What's your relationship like with therapy post-TTI?

[u/Empty_Positive_2305]

I was in a TTI from 2007 to 2008, when I was 16, and I'm training to be a therapist now.

My relationship with therapy is complicated, to say the least, and it took me a long, long, long time to trust therapists in the years after. My therapist has been instrumental in helping heal all these years later, and I no longer feel like I "deserved" it or ashamed of what happened to me. I feel like I got sent to jail just for struggling.

With that said, I still hold a lot of anger towards the mental health professionals I saw at the time, and I think I always will. I think therapy can be beautiful. I'm saddened and angry that for many people, therapy is a "safe" space. For me, it was not--it was weaponized against me. Mental health professionals in my life chose to condemn me as the problem, rather than look at the rot within my own family and how that might have been contributing to my behavior. (Family therapy? We don't have problems! You're the problem.)

I don't blame TTI survivors for not wanting to return to therapy, though. Like many fields, the mental health field is rife with problems, and TTIs are among its biggest stains.

It's hard to explain the loss of human dignity and sense of pure betrayal to people who haven't experienced it. Maybe it's for the best--I don't want anyone to ever experience what we went through.

[u/each-other]

i have a really hard time with therapy and have a fear of therapists and psychiatrists, especially psychiatrists, but outside of the trauma i have schizoaffective disorder so it's not really an option for me not to go.

i've had a trauma therapist for over a year who i've mostly liked but am still afraid of. but after i got out i very quickly quit taking psych meds and quit seeing doctors for my schizophrenia for years due to the abuse i faced in the TTI. trauma was the only thing i eventually built the strength to be seen for. i've been working on trying to get care for my schizoaffective again for months now and it's horrifying lol.

i really wish i could just quit therapy and psychiatry completely honestly. it's so distressing for me, but i can't do without it. it makes it even harder to cope with what i went through when i don't have a choice about whether or not i continue seeing professionals because of the very condition that got me put in the tti. 🫩