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Yeah, it seems strange why the therapist is so after finding The Truth (as Norma put it) when she as a therapist should know that this is not the key to healing. Either she has some personal agenda or she has completely lost her objectivity and is submitting to OP's demands. In either case it doesn't help the OP to heal.

She is a Lcsw trained in Emdr. She is not supervised. Owns own practice. I get the feeling she wants to talk to my mom because she thinks my mom sexually abused me and wants to get some clues because she brought it up after she asked if my mom was sexually abused. She said who was she abused by snd I said idk she wont tell me. She said I really wish your mom would come in for a session. If she prodes to much at my mother she will lose her *****.

She is trying to help me because she doesnt want me believing I was born bad.

IMO it would make more sense to work on changing your belief that having a mental illness means you were "born bad," along with your other symptoms. Rather than trying to find a "truth" that may not be the truth at all. This woman sounds like she's read "Sybil" one too many times.

If the therapist reinforces a perception that these impulses you tend to have and your ability to just keep them inside and not act out is bad, then I am not sure who is bad actually... Would not sound like a good T to me, someone "helping" to maintain an obsession by looking for a source that may never be found or does not even exist other than in your physiology. Instead of encouraging you to look at it differently. What does it matter really whether you were born this way or acquired it? It reminds me when my first T insisted that we should keep looking for the causes of my addiction in my childhood because otherwise I will never beat it. So untrue! There really is not much useful information in my childhood history that helps me maintain my recovery, not even to explain why I am prone to it. Of course one can always explain it in a million ways but, the truth is, I simply just loved the momentary pleasure and the euphoria and made bad decisions focusing on that in the moment while neglecting and escaping real tasks in my life. I actually even stopped going to recovery meetings after a while because I found so many people there traded their old addictions with obsessions about recovery and many would be quite harsh claiming whoever stops going will relapse shortly. It did not happen to me, I relapsed when I was overly engaged and obsessed with therapy and trying to do everything by the book in recovery. I am not suggesting this is the case for everyone but have seen quite a few people similar to me in this regard. It's been far easier for me to accept that I probably will always have addictive urges every now and then, it is just part of me. Trying to wish them away or looking for mysterious solutions to eliminate them does nothing more but reinforces them and makes the urges less manageable and contained. Even just a perception that there is something wrong with me... it is not useful at all. As long as the urges remain inside and I don't act on them in destructive ways, it is not wrong at all, just a bit distracting and challenging sometimes. I think we all have our individual versions of such challenges and they are often life-long. It can be much more constructive and realistic to learn to manage them rather than trying to find where they come from or to aim for eradicating all of our flaws.

But she doesn't need 'clues' to know whether something happened. That's not how therapy works. Therapy is not about uncovering things that you can't remember happening. There's a very real thing called 'false memories'. You can remember things that never actually happened. Therapy is about working with the things that currently bother you and remember to manage better in the now.

The reason why so many people here say they wouldn't want their parents talking to their T is because it's not a usual thing to happen and not something that is needed for therapy to work. Your parents don't know what currently bothers you, what you struggle with, how you feel. They might know stuff you don't, but that shouldn't be relevant for you to get better.

But it is objectively impossible to find out how exactly were you born. And it seems that you have experienced enough emotional abuse and neglect that it would confound with any other particular trauma and it would still be impossible to say why exactly you have turned out the way you are - because you were born this way or because you had to endure the emotional neglect or because there was still something else. It's just impossible to disentangle it at this point.

The only real thing at this point are your memories (the things you really remember), your thoughts and feelings right now. These are the only things you can realistically work with right now. Also, it wouldn't matter if by some divine means you would find out that you were not born this way - you still have those memories, thoughts and feelings and you would still have to work with them to make peace with yourself and accept yourself the way you are.

As several people have told you, as long as you have thoughts and urges but you are not acting on them you are not bad. Being a person is a messy experience and everyone has their "good" sides and "bad" sides. This is what being human means. Therapy can help to learn to know yourself and accept yourself more the way you are in order to live more fully as the person you are. Therapy cannot help you to become a different person. The healing lies in learning to accept yourself and managing your different sides, both good and bad, better.

I would also like to repeat that false memories are a real thing. It has been shown repeatedly that it is possible to make people "remember" stuff that never happened to them. Your therapist seems very suggestive and I find it dangerous.

