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?

I resent some stuff my parents did in the past. But I'll never hate them or cut contact. I still enjoy a nice mummy hug 🫂

I’m a therapist and I would never tell a client what I want to work on because my role is to support and help the person in front of me with whatever they wish to deal with. If you want to talk about issues in your day-to-day life your therapist should absolutely do this. The past may be relevant of course but you do not have to discuss this if you’d prefer not to. It sounds as if your therapist’s approach may not be the right fit for you so maybe it’s time for a change?

If you don't agree with the therapist's approach, find someone else. Plenty of therapists won't insist on talking about childhood. Find someone who you feel comfortable working with.

@Plastictrees Yes this is exactly what she is focused on. She would like me to feel my feelings more and I’m fine with that. I talk about my sadness and I’ve cried a fair bit in front of her. I just struggle with what I feel is an expectation that I should blame my mother and be angry with her. It’s just not what I feel. When I tried to say this and explain why I don’t feel angry I was told I’m defensive about my mother. I don’t know 🤷🏽‍♀️

This, completely!

I did see a clinical psychologist a a few years back for some difficult circumstances I was going through at the time. Although I only needed a few sessions I did go away from it feeling that it helped. Maybe I need to see her again.

My adult dd has recently started therapy. I have come to dread Wednesdays as I know she will return full of scorn and hate for me. Last week it transpired I do too much for her eg washing, cooking. She's an adult and can do her own but I do it out of love- she works hard and I just wanted to make her life easier.
Her abusive dad through, who walked out when she was 5, never gets a mention!

You can be angry at how your mother treated you when you were a child and hold compassion and understanding towards her. Being angry is how you feel/felt, it's your reaction regardless of what was happening or why it was happening.
You feeling angry isn't the same thing as blaming her.

The important thing is that you are able to feel how you want to feel.

"The important thing is that you are able to feel how you want to feel."

Is it? Because on this thread, from the therapised, it really reads like the only acceptable emotion for her to have is anger, and any other response is interpreted as denial.

It's sort of an interesting live demo of the problem she's describing, really.

Would you feel able to discuss this with her? I can understand that it would be frustrating to be told how to feel! Do you know what type of therapy this is, out of interest?

Another one who has experienced this in therapy.

YANBU OP

[Caveat: not all therapists are great or the right fit for a given client at that point in their life, and we’re not going to be able to tell you which this is better than you.]

I grew up with parents who loved me but who were woefully unequipped to parent well, in a toxic marriage, and (in the case of my mother) dealing with deep mental health issues. When I was younger I did a lot of skills-based therapy, but at some point it really was helpful for me to find a therapist to do “deeper work” with.

Here’s the lesson I struggled mightily with, and it sounds like what you’re running up against: I can love my parents and understand their struggles while also recognizing that I got a shitty fucking deal as a child through absolutely no fault of my own. Feeling hurt and anger about that does not require me to hate my parents or stop having compassion for them, or to see them as bad, unloving people. People can love us and do their best yet still hurt us. Part of learning that was working with a therapist who encouraged me to feel and express that hurt and anger, to have a space where that temporarily took priority over me being fair and understanding about my parents’ struggles. It turns out that expressing and feeling anger in therapy (without couching it in all of the habitual “well they weren’t that bad/they tried/not their fault really”) didn’t make me stop loving my parents or whatever I was afraid of. It was intensely uncomfortable, but it was also immensely helpful both to allow me to work through my own buried feelings but also to get to a place where I can stand up for myself, get angry where appropriate, and set boundaries because I understand that doing so is about self-respect and taking care of my well-being, not punishing others or abandoning love and compassion.

@Plastictrees I suppose I should try to talk to her about it and see what she says. If feels like she thinks my “understanding” of my mother and her limitations blocks my ability to feel whatever it is she thinks I should feel? It’s integrative and relational therapy.

No, what people were trying to say is that it's possible anger can be accessed, worked through and then lead to a better quality of life.

It's normal in therapy to have many instances of 'not for me, this doesn't apply to me, no way is this important to me' only for the client then to realise the opposite was the case. It really isn't unique to therapy. It's how a lot of transformation in life works.

I don't know if this therapist is right or wrong. Many people have suggested though to bring it up with the therapist, which the OP has still not acknowledged.

DD saw a few therapists in her early mid teens and the final one was absolutely determined that DH was some sort of monster even though he is lovely.
I used to take her to the sessions and according to DD the therapist wanted to know why DH didn't and was very keen to push the narrative that DH was somehow distant and/or negligent (he was at home with her brother). One week DH DID take her and the therapist asked DD if he had insisted and how did she feel about him doing that?
Therapist seemed ok about me according to DD but asked about DH and their relationship A LOT.

I think it could be valuable to try to talk to her - the fact you are reticent about this shows something as well, like there is a power imbalance going on? I mean there always is a power imbalance but a good therapist will have ways of addressing this and acknowledging it if they pick up on it. It sounds like there is a lot being inferred and assumed, potentially on both sides, with you feeling like she wants you to feel a certain way. If you want to progress with the therapy it is important to address this. If you find conflict difficult and tend to avoid it, this will be challenging for you but potentially an integral part of the therapy.

Is the therapist a type of psychotherapist?

@Dreolady again interesting that you feel there is an expectation that you should blame your mother and feel angry towards her.

Maybe it is more about feeling angry about what happened and apportioning responsibility. So not blaming your mother but accepting that what happened was not your fault or your responsibility and you were powerless in the situation.

