Why Am I Triggered By Cbt?

[wyrd_dragon]

A query for practitioners or those who know trauma-focused CBT very well:

I am intensely triggered by CBT -- I am not entirely sure if it was trauma-focused CBT but it's been multiple times over multiple therapists spanning 1990's-2010

I have sorted out - or inferred - a few things from the reaction I get and the experiences of my childhood sexual abuse by an organised pedophile ring who practiced simulated ritual abuse during the 1980's.

More than one member was a psychologist or psychiatrist and I am certain that many of my memories of abuse include deliberate efforts to condition and brainwash me.

The methods included: use of some kind of drug that induces what I believe to be a suggestive state.

Use of lighting (red light, darkness, white light) while drugged, repetitive phrases and focused talking 'to' me - either a group chanting repeated phrases, or one person focused on me and talking to me about who I was, what actions were 'good' or 'bad - Urgh. Hard to explain. Saying things that affected how I thought about myself and the world, that influenced how I behaved and believed. That's the general sense.

Use of another drug that induced a state where I could not move but was aware, and the previously mentioned drug, and then 'faking' surgeries or other frightening experiences, while utilising torture (cutting, burning) to convince me they were harming me more than they were. More talking about actions/consequences.

Involving me in life/death decisions and the abuse of others 'do what we say and they live, do what we say or we hurt them more'.

Random contamination of food, random punishments/rewards, punishments (rape) for 'homework' and rewards (rape) for same. Same for household tasks etc.

Random abduction.drugging from home at night.

Faked 'burglary' attempt with rape

Disrupting sleep, confinement. I think that's all that applies maybe, other than the repeated rapes and verbal/emotional abuse that is probably unrelated to this issue.

How might these methods give me an aversion to/trigger for CBT like techniques?

 

[wyrd_dragon]

Just a note that this is not all my reasoning and memory behind the conditioning/brainwashing opinion, just a brief overview of what i think might be relevant.

 

[wyrd_dragon]

Urgh I'm sorry - I forgot to include my reaction to 'CBT' - nausea, panic attacks, flashbacks, a feeling that I'm 'unravelling' or 'coming apart' and severe feelings of instability.

 

[shimmerz]

It sounds like you suffered through ritualistic programming and torture, that they were completely in your head. Does that sound right?

I could see how any type of therapy that was attempting to get into your cognitive processes in a deliberate way could well be seen as a violation, given your past .

Can you do your own re-programming? This is how I have dealt with most of my issues - I figure out an overlay and apply it. Anyone who tries to mess with core me, I freak out on. It feels like rape somehow. Like I have been violated. I have trained my therapists that they can give me ideas, but only I can decide how to apply any 'fixes' to cognitive stuff.

 

[Lady of Longbourn]

Maybe you just don't want to open yourself up to talking about those events as CBT is 'talk therapy'. Maybe that is what is triggering you; talking about your trauma.

 

[wyrd_dragon]

anyone who tries to mess with core me, I freak out on. It feels like rape somehow. Like I have been violated. I have trained my therapists that they can give me ideas, but only I can decide how to apply any 'fixes' to cognitive stuff.

Yup, that's exactly how it feels! I've been with my T for 6 years and she's figured out how to apply therapeutic principals of all kinds without triggering me by directly using techniques that challenge 'core' me. Or at least my 'carefully built around trauma to survive' me. I'm slowly chipping away at it, but any effort to force a way in feels like a violation.

And you're right - they were completely in my head. they deliberately 'built' me how they wanted. It's been rough to unwrap.

 

[wyrd_dragon]

Maybe you just don't want to open yourself up to talking about those events. Maybe that is what is triggering you.

I can see how that might be the case. I've considered it in the past - but I have done soooo much talk therapy and the most-quoted comment when I'm talking to people about it is 'how do you talk about this so calmly?'.

I feel okay about talking about it, especially in a general sense. But i know that there's a lot of work yet to do on the worst and earliest of it, and it's something I'm trying to directly confront in therapy.

