Does therapy make you dislike your family more?

yeah. i just typed a whole big response to this because I did a TON of work in therapy to overcome the dysfunctional relationship I had with my mother. What I wrote got so convoluted I even stopped understanding it. But - I will say in a much shorter version - that for awhile, I hated my mother more than ever and would not even try to speak to her. It took a lot of work to get to a point of forgiveness and now I can at least be pleasant when I have to talk to her. But I don't go out of my way to talk to her.... my inner little girl still sometimes wants her mommy's approval and if not for that, I wouldn't keep trying... eta that whole compassion thing somebody else said... in learning compassion for myself, I'm slowly learning it for her too and that was part of the learning to forgive. I talked to her this morning and very clearly I could see... that she must have had a very cold, very judged life as a child and that may be why she is so judgmental of everyone and everything around her and has no concept at all that everyone else is NOT exactly like her. Interesting. I do feel a sort of combination of compassion and pity that she has never been able to break out of that. Maybe she doesn't want to. Maybe she doesn't know she CAN. I don't know... before I get all convoluted again I will stop.

Thank you for all of the replies everyone. Sorry it's taken me so long to read through and reply. I'm starting to understand a bit more why the therapy is doing this since reading your replies though, so thanks again.

I get you on that.

Didn't for me, but I'd already reached a stage where I'd largely figured out a lot of things and suspected what was going on, and already had some strong mixed feelings toward my parents, esp. my father. So when my T seemed to see things very similarly, it wasn't a big revelation; it was more like a relief. So I think it'd depend where you're at when you start therapy.

Yeah, this for me, too. I don't like using the 'v' word much because it's so cliched and it makes me feel needy, but that's what it's pretty much been for me. It was a relief to get some confirmation that the sense of wrongness I felt wasn't in my imagination, that I wasn't being ridiculously sensitive, that I was reacting to something that was really there.

Kind of. I have distanced myself from my family a bit since starting therapy because it became clearer to me how the constant anxiety I felt about them was hurting my partner and kids. I have definitely left sessions feeling surges of anger, resentment, hurt and disappointment with my parents and other family members.

On the whole what is changing gradually is that I have a sense that my needs are legitimate and that protecting myself and my family from my FOO's thoughtlessness, meanness or neediness is a fair enough thing to do. I don't always feel this way but sometimes I can even grasp that my depression and anxiety about them comes from somewhere; it isn't just that I'm too sensitive or emotionally incompetent but that they have been cruel and thoughtless and behaved in ways that have been very damaging to me.

Sometimes it does