To think therapists want you to hate your parents?

[Dreolady]

I approached a therapist because I’m feeling low about a particular issue and have anxieties about the future: The therapist wants to work on healing my inner child and talking about my childhood. I’m not really sure how it’s linked to the issue I’m currently facing but she thinks I need to do “deeper” work. I trusted her judgement on this but now I feel like she wants me to be angry with my mother. and I don’t know how I feel about that because we have a good relationship.

I know my mother wasn’t the best parent but I think she was limited in her understanding of how to parent and she had a lot of her own traumas and issues to deal with. My therapist feels Im making excuses for her and I need to find my anger in order to heal my inner child.

I spoke to my friend about this and she had the same experience where she felt that her therapist wanted her to hate her parents. Is this common?

Yes don't do it. Say no.

I've heard they encourage estrangement as well.

Why would you pay someone for this, they don't care.

@goandhohoho actually, people here have been trying to be helpful and the OP has received a number of good responses. I suspect these posters have benefited from therapy or are therapists themselves.

In just a few posts people have also picked up on a perhaps not ideal relationship the OP has with anger.

If OP does not want to discuss anger with the therapist, the 'mature' thing to do would be to ask the therapist to no longer refer to that subject. That would be a boundary.

A boundary in therapy isn't to say 'but I don't feel anger etc.'

It may be that it's not the right style of therapy for you or she is not the right therapist.

Some types of therapy do involve opening up past hurts, in order to be able to process them. For example, something your mum might have done that upset you- acknowledging that upset and how you felt at the time (including all the irrational or "unacceptable" things you might have felt) can be part of dealing with it, so that you can then put it away. The role of the therapist is to try to help you access those negative feelings which might include all sorts of (objectively) unfair things but then to move past them- the key is not to mistake those negative feelings for objective facts but just acknowledge them for what they are. So less that she's trying to get you to hate your mum and more that she's trying to get you to acknowledge past negative feelings (if she's a decent therapist).

This kind of therapy can take a lot of time and it can mean opening up all sorts of cans of worms. If this isn't what you're looking for maybe try a different sort of therapy. CBT can be very helpful as a way of addressing present problems without trying to go back over the past.

This is just bizarre. So she's trying to get you to feel (or manufacture) some anger that isn't there? Or, if it is, she wants you to dredge it up?

I would be wary. Just remember that if anger does come, it's another thing for you to deal with and it may be pretty destructive or long lasting.

If it's not there, then she should see she's on the wrong track and focus on the feelings you ARE having.

You don't trust her, which really means this therapeutic relationship does not have the right basis at all.

I’m very skeptical about how effective that kind of therapy is in general. I think it can be beneficial for people in some circumstances, but usually not for people who have actual psychiatric problems.
I think, because it’s not regulated (at least not where I’m from), some of the people who say they are therapists have very little clue what they’re doing and some of them seem to focus on certain things like childhood/ inner child and “breakthroughs” because they have basically seen too many movies.

Abigail Shrier talks about this in her recent book Bad Therapy

I think in therapy we can often feel very vulnerable, and that can lead to feeling very defensive, especially in early sessions.

Hate is such a strong word. I can't see why therapists would all want you to hate ones parents. I can see how they would want to explore your childhood as therapy is about the root causes of issues. Counselling is dealing with current issue I believe.

But, as I say, if those receive therapy are feeling vulnerable, especially if you're uncertain what therapy might reveal, a common response would be defensive, and defending what you think you do know, for example, about your past, is a common reaction.

edited for typo

I know my mother wasn’t the best parent but I think she was limited in her understanding of how to parent and she had a lot of her own traumas and issues to deal with.

As a therapist that statement tells me you've looked at your childhood through the experience and maturity of adult eyes, which is the ideal situation once we've ascertained there was no abuse or malice. I'd be looking to concentrate on your actual issue.

It is one thing to intellectually understand that your parent did the best they could but made mistakes and didn't always parent well or actually sometimes parented really badly.

However, at some point we need to feel the feelings and not just understand it intellectually. It sounds as though your therapist @Dreolady is offering you an opportunity to feel some pent up feelings, not hate your mother. You can feel angry about someone's past behavior without hating them.

It is interesting in itself that the suggestion you might want to allow yourself to feel angry seems to you like an invitation to hate your mother! I'm not even a therapist, but I'd definitely be asking you why you thought feeling angry meant you had to hate your mum.

Some therapists are more skilled than others, and I have certainly seen cases where they have encouraged clients to become angry at the people who in reality are their only support network. Hard to know what the plan is.

Whilst the concept of the inner child is very useful in recognising that children don't have the capacity to understand what happens around them, or the agency to change their circumstances, I'm not sure that promoting the idea that there's a younger version of ourselves wafting around inside us particularly helpful.

@MargoLivebetter I can only feel angry if I felt she did it deliberately. If I dont think that’s true that then for me the right emotion is sadness, which is what I feel right now. Sadness that my mother had the awful childhood she had and never had any role models on how to parent effectively and sadness for the little me that had the childhood I did as a result.

I think my inner child was also sad and afraid but it feels like those feelings aren’t enough?

I was abused by my mum but loved her deeply til the day she died. I think my therapist felt angry with my mum when I recounted memories of the abuse (you could kind of see sympathy for me and anger at my mum, on her face. Though she tried to hide it!).

It's a normal human reaction to feel angry when someone inflicts pain on another. Because my therapist felt angry I think she thought it was weird that I don't, and felt maybe I'm suppressing that anger somewhere (I'm not, I just understand why she was as she was, and have no anger).

