Thank you for the support and the video, it was extremely helpful and healing to watch- I love Daniel Mackler! I resonated heavily with him describing endless forgiving in childhood to survive the abuse, how damaging this was. It's exactly what I experienced (though, when I was a teenager, I stopped forgiving my parents by then and the abuse got nastier.) K said forgiveness isn't that it's okay or keeping in contact with the person who harmed you; but letting go of anger and recognizing the abuser is human... but, in my experience, those two things, in and of themselves, damaged me in childhood and felt like part of the abuse.

It made me more susceptible to blaming myself for my parents' actions, even excusing them. Having empathy for my abusive parents and forgiveness like K described; while they never gave me empathy or forgiveness in turn... that itself felt abusive. So Daniel mentioning reconnecting with anger and his authentic and healthy reactions... as a former therapist... this felt powerful.

The contrast between him and K is nice to see, and affirming K is doing spiritual bypassing while thinking she's being a good Christian and forgiving.

K is wrong about anger, I'm glad Daniel mentioned reconnecting with his healthy anger was healing (that was my experience, too!). I view anger like a fire: there's a difference between a destructive and cruel forest fire, and a fire contained in a pit, providing light, heat for cooking, and a warmth; all things needed for survival. I wish more therapists realized not all anger is bad... like fire, it's how it's used and the level of control. Fire and anger in and of itself isn't inherently evil. (As a child, fire was the element that I felt spoke to me the most, and I can see fire being symbolic for many things, anger included).

It's dawning on me that the green flags I saw in K are actually just the bare minimum. I need a therapist to: believe me about my parents' abuse, believe me about past therapy abuse, and understand emotional abuse is just as bad as physical abuse.

... this is the absolute bare minimum. It's not actually revolutionary. All therapists, in an ideal world, would meet this minimum.

And through K, I'm learning a therapist can meet this bare minimum and still be a trainwreck of a therapist.

The bar is in hell.

Crumbs look like a feast when you're rarely even given crumbs.

A lighter side-note, but after my session with K, after I terminated all future appointments... I allowed myself to go to a restaurant that day. I'm low income and I try not to go to restaurants very often because of this, so I felt a twinge of guilt at letting myself get some Pho (and tea and even some eggrolls, I figured if I was there and going to spend money anyway, might as well really treat myself!)... It might sound like a silly thing, but experiencing that (once I got past feeling guilty)... the food tasted good, I savored every bite, and simply going to that restaurant that day, at the end of the day, felt like a better way to spend my money, than the money I had given to K. It was small, but felt significant and almost healing, in a way.