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How Long Did You Spend On Stabilization?

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sun seeker

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This is a question for those in trauma-specific therapy, as opposed to more general counseling. How long did you spend on stabilization at the beginning of the process? How often do you come back to it and under what circumstances? How do you feel it helps you?

I'm reading up on the subject and thinking perhaps some of the problems I'm having now in therapy would be because we completely skipped this stage at the beginning and have only touched on it very briefly once in a while since. Those coping skills people talk so much about... I can probably think of some, but I haven't internalized them so they're second nature when I'm going from zero to 60 with a trigger that makes me feel like I'm dying RIGHT NOW. It seems like a pretty major oversight. Has anyone else experienced this?
 
Took several years to stabilize enough to do real work in therapy. My T didn't push it mainly because I think the attachment stuff was more acute and also the base of stabilization. I still regulate constantly and we stabilize every session it seems.
 
My T didn't push it mainly because I think the attachment stuff was more acute and also the base of stabilization.
I'm very interested in this, because attachment trauma is also what destabilizes me most. How have you worked on stabilizing that?

Three years
Three years without touching on the trauma at all?

:confused: We jumped right into my most intense trauma right from the start, with no tools for how to cope with the fallout, and it's only in the past few months we've slowed down, and that's because the relationship has broken down too much to focus on much else.

Having said that, the therapist I was working with before this one, even though I wouldn't say she was a trauma therapist exactly, exasperated me by spending so long just getting to know each other and talking that it took, oh, six months maybe? before we even started working on the trauma. Not sure that's stabilization either though. We did do grounding exercises in some sessions, but there was never anything I took home to help me cope with activation in my daily life. I've been reading an article about it and it's all about identifying triggers and levels of activation and fine-tuning coping mechanisms for each level. I've never done that with any therapist, and I've worked with several. And I'm still, after all this time, so close to complete overwhelm that I know it would take only one more thing going wrong to put me over the edge. Life is not supposed to feel this black and white, I don't think.
 
Oh no... We jumped into EMDR immediately without any stabilization and it was disasterous. He mentioned EMDR for the first time in over six months today and only to tell me that he had something that he had learned that he wanted to think about doing with me.

With me we've also been trying to life back to a state of calm. I've had a hell of a couple of years.
 
Took 8 years for me to discuss early traumas without sounding like a robot.

To me the key to the attachment work is simply learning to trust. For me that has taken 14 years. Somatic Experiencing therapy is the only modality that's allowed me any progress in any area.

I'm concerned you said you guys jumped straight into major trauma. Are you seeing a trauma specialist?
 
We jumped into EMDR immediately without any stabilization and it was disasterous.
I haven't done EMDR, and probably wouldn't, considering how many people on here mention how they've struggled with it. I had a couple of sessions once with an EMDR therapist preparing for it, but it was a really bad personality clash to put it mildly, so we never got around to the actual work.

With me we've also been trying to life back to a state of calm
And that really is the goal of therapy anyway, isn't it? Call it nervous system regulation or what have you, but we're all trying to get to a state of calm. I've kind of lost sight of that along the way and now it's like I'm backing up and saying "Hey wait a minute, what am I doing this for again?"

I've had a hell of a couple of years.
Sorry about that. I'm wishing you that calm you are working for.

Took 8 years for me to discuss early traumas without sounding like a robot.
So lots of dissociation.

the key to the attachment work is simply learning to trust
Yes. There are SE techniques, but nothing replaces trust, and that takes time and consistency. Unfortunately I've had a really bad few months with my therapist that have really undermined the trust we've worked so hard on (I have another thread going on the topic so won't tell the whole story here). I'm just now putting that whole saga together with the fact that we've done next to no work on stabilization, and it adds up to a really volatile situation where the stuff coming up as we work out the relationship issues can trigger me to high heaven and I have no coping skills to help me when it does.

So yes, he knows SE and various other modalities, and when in the thick of working on a trauma in session he's awesome, but there is next to no attention to how the person is going to cope with the possible fallout once they leave. I think maybe the expectation is that just working on releasing the trauma will get the person to a more stable place all by itself? Not sure. Once in a while I've brought up the question of coping skills, and not gotten very much of an answer. And I don't feel much more resourced than I was when we started, no matter how much time I spend on trauma release.
 
2 years and counting. What's super fun is I've decided to go and get less stable, over that time period, instead. :wtf: It's outstanding. Way to go self!

If we use the word 'decided' to mean : against every effort to the contrary.

What's particularly embarrassing is this isn't my first rodeo. I already spent several years getting stable once. I damn well know how to do it. I simply haven't been able to. And every time I try to, I just seem to slide farther back. It's vexing. It's beyond vexing. It's utterly moronic. Che cazzo fai.
 
He hasn't been doing this very long. And I gather I may be the most challenging person he's worked with. I guess I turned into something of a guinea pig. I guess someone has to do it... but why does "someone" have to be ME? :banghead:
 
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