Trying to decide if I should fire my therapist

[HealingMama]

Hi Healingmama
Before you change her, see if you can bring up the attachment issue. Remember she cannt read your mind. She does not have attachment issues and if she did it is not her place to bring them. You bring the issues not her. And finally, you have to be super aware your projection. You focusing on her is transference. The frustration or the fear you have is bodyymemoreis acting out out of therapy.
Switch your POV and try to see yourself rather than her in your thoughts.

Hi grit, can you say more about the frustration acting out body memories? I am curious what you mean.

 

[Sideways]

I relate a lot to the feeling that therapy is moving waaaay too slow. And the “why aren’t we fixing this? And doing this? And working on this?”

It can feel like your T is moving at a glacial pace sometimes. But often, that’s the only speed we can actually work at and not fall apart completely as soon as we leave the therapy room.

Is it possible that your T is perhaps getting some projected anger from what’s happening at home? Like, “Why can’t you just fix this quicker???” Is it also possible that, given the breakdown currently going on in your personal relationship, that your T is avoiding doing anything too full on, too quickly, quite deliberately because of the stress you’re dealing with at home?

When a long term relationship is on the skids, it’s not time to get into really full on emdr type work. That’s a recipe for a complete meltdown.

So, I hear your frustration, and I relate to it a lot. But perhaps, as frustrating as it is, your T is going at the speed that you can manage right now...?

ETA maybe flip it round. You’re a T. If you knew one of your clients was talking “divorce” at home with their partner, would you launch into trauma work with them?

 

[Friday]

I rarely hold back, anyways, but if I’m considering firing someone? I don’t have anything to lose, may as well lay all my cards out on the table and see how shit shakes out.

Not in a “sell yourself to me / convince me to stay” kind of way but... Yo. I wanna hit these points. Can we get to a consensus or working compromise on them?

 

[HealingMama]

I relate a lot to the feeling that therapy is moving waaaay too slow. And the “why aren’t we fixing this? And doing this? And working on this?”

It can feel like your T is moving at a glacial pace sometimes. But often, that’s the only speed we can actually work at and not fall apart completely as soon as we leave the therapy room.

Is it possible that your T is perhaps getting some projected anger from what’s happening at home? Like, “Why can’t you just fix this quicker???” Is it also possible that, given the breakdown currently going on in your personal relationship, that your T is avoiding doing anything too full on, too quickly, quite deliberately because of the stress you’re dealing with at home?

When a long term relationship is on the skids, it’s not time to get into really full on emdr type work. That’s a recipe for a complete meltdown.

So, I hear your frustration, and I relate to it a lot. But perhaps, as frustrating as it is, your T is going at the speed that you can manage right now...?

ETA maybe flip it round. You’re a T. If you knew one of your clients was talking “divorce” at home with their partner, would you launch into trauma work with them?

It's true that my T might be going slow on purpose. In my last session I came in complaining that I've been having dissociation and derealization. I guess I have some parts that want to hurry up and some parts that are too decompensated for the pace that I want.

She is not aware that I am talking about divorce at home. If she were of course she would want to move slowly.

Thanks for pointing out that her efforts might be intentional.

I rarely hold back, anyways, but if I’m considering firing someone? I don’t have anything to lose, may as well lay all my cards out on the table and see how shit shakes out.

Not in a “sell yourself to me / convince me to stay” kind of way but... Yo. I wanna hit these points. Can we get to a consensus or working compromise on them?

Yeah that makes sense. Not much to lose.

 

[grit]

Hi HealingMama,

I think sideways really captured some of feelings I was eluding to.
I think you want to do uncovering and your therapist may be trying to build your coping mechanism first. This may on the surface reminds you of you may not be getting at home or in the past.

I want add she may not be aware fully things at home but dissociation and derealization imply broken defences and unstablity in here and now.... So she could infer.

 

[Sideways]

She is not aware that I am talking about divorce at home.

Wow! That’s quite a doozy to keep from your T. If you were to tell her, sure, trauma work might come to a grinding halt for a while, but she might also be able to provide some support for you.

If you’re experiencing high levels of dissociation, that means you’re experiencing high levels of distress. As much as you want to rip off the band aid and get the trauma work over with, maybe now is a time where working on some stabilization might be helpful? Helpful not only in preserving your sanity, but also giving you a much better headspace from which to deal with the issues going on for you at home.

Just kicking some ideas around - hope there’s something helpful in there.

 

[Cypress]

Might want to start with telling your T about the divorce and manage that first before you drive into trauma therapy. If the conflicts at home are triggering dissociation then definitely that needs to be your first priority.

 

[HealingMama]

Might want to start with telling your T about the divorce and manage that first before you drive into trauma therapy. If the conflicts at home are triggering dissociation then definitely that needs to be your first priority.

Actually it's the therapy triggering dissociation not the crap at home. The days leading up to therapy and the times i try to write about trauma in my journal make my dissociation and derealization act up. I don't mean I'm totally checked out or losing time or anything. I just don't feel like myself or feel blocked or like I'm a little bit "jelly legs" that kind of thing.

