Trigger warning... Is T minimizing my experience?

I feel a bit upset about my therapy session last week. I feel like I might be making too much of it but I'm not sure. Not sure if I'm doing the TW right so I'll scroll it down a bit in case I screwed up









Am I crazy to feel upset? I feel more upset the more I think about it.

I'd be upset by that. Sorry this happened to you.

It sounds minimizing to me. What strikes me is, he doesnt seem to get the problem behind the aggression. Behind being forced. Hes like, oh so the sex came a few years earlier. No! The problem is, that the sexual bullying was there at all.

I am wondering if by "activating" he was saying that early abuse experience was the catlyst/activating event that set you up for later sexual behaviors. That wouldn't seem minimizing so much as explaining a sequence of cause and effect. But I'm just guessing. Probably need to ask him to explain what he meant.

Wow, sorry that happened to you. It sure feels to me that he is minimizing what happened. I would definitely talk to him about this though because I just can't imagine a T ever saying that so I'm thinking that there is a misunderstanding somewhere.

I find it dismissive and very much off. Not all children are “activated” (like some sort of robot or mechanical device) at that age. Even if they were, that doesn’t give anyone licence to abuse or impose their sexual urges on young(er) children. That is not ‘normal’ unlike what T implies (‘oh, it happened earlier, no big deal’).

I'm sorry , his lack of empathy made you feel this way. You should ask him to explain what he meant by all of that, don't let that session get buried and dismissed. Those are your feelings and emotions. That could lead towards reentment and could hinder therapy.

I would be very upset to get that response from my T. I would definitely go back and ask for some validation on that one. As said above, don't leave it for the resentment to rise. I think I have done that already and it may be what is causing some of these issues now, deep down.

Feels rather insensitive.

You have every right to be angry and upset about this. Seven or eight year old children are not 'activated a few years early' by a much older step brother. The correct terminology for it is sexual abuse.
In the course of normal childhood development seven and eight year old children are not interested in being sexually active. I don't know what your t was thinking.
I was not 'activated early' by my somewhat older brother. I was sexually abused by him. Neither was I 'activated early' by my father. He too sexually abused me. And the others. They did not 'activate me sexually'. It was all abuse of an available and vulnerable child for their own sexual purposes.
Your T was straight out wrong to say what he said.
He may well be a great T in other ways, but in this particular instance he made a very inappropriate and potentially very damaging comment to you.

And,
it makes me seriously question why he has a need to normalize that kind of behavior.

By the way, the brother who 'sexually activated' me was also 'sexually activated' by our father.
Meh. So it 'activated' us a little early.
No problem, right?

It sounds to me like a lack of understanding on the T's part. He throws out some T buzz words to make himself feel like he has led you to the beginning of your problems. While he is patting himself on the back, he leaves you in a state of confusion. The T did not explain or walk you through what was happening. He let you walk out without having closed the session. Without giving you what is needed. No compassion from this T.

Best to leave now and try to find another T but I know how hard it is to find anyone who is both intelligent AND compassionate. This T is not good enough for you.

To be activated means something natural was set in motion. There is nothing natural or OK with molestation and taking advantage of a younger child. Do you think he misunderstood the age difference between you and your abuser? Maybe he has it in his head that two kids played Doctor. I find his need to normalize this disturbing too. So sorry your t sounds out of touch.

Thank you everyone. I'm going to write him an email, and see how he responds before I make a decision. I really like him in other ways, but this is a major issue and ice already had it minimized by stepmother (other side of family, not abusers mother) who said "we've all had things like this happen", and another therapist who said I've had lots of "little" things happen. To be clear....


Given that he knows all of that and knows my memory is fuzzy, how can he minimize this? And also in light of the fact that I have a history of being promiscuous with much older men until I married, with distinct remembrances of being unable to say no.

I agree that it sounds like he was minimizing your experience. I think it's good that you're sending him an e-mail about how it made you feel. It's possible he was thinking out loud (like, "Oh, this is why she did what she did"), but he shouldn't have said it to you.