I have done bad things I cant mention here. My therapists says it was probably from some sexual trauma but I cant know so it kills me inside. We have gone over coping strategies for my thoughts and impulses and i hardly have them anymore. So i am managing that. So what about all my other issues like aversion to semen, finding women who were sexually abused attractive because they are strong and vulnerable, my complete freak outs around sexual abuse topics and sex in general, and countless other things? Is she not trained to give her opionion on where these issues come from? She does suggest things like she thi nks it was my mom or that I was sexually abused in general and dont remember but didnt she go to school for that?

Nobody on here knows your T like you do. If you feel what your T is doing is okay, then it can well be that you are right, we can just speak from our own experiences.

I can give you an example of something similar that I experience and how my T handles it: I have problems handling my emotions, especially with having too many emotions over nothing at all. We discussed my childhood a bit and we talked about how my parents didn't show much emotion ever. My T then said something like this: It could be that your parents caused your issues with emotions. We can't know for sure, but it sounds like a plausible theory. But we're here together now to learn how to solve these issues.

My T gave an opinion of why I have my issues. He can tell me that it might be that's what happened. And then we work on resolving the problems this created. But my T doesn't go and talk to my parents to see whether they actually don't show emotions or whether it's something in my head where I can't recognize their emotions or whatever. Working through my problems is done without ever needing to confirm this.

So if I translate that to your case, what I'd kind of expect a T to do would be for example say 'okay, you have lots of issues with certain topics regarding sex, how do we resolve your freak outs around these'. For that you don't need to know the correct root of the problem. Ideally of course you do. But if you can't remember, it doesn't matter. Your T isn't a detective, she shouldn't have to dig for reasons as to why you're the way you are. It's fine for her to suggest something as a theory. But it's just a theory. Psychotherapy does not usually rely on confirming these theories, since that is most of the time not even possible. It only matters what the truth is that you find within yourself. And in my opinion a T should help bring that truth out, not find support for their own belief from people outside of the therapeutic relationship.

I will offer the alternate opinion.

I have invited a 3rd party into my therapy sessions. I wanted my T to talk with my bff because he has known me longer than anyone outside my FOO, helped me through some of my childhood trauma, and has a background in therapy. I felt T and I were stuck, she wasn’t able to understand what I meant when I said (or didn’t say) things. BFF has a way with words that I do not, he knows me like no other... it made sense to me that he could help T help me.

It really weirded out my T. It’s unorthodox, for sure. She worried that talking with someone about me without me would harm our relationship because I wouldn’t know what was said.

We compromised - I arranged one day for BFF (who lives on the other side of the country from me) to be available during my session. We called him on speakerphone on my cell phone (so T doesn’t have his contact info) and talked to him for around 15 minutes (mostly him talking to T, but she asked some questions). Afterward we spent the rest of the (55min) session talking about the phone call. In particular, T spent time talking about what she heard, understood and thinks based on what was said. I have to trust that she was honest with me, but it did give me the opportunity to give some corrections or explanations.

I could never do this with someone from my FOO. It was super scary and hard to do it with BFF and I’m more honest with him than I am with T! But. It was beneficial. I think because I could trust that T was not talking “behind my back” and I knew everything that was said, it actually strengthened our relationship. It made me feel like she was taking me seriously and that I’m important. Or something.

Perhaps some approach like that would be more favorable? I think the key is to make sure that *you* have the power. I fear that if your mother had access to your T (even hypothetically) it would fill you with fear and suspicion and tear you and T apart. If all the contact is in your control, with you present, you can talk about what you both heard and feel right away.

Another option might be to work with T to formulate a letter or email with questions for your mother and then you can send them and bring any response in to read with T.

I don’t understand how vehemently against this some folk are. Unusual doesn’t mean automatically that it’s bad. I would spend some time making sure it’s something *you* want to do (not just what T wants to do) and then figure out a way to keep the relationship safe and uncontaminated.

I get what youre saying Chickenoodle soup.I know logically I cant know the truth unless I was to get an unprovoked memory. I just dont see how working on my issues know are going to get me any closer to finding the truth within myself. Thanks Geekyone but I have no friends.

Sorry D, I was wordy and confusing, making my story about me instead of you.

I don't think you need to have a friend talk to your T. I was trying to say that I think you can have your mother talk to your T in a way that maintains boundaries, safety of the relationship and clarity in your mind about who T's alliance is with.

Don't give your T or mother each other's contact info. Instead, initiate contact yourself with your T's support/presence - for example, by calling her on speakerphone during a session, or by crafting an email or snail mail letter together and then reviewing the response in session. If you are present for any interactions between your mother and T, you can discuss those interactions with T afterward and worry less about manipulative garbage.

Thanks. She wont contact her by phone so thats over now. Since my mom wont come in. Also I am stopping EMDR as I dont want any false memories and it has robbed me of emotion.