Am I over analyzing this?

This is a convo me and my therapist had.

Her: I can only imagine how difficult it must be to listen to the possibility of any form of abuse happening to you (especially by your parents). If you can dismiss that possibility you can avoid having to think of that reality. However, it is only through acceptance of our situation/our reality, that we can begin to get to work on the healing process. Your brain reverts to its alarm center as a way of avoiding the reality.

Me: Can you explain this a little?

Her: Not sure what part of this you are referring to but guessing the last. It is only through accepting that we need help that we can begin using and accepting help and begin healing. As example, if I had an anger management problem but denied that I had one, I wouldn’t be able to work on improving it.....why would I? because in my mind I didn’t have s problem.

Does that help?

Me: I am not sure what reality youre talking about.

Her: Whatever the reality may be for you - that something abusive May have happened, that you adopted some unhealthy coping mechanisms, etc...

Me: I dont know my reality. That's my problem.

Her: Yes!

Me: I get the feeling you want me to accept I was sexually abused and are just not saying that.

Her: NO- I'm saying you dont know thats your reality.


Im so confused

Yeah this T is so focused on that possibly abused happened. I feel that is so wrong.

To me its like she said you were abused but when I questioned her so much about shes saying she doesnt know( and I know she doesnt. She cant)

So, but have you actually talked in therapy extensively about your relationships with your parents when you were a child?

ex-T use to often talk in a round-about way and i could never figure out if he did it to confuse the f out of me or because he didn't really know what the hell he was talking about. very frustrating to say the least....

I'd be bothered by your Ts approach. This might be more of my T speaking than me, but the part that bothers me the most is that she says there's one reality that is correct, and you need to accept it in order to work through it.

This bothers me because my T always goes on about the exact opposite. There's more than one reality for most things. For example, I might think my friend is stupid because he didn't reply to a text, and therefore I should block him and never talk to him again. A different reality might be he is stupid because he didn't reply, but we can still text sometimes. Another one would be the friend indeed had to get emergency surgery and therefore couldn't reply. And so on.

As far as I remember, the abuse your T talks about was not even sure to have happened, right? So there's already two options, it has happened or it has not. Now if it has, there are more sub-realities and likewise if it has not. And you can not choose which one is the reality for you. You can choose to believe that it is a possibility that abuse has happened. But I highly doubt it is necessary to accept the reality of abuse having happened in order to work through whatever you are struggling with.

Another part that bothers me is the fact that she says 'you don't know that's your reality'. She doesn't know either, she knows even less! My T always tells me to be vary of Ts that claim to know things about their clients that the client themselves does not know. That's simply not possible (at least not in the sense that you describe).
It feels to me like your T thinks abuse happened and she wants to convince you that it did. That doesn't sound like what I'd want to happen in my therapy or what I'd want my therapy to be about. If I don't believe I was abused, then it should not be a thing we discuss in therapy.

By the way, for perspective, after I described very clear abuse to my T, he at some point asked me whether I think I was abused. If I had said no, then I am pretty sure it would have never been discussed again. If the client thinks that something was fine, then it was fine to them until they say otherwise. Some people go through war and come back fine. Others have PTSD. If they are fine, you don't start to tell them they should have PTSD.

This is the part I am unsure of. Isnt it contradicting.

Her: Whatever the reality may be for you - that something abusive May have happened, that you adopted some unhealthy coping mechanisms, etc...

Me: I dont know my reality. That's my problem.

Her: Yes!

Me: I get the feeling you want me to accept I was sexually abused and are just not saying that.

Her: NO- I'm saying you dont know thats your reality.

You are absolutely right. She is trying to get you to accept that your "reality" is that you were sexually abused. She denies that that's what she does when she does that. That's a mind ****ing game and I hate when therapists do that. I don't know why you still keep seeing her.

Not much

Im hoping somehow she may be able to help me.

So today she asked if I had anything I wanted to talk about then didn't answer half those things. One was asking her why she said my reality was thst I may have been abused then my reality is I dont know if I was abused. Then I asked how can I know my reality. She laughed and dismissed it. Then said she wanted to try to see if I felt anything in my body when she tapped on my knees before conception all the way up until 3 years of age. She said she had only tried it on children so didnt know if anything would come of it and nothing did. Then she asked me when the first time I remember being touched was or touching someone else. Then she said she wasn't going to be in next week.

In what way?

With the fact something may have happened. I want to know before I croak.

I get that, I really do. I am missing the first 11 years or so of my life. It drives me INSANE that I don't know it, but my T has never told me I probably was abused. NEVER. She's mentioned that there are good reasons why I might have a memory lapse, but she doesn't ever profess to know exactly what it would be.

Mine professes then takes it back then without saying hey I think you were abused. Which is might as well what she should be saying because she tried to bring out preverbal body memories today. Part of me doesn't see the harm in it because I really want to know.

That's really confusing. Is T saying you don't know your reality yet you need to accept something you don't know to be true?

That's what it seems like.Three weeks ago she said I think your mother sexually abused you or at least a woman. When I said I didnt know if that was true she said I was denying my reality. Then the next session she said my reality is I dont know for sure. Then today when I asked her about that she dismisses it and did emdr to see if any preverbal body memories popped up. My mental health skill builder suggested her to me bevause they are friends. When I told A I didnt think she was helping me she said wrll i think she is. Idk

Also she said if any memories come up between now and Sat before she goes out of town to call her. Wth like I cant bother her if I have a crisis between today and two weeks before I see her. And at the end of our session sad thanks for being brave today.

So I asked her to please answer my question and she said my reality is unknown I am exploring.

i think shes trying to get dnester to consider the POSSIBILITY that he/she was abused...

she doesnt know for sure, but shes saying that dnester is expressing symptoms of abuse... where did it come from?


and dnester is unable to even consider the possibility (he/she knows its impossible? or maybe it was someone else who did it?)

but this is a dangerous line to walk... re planting suggestions in a clients mind

Yes me too. I think that not knowing is wrecking my life though.