Counseling

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-17-2005
Counseling
31
Sun, 06-19-2005 - 11:58am

I think it was this board where I posted a while back and everyone automatically suggested counseling as if it was the solution to everytihng. Well, I tried it, again, and I maintain my stance on counseling. It was such a horrid experience, I am still trembling. The whole situation just baffles me. I look around me, and everytime I see someone who goes to counseling, or suffers from depression, it seems like those people are verbally coddled. Told that they can't help what's happening to them. They can't help the way they feel, they shouldn't have to take responsibility for anything that's happened and basically, they can't do no wrong.
Then there's me. I was depressed in my late teens, but don't feel that way anymore. Nowdays, I do a lot better emotionally, and I am a perfectly functioning person. But like everyone in this world, I do have some bad days where I might feel down and not so peppy. Or I might feel like locking myself in a room and crying for a while. It seems, though that the thing to do would be to go to counseling. That's what our society says you are "supposed" to do. Forget just accepting that bad days and crying are part of life. All those doubts I have about counseling being nothing but making money by convincing people of their misery makes me a horrible, horrible person. So I ignore all of my feelings about counseling and just be a good girl and go like I am supposed to.
I don't know what it is about other people that makes them so "not responsible" for both the way they feel, and for any abuse they suffered; but yet when it comes to me, I am responsible for it. I must "stop blaming" my parents for the physical and emotional abuse and "take responsibility" for the way I feel about it. But yet, tell ANYONE else with depression to take responsibility and stop blaming, and you become the most intolerant person ever!!! Is it because my parents were not divorced? Because they had money? Is that why the abuse was okay and why I must get over it? Why are others in the mental health field coddled and pampered with "aw you poor baby, you didn't do it" when I get found guilty? They might as well put the scarlet letter on my chest. God!!!!

I don't think I have ever encountered more abuse than in counseling. Even when I was a child, the physical abuse was not as bad as the emotional abuse in counseling. The scars fade. The abuse is apparent in a situation like that and it's easy to know what you're mad about. But in counseling, it's so tricky. They refuse to let you be your own person. Who you are is all these textbook labels. You can't survive without them, and if you think you can, then you are in "denial". If they want you to have a certain problem, you have it, no matter how well you know yourself. It's like an abusive relationship where they convince you to be so down that you don't even know you can make it without them.
In group therapy, it's even worse, because on top of al the manipulation, you get verbal abuse from the other people, and if you try to defend yourself, you are intolerant against their "disease". They play the disease card to get away with being the most heinous, rude, verbally abusive, subtly murderous people ever.

I will never have anything to do with the mental health field again. It isn't for me. Thank goodness I am not the vile person my counselor thought I was. Thank goodness I have enough mental and emotional strength to rise myself up when they try to beat me down into thinking that I am worthless without them.

Please think twice before insisting someone get counseling or else they are nobody. It isn't for everyone. And if you think it's for everyone, then it appears you have been suckered into their way of thinking. They won with you.




Edited 6/19/2005 3:06 pm ET ET by dragon709
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-17-2005
In reply to: dragon709
Sun, 06-19-2005 - 3:09pm
So being physically abused as a child is a person's own fault? Since when?
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-17-2005
In reply to: dragon709
Sun, 06-19-2005 - 3:30pm

I think back to my counseling session again, and I go back and examine myself and think of every aspect of my life. I get up in the morning and I go to work. I have this job because I want financial stability, and not to make my husband be the only breadwinner. I want us to buy a house and go on vacations. I also have this job because I took a trade school course which made me certified to do it. I also work this job so that I can help people. So that I can contribute to society. I wonder, if I had told my counselor thses things, what would he say? Would my desire to contribute to society, make my own money, help people, be evidence of some "hidden negative emotion about myself that I am unable to admit right now"?
What if he knew that I often get up in the middle of the night just to brush my teeth? Or that I like couches with a lot of mix-matched balnkets and throws? What if he knew that I feel most serene in the middle of a forest, or that I believed in reincarnation? What if he knew that I had a dog? That my friends and I like to go for happy hour at Applebees once in a while and have drinks and half price appetizers? What if he knew that I liked stand up comedy and that on Friday nights, my dh and I celebrate by getting Mexican food and watching comedy central's stand up comics, staying up late, and making love?

