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The therapist is correct. You're misunderstanding her. Please give her another chance.
She is saying that it's normal for any of us to project our feelings, our pain, our hurt away from ourselves. When you stated that you felt bad for the others, the therapist was trying to steer you to refocus back on yourself instead. It's very easy for any of us to identify and "help" others deal with their issues, while turning an blind, ignorant to ours. Why? Because it hurts us much less.
Getting to the bottom of whatever issues lead you to meet with a therapist is a painful process. The therapist knows it. She also knows all the tricks we unconsciously use to avoid sorting out our pain. Focusing on others is the famed way people practice avoidance.
I have been reading and re-reading your replies. You've all been more helpful than you could know.
I don't think I'm ready for this group therapy. I have had this ...thing... buried deeply inside, walled up in a corner of my mind, since I was 15. I've never been able to discuss it with any of my therapists. The thing is made of fear, guilt and shame.
You say there's value to bringing the thing out into the open, but all I can see are four more people let in on the secret. If I could talk to somebody I'd never have to see again...maybe.
But I grew up in a small town where dissecting and destroying your neighbor's character was a daily pastime. I don't need that happening here again.
Thank you for helping me understand the process.
Do you think you could write everything down? Everything. What happened to you. How it made you feel. The influence it has had on your past, present, and future. Every emotion you have ever felt regarding the secret, the perpetrator(s), the inability to share it, to need to release it, etc. Unleash the fury within. Write it all down.
After you are done writing it all down, read it aloud, and then burn it. Watch it go up in flames. Release the burden.
By reading it aloud, you are being heard by the most important person - you.
Do you think you could write everything down? Everything. What happened to you. How it made you feel. The influence it has had on your past, present, and future. Every emotion you have ever felt regarding the secret, the perpetrator(s), the inability to share it, to need to release it, etc. Unleash the fury within. Write it all down.
After you are done writing it all down, read it aloud, and then burn it. Watch it go up in flames. Release the burden.
By reading it aloud, you are being heard by the most important person - you.
That's an intriguing idea. I have adapted part of my story for use in my novel but I've never written it all down.
I would not write off the therapist, nor the group. But it sounds like either you are zooming in on a couple of ideas and not processing the entire context, OR the therapist was blundering a little in how these ideas were communicated.
Feeling compassion and empathy because you have commonality in your life experience is not invalidating the stories of others by shoveling a burden of your own on top. Nor does it mean that your compassion should be dismissed as mere self-serving YOU stuff. The whole point of group therapy is grounded in these shared experiences that allow people to heal together with the support of others who GET IT. So you should be thinking about whether you would benefit from this, as well as whether you have the ability to be part of that support network for others and benefit them.
My former girlfriend said something once, which I repeat from time to time, "Vulnerability is currency for connection." This is truth. But I don't favor the phrase, "tearing down" defenses. We build up our defenses for valid reasons. I would rather think that part of therapy would be learning to see your defenses more clearly, understand how they were built and why, and recognize when they are, or aren't, healthy/necessary. There are times to be defensive, and times to be vulnerable. Tearing down your defenses and being vulnerable to the world isn't healthy. Turning your defenses into reasonable and appropriate boundaries, is. I have realized I built up a ton of defenses, which I visualize as like fortress walls, against harmful ideas and behaviors by my ex. But we aren't together anymore, so the attacker is no longer sitting outside of my fortress. I am no longer besieged.
So now the focus is on having close connections and relationships with people who do not attack my Self or necessitate walls. And yet being able to maintain boundaries when needed, keeping harmful others at a safer distance. Knowing WHEN to be vulnerable, is at least as important as being ABLE to be vulnerable.
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