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#81
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Mopey, Nik87
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Mopey
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#82
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Thanks for your contribution and sorry if the upsets you. |
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Member
Member Since May 2019
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#83
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"Psychotherapy is the condition for which it purports to be the treatment" Can someone confirm or correct this quote ? |
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Forgetmenot07
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#84
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Yes seems so, which brings us back to the prostitution analogy. |
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Grand Magnate
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#85
Am I the only person who finds the prostitution analogy ofensive? I am by far not easily offended but as somebody who has suffered significant sexual abuse comparing therapy to something often routed in sexual abuse. Therapy like anything can be abusive but it us not the norm.
__________________ Last edited by nottrustin; May 17, 2019 at 08:20 PM.. |
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Louella
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#86
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Kk222, Louella, nottrustin
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#87
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Grand Poohbah
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#88
My therapy was bunkum toward my goals, but not because one of them love-bombed in eye-dropper doses.
Rather my therapists either promised, implied or allowed me to believe their methods would be transformative. (One even snarled "don't you want to stay in therapy to find out why you don't have any friends," when I indeed had friends.) I was a nerdy younger woman who was deferential, childlike and needy long after my childhood expiration date. Therapy took me in exactly the wrong direction. It habituated subordination to false authority. It reinforced my fears that others had an it-factor, a life wisdom to which I couldn't possibly achieve. It encouraged my emotional striptease before those who exploited it. And it rewarded me for sorrows and victimhood. It did NOT teach me more social ease or a sense of competence or equality, in fact, just the opposite. Relating to others like I did therapists--expecting comfort for all my suffering and sorrows--did not make me a friend magnet. For a while I lived in a therapy pseudo-world and lost important friends during that period. Eventually I left, only set back by therapy. I was capable of change, and over years I did change internally and externally, thanks to accomplishments and feedback. But sniffling in a room for therapists was the wrong direction. My worst experience was at the hands of bullying co-therapists. But in all cases, therapy was regressive, destructive and absolutely wrong for me. I reviewed this years later in my blog below. I can't speak for anyone else, but I do think it important to monitor reactions and be aware therapy consumers. |
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Forgetmenot07, koru_kiwi, Mopey
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Grand Magnate
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#89
It's a common analogy (prostitution). Google shows many hits.
I think the transaction is similar. Both involve purchased intimacy. One is emotional, the other physical. I do think therapy has inherently abusive elements. I had one therapist ask if she abused me (emotionally) when the s**t hit the fan. Many therapy relationships i've read about seem abusive. I used the emotional rape metaphor in reference to my therapy. |
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Grand Magnate
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#90
Yes, this:
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koru_kiwi, missbella
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#91
Yup this was my session yesterday. He sat there with nothing to really say or help me. My week was about taking care of my husband who had surgery to remove cancerous tumors in his bladder. It was a rough scary week for me and this session was suppose to be a reprieve and self care for me but turned out to be awkward to sit there in mostly silence. It made me feel I was very alone. I should not have relied so heavily on this appointment to help me deal with my husbands cancer treatment.
__________________ When a child’s emotional needs are not met and a child is repeatedly hurt and abused, this deeply and profoundly affects the child’s development. Wanting those unmet childhood needs in adulthood. Looking for safety, protection, being cherished and loved can often be normal unmet needs in childhood, and the survivor searches for these in other adults. This can be where survivors search for mother and father figures. Transference issues in counseling can occur and this is normal for childhood abuse survivors. |
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atisketatasket, here today, koru_kiwi, Mopey, SlumberKitty, Taylor27
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Grand Magnate
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#92
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It may be all over the internet but this forum has many people who are using therapy with good results to heal from abuse not yo be told their therapy equated to abuse. __________________ |
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ArtleyWilkins, feileacan, Kk222
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#93
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But, if I understand what you are saying, I also relate to the idea that therapy abuse that is not in fact sexual is like rape, is also painful to hear. As a survivor of CSA by the people who were supposed to nurture me, I know that sexual abuse is a particular kind of humiliation unlike anything else. I feel no need to say X is worse than Y or Z or diminish the painful experience of the other, but CSA is not the same thing as abuse by a therapist (assuming no sexual exploitation). Otherwise I think there are many parallels in t The experience of therapist sexual exploitation and CSA, but that's not what most people talk about when they speak of experiences of therapy abuse. I have found reading the accounts of therapist sexual abuse really helpful to me, because understanding that an adult could be exploited by someone they trusted, then I knew in a deeper way that my resources as a child victim were not enough to stop it. It helped me let myself off the hook. |
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here today
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#94
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Veteran Member
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#95
I never developed dependency on my therapists but I am not prone to that in everyday life either, just my personality. I did get hooked on the concepts and mental analyses though, it became excessive mentally, and not much more than a mostly useless (and expensive) distraction. That's why I stopped therapy after ~2 years of experimenting with it, with two Ts. People often claim that therapy is a great place to explore the self and patterns of behavior but, for me, I can easily get the same and much better from everyday life, situations, relationships. Just live, observe, think about it - it is pretty easy for me to do on my own and I have a couple friends who are similarly interested, introspective, unbiased/tolerant enough, and happy to discuss these things seemingly endlessly... plus are empathetic and supportive on top. For free. It is also way more interesting and informative for me to do it in a mutual way. Especially one of my friends is like that and we have been doing it for years now, interacting quite frequently, without any painful emotional dependency. Therapy was extremely limited and distorted compared to that. I even find the discussions on message boards like this much more illuminating than getting feedback from only one person, a Ts feedback is usually much more limited and manipulated, the way I see it. I do not discount the positive experiences of many people with therapy but, for me, it had minuscule benefit.