I wonder what he would say about all these little insignificant things, because all of the other little insignificant things that I did share with him- like going jogging or making quilts, cooking, etc- were all evidence of some horrible, deep down, negative thing about myself that I didn't realize. That he knew about me from knowing me one hour, while I didn't know it from knowing myself my hwole life. If those minor things were so bad, then what about all that other stuff? What kind of horrible thins do all those other things say about me? If liking to jog is so bad, then how guilty am I for the happy hour thing?
I couldn't imagine. I just couldn't imagine squandering my beautiful life, just because I was stupid enough to allow a counselor convince me of some fake misery for money. I couldn't imagine bucking to the counselor's whims, and believing the vile things about myself that he would have me believe.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2005
In reply to: dragon709
Sun, 06-19-2005 - 4:40pm
No being abused as a child is not your fault, but you already know that. However, allowing it to continue to affect your life as an adult is in your control and is your choice. Millions of people who were abused as children do not allow it to continue to affect their lives in adulthood, millions refuse to continue to be victims. In order to be helped you have to be willing to receive it.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-17-2005
In reply to: dragon709
Sun, 06-19-2005 - 4:50pm

By absolutely no means do I allow it to control my life.

But any time in the past that I have gone to counseling, that is one of the first things that they ask. "Have you ever been abused"? I am not going to lie, I am going to tell them yes, I was. Even though I have made peace with my family and not allow it to control my life. If they flat out ask, I am going to tell them. They use the mere FACT that it happened and they blow the past out of porportion. Even if you tell them that you don't let it affect you, that you have made peace, the counselors refuse to accept that. I guarantee you, within 5 minutes, they are forcing you to relive the whole abuse AGAIN. Then they take everything you say and refer it back to "having been abused". EVERYTHING GOOD in your life is really bad, and it's all"because you were abused". They rub it in so much. They are so abusive themselves, itmakes me ill.

I know a lot of women with abusive husbands, who fit the "battered woman" role. No one would ever tell them to not let it control them. Women who were abused by husbands don't have to take responsibility for their feelings about their abuse,but people who were abused as children do. It's kind of ironic, isn't it, seeing that people CHOOSE their spouses, but children don't CHOOSE their parents.

In a way, I am glad that I am expected to not let my past abuse bother me so much. I am glad that I am expected to "get over it". Becuase I see so many victim mentality women who make "I was abused" their middle name, and they simply can't function in life. It's rather sad, actually. If they were slapped in the emotional face like I always was, and told to get over it like I always was, then maybe they'd have something going for them. But the mere idea of disciplining these people instead of spoiling and coddling them is unheard of.




Edited 6/19/2005 4:52 pm ET ET by dragon709
iVillage Member
Registered: 05-12-2005
In reply to: dragon709
Sun, 06-19-2005 - 10:45pm
I agree with you. I do think counseling has it's place and it has helped many people, I do agree that it is pushed as a universal solution. And it isn't. I have been to counseling too because I thought it was what I was supposed to do. But I am a strong person, and I saw through all the b.s. It's like they want to make something be wrong with you even when it isn't. Like they want to find things to pick at when nothing is there. Almost like they subconsciously want to keep people down. I don't think it's directly about the money, I think they actually believe they are helping people.I think the abusive relationship analogy was very good, for reasons I don't fully understand, they make the assumption that something is wrong, and it keeps you down. Keeps you dependent on them, like you aren't good enough on your own. I think I realized that about myself too, that I am a good person, I am fine the way I am, I can cope perfectly well with life, I enjoy life, I have occasional bad moments, but who doesn't? I didn't get that in counseling, all I got was nitpicking.Another thing to keep in mind, is that in counseling like in everything else, there are bad apples in the profession. As examples, these are all situations I have come across: a psychiatrist who is very abusive towards his girlfriend, a therapist who is in an abusive relationship and is actually given power by the government to remove children from their homes through working for child services in that capacity.In some instances the counselor can be more messed up than they people they are supposed to be helping, and you would never know it, you can never know because they aren't allowed to talk about their private lives.
iVillage Member
Registered: 05-12-2005
In reply to: dragon709
Sun, 06-19-2005 - 10:54pm
My friends don't tell me what I want to hear. Oftentimes they disagree with me and with things I am doing,I don't think all friends just tell their friends what they think they want to hear, not every one is the same. It is possible to get honest feedback from friends. I think in a friendship you go into it just seeing each other as people, not automatically looking for the pathology, unlike in counseling that often times sees something as wrong when it's just not there, with friends you get positive and negative feedback and your friends see you as a whole person with strenghts and weakness. That has been my experience with my friends. Counseling not like that at all for me, it saw me as a person who had to have things wrong.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2005
In reply to: dragon709
Mon, 06-20-2005 - 12:01am

