Ptsd Therapy - One Page, As Simple As It Gets

[anthony]

you state that medication is a necessity before you do self-work.

That's not what the document says.

Point one states:

All substance use must be within acceptable ranges of use before trauma therapy begins. (Alcohol: 2 standard drinks daily, 2 days alcohol free per week : No illegal drug usage : Prescription medication only as prescribed : ensure 6 – 12 weeks duration prior to commencing.)

Point five states:

Stable medication suggested during trauma therapy to regulate symptom severity. 6 – 12 weeks prior.

Stable means just that, stable. Don't go changing meds or start taking some new med whilst doing trauma therapy. In other words, if you have to change something with medication during trauma therapy, STOP trauma therapy until medications are once again stable within your system and working for you... revert back to 6 - 12 weeks prior to commencing / recommencing.

Suggested means just that... It is suggested you have something to help you. What that is, is completely up to you, but it is suggested. Your personal circumstances are something you have to work out for yourself with medication. There is no one size fits all with medication.

If you don't want medication, or it doesn't agree with you, then no doubt you have other coping mechanisms. Just make sure there healthy ones, not unhealthy ones.

 

[Powder]

I would say that this is in line with therapy and the natural way out of emotional flooding. I had to think my way out, but not turn off either. So I would agree.

So far, I can't do all of this process, I think, because I was so young and can't remember the trauma, except for one memory, and it was not the trauma, but it was peritraumatic and "the last straw." In fact, I don't know, but I think my standing up to my abuser, questioning him, led him to stop abusing me. Who knows? I was like five at the time.

I have had auditory flashbacks once, so all I got is fragments of the trauma, but enough to know it happened.

This is where I can't find a way to progress on so little, other than the emotional processing, labeling, and thinking ("I'm an adult now; I'm here now; I'm safe now"). My T says my trauma was experienced when I was pre-verbal, so I can't recall it well. It's all emotions and body memories, that's all. I could examine my recurring nightmare or my childhood dreams that dealt with the trauma, but I don't have memory of the trauma itself.

Sometimes I'm suddenly in a panic attack and feeling like I'm five and frightened and in my old house. I look at my current house, but it doesn't look real. The feeling of powerlessness and fear is more real than my house, which is like a dream I want to be real, but I can't make it real. Then, I think and find my way out somehow. Thinking brings me back to the present. I believe the trigger is/was my toddler crying, but it's not clear. When she screams and cries I get headaches, nausea, and feel like I can't breathe. I guess her tantrums are triggering, but I have not learned why.

 

[silver_turquoise]

Ok, thanks for the explanation. I have difficulty processing verbal information so I really appreciate the clarification, and now rereading it makes much more sense to me. Also nice to get some validation from someone who's very knowledgeable about it. :)

 

[Nicolas Connault]

Sorry to intrude upon this great discussion, but are some of you familiar with Ann Hackman's work on imagery for trauma? I attended one of her workshops earlier this year, and the concepts she discussed seemed to make a lot of sense, and are apparently backed up by encouraging early research results.

One of the ideas is that instead of revisiting trauma through words and emotions, you do it through mental imagery. You can try imagining you are in a time machine, and you are observing what happened from this detached point of view, describing it verbally to someone else who guides you by asking simple questions about what you see. Another thing you can do just when you get to the "crisis"point is to ask what you would like to be different, or what would you like to happen at this point, then try to bring up the images of this happening in your mind. Often people will say: "I'd like someone to be there and hold me, tell me that they'll look after me".

There are quite a few ideas like that I found interesting, but having never tried them I thought I'd let you comment on your reactions.

 

[anthony]

I have done some work with mental imagery with Dr Robert Roerich, and found its extremely powerful. Unfortunately, the amount of sheer data involved is extremely overwhelming. He taught me maybe 5 - 10% of understanding his work to do some basic work here with people... from what got used, it worked extremely well to get past the web of deceipt, secrets and lies involved with trauma in our brains, our lives, our ability uniquely on whether we're honest with ourselves or others, and quickly painted a full picture of trauma and problem areas, helping the person themselves shift past denial and into action much faster.

In some cases I have seen it bring completely hidden / forgotten memories forward by a person after weeks / month/s of thinking about things, to understand their own trauma much clearer, thus they provided their own resolution.

 

[Nicolas Connault]

There's another use, if direct imagery is too confronting: metaphorical imagery. The idea is to let the person grab hold of a random image that forms in their mind, and describe it in increasing details to the person who is listening and asking questions. The person who is asking questions is careful not to take control of the imagery, so there are no questions like "Do you this could mean [such and such]?", but more like "What do you think this could mean?" and "What else do you see around this?".

I actually tried it with a fellow student, I was the one doing the imagery, and it brought up some very interesting points about my own childhood, even though it was mostly trauma-free. I never though that a lemon tree could represent my family :-)

 

[maddog]

I believe I have done a little of this mental imagery exercise as part of an exposure session regarding a particular childhood trauma event. My T asked me, at the point at which I had recounted my mother's reaction to the particular event, to create a dialogue/series of actions to outline how I would like her to have behaved/reacted instead, the way a so-called "normal" mother would have reacted under such circumstances.

I have to say that for reasons that completely blew me away at the time, I found this exercise to be both overwhelmingly distressing (without doubt the most unrecoverably inconsolably distressed and subsequently dissociated I had ever become at the time) and yet ultimately intensely validating. When i was able to recover sufficiently to discuss and explore both the real and imagined role/response of my mother with my T over the course of the next couple of sessions, I found there to be enormous release, clarity and a whole new level of ability to contact and communicate some very complex emotions that had previously been completely out of reach.

The exercise scared me deeply, yet mesmorised me for its effectiveness, and we are slowly working our way towards recreating this and similar exercises in relation to other trauma events... hopefully with a slightly less destructive impact on me this time... maybe, or maybe not.

All that to say that I understand the concept of mental imagery and can imagine that metaphoric imagery could play a similarly effective and perhaps less directly impactful role in integrating trauma events.

Very interesting discussion.

And thanks for your contribution to the forum Nicolas - I personally think it's a shame that more professionals aren't able to shelve their self interest for long enough to really meaningfully participate on this forum, as I believe that we all have much to learn from each other and the addition of the "right" professionals could add a lot of value and alternate perspective to many discussion threads here.

Maddog

 

[Nicolas Connault]

Thanks maddog for sharing that. It seems that healing always comes after some reopening of old scars and cleansing of the underlying infection! How painful that must have been...

 

[StandHopeful]

I would really like to read this... but the link doesn't appear to be working?

 

[angel2write]

I would really like to read this... but the link doesn't appear to be working?

I just clicked on it and the link worked for me. It downloads onto Adobe Acrobat on my computer. Do you have access to Adobe?

 

[anthony]

I would really like to read this... but the link doesn't appear to be working?

Double checked here to... clicked the PDF document link and it worked just fine on my mac.

 

[StandHopeful]

Thanks.. finally got it. Clicking on it just opened a blank link... but right clicking and saving it to my desktop worked. Great tips... can't wait to share with my husband.