I agree with this, although I will say that I’ve met a lot of people for whom talk therapy is not effective. For me, though, it was a huge relief - so much so that I had a really visceral reaction from just reading the thread title: “Hell, YES it really helps, and don’t you ever tell me I can’t talk about my feelings!” :rolleyes: But like I said, I know it isn’t for everyone, and it really depends a lot on what your issues are and how you tend to deal with them.
Me, I come from a family that was basically the opposite of the OP’s. They not only bottled up their feelings, but also hid the things that caused those feelings. And most importantly, they never dealt with those feelings. My mom, for example, would often suddenly become silent and sorrowful, fighting back tears, and would stay that way for days at a time. She wouldn’t say why, and wouldn’t even admit she was unhappy. For me, it was really upsetting and confusing to see her that way. It was years before I learned that she never got over the death of her younger brother, almost 20 years before I was born. Some random thing would trigger her memories of him, and she would grieve him all over again. The same thing happened with the deaths of her parents and other relatives.
But it wasn’t just major issues like death; she seemed to hold onto every little hurt she’d ever suffered. She never got over being called names as a child, or the fact that her sister corrected her etiquette once. And she dealt with my father abusing us in the same way. She got upset about it, but didn’t admit she was upset, and then pretended it wasn’t happening. And we were explicitly told to do the same: don’t tell anyone about it, don’t let on that anything is wrong, just let me handle it. Of course, her “handling it” was telling him to stop, and swallowing her sorrow and disappointment when he didn’t.
So my life growing up was pretty much a perpetual situation like SurrenderDorothy described. I carried around all this pain and these huge, awful secrets, none of which actually had to be secret. And I directed all my pain inwards, thinking that if other people were able to handle these things that I struggled with, then there must be something wrong with me (rather than just my method of dealing with things).
Talk therapy taught me not to hold things in if they caused me pain, and that having feelings is normal and not shameful. It taught me to stop telling myself I’m stupid, worthless and unlovable, which I did almost reflexively, and still do, from time to time. And so on. But it’s important to note that we did *not *just sit there and rehash all these old hurts. It was usually something along the lines of, “How do you feel lately? Does that feeling make sense in the context of what’s going on in your life? If yes, then it’s normal, and you should go ahead and feel it. If no, then why do you think you feel that way? What goes through your head when you feel that way? Do those thoughts and feelings make sense? If not, then you should try to do x, y, and z and see if that helps bring your thoughts and feelings in line with reality.”
So I guess I’d say even for people for whom talk therapy is helpful, it has to happen in the right way.
And SurrenderDorothy, for all that talking about my problems has helped me, I still don’t like talking about it with just everyone all the time. To avoid the kind of trap you’re in, I tell people something like: “Hey, just so you know - I’ve got a, b, and c going on right now, so forgive me if I’m kind of stressed out/unavailable/moody/etc. at times. I’m doing okay for now, but I’ll be sure to let you know if I need to talk about it.” I find this effectively keeps people from prying, without me feeling like I’m hiding my whole life from them.