Of course there is no one method that suits everyone.

I too have friends who tell me what they really think rather than what I'd like to hear, but I also know they're closer to the situation than being able to be completely unbiased allows and I also know that they are not trained to see things that are indicitive of issues. When my therapists indicate the possibility of something being wrong, there's something wrong. I may not like it and I may not want to see it, but darn it, it's there.

Have you read all of the OP's posts or just those in this thread?

Do you really think six therapists have told the OP that she's to blame for childhood abuse?

Do you think one month of counseling is enough to determine that it's not helpful, even though most likely one month isn't enough to really make progress in?

Didn't you tell another poster on this board that she needed to "focus on counseling for a while and give the counseling a chance to really sink in"?

It seems like she's got a big old chip on her shoulder. It's hard for anything to be helpful when you're too busy being defensive to let anything in.

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-12-2005
In reply to: dragon709
Mon, 06-20-2005 - 8:58am
I don't know the OP, I have read the discussion from a month ago though. I don't know what is actually happening. It is very possible that what you say is true. It is also very possible that what she says is true.I do not agree with everything she said. But I do think there is some truth to it.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-17-2005
In reply to: dragon709
Mon, 06-20-2005 - 3:23pm
Thanks, I totally agreed with your post.
Avatar for jeffkristi
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-12-1998
In reply to: dragon709
Tue, 06-21-2005 - 8:48am

What exactly is the point of this post? To blast the posters on this group for suggesting counseling? To blast the health field in general? What?

I went back and skimmed throught the threads in your old post and I didn't see where anyone INSISTED you get counseling - it was a suggestion. And in that post you said that you were completely over the abuse at the hands of your mother when you were young (you're "best buds" now), yet in this post you go back to being upset over the abuse and the fact that people tell you to "get over it". That would seem to me that maybe you aren't as "over it" as you think you are. That and the "victim" attitude that exudes from this post ("other people are pampered when they have a problem, yet I am seen as guilty", "it must be because my parents had money and were together......."). So as I see it, people are telling you to "get over it" not becuase you are "guilty" but because they see 2 choices for you. See a counselor to help you get over it or get over it in your own way (neither of those 2 ways is right or wrong - just different for different people). Since you have already made your feelings clear about counseling, the only thing they have left to offer you is to get over it in your own way.

You have obviously had some bad counselors in the past and that has made you shy away from them. Fine. They are not for you and you need to find another way to get past difficult things. But as you've been told over and over again - not all counselors are like the ones you describe.

You wrote: "They refuse to let you be your own person. Who you are is all these textbook labels. You can't survive without them, and if you think you can, then you are in "denial"."

But as I said before, the counselor that my DS saw was the exact opposite. He was suffering due to a physical injury and the counselor brought him back to the happy, care-free kid he was before (let him be his own person). He also pushed him out the door even tho we weren't sure he was ready (made DS see that he not only could survive, but could thrive WITHOUT a counselor).

"If they want you to have a certain problem, you have it, no matter how well you know yourself"

Or maybe they see something from the outside looking in that you are too close to to really see (can't see the forest for the trees).

I agree with you on one point - counseling isn't for everyone not does everyone need it. But as a profession as a whole, it's not nearly as bad as you make it out to be.

Jeff