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Forgetmenot07
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Forgetmenot07, here today, koru_kiwi
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#96
I personally don't find the prostitution analogy very accurate, more that therapy is a professional service that is very hit-and-miss. I think the sum of experiences reported on this forum shows just that even though I do believe it is more loaded with negative experiences here than the larger picture. But most people I have ever asked in everyday life about their experiences with therapy tend to say either that it helped just a little, or that it never revealed anything they did not know already. I think the "evidence" published is also usually quite biased because there is no way of really telling how much therapy actually contributed to someone's improvement - people usually do a few things and already ruminate on the nature of the issues when they decide something is not working right and they seek help. Of course talking to someone regularly about our issues can be helpful, we are a social species. But whether a therapist does more than decent, reliable people can provide... that is the very hit-and-miss part. Definitely more chance that it will provide something in cases where the client is very isolated and/or struggles with establishing and maintaining meaningful relationships in everyday life, because the only effort they need to invest to have it is paying and going to appointments. But, as many stories shared here also demonstrate, it can also create excessive and harmful dependency in those cases especially.
As to the dynamic of increasing and then dissipating dependency many people seem to experience in therapy, I am not sure it is specific to therapy at all. Normal close relationships tend to have similar dynamic: much more intense and emotionally engaging in the beginning, then become more routine and habitual and less emotionally clouded. If this is useful to experience in therapy, great. But claiming that it is due to some "magic" training and ability Ts have... blah. |
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Forgetmenot07, here today, koru_kiwi
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#97
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But, far more often, therapists (unconsciously?, due to their own issues?) exploited my compliant, authority-respecting, people-pleasing, co-dependent ways, to advantage their own egos. A form of narcissistic abuse, in today's psychology language. Or at least exploitation. Which I did not understand, because of the deficiencies I went into therapy with. Yes, I participated. Unconsciously, I built up the therapists' egos, so they would build up mine. And not reject me. Like clients who participate in sexual exploitation for their own, perhaps unknown, unconscious reasons.. Both are violations of the sense of self by people who "should" know better. I didn't know what was going on, couldn't know what was going on because of the deficiencies I went into therapy with. Until, finally, my intellect got some clues from reading about other people's experiences on here. |
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Forgetmenot07, koru_kiwi
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#98
These references skirt far too close to the recent "consensual rape" reference, and are inaccurate, offensive, and misplaced on a mental health forum full of members who have experienced actual rape and sexual exploitation in their lives. The lack of forethought and respect for those experiences in perverting those references hyperbolically for effect in making a point about therapy is disappointing. These issues can be discussed frankly and honestly without resorting to minimizing others' trauma, however unintended. Sometimes being aware of how one's own language can unintentionally be painful to others and then consciously changing that language is an act of respect and kindness toward others.
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FearLess47, Louella, Salmon77
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#99
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koru_kiwi
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#100
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For me, my person's cancer and all that surrounded it was the one area where the therapist was not a complete disaster. All I required was a place where I did not have to deal with/take care of anyone else or their response to her cancer/treatments/surgeries or anyone else's response to my responses about it etc. I did not have to check myself to be nice or take care of or help anyone else deal with it for that one period of time. I really don't recall the therapist doing anything except sit there - but that whole period of time is still so blurry in a lot of ways. __________________ Please NO @ Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. Oscar Wilde Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History - Laurel Thatcher Ulrich Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. |
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Forgetmenot07
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