APA article: "Termination and abandonment: A key ethical distinction"

Thanks to the comments in this forum recently I am coming to believe that, for me, therapy has had aspects of being a cult. It would have been very difficult to consider that without some support. I was taught to drink the Kool-Aid in my family of origin and then transferred that to therapy 50+ years ago. Getting away from my family for 11 months when I was a teenager in a psych hospital may have saved my life, but going somewhere where I was loved and appreciated might even have done even more.

Part of what IS controlled on PC is that it is supposed to be a safe place, no perps allowed, only supportive posts. That is a given.

Why i find many of "the other side's" posts upsetting is that they tend to sound like my perps - saying there is no other way, "those people" just want to take advantage of you, stay with the devil you know.

This chicken is trying to cross the road to the other side. I thought this website was the road to the other side. Im not really interested in all the clucking from those who insist on staying in the henhouse!

Forget it.

This is pointless. LOL. Just laughing here.

Then don't read any more on this thread.

This chicken thought that therapy was the way to cross the road. Got plowed into and run over by the traffic. Continued with therapy to try to heal the original problems plus the new ones from getting run over. Been with my current T for 6 years. Now that I may really be getting to the other side I understand better how very badly I was hurt and set back by T's who may have been well-meaning but F....d me over anyway. Or maybe there isn't another side to the road. But I'm still out here trying.

Perpetrators tell victims to hush up and keep quiet about their abuses.

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Yes, i get that. All im saying is, this is not a stay-in-the-henhouse website. Its a cross the road website. I dont know what there is to distinguish. What do people who stay in the henhouse even know about the road? Its not like you want help getting on the road. But when people have problems on the road, there you are clucking away. How is that supportive? Its like, hey us 8 year olds dont want to hang out with the six year olds. Yeah Thats how mature i am.

You forgot to say thank you.

I was just trying to answer your question.

I was not trying to be argumentative or talk down to you (that's a tendency I know that I have) that's why I deleted my post. What to distinguish is that we here are NOT your perps. At least I know that I'm not one. So you're getting upset because I have a view, based on my long experience in therapy, that seems to you similar to a view that your perps had.

Again, we are not your perps. I'm sorry if the similarity triggers you. I don't think that's a good reason for banning our posts. But if you'd like to refer it to the mods, feel free.

I think we tend to hear things in therapy criticism/skepticism that aren't really there, or at least aren't intended even if we read into them. I'm guilty of it. Again, it can be hard to read criticism when you feel like you're constantly defending the legitimacy of your own treatment.

And some of us do feel like we're doing that--though this probably has more do to with things going on outside this forum than in it.

The result is that even fairly innocuous statements like "Exercise may work better to treat depression than talk therapy" start to sound like "Get on your bike, fatty! You wouldn't be so depressed if you weren't so gigantic!" More inflammatory statements along the lines of "Therapy is BS!" can sound like "**** it. You're doomed. You're never going to get better."

I get it. I'm guilty of it. I think some of us could do a better job distinguishing between what's actually said vs what our various neuroses twist it into.

And by 'various neuroses' I mean the hurts of our past, and the indelible marks those left on the way we process information. Sorry. Might have phrased that a little more nicely.

Actually -
I think more it is people saying there are other ways to cross the road than just by therapy and that therapy is not the best way for every person to cross the road even if it is a good way for someone else. There are more roads to the other side than just one.

If I was going to characterize something as the clucking hen house sort of
thing, it would more be the clucking about how one should keep doing therapy rather than strike out in another way to cross the road when therapy does not seem to be a good fit or idea for someone.

This is an interesting debate. For me the "perps" were actually arrogant medical authority figures who treated me in ways that doctors and medical institutions have since realized are damaging to children. So I'm inclined to see a lot of wisdom in the idea that authorities should be questioned, and a lot of sympathy for people who were wounded while under the care of others.
I think what argonautomobile is saying is wise. We are all seeing it through the prisms of our own experiences. I feel like it's good to step back and not get hooked into that, and give people space for their own experiences and perspectives.

Omg you understood my post and metaphor and everything! Im cluckless!

I think I may need a drink

hahaha. i would post a blinky emoji...but i will refrain, just for you SD.

Good reminder that people who say these things are actually being triggered by their own issues and it has nothing to do with me. Thank you.

There is already a sub-forum on PC for people who've been betrayed in therapy. It's basically a ghetto, where people who need to talk about this stuff are shielded from the general population.

I also understand the reverse situation -- that people in therapy might want to avoid those who are criticzing the profession.

But the latter group (not that there are two "groups" exactly, but sort of) is protected while the former group is marginalized.

I've seen plenty of posts written with the pretense of support, but that were actually cruel beat downs of a person in distress. The usual scenario has the OP struggling with therapy and questioning this or that, and then a series of replies advising them to get their s**t together, try harder, get over it. This is framed as "supportive" because it advocates continued therapy at any cost, which is presumed to be the noble and righteous thing. And then if someone steps in and backs up the OP and says hey maybe this therapist is an idiot and the OP is justified in being upset and maybe they ought to stop therapy, that post will be deemed unsupportive. It's all subjective. Many so called helpers are actually perps.

We're just tryin to help you cross the road. Thats the objective part.

And what if making generalizations is therapeutic for those who've endured destructive therapy? I'm not talking about total condemnation or wild absolutes, but well reasoned criticisms and questioning of the system that are rooted in direct experience, research, and accounts from other clients.

I started the thread by linking to an article written by the profession. The article, in my view, makes plain some disturbing things about therapy orthodoxy. Namely, that it's ok to decide a person's fate without consulting them, up to and including abandoning them in crisis.

I don't see how any of this is "negative". Such portrayals say more about the profession's distaste for honesty than anything else.

What's Behind Different Types of Unsolicited Advice?

Yeah this article considers posting on a forum to be asking for advice, acc to the first paragraph.

The mere act of posting on a forum is not the same as asking for advice. The article acknowledges a difference.

"Asking a group of people, even strangers, for advice can give you a great variety of helpful ideas. (Many people in my forum have found this to be the case.) But what about when advice is offered when you didn’t ask for it?"

Nothing in the op solicits advice.

Most of the time I'm looking for perspective not advice.