Oh, dear. Yeah, it's tricky, because all the things she did are almost a good idea, and might work well for some people. It can be a good idea for a therapist to point out that a client was abused as a kid, but you have to do it in a very, very empathetic way-- exploring what the client thinks, and helping them figure it out for themselves, not imposing it. A client who was abused will have plenty of their own anger about it somewhere-- if they're not feeling it right now, they've got reasons for that, and you need to work with them for a while rather than jumping ahead to the point where they're up for feeling it.
And the "spirit lived on" thing is great and useful if the client comes in believing that, or realizes they believe it and wants to talk about it, but... well, "what happens to people after they die" is not, as it turns out, something they teach us in shrink school. And so is not something on which a therapist has actual expertise. So... no.
And it's true that you can learn to take care of yourself, to listen to all the feelings of your childhood self and give yourself the comfort you didn't get then. But just as you say, it's not time-travel. It doesn't "replace" the old memories, it just adds new ones. You'll never be a person who didn't experience what you experienced, and if a therapist can't come to terms with the fact that no, really, sometimes bad things do happen to people, that therapist is not going to last long.
(Also, this is clearly something that happened a while ago and you've dealt with, but still-- I'm sorry about your friend & love. That really sucks. :( )
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branchandroot
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Date: 2012-11-17 02:35 pm (UTC)And the "spirit lived on" thing is great and useful if the client comes in believing that, or realizes they believe it and wants to talk about it, but... well, "what happens to people after they die" is not, as it turns out, something they teach us in shrink school. And so is not something on which a therapist has actual expertise. So... no.
And it's true that you can learn to take care of yourself, to listen to all the feelings of your childhood self and give yourself the comfort you didn't get then. But just as you say, it's not time-travel. It doesn't "replace" the old memories, it just adds new ones. You'll never be a person who didn't experience what you experienced, and if a therapist can't come to terms with the fact that no, really, sometimes bad things do happen to people, that therapist is not going to last long.
(Also, this is clearly something that happened a while ago and you've dealt with, but still-- I'm sorry about your friend & love. That really sucks. :( )