I’m so confused about what is happening in therapy. I thought I had gone to a specialist trauma therapist, but what I’m getting seems nothing like what I ‘ve read about. As a person she seems quite pleasant, warm and intelligent, but as a therapist she is bewildering.
She is very specific that she doesn’t do stabilisation “What do you want – breathing exercises? I don’t do that”, and apparently doesn’t work within the three phase model. I know the name of the type of therapy she does, but she can’t or won’t explain how I should do it, or how it works. We had talked a bit before about her apparent dissatisfaction with how I do therapy, and I bought a book on how to do psychotherapy. With its aid I seemed to be performing better, but I’m still lost.
I was alarmed when I asked for examples of how others had improved. She told me of a woman she had been seeing for many years( 7? 10?) who is “more open to possibilities” after that time. I want to change, in what I do and how I live, and there doesn’t seem to be anything applied.
When we first met, I said I needed someone clear and direct, and she said she could be that. I’ve concluded she really can’t. I never get any explanation of myself, or of how PTSD/ DDNOS impacts me, or what to do about it. Past T’s have been very big on things like “You see yourself as wrong, but it is part of the condition, not reality” She never says anything like that. The most I get from her are tiny slivers of comment dropped in passing “Do you think you are looking for attention?”. When one of those appears, about every three weeks, I focus on them as the only clues, and convince myself she is diagnosing me as bad, disordered and undeserving.
One huge conflict in our first few months was that she was adamant that I must be multiple, and would take every chance to persuade me I was, despite me explaining in every way I could that I’m not. Eventually she backed off and I thought I’d convinced her. This week, in discussing my frustrations, she revealed that in fact her supervisor had told her that DDNOS doesn’t have to be multiple. I’m devastated. She flatly refused to believe my lived experience, then denied that she was pushing me that way, and now reveals that she was after all, and it wasn’t hearing me that changed her mind.
And yet – I was sent to her by a specialist organisation, who have faith in her. So this must be me? I keep telling myself that the whole point is that I need something different, not what I was expecting. But I don’t want to go back.
She is very specific that she doesn’t do stabilisation “What do you want – breathing exercises? I don’t do that”, and apparently doesn’t work within the three phase model. I know the name of the type of therapy she does, but she can’t or won’t explain how I should do it, or how it works. We had talked a bit before about her apparent dissatisfaction with how I do therapy, and I bought a book on how to do psychotherapy. With its aid I seemed to be performing better, but I’m still lost.
I was alarmed when I asked for examples of how others had improved. She told me of a woman she had been seeing for many years( 7? 10?) who is “more open to possibilities” after that time. I want to change, in what I do and how I live, and there doesn’t seem to be anything applied.
When we first met, I said I needed someone clear and direct, and she said she could be that. I’ve concluded she really can’t. I never get any explanation of myself, or of how PTSD/ DDNOS impacts me, or what to do about it. Past T’s have been very big on things like “You see yourself as wrong, but it is part of the condition, not reality” She never says anything like that. The most I get from her are tiny slivers of comment dropped in passing “Do you think you are looking for attention?”. When one of those appears, about every three weeks, I focus on them as the only clues, and convince myself she is diagnosing me as bad, disordered and undeserving.
One huge conflict in our first few months was that she was adamant that I must be multiple, and would take every chance to persuade me I was, despite me explaining in every way I could that I’m not. Eventually she backed off and I thought I’d convinced her. This week, in discussing my frustrations, she revealed that in fact her supervisor had told her that DDNOS doesn’t have to be multiple. I’m devastated. She flatly refused to believe my lived experience, then denied that she was pushing me that way, and now reveals that she was after all, and it wasn’t hearing me that changed her mind.
And yet – I was sent to her by a specialist organisation, who have faith in her. So this must be me? I keep telling myself that the whole point is that I need something different, not what I was expecting. But I don’t want to go back.