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Men's therapy in a nutshell (i.redd.it)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/memes@lemmy.world
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[–] 10 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Yeah, therapy sometimes is about rehashing things, usually because you either took bad lessons from it, never really moved on from it, or something similar, but the goal is to move to a point where the bad things that happened to you are no longer destructively impacting your life.

I think a lot of people think therapy is more about telling you how it's not your fault and how horrible it is that things happened to you, and yeah that happens, but so much more often it's stuff like being given homework to practice setting and holding boundaries, and evaluating why you feel the way you feel about things.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (2 children)

    Yes, a lot of people internalize things as their fault. I had that issue with relationships. I thought if my ex cheated on me, it was because I had failed or not tried hard enough... I was wrong.

    Similar with abusive relationships. If you had been a better child dad/mom wouldn't have beaten you... moving on is realizing that you had zero control over that situation and the fault was entirely your dad/mom. But a lot people can't dissociate emotionally to begin to see things that way, esp if they are still hung up parental approval.

    I'm in my 40s and it's terrifying to me how many people I meet who are still hung up on parental approval or angry at their parents for not doing more for them... it's pathetic.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    I wouldn't call it pathetic. Firstly because it's an unempathetic and unhelpful response. I'm in my early 30s and it's unlikely I'll ever be not experiencing negative aspects of my parental situation. I was forced to learn to cope with it, I've done a lot of work on it, and I'll likely continue to do work on it. The fact is that parents are one of the strongest, longest, and most culturally enforced bonds we have. They can be enduring and deep sources of new issues that can crop up through life. Furthermore they're a relationship that we are supposed to reevaluate and reinterpret at every stage of life. I haven't had parents in a long time and I'm still doing that as part of my continual growth and maturity.

    Like yeah, at times it can feel weird and immature for me to see people my age beating themselves up for parental approval, but then I think about what it took for me not to, and how long after that I wanted nothing more. Who am I to judge their path?

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