This is why I hate the idea of psychotherapy in general; they can rationalize anything in any way that they want. And a lot of the time those rationalizations are projections of what the therapist 'expects' and how they see and view reality; and you're essentially being told to throw out your own beliefs/views for the therapist's when that doesn't really solve your objective problems with PTSD.
Sure it might help if you have a problem with self-esteem, but such a label as self-esteem changes subjectively in definition from person to person and can't be securely relied upon as a guiding belief. It's as if you have this divide in psychoanalysis between the objective and subjective - they are philosophically intertwined and yet always seem to be at each other's throats. So where would I draw the line and decide that the pain and fear I feel is a result of my unconscious influences or the conscious beliefs I form to make decisions? What comes first, the chicken or the egg...and the therapist that tries to lean toward one or the other ends up seeming like nothing more than a silly jester.
Now add psychiatry into the mix and you've got three types of basic therapeutic philosophies:
1. The therapist that seeks to understand the negative causes that formed you the way you are and seeks to replace them with recovering causes.
2. The therapist that thinks all problems are created in the mind and that if you just understood what you were taking for granted and found ways to be happy, life would be an ethereal symphony.
3. The medical quack that believes if an animal isn't functioning up to some standard of their own, the best solution is ALWAYS to redesign that animal into a new one, aka pure biological modifications. These people have no decency and respect for those outside their standard.
Oh...but ON TOPIC I suppose...
I went to therapy twice: on the second visit I was told that "You don't want help because you don't tell me anything unless I ask." and that I should make an appointment when I was serious. I know not all therapists are idiots, but how ridiculous for that to be her professional conclusion.
I should have said "Then you must need a lot more help than I.", but it's that whole in retrospect thing - we rationalize later what we didn't really understand at the time it occurred, I suppose.