It is not holding on to the damage, it is that the damage is permanent. It helped form you, and as you start unlearning things to get better and react to the world better you tend to be older when much of your life is gone.

Not to hit on what you do for a living but I never met a counselor worth spit with regards to neglectful or abusive parents. I am sure the good ones are worth their weight in gold, I just never met any of them.

In my experience, once you get to a certain age our society including counselors expect you to have it worked out, so they rarely concentrate on how to help older clients the same as children.