I'm trying but I can't come up with a justification for what he said. Maybe SOME kids are interested in sex at 11 or 12....BUT. That is a 4 yr age difference . at 8 that is HALF your lifetime. In child development terms a few years early is an ENORMOUS amount of time.
Also some kids may be interested in sex at that age but I know I wasn't .
I find his need to normalize this stuff disturbing. There is nothing normal about it.

He emailed me back a whole 3 sentences, explaining that the clinical term is actually premature sexual hatching, which is used exclusively in sex abuse cases. He then said he regretted the implication of minimization and that such abuse puts the individual at risk of traumatization and ptsd. That was all he wrote. I still feel mad. I need to be careful because I have historically abandoned relationships when something makes me uncomfortable. I am not sure if I am using this situation as a reason to give up on him. I wish I felt some kind of nurturing from him but I don't. Even his response felt cold, clinical, although technically correct.

His choice of words is kind of sickening to me. Even in his email, he continues to downplay the situation. Technical correctness (??) is fine but being cold and clinical is not. Sounds like he is perhaps not qualified/had no training as a trauma therapist, or, even has common sense on the subject. I am so sorry you have to deal with this.

That can't be a real clinical term. If it is I might have lost my faith in the entire profession

He knows my stepbrother was 15 and he knows he was put into a juvenile detention center after my best friend was molested by him. He also know he was jailed for sexual assault with a weapon in his 20's. He understood that my stepbrother was a total scumbag. He understood that I was so scared of him that when he escaped the juvenile detention center and ran away back to our home, that I hid him in our crawl space for days, bringing him food and blankets to protect him. Not sure why I did that but it carried over to years later when at 16 I protected my alcoholic abusive 28 year old boyfriend at the police station after he pounded my face to a bloody pulp in public, telling the officers that we had never slept together, when we had, because I didn't want him to get in worse trouble and go to jail. The entire dynamic with my stepbrother had very significant implications for future relationships and that's why I can't believe he is so disinterested in the topic, and minimized the situation.

I actually googled it and can't find it anywhere

I would leave this one and never look back.

I just yelled at him over another email. I don't know what is wrong with me, I feel so upset with him. The irony is that I love him in a way, but the minimization of my experience was just like pouring salt in the painful wound of knowing he will always be just a therapist to me, he'll never be anything else. I guess him showing real compassion would be lowering the boundary wall too much. Even his last email, so short and referring to "individuals" who experience abuse, rather than me, Lola, his patient who he knows, who suffered abuse...just felt clinical. I yelled at him in the email that he's not lecturing his class, stop talking about this as if it's from a textbook. I'm right here. I told him I needed him to stop being clinical and be human for once. I wish I'd said it nicer but it's sent already.

Me too.
Nothing.
Makes me cautious about this T. He almost sounds like he doesn't recognize CSA as abusive.

I just want you to know that there are Ts out there who will recognize and honor your experience and call it what it is---abuse.

Is it possible the same dynamics that drew you into other abusive relationships are at work here??
There are people on this forum who have been victimized by their Ts and something about the words he chose sets off warninga for me.

Think carefully about whether this Ts approach is helping you. Because I can tell you my Ts response any time I question her because I felt she minimized something " Bay, you were abused and I never mean to.minize that". The fact that he didn't say . " I'm sorry it sounded minimizing. You were abused." Really bothers me

He did say "I very much regret implying minimization" but never straight up said "you were abused" Not sure what I'm going to do. I have grown attached to him in some ways but I don't trust my judgment completely. Part of me wonders if he's just very uncomfortable talking about sex in general. Even when he says the word "lesbian" referring to my extramarital affair a few years ago, he says it in a slightly altered tone, like lowering his voice, as if it's a bad word. He's quite religious, this I do know...

In other ways my therapy with him has been good, and I've attached strongly. Maybe that's why I wanted him more firmly in my corner on the abuse issue, and felt hurt when I felt he wasn't.

I am not sure what you mean about questioning whether the same dynamic of abuse might be involve in the therapeutic relationship. I haven't felt him to be abusive at all.