Workbooks, Yea Or Nay?

[KwanYingirl]

I have three workbooks; a The courage to Heal Woorkbook, The Dialectic Behavior Therapy Woorkbook, and The PTSD Workbook. I really have tried to embrace the process, but I get so triggered, I close the book for another 3-6 months.

This leaves me feeling like I'm not cooperative or as a failure. So many people can write in these books. Not me. I hate them.

I'm interested in hearing other peoples experience with these woorkbooks. Are they really worth the agony I experience while trying to write in them.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Are you in therapy right now and working through them with a therapist? If not, is this an option? My dad bought me the courage to heal workbooks, but my PTSD is so incredibly beyond just sexual abuse that I didn't find them to be all that helpful.

The DBT workbook was good up until page 100 (yeah, it was on page 100 exactly in my version) where they did an about face and told you to go directly against a skill that they had previously pounded into your head on the preceding 99 pages. I lost faith in the book at that point, as I require consistency and this was a major editing boo boo. I have the PTSD workbook, but other than a few pages that were copied for me in group therapy, I never used it.

I personally like the CBT for Dummies book & workbook. Then again, I love CBT as it has helped me more than anything else.

I think that workbooks *can* work for some, and it depends on the exact workbook that you are using, as well as what are your prominent symptoms that you want to work on. It isn't easy work, as it isn't meant to be, but if it is SO overwhelming to you, I think you should work on grounding skills, self-soothing skills, etc, so that you are able to work through such books.

 

[KwanYingirl]

I have had them for several years. Just recently I wanted to bring the PTSD book to therapy and write in it with help from my therapist. He also suggested I get more skills around grounding and self soothing before trying them again.

 

[JEKBreatheandBelieve]

I have "Overcoming Trauma and PTSD". I was really hopeful when I got it because it is full of exercises to gain skills for grounding and calming. For me, I can't do it because I am struggling with some issues regarding right and wrong. I want to gain skills, but doing that means I have to admit that my current thinking is "wrong" and being "wrong" is not okay in my world because of events in my childhood.

 

[Leah123]

I have three workbooks; a The courage to Heal Woorkbook, The Dialectic Behavior Therapy Woorkbook, and The PTSD Workbook...

I'm interested in hearing other peoples experience with these woorkbooks. Are they really worth the agony I experience while trying to write in them.

They've been blessing and bane for me. Courage to Heal: not for me. Too unprofessional. The DBT workbook was great for me, but I do bit and pieces, and some with my therapist, some on my own, not in a forced march fashion.

I do find it most helpful to work with someone I trust on my issues. Doing the workbooks alone or in conjunction with support groups just didn't work for me. Too intense at turns, too lonely at others.

 

[KwanYingirl]

Yes, my feeling, too. In the PTSD workbook, I found myself just reading the section about complex PTSD over and over and not attending to the beginning safety exercises. I'd like to apologize for spelling workbook wrong .

At any rate. My T and I have decided that they're just not the right tool for me. I do much better being taught and guided one on one by my trauma T.

I make gains and then slide backward. We're revisiting safe place. @Leah123 I also struggle with 'wrong' thinking. I tend to be very rigid in this are. I must be 'right' or I fear I will ode my molecular stability.