The good thing about my therapist is we could talk about such things and she never forced me to feel.angrynor tried to make me feel that way

I'm a therapist of sorts myself and I would never try to make someone with feelings angry with a. parent. Sometimes though, people blame themself for something which was actually their parents responsibility, so asking them.questions to help them think about that is helpful (you weren't hit because you were a naughty 5 year old. You were hit because your parent didn't know another way/was abusive/thought it was right etc.,)

@Twatalert i know they are trying to be helpful but someone trying to be helpful doesn’t mean that they are.

Good intent isn’t a catch all for everything and I think that the most valuable thing we can all do is trust our own judgment. If someone needs help with that fine but they are the ones living their life.

@Dreolady I guess I'd ask why you can only feel angry about deliberate actions? Why are you ruling out a whole emotion simply because something wasn't deliberate?

We all react to things in our own way, but I've been involved in lots of accidental situations (car accidents as an example) that made me feel angry, even though they were accidents and not deliberate. Feeling angry doesn't make me hate the person who accidentally drove into the back of my car, but their actions did make me feel angry.

However, if you don't feel angry, you just feel sad, then that is what you say to your therapist.

@goandhohoho I didn't see the original post as a request to agree blindly. I thought the OP asked for views, but I realise now that different views weren't wanted, just validation.

Is that what you’d say to a client? I hope not.

'I think my inner child was also sad and afraid but it feels like those feelings aren’t enough?'

You could share all of this with your therapist, and discuss it together. As well as feeling that anger is an immature or less valid feeling than sadness, you also seem to feel that the therapist is sitting in judgement of you, and judging that the feelings you can indeed access are 'not enough'. I can't tell you how much I can relate to all this! I held back in therapy for a very long time, I felt like I wasnt being a 'good enough' client, I felt very defensive.

Maybe it's early days and you don't trust your therapist enough yet, and that's fair enough, but I would really recommend sharing with her what you have told us here. You can then explore it together.

And you absolutely are allowed to feel anger (or anything else) at your mother, even if she was doing the best she could. Feelings aren't rational, and they can't be explained away. You're still allowed to have them, they're normal and healthy, even if they don't always seem like it!

Was that directed at me? What made you think I'm a therapist?

I have the sort of background and recent 'trauma' that gets people (the few I tell) urging me to go to therapy.

Nope. Not for me. I have a lot to think about, but I don't feel I have anything to 'solve', and I'm actually pretty cheerful, despite what's happened to me. I read a few self-help books, and I have conversations with a few trusted people, who don't give me answers, but simply tell me 'yeah, that sounds about right'.

I think therapy would make things worse. I also expect I would be encouraged to feel angry at a family member, who I have deep love and sympathy for, because they suffered too.

It's not for everyone, yet it seems to be considered mandatory if you've been through anything (seriously) difficult.

I know my mother wasn’t the best parent but I think she was limited in her understanding of how to parent and she had a lot of her own traumas and issues to deal with. My therapist feels Im making excuses for her and I need to find my anger in order to heal my inner child.

@Dreolady you sound incredibly compassionate and clear-sighted. Without going into my story, I say and feel exactly the same thing.

I thought 'inner child' was a particular approach that was only really suited to childhoods that were abusive and where denial of abuse caused problems in the present by repeating abusive dynamics.

For most of us with good enough parents the traumas experienced in childhood may have been outside the family. Religion and school as a forum of overly strict instruction and peer bullying etc.

From the age of 3-adulthood I spent most of my time away from parents. And also my dad was present but absent as the 'breadwinner'.

Are we talking mothers as primary childcarers to preschool children? Mothers who work full time and were too absent. Fathers also work full time.

What is the point in getting angry with a mother (presumably the father was completely absent or gets a free pass) who you already recognise wasn't perfect but did her best and was mostly good enough?

We mostly do our best. We don't have to be perfect just good enough.

It's perfectly OK to say that family dynamics are not behind the current issue that has led you to therapy. Also to try a different type of therapy. You are the paying client after all.

Psychologist here, it sounds like your therapist is wanting you to connect to your feelings rather than the rational / logical part of your brain. A part of therapy can be getting someone to feel their feelings more, especially if they are quite detached which is part of a bigger problem. This can be very healing and helpful long term however you should have a shared understanding with your therapist about what you are doing and why. Otherwise it can be quite harmful and confusing, particularly if you feel like the therapist is wanting to cause a rupture in your relationship with your mum. It could just be that the therapist is encouraging you to tune into what your feelings were back at that time, rather than change your feelings towards your mother now. It’s so important that you can trust your therapist and be open with them, I’d encourage you to speak with them about this and be honest about your feelings. Any decent therapist should be able to work collaboratively with their clients and be open to hearing concerns and feedback.

I am concerned to hear so many people have had bad experiences with therapists, there are some charlatans around and make sure the therapist you are seeking is appropriately qualified and registered with a professional body. It is one of the reasons why I chose to have a therapeutic career with a protected job title!

In my experience of various therapists over the years I found there was a lot of rigid, black and white thinking. Every time I tried to offer some insight into why my late parent behaved the way they did it was like striking a brick wall. I'm allowed to have compassion for a parent's traumas and difficulties they had to contend with and acknowledge the damaging effect their behaviour had on me. The two things aren't mutually exclusive, yet I felt they trying to get me to believe they were. Most people aren't all bad or all good. And the reality is that professional emotional support for traumatic experiences was very difficult to access years ago. Peer support wasn't easy either, generally you were encouraged to have a stiff upper lip, to get on with it, and introspection was so often seen as weakness.

I eventually found a clinical psychologist who was much more helpful and much less judgemental.

I think it is also predicated on a different experience of a child who was silenced at the time (abuse related) and not on a child that fully expressed their anger at the time and made their feelings clear (not abused). Reigniting anger and experiencing suppressed anger are two different things.