaybird I think the best way I can demonstrate my complete belief that things are different with me is like when my T tries to reference how I have raised my son verses how I was raised . I did not abuse my son. I said to her that he made it easy to love him .he is amazing . he is not me and I was a very different child .

absolutely I am able at this point in my life to recognize abuse but if you had asked me this at maybe 20 or so . nope I would have had no clue at all. in fact I was more like a wild caged animal

So if your son had been difficult, it would have been okay to hit him?

not even a spank on the but . that is not who I am now but at 20 im not so sure I would hope not but do you see why this makes me horrible

Granite - just to make certain - I am not criticizing you or anything. I was sort of laughing at myself some here (although it might not translate on paper). As odd, weird, stubborn and unfeeling as my family thought me, I still have trouble remembering others might not have responded or view as I did to the things that happened to me if those same things happened to them. It is even more amusing to me that I have such a hurdle because of how differently I seem to respond to things from others even on just this one board. My problem is that I can't understand why the therapist is so insistent on labeling some things as abuse when I so clearly describe them as non-abusive.

I didn't think you were criticizing me at all .you were sharing your experience . I always love to hear you view point . you have a lot to add to this conversation and different views that are helpful to look at .

I didn't say "dislike" of an abuser. That is far, far milder than what I'm talking about, and it's an important distinction. A T should characterize acts of abuse as abuse. That is validating and helps a client re-define (often learn for the first time) what is normal, as opposed to the very dysfunctional norms that an abusive family considers normal. It allows the guilt and shame to dissipate.

But when a T goes further and characterizes an abuser as a person, beyond the acts, as "evil," "horrible," "crazed," "disgusting," "sub-human," etc, it can have an unintended effect on the client's identity, if the abuser is a biological parent.

You see yourself as horrible, despite seeing your son as beautiful. You see yourself as having deserved abuse, despite seeing others as never deserving of abuse. Why is that? It could be because your identity is bonded to the mother's and so you psychologically believe her view of you, her reality of you, despite not wanting to and despite it making no logical sense. It's not conscious or within your control (yet).

So while it may feel validating in the moment to hear someone say, "the mother is evil," as a reason for her actions, somehow, it doesn't diminish your wrong belief that you are evil. Because when an abuser is a biological parent, as much as we may want to deny a genetic tie, it's there, it's reality, and it has a profound effect on our sense of psychological identity. I think what underlies therapy for this kind of trauma is the breaking of that dysfunctional bond in favor of a more realistic bond. Remember that bond grew over many years and was fueled by a child's magical thinking. The remnants of that stay with us as adults, despite our parallel awareness that it is illogical and untrue.

I experienced this about mid-point in therapy, despite my T never saying anything about my parents as people, only about the wrongness of their actions. But part of my family dynamic is that I physically look very much like my father (my primary abuser), and was the recipient of my mother's anger and abuse because of it. I went through a period during therapy when I couldn't look in the mirror without experiencing waves of panic and revulsion. I didn't experience it consciously as self-hate, but unconsciously it was the recognition of that hated bond that I couldn't escape because it was, literally, in me.

So my identity as a child was very much "my father's daughter," and that was used both as an explanation by my father against my mother, and as a justification by my mother against my father. If my T, in an attempt to be validating, had attacked my parents as people, it would have re-played that whole dynamic. Ultimately, it would have been an attack on me because that bond had not yet been made conscious and re-defined.

The other aspect of this from a healing standpoint is that I don't know how I could have ever found peace with my past if I left therapy with the belief that my parents were evil monsters (as opposed to dysfunctional people who did some really bad things). Again because the inherent bond can never be eradicated. It certainly would have prevented me from having any appreciation for the good moments of childhood. There weren't enough of them, and they don't erase the bad, by any means, but their recognition does have value to me. For me, healing is not having to struggle to perceive myself as whole and OK. I didn't want the baggage of living my life despite, or in the shadow of, evil parents. I wanted to believe in my bones that there was good in me--not just acquired by me, or on the surface, covering up innate horribleness. The only way I experienced that was by redefining the existing bond, rebalancing its power while allowing for the good.

My t has made clear her disdain for my mother, who was very emotionally abusive.

My T started very gently and gradually turned up the heat. At the beginning, he said I was insecurely attached to my parents and I "haven't had a good-enough anyone".

One day I asked: they didn't look after me properly, did they? He said no, they didn't.

Eventually, after about 18 months, I asked my T if he thought they were abusive. (I know they were but I also don't know and have many conflicting feelings.) He said yes, they were.

This week he said they were "so appallingly not good-enough". That's about the strongest yet.

Mine says we aren't here to blame anyone, I think that's true. It doesn't do me any good to blame and hold resentment towards anyone. One of the many reasons I think I stumbled onto a great T.

FERALKITTY I am kind of getting what you were saying here. as I am spending time with the mother all the similarities I see are horrible .I so don't want to be tis person but I am . just like her . I can in her completely see why people in my life end out hating me so much.

Granite... You are not "just like her"! I get how disturbing it can be to see some things I don't like about my mother in myself.... But you are not horrible like she was... Maybe you should start by listing all the horrible things she did to you that you did not do to your son!

I would hope my T would support me wholeheartedly against anyone abusing me.

Granite, it's NOT similarities--it's the imposition of her judgement of you that reflects her, NOT you. It's her judgements twisting who you are into who she needs you to be. This "voice"is distorted; please try to separate yourself from it.