12:32pm July 28, 2013

➸ Trying to find the right words: FFS

josiahd:

Can we PLEASE stop pretending that therapy is safe and all therapists who hurt people are just abberrations that have no bearing on anything systemic?

Therapy can be really good for people it’s good for but…

It’s not safe, and it’s actually a really messed up…

I basically learned to become anyone they told me I was. Also anyone anyone told me I was. And then I blamed myself for doing it, and took on all the responsibility. As if I was doing something terrible, when I was just a confused kid trying to survive in a system I didn’t understand.

I used to pray to really become who they said I was, all the way, for real, so that I could stop feeling torn into pieces.

One of the most important things I ever did was fire all my therapists, go off to live alone, and see who I was when there was nobody pushing me to be anything other than who I really was. And that was the beginning of self respect for me.

But they hated that. Two of them insisted I would die without them telling me what to do. One of them had a full fledged tantrum on the phone to my parents, he demanded that they stop me. They wouldn’t.

I also isolated myself from every so called friend who had ever exerted as much pressure on me to be something I wasn’t, as the therapists had. I told my parents to let anyone interested know it was for spiritual reasons. Which it pretty much was.

My “friends” did not make it easy though. One of them had his sister call my parents asking where I lived now. My family had to be instructed to tell everyone I lived in a different town than where I lived. Nobody respected my right to privacy. And that told me they were not friends. Real friends would not pry. Real friends would not stalk. And I told you about the intense stalking and harassment I got from other “friends” when I tried to get away.

When my mom told one person that I needed privacy for spiritual reasons, he whined, “I knew she was going to do that, but not to ME." As if, what, he was so close to me that I’d make an exception? This dude had just told me he fantasized about murdering people and the only reason he didn’t was because he might get caught. Why would I give him my contact info?

I don’t know how I attracted all these people who seemed to think they owned me. That I simply wasn’t ALLOWED to get away from them if I wanted. Both therapists and "friends” behaved this way. (I think it’s no coincidence that one of the worst of the “friends” has become a therapist.)

But anyway, getting away from them allowed me to learn who I was apart from pressures to be anyone but who I actually was. I only wish I hadn’t blamed myself for my survival strategies. Even when I told them “this isn’t who I am”, I did it in a totally self blaming way. I always felt like I acted in isolation, I never recognized the forces and the power acting on me to mold me into whatever shape they wanted. I felt those forces, I couldn’t resist them, but I never recognized them as external until I had a lot of time away from them.

It also disturbed me the way therapists seemed to act like they were the only reason I could survive. That without them I’d become both dead and pathological. And that one, the one who told me I wasn’t an adult, and that he would control me through my parents… he’s the same one who threw a fit when my parents refused to do as he said and stop me from living on my own.

(Funny thing… he always said in my early twenties I’d be living in the Santa Cruz mountains independently, writing books. But when I moved to the Santa Cruz mountains at the age of nineteen, he resisted it like hell. I wasn’t independent, and I’ve never written a book, probably never will. But he seemed to resist his own prediction. Maybe because he knew his prediction was bullshit? IDK. I did nearly starve, but therapy wouldn’t have helped there. Services did. And my psychological problems have only gotten better and better the longer I stayed away from therapists.

But all that time… maybe here’s how they see it. All that time they were helping me and I was only getting worse or staying the same. So without them, surely I’d never survive. Except, actually, their help was making me worse. Not preventing me from getting even worse. So getting away from it, and getting REAL help, only made me better.

But they wouldn’t see me as better now, because my life isn’t what they wanted for me. And they’re the professionals. Ugh reminds me of when my friend went to the shrink, told them how much progress she’d made… And the shrink claimed she was regressing, because she looked more autistic, so that couldn’t be progress.

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