Is all therapy about blaming your parents?

[Giveupnow]

interested in heating from any one with any knowledge of counselling/ therapy with different types. I’m burnt out and have anxiety and probably PTSD from medical trauma and a tough last few years. I’ve tried personal integrative, and now transactional analysis and both therapists seem intent on focusing on my childhood. There is a lot to unpick there but I’m not sure how much more unusual than strict 80s blame/ critical style type parenting that I’m sure lots of us had. I don’t know… my parents weren’t great in that they were very busy, stressed and strict and didn’t really care about the impact it might have on us but I feel guilty about questioning my upbringing so much, when in reality they tried their best. There just wasn’t the emphasis then on child well being or how parents need to nurture their childrens self esteem and emotions?

The Larkin poem is “this be the verse” and it’s excellent. I have looked at both my marriage and my childhood and concur with what’s been said: it’s a way to understand the scripts or rules in your life and to think about whether you really want to keep following them. There is also a sort of fulcrum in that you’re looking at how your parents behaved and how that affected you, whether or not there was abuse: it may be that your parents, like mine, had their own issues and didn’t meet my needs-not a question of fault. But of course if one is a parent, one will make mistakes and that’s hard to work through.

Look up Winnacott- parents need to get it right 51% of the time. That’s all. We can’t be right always as we are human. What you do with that (I have chosen to apologise to my own children, something my own parents couldn’t see the need for or do) is up to you but good therapy will support you.

@Giveupnow I found therapy vital for helping me understand the concept of 'good enough ' and also stopping me from continually comparing to others.

Mix of psychodynamic followed by CBT.

Even now if I am slipping back I can tell myself 'are you comparing again ' and divert onto something else.

I knew a girl who blamed her parents - especially her mum - for everything that went wrong in her life. She left home at 18 and moved abroad and then came back but lived on the opposite side of the country for the rest of her life.
When she was 48, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She & her mum reunited and spent the last two years of her life trying to make up for those 30 missed years.
Seems to me you should spend your time looking for ways to take responsibility for your own actions, whether in a shrink’s office or lying in your bed at night.

Seems to me you should spend your time looking for ways to take responsibility for your own actions, whether in a shrink’s office or lying in your bed at night.

Undergoing therapy is taking responsibility for your own actions though isn't it? It's looking into why things are how they are for you and moving forward. Sometimes the actions of others are bloody awful and the impact on us is real and negative. Unpicking that is much better than buggering on making the same mistakes over and over.

My experience of therapy is that it's not about blaming your parents, but accepting what they were/are and did/do, acknowledging the effect they had on you and learning ways to build on that and then, most importantly, somehow (not easy!) forgiving them so that you are able to move on.

A therapist would be able to help you figure out why you are so resistant to exploring your childhood.

Childhood isn't just about our parents.

Good post. I don't in the least 'blame' my parents, of whom I am very fond.

What therapy has made me aware of is the extent to which my adult character and coping strategies have been formed by the fact that my parents had far more children than they could afford, financially or emotionally, and, themselves from poor, dysfunctional backgrounds, weren't able to parent us because neither of them got anything from their own parents but the absolutely basics of (not quite enough) food and clothing -- which meant that my earliest lesson as the eldest was not to be a bother, because they couldn't deal with stuff, and hadn't enough bandwidth to deal with the needs of a young child.

Which meant that when I was sexually abused aged nine it never even occurred to me to tell them, because they would have been paralysed, not done anything and tried to explain it away as a misunderstanding, just as they did when a teacher was bullying me at school.

Again, I don't blame them (though I think for some people there's a stage in therapy where the blame comes uppermost for a while, because recognising it is new). But I'm still living with the legacy of having learnt very young to ignore my own feelings, dismiss my instinct, pretend I didn't have a body, and just trudge on with things. I chose people in my life as an adult who also ignored me or weren't able to deal with my feelings. Therapy has helped me recognise these scripts and patterns and find a way of working on them to change them.

It's been a very positive experience.

I’ve thought about this before. I appreciate the role parents play in forming the person we become but from the time we are put into the care of others they don’t have sole influence. In fact children with activities outside the home probably spend more time with other people than they do their parents.

I’ve never heard of a therapist asking what teachers were like, club staff, child minders, extended family.

@NotestoSelf So sorry you had to go through that alone. I'm so glad therapy has been a positive thing for you.

Thank you, @SomersetTart -- that's very kind.

I wont let my past ruin my future.
The things that happened cannot be changed but i can take a different path.
If i did the blame game i would not move on i dont need that baggage.
They have to live with what they did they no what they done.
It was not my fault and they no that.

I love the explanation but it would help if therapists told the clients

The fact you have this level of insight means you are doing a great job. Some times you are too strict and some times you are too lax, but you know that.

Why not try talking about your upbringing and see if it helps? What's the risk?

It is nothing to do with blame, it is about understanding who you are and why you are who you are.

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No not all therapy is about the past.

CBT couldn't give a crap about how you got to be the way you are, it is all about managing responses in the here and now, for instance.

Im so sorry you’re going through so much. It sounds exhausting for you. I’m trained (but non practicing) integrative therapist and would say that it’s not about blaming your parents and upbringing but more about helping you to understand yourself more. So much of our formative experience shapes how we operate as adults, how we see ourselves, how we talk to ourselves and how we deal with stress etc. A difficult side effect of this can be discomfort or feeling blame and anger and it’s something that needs to be worked through.

That said, if you are finding that this approach is not working for you, you could consider less psychodynamic therapies such as an existentialist approach that focuses more on how you are in the here and now (this approach does encourage clients to take full responsibility for their feelings, situation and actions which can be challenging at times).

Whichever mode you decide. Good luck! Therapy is hard work but so worth it.

I’ve had emdr for complex post traumatic stress from childhood abuse and trauma from thirty years in the cops. It’s been amazing. I’d highly recommend it to anyone wondering how good it is.

If you have psychodynamic/ psychoanalytic therapy then there will certainly be a lot of discussion of your parents, and the impact of your childhood on who you are today and how you are in the world.

Other types of therapy are a bit different, for example humanistic/ existentialism/ person centred therapy might be a bit more focussed in the present, but honestly your parents are likely to still come up because they played a big role in shaping your childhood.

Therapy can be absolutely life changing, with the right therapist and the right type of therapy.

It sounds like exploring your childhood would help you lay some things to rest. A good therapist won’t be ascribing blame to your parents but will help you put your experiences in context, help you understand the impact on you, let you have space for your feelings about whatever happened and help you find a way to move forward. You might find you have feelings of blame or anger at times, your therapist should help you with those feelings to come to a place of acceptance - acceptance of them, of your childhood but most importantly acceptance of yourself.