 

[Justmehere]

I tend to be calm when I talk about my trauma. When I talk about how it makes me feel or what I notice in my body when talking about it... oh boy. That is a whole other thing.

CBT triiggered me at first. Oh my gosh, I hated CBT at first. During my childhood trauma my thoughts were challenged. Constantly. What I thought was always wrong. CBT is also about challenging thoughts. At first it felt like a threat to my very existence to do CBT. I didn't think it was a threat, but it felt like I threat, my response to CBT was a full fight or flight response. I found a therapist who did CBT with a lot of trauma survivors who had undergone programming one way or another. That therapist understood and helped me understand that any challenges to my own thinking needed to come from me, not anyone else. My choice and control over my thoughts had been so screwed up, he didn't want to be another person to tell me my thoughts were wrong and dint see that as a path towards healing.

CBT still triggers me, but in a way that is actually more theraputic and not so frightening. It's like a healthy challenge. It doesn't feel scary anynore but like a tool, a difficult one, but a good one.

That therapist also explained to me that thinking patterns developed during trauma are really hard to let go of because we believed them in order to survive. We are trauma bonded to those thoughts. Letting go of them can feel like we are letting go of the means to survival. Just like when we are trauma bonded to a person.

Your reaction to CBT, which is essentially a means to to challenge and change thinking patterns, is very much akin to a fight or flight response and makes sense in light of the trauma you have endured.

Those are my thoughts anyhow. ;)

 

[Ronin]

I was thinking something along the lines of what others said - anticipating punishment basically, seeing it as one of those no win situations which of course provoke panic given your history, wanting to meet expectations that just aren't clear (as in, fitting with your experience) and get it 'right' (and confusion jumps in... wait, no hijacks in the middle of the night, just strangers on the net talking?) and old fears rehashed. It's not even CBT that's the scare. It's that there's a flashlight and shadows needa move. It's making sense it's blinding for a while.

You're disrupting a pattern (don't remember, don't process, don't share, don't contextualize, don't.... yadda yadda, whole line of don'ts) and you're doing it with a topic that's close to home (CBT/similar therapies mentions). It's not about that topic. It's about you acting against something you were taught not to, for your own good. Of course you're in bit of a 'hey, stop, keep safe' roll.

 

[sun seeker]

It's brave of you to write about this stuff. It can't have been easy. There are therapists who know how to work with this, but they are few and far between. Congratulations on making it this far! It sounds like you have done tons of work sorting this out and finding your own truth.

It's a topic I am familiar with, but uncomfortable being too open about on the forum. Feel free to PM me. I'll just make one suggestion in case it helps you or someone else in a similar situation. If you haven't read either of Cathy O'Brien's books, I recommend you do. She escaped from similar abuse and found a very particular way of undoing the programming. The first is Trance Formation of America. Warning: I found this book very hard to read, and the things you are describing did not happen to me. If you have similar issues it might be too triggering. The other, which has more about her healing process and less about the abuse itself, is called Access Denied: For Reasons of National Security.

 

[ghotiff]

I am not familiar with CBT, but it scares me and just last week I told my T that I think it would be a really bad fit for me.

Part of it is that the only thing I got to keep during my abuse was what was in my head. Sure, they tried (and succeeded) to mess with it..but it's the part of me I got to keep the most of (or at least I feel I did).

Another part is that the person who tried to apply CBT doesn't know "me". I don't really know "me". You can't safely change me without really knowing me first. Maybe that I'm too close (or fearful of) my world unravelling...I'm hanging on by a thread, please don't pull on it.

What I find effective is to read about therapy modalities in textbooks for therapists. I find these books the least threatening/triggering and they introduce me to the techniques without trying to convince me to change and importantly they explain some if the why and how, of how it works.

I hope that helps.

 

[joeylittle]

I'm slowly chipping away at it, but any effort to force a way in feels like a violation.

