Apparently I wasn’t prepared for therapy

Been on imgur for several months and this is my first post.... I know a lot of people here says something like “expect this to die in user sub” or something like that, but honestly I’m hopping to receive some form of support, hopefully some encouraging stories of getting through hard times in dealing with past traumas.

Long story short I grew up with a borderline sociopathic mother who only wanted me around because she was receiving child support from my father, and I became aware of this somewhere around the age of 8/9. Because of child custody laws and practices I had to wait until I was 13/14 (can’t exactly remember) before I was able to live with my father full time, and even that process took about a year to complete.

Since then I have tried to maintain normal relationships with people but have always felt something was off in how I perceived my personal relationships. I finally started going to therapy earlier this year and it has unearthed so much more than I was prepared to deal with. It has forced me to re-examine and rethink the motivations for many of my habits and actions, and emotionally and mentally I feel so much worse than I did before starting therapy. For example I used to partake in self harm as a coping mechanism and while I haven’t done that in years I keep catching my thoughts gravitating towards engaging in that again.

I’m hoping that other people on imgur have experienced similar “setbacks” in their lives while trying to make positive changes.

TLDR; therapy has opened up a much larger can of worms than I ever imagined, hoping others can share positive stories of how therapy got them through dark times

Edit: wow, thank you everyone who has commented and messaged me with support. It has been helpful to hear similar stories. To everyone who messaged me: I wasn’t expecting so many messages and I will do my best to respond to them all!