"no-talk" Therapy?

[scout86]

There's no connection for me,

"Yet". There's no connection, yet.

That sounds pretty weird! I guess I don't get it either, so your experience was pretty different than theirs. What did they say when you told them how that was for you? Because it sounds like they were kind of out of touch with what was going on with their client and it seems like that should bother them, at least some.

The only thing I can think to add is that you REALLY don't come across as "screwed up" here. Some stuff is hard to pick up on online, but you seem like you have a fair amount of insight into your situation and like you're really applying yourself to working on things. You might be "screwed up" to some degree, but you sure don't seem to be hopelessly screwed up. It seems like you might be being a bit hard on yourself though.

 

[joeylittle]

They said they were mostly just watching the horses to understand and experience the moment or whatever, and holding space for me with whatever I was experiencing, and just waiting to be available if...whatever. I don't know. We talked a lot, but I don't get it. I'm so screwed up. My brain just doesn't work right at all. None of it makes sense to me, and I'm so tired of trying.

In all honesty, from the way you've described this: It's not you, it's them. I don't think your brain is screwed up. I think they were talking bullshit.

As a therapist you have to communicate with your client. That's thing #1. I just don't think this one is on you...

 

[Kailani]

Sometimes making a connection with an animal is safer than a human; maybe that could be a focus then if that is succeessful; humans. You seem to make great connections to others on this forum and you listen and respond well. I also think you may be being too hard on yourself.

 

[DogwoodTree]

"Yet". There's no connection, yet.

Kinda OT, but maybe you can help me understand something here. I can adjust my language to prevent cognitive distortions from "showing through." I actually have lots of practice in my family with monitoring every word that comes out of my mouth to make sure it conforms to the latest standards of "wellness", as defined by each of them (yes, I study each individual's standards for well-being, and adjust my language for each one so that I appear as healthy as possible).

But what if I don't actually believe what I've said that is relatively distortion-free?

I knew when I made the statement that "there's no connection for me ever" that it was absolutist thinking and, in order to not get "caught", I should throw in a qualifier of some sort. But that wasn't (and isn't) what I actually believe. So to clean up my language, so to speak, means that I'm actually misrepresenting my inner reality, and then I start thinking that the things I feel are wrong somehow, that I'm not allowed to feel this or feel that, because those are "distortions"...but really, it's actually "progress" for me to be able to state what I feel at all, even if it's *possibly* a distorted version of reality.

Is it better to accurately express what I actually feel? Or is it better to monitor and modify my language to make sure I never speak out any possible cognitive distortions?

And I say "possible", because honestly, I really do think I'm not capable of real, emotional connection like most people experience it. I do have emotions, but the gap between my inner world and the outer world is just so huge (from Asperger's) and so distorted (from C-PTSD), that I really don't think I'll ever truly experience connection in anything resembling a "normal" experience. It's kind of like a paraplegic coming to grips with the reality that they've never danced, and probably never will.

What did they say when you told them how that was for you? Because it sounds like they were kind of out of touch with what was going on with their client and it seems like that should bother them, at least some.

If it bothered them, I didn't catch it.

They listened to me. The equine T did a lot of mirroring back to me whatever I was saying, almost like a parrot (which is very irritating). I called her on it, and said that I recognized she was doing a lot of mirroring without answering the questions I asked at the beginning of the session (I had asked what they were trying to accomplish last week, and what their experience of the session had been like, so that I could get a reality check of sorts...see where I might be misinterpreting what happened).

It took quite a lot of discussion from me about my experience of it all before she was willing to address my questions at all. I told her I could read my own journaling if I just wanted to hear back whatever I was thinking, but what I really wanted to hear about was their perception of it all. But she still resisted for quite a while. It was really hard for me to stay engaged in the conversation when she had asked what I wanted to get out of this session today, but then wasn't willing to discuss my questions at all for several minutes (15-ish maybe?). And then as the session went on after she, well, sort of, answered my questions, she still spent a lot of time just mirroring back to me whatever I said. Sooo irritating.

(And this was very different than how my primary T usually responds to my questions. When I've asked him questions before, he's been very genuine and forthcoming and vulnerable about his experience of things or of me or whatever. He was there today, too, but he doesn't usually talk much while the equine T is leading the session, and I didn't feel comfortable asking him these questions specifically today, because I felt like it hadn't been his decision to handle the session that way anyway.)