I identify with this. I was tortured, though not nearly for the length of time you were, and I was older. Still, the event locked in what was an already developed belief that I was bad, disposable. Coming up on 2 years into trauma therapy and it doesn't make me panic every time we come up against an old belief. But I get it, I do.

I can see how that might be the case. I've considered it in the past - but I have done soooo much talk therapy and the most-quoted comment when I'm talking to people about it is 'how do you talk about this so calmly?'.

I think @Ayesha is on to something, in this sense: with CBT, if you are at all reflective by nature (like, you think about how your mind works quite often) it does not take more than a little bit of the kind of re-framing you get in CBT in order to see that everything you thought about yourself is not logically true. That was the concept I rejected, at first. I'm a "good student" type, I like to learn things properly, and it was not long before I understood that my concept of identity (sad and broken as it was) would collapse like a house of cards the moment I challenged it. When I realized that, I parceled CBT over to the side so that I would only apply it to my depression - basically, anything but trauma.

So even though you are practiced at maintaining an emotional remove when you talk about these events, remember that there is the actual, experiential "you" underneath that coping mechanism. And if that vulnerable you sees that there is a threat to your coping - I understand why you'd have a visceral fear response.

Because also, in CBT, the client does all the work. The therapist teaches you relaxation and grounding, and then pretty much just gives you prompts - like "what feelings come up when you have that thought?". Soft prompts. It's not at all like conditioning.

Which also makes me wonder who actually introduced you to CBT and what they did wrong. I'm not saying you'd love it, far from it, I just think they might have said they were doing CBT but I think they were wrong. Maybe it was their interpretation of CBT, that happens a lot.

'faking' surgeries or other frightening experiences, while utilising torture...Involving me in life/death decisions and the abuse of others 'do what we say and they live, do what we say or we hurt them more'.

I went through some stuff like this also. I do know that even now, it takes me less than 10 seconds to go from being asked a question in therapy to sobbing and repeating over and over, "I don't know, I don't know". The only pre-requisites are: I need to be in the middle of working on the trauma, and the question needs to be either/or, yes/no, or pick one.

If you haven't really learned how to and agreed to separate your thoughts from your feelings from your actions (CBT 101) even when it's uncomfortable, and to slow down enough to be able to really look at them - then it's a mess, in my opinion. Stabilization is the first phase of pretty much every trauma therapy. So, for whatever reason, things that point straight at breaking down your old core beliefs progressively, in a thoughtful, phase-oriented way, connects to all your memories of not knowing how to do what they wanted, wanting to do what they wanted, knowing it was wrong, and pain no matter what.

Whenever I read about someone being really disturbed by CBT, I think to myself, "I bet that when they went to therapy, they were very symptomatic already and the therapist went too quickly through stabilization and principles.". This is also why it's very common to combine CBT with EMDR, because EMDR is a little more emotionally neutral (believe it or not) than just CBT alone. And it's why MDMA is so promising, and why things like TFT and EFT and Somatic Experiencing come along - everyone is working to find a trauma therapy process that is the least agitating/re-traumatizing for the patient.

Because of your conditioning triggers (alternation), it would never be advised for you to do EMDR. (I'm kind of the same). I do EFT with a really talented therapist and it works for me. It sounds like what you are doing with your therapist works for you. And perhaps when you've really gotten through the layers and are cleaning out the cobwebs, some principles of CBT might be useful (though personally, I way way way prefer DBT. For me, it's more practical. It's basically all my tools for managing my thoughts and emotions so I don't flood).

thinking patterns developed during trauma are really hard to let go of because we believed them in order to survive. We are trauma bonded to those thoughts. Letting go of them can feel like we are letting go of the means to survival. Just like when we are trauma bonded to a person. Your reaction to CBT, which is essentially a means to to challenge and change thinking patterns, is very much akin to a fight or flight response and makes sense in light of the trauma you have endured.

So basically, what @Justmehere said, but with way more words. :facepalm:;)