You can feel angry at what happened without having to direct the anger specifically at a person. You could also do that but one doesn't have to follow the other.

Do you ever feel angry about stuff? Is it an emotion that you experience much?

This is an interesting take, the only therapist that I know as a personal friend had a terrible childhood and has a visceral hatred for their parents but particularly their mother.

Yes, it sounds to me as if you have some kind of block about anger. It’s perfectly possible to explore anger about lingering effects from your childhood without in any way ‘blaming’ your mother. Therapy has improved my relationship with my mother, if anything. I had, in many ways, a quietly disastrous childhood with lingering effects in quite a debilitating way, but it wasn’t her fault — she was parenting as she’d been parented. Sorting out your own issues allows you to be more clear-eyed and generous about other people’s limitations.

@MargoLivebetter I don’t blame myself. I sometimes blame my grandfather and great grandfather who by all accounts were pretty awful but I’m sure even with them there’s some backstory off terrible parenting/abuse: Someone somewhere started this terrible cycle and they are probably to blame. I consider myself fortunate that I had a father who grew up in a stable environment and was a great role model for what a parent should be like. I also became a parent in a time where there is greater awareness and discussion about what good parenting looks like.

Do I feel angry about stuff? I used to feel a lot of anger about various things when I was younger but I feel it less and less as I get older. I don’t feel like anger is a good place to be. I’ve actually been in a much better place mentally since that shift happened.

Yes indeed.

From my experience of teens seeing their school therapist, your experience seems very common. Although it’s undoubtedly good to have someone to talk to, imessage, they encourage the girls to lean into the hurt, rather than place it in perspective.

So a friend and her partner were summoned by their child’s therapist to hear how the fact that they had professional jobs (teaching) put a lot of pressure on their child to succeed and they needed to understand that. There was no suggestion that they put pressure over grades, but just that by having jobs their DD felt pressured.

The therapy was all from the perspective that the child’s feelings were paramount, and that if a child has bad feelings, this is a parental fault, and she deserved better. No child should ever be made to feel bad.

An alternative therapy approach could try and build perspective of possibly how the DD would feel if her parents were unemployed or had money troubles……

@Dreolady I agree it is not good to be permanently angry, or stuck in any emotional state. Emotions are there to be felt but not get overwhelmed by or have them dictate how we behave. I guess that's why I found your original assertion so intriguing that to be angry about what happened you needed to hate your mother.

You are right that trauma is often inter-generational. However, as adults we are responsible for our behaviour, actions and if we are parents we are responsible for parenting and safeguarding our children. Children can never be responsible for what adults have done to them or not done. You can kick what ever happened in your childhood as far back down the generations as you like but sometimes you have to accept that an adult didn't behave as they should have done and not try to absolve them or understand it intellectually. You just have to acknowledge how it felt to you when it was happening and how it feels now. No blame but just an acknowledgment of your own feelings.

I can't help but think that those bashing therapy in general just shows how their kids have very good reasons to be in therapy.

Society has a long way to go to understand that therapy isn't brainwashing and that the clients autonomy is at the forefront. There are bad therapists, just like there are bad medical doctors or useless plumbers, but the profession in general is useful and necessary in society.

I honestly don't know how you wouldn't want to take a good look at yourself as a parent, open your mind and reflect if it meant your child could resolve an issue and be happier. It is sad how dismissive some parents are about their child attending therapy.

I was a therapist for many years. Perhaps try a therapist who uses a different modality. We don’t all take clients back to the early years, unless a client specifically wants to talk about that. CBT or solution focused therapy might provide good options. Or a clinical psychologist who uses a mix of modalities.

Op I can identify with a lot of what you've said - I had a difficult childhood because of trauma that happened to my mum in her life. I understand better as an adult why she acted the way she did because I have a better understanding of trauma and mental ill health now than I did as a child. I also use logic and understanding 'why' someone does something hurtful to help process my own feelings around it so I can empathise with them instead of feeling angry which is much less comfortable for me and probably if I'm honest feels like a negative emotion.

What I'm realising now (while going through another separate issue) is that I actually don't get angry when I should and I've maybe shut off that part of myself to protect myself. And now when I know I should feel angry (and it would probably help me to be angry) I just feel nothing. It's something I've been trying to work on in therapy and it does come from early childhood and having to repress my own feelings and needs because I understood that someone else was struggling. But actually that eventually takes a toll. My guess is that she wants you to recognise that it's ok to feel anger channeled in a healthy constructive way. But it's not really about her agenda - counselling should be about what you bring to the table and where you go with it in terms of reflection and processing. I think you should speak to her about how you feel about it and see what she thinks about that?

Trauma is inter generational. I've had to do a lot of work on myself and try to be very intentional with my parenting of my ds to try to break that cycle and emotional intelligence and resilience are such a big part of that. It can feel exhausting at times because it's a big responsibility and it's something I will probably always be doing in some way. I think from the way you're talking you're maybe the type of person who likes to look for the best in everyone and who takes care of others a lot? Maybe she's just trying to remind you that sometimes it's ok to be selfish and act rashly and get things wrong and have the negative emotions- I know for me this feels deeply uncomfortable because I also know how it can hurt having been on the receiving end? But really all we can do here is speculate - talking to her and being really honest about how you're finding it will get you much more out of your sessions with her. And if you still feel like it's not a good fit a few sessions after than then maybe you try someone else? It's important to feel a good 'click' with a therapist and I've had a few before my current who were decent but I've definitely felt like I've done more 'work' with this one (though sometimes that can be timing as well!)