> Frankly, I see a lot of therapy this way. Some people go through terrible things, and some people's lives suck, but a lot of therapy sounds like brainwashing yourself to deal with it.
If it works, then who cares? Maybe you were wronged, but maybe you don't want to go through life feeling that way, so you let it go by sympathizing with the person who wronged you. And you move on. There's a limited amount of justice you'll be able to get in life, so it's a good idea to pick your battles and not stew on every single sleight because you want to avoid "brainwashing" yourself.
And you've been keeping these ways to address trauma from the rest of the world? If people could feel better without forgiving their trespassers don't you think they'd be doing that instead?
Are you a therapist, or are you acting like an armchair expert? Because my strategies come from an actual fucking therapist.
The first thing to note is that time itself has healing properties. Putting physical and temporal distance from your trauma is beneficial. For example, cutting people out of your life.
Beyond that treatment becomes more tailored to the individual. For example, I developed medically diagnosed "severe anxiety" from my childhood. So part of my healing process is learning to calm my nervous system because my default mode is hyper-vigilance.
Every 15 minutes I get a notification on my phone reminding me to do two things:
1. Take a deep breath. This engages the parasympathetic nervous system and teaches me to self-soothe.
2. I ask myself "Who is hurting your right now?" and 95% of the time the answer is "nobody, everything is fine". This helps keep me grounded in the present moment.
Note that NONE of this involves divorcing myself from reality. In-fact, it's the opposite.
If it works, then who cares? Maybe you were wronged, but maybe you don't want to go through life feeling that way, so you let it go by sympathizing with the person who wronged you. And you move on. There's a limited amount of justice you'll be able to get in life, so it's a good idea to pick your battles and not stew on every single sleight because you want to avoid "brainwashing" yourself.