How important is it to deal with childhood difficulties in therapy?

There are pretty regularly posts here about things a therapist did or didn't do, how it made someone feel, and what does it mean.

Responses are often along the lines of "your feelings are okay because feelings are okay". Then the OP will say things like "but T didn't mean to hurt me so I am bad for being hurt" or they will say the T's actions were normal/everyday kinds of things (e.g. rescheduling an appointment), or the OP will feel that their T has been attacked or maligned and make arguments about them not being bad/unethical/mean/whatever.

It's the same with our parents. Our parents can have loved us, cared for us as best they could, and still have hurt us. We could have had normal childhood experiences with no (obvious) Trauma and still have internalized unhelpful narratives or had emotional needs unmet.

It's not either-or, it's both-and.

So in therapy... talk about what's been hard. What's hard now, and what was hard when you were growing up - whether it was CSA or that one time your parent forgot to pick you up from soccer practice. Talk about what you think and feel about yourself now, and where those internal thoughts/opinions/expectations come from. It's not a comparison or a contest.

Sounds like solution in search of a problem.

I would trust my own interpretation of my life over that of a semi-stranger who has a vested interest in keeping me around and who has no direct involvement in my life.

I found it was self-perpetuating. The more material I attempted to "process", the more the backlog grew. Even therapy itself generated issues that had to be processed.

If i'd kept going like that, i'd have become an emotional cripple, unable to know what to feel or think about my life without consulting the paid oracle.

It's not compulsory, this kind of "work", regardless of childhood. That's just the therapy hard sell.

Thanks. You always make so much sense. I think I may not be super comfortable exploring the “disavowed feelings” and I sort of dread going there even though I understand what you and others (including my T) have said about the importance of going through this process.

Last week I really struggled with the idea of no-showing (which I know many on PC find irresponsible and incomprehensible but it has been a true struggle for me for whatever reason) but I did ultimately show up to both of my sessions and was glad I did. Phew.