It's like going into recovery. People are healing but they are never really healed. For years, Pearlman said, she had been trying to convince a client that she should stop always seeing herself as a victim, to no avail. Then one day the client came face to face with a neighbor with the same problem and realized the therapist was right. Now I see that if you're the victim all the time, people get sick of you.
People can and do learn from one another in group sessions.
Pearlman says one group she facilitated brought together victims of abuse who blamed themselves, in the belief that if they had only tried another approach they would have avoided the assaults. But in this group all those other approaches had been tried by at least one other member of the group. And none had worked. It showed, she said, that they could stop blaming themselves. In a question and answer period afterward, participants agreed that when it comes to things spiritual, it's often easier to get through to teenagers.