It's very embarrassing to admit this but we talk about divorcing most of the time conflicts don't get talked through in a timely manner (because if we cannot solve our problems and communicate what's the point). Most recently was July 31 when he threw the chair. I never know when we are actually going to follow through on it but it doesn't seem like any more of a crisis than all the other times we talk about it. So my T knows we aren't getting along, but not about the divorce talk. She probably should.

 

[HealingMama]

Wow! That’s quite a doozy to keep from your T. If you were to tell her, sure, trauma work might come to a grinding halt for a while, but she might also be able to provide some support for you.

If you’re experiencing high levels of dissociation, that means you’re experiencing high levels of distress. As much as you want to rip off the band aid and get the trauma work over with, maybe now is a time where working on some stabilization might be helpful? Helpful not only in preserving your sanity, but also giving you a much better headspace from which to deal with the issues going on for you at home.

Just kicking some ideas around - hope there’s something helpful in there.

You're right. I try to be strong and fight through everything but...

 

[hithere]

Yeah the least I could do is tell her we are spending too much time on psychoed.

I think part of the problem may also be that my previous session was hypnotherapy where she was practically yelling at me to amplify the negative emotion tied to memories so I don't really feel all that safe with her anymore.

Not feeling safe is horrible for therapy. If you don't feel safe, you probably aren't. ?/ just a guess.

 

[Justmehere]

Most therapists wouldn’t jump into hypnosis and/or EMDR while someone already has unmanaged dissociation. It’s contra-indicated for EMDR to dive right in without stabilizing first and the client demonstrating an ability to ground out of really bad spots.

And yet she actually did dive right in, despite those factors -

hypnotherapy where she was practically yelling at me to amplify the negative emotion tied to memories so I don't really feel all that safe with her anymore.

She was pushing to go deeper. (I wouldn’t have liked the pushy style either.)

some parts that are too decompensated for the pace that I want.

Yeah. I rather rip off the band aid and be done with it, but had to learn to pace or I only end up having to work longer at it.

The work you want to do is likely to lead to some spikes in symptoms. Going through a divorce with symptoms off the charts isn’t going to help your healing and will magnify the divorce.

Right now, you are holding significant information back like a possible divorce, holding back information about work you want to do in therapy, holding back what leads you to feel unsafe with her, while also experiencing symptoms that are not well managed...

Your focus is that she is slowing your pace down. Maybe she is indeed going too slow.

But I think you holding back information and the unmanaged symptoms are also a big part of what is slowing you down.

Talking with her and developing the type of relationship where you can tell her what’s going well, and what isn’t going well, is part of the work. It’s not a tangent away from the work. It’s part of the work itself.

You are doing the work to heal when you tell her what you need, when you tell her of pending major life changes that could impact the work, and you area especially doing the work to heal when you tell her things like “let’s stop, this doesn’t feel safe to me right now.”

That’s part of healing.

 

[Sideways]

Fwiw? For a long long time, I thought that all the coping skills stuff we were doing in therapy, just keeping me alive and my head above water - I thought it was wasting time. I kept wanting to get to the bits where we actually healed my trauma. So that I could recover, and get on with my life. So that I could go back to handling normal every day stressors (like relationship issues) like a normal person.

10 years later? Most of my therapy, most of my recovery work? Has been nothing to do with my actual trauma. Spending all that time “just” doing coping skills? Going over CBT, and DBT, and ACT till I could recite it in my sleep? Was me recovering.

With ptsd, it’s not always a case of separating out stressors and deciding “Stressor A is what’s bothering me and needs work. Stressor B is actually something I can manage quite well on my own and I don’t need my T’s help with that part...”.

With ptsd, stressors all pile on top of one another and smoosh together, and the end product is dissociation and all the functional and relational issues that go along with that. It may feel like one thing is far more stressful to you than another thing, or working on A would be more helpful than working on B”. And there are times when that’s absolutely right. We knuckle down on the precise thing that needs work.

There are other times, like when our dissociation has slipped beyond manageable levels, when it’s just a big ptsd mess of too much stress. And at those times, it can be far more productive to just relearn how to live. How to manage the excessive amounts of stress and distress that we suffer as a result of having ptsd.

For some folks, working through their trauma is about all they need to do to functionally “recover” from ptsd. But round these parts? Most of the therapy work has nothing to do with our trauma at all, and is more about coping skills. Re-learning to live with ptsd on board skills, you know?

I’m not saying your T knows what she’s doing and you shouldn’t challenge her on her approach (because I think you should challenge her, for your own peace of mind and to ensure you can trust her) (as a side note? Hypnotherapy makes me run for the hills - no fking way would I touch that, especially if I had a lot of dissociation going on) But maybe your T knows exactly what she’s doing. Idk, but maybe. Maybe she’s she’s quite deliberately slowing things down, and going over things that seem obvious to you, because with the level of dissociation you’ve got going on, she’s decided that’s the pace that a trauma patient (like you) with a lot of dissociation should be moving at...

Again, just thoughts. I’m not for or against this particular T. But I am definitely in favour of sticking with established supports when going through major relationship issues like you are atm.