The horse specialist was more open about her experience. But her experience was still very different than mine. She said she was mostly focused on being in the moment and watching the horses. She wanted to check in with me at one point (that half-way point question) just because she was curious, but when she didn't get a response from me, she dropped it. I explained to her that I had wanted to answer her question, but with her being behind me and so far away physically, I just couldn't make the connection at that point because I was too triggered.

So, I tried to explain some of the stuff in my past that created those triggers for me, and they listened, but I don't know if they "got it" at all. If they were concerned about missing what was going on with me, I didn't catch that information from their behavior or responses. Mostly, I felt like I was just completely out of touch with the whole point of the session last week, and still missing it this week. The equine T turned the conversation back to the horses...watching what they're doing...what does that mean. It was really hard to get into that conversation. It felt fabricated, like trying to see significance where there wasn't any. I feel like she and I are communicating in two completely different languages, and neither one of us understands the other at all.

The only thing I can think to add is that you REALLY don't come across as "screwed up" here.

Thank you. I've practiced on forums for many years...plus, it's easier when I can hide behind my computer. :bookworm: IRL, though, I behave very differently and hardly ever talk at all. :lurking:

 

[DogwoodTree]

I just don't think this one is on you...

It's hard to believe that when there's 3 of them and only 1 of me...and they're the professionals...and they seemed completely unphased by the differences in my experience vs. theirs. I end up questioning my whole experience of reality. Maybe my mom and the others really are normal...maybe I'm the crazy one...what if everything I remember about myself and my past is just as questionable as my experience of last week's session? What if nothing I experience of reality is accurate? What if I'm screwing up my kids just being around them? (yeah I know...catastrophizing, filtering, generalizing, polarization)

It was the same kind of thing last year when I went to my pastors for lay-counseling from them (before I gave up on them and started going to a professional). They were so surprised at the things that would bother me. And then they seemed to be trying to be really careful about things that didn't matter to me at all. Maybe it's just a lack of communication on my part, but I did an awful lot of emailing with them last year...and I tend to be very chatty in my emails, giving a lot of information. But still it didn't seem to make any real sense to them...they still never really seemed to understand me at all.

It's like I throw buckets and buckets of information into the abyss, but it gets swallowed up in that pit and never makes it to the outside.

Sometimes making a connection with an animal is safer than a human

I've never really connected well with animals, either. Wanted to, and I seem to read them pretty well, but connected? Not really. I can give them what they seem to want, but I never feel a true reciprocity there. And maybe I'm missing the point of "connection", I don't know.

 

[joeylittle]

It's hard to believe that when there's 3 of them and only 1 of me...and they're the professionals...and they seemed completely unphased by the differences in my experience vs. theirs. I end up questioning my whole experience of reality.

I understand. But being a professional doesn't make a person good at something, and being clueless and unfazed is a pretty good indicator of being bad at it...when you are a therapist. I think there were three of them in the moment, but I know at least 2 other people on this thread agree with me, so that makes it 3 to 3.

Quick thought on cognitive distortions and speaking them - the 'ideal' process is to be aware of the distortion you are about to use, and purposefully correct it in a way that is honest, even if you don't totally believe it - but there's a big difference between 'honest' and 'saying the right thing'.

Two tools that might help you:

Addressing feelings: When you feel like this -

Mostly, I felt like I was just completely out of touch with the whole point of the session last week,

, instead of thinking that the right answer is to alter 'just completely', try and identify the thought that connects to the feeling. If you felt completely, utterly, fully out of touch with the whole, whole point - that is valid, you don't need to undermine that. But what might you have been thinking that created that feeling, and what action got the ball rolling?

1. When I talked about how my past affects my triggers, they did not indicate that they understood me.
2. I thought, I must be speaking in a foreign language, or something.
3. And that thought led me to feel like I was just completely out of touch with the whole point of the session.

I'm not you - so I'm inventing what your thought might have been, before the feeling that you were totally missing the point of everything. But does this make sense?

Sometimes, it's not that the feeling is distorted, per se - it's that you need to identify the thought that got you there, so you can maybe have a different thought next time. In this case, a different thought might have simply been, 'I thought i was speaking in a foreign language - but I'm not a mind-reader (this is the actual cognitive distortion going on, BTW), so I asked them if they understood. And I thought that might be rude, so I felt nervous.'

Notice - in the first part, you just want to another action without having much of a feeling about it - in other words, you stayed neutral, and asked a question. It was the act of asking the question that created the next feeling.

Tool #2 is simple - temporalize
'I think I'm never going to make a connection'
becomes
'Right now, writing about this, i think I'm never going to make a connection.'
or
'I often think that I'm never going to make a connection'
or
''That conversation became more evidence for me that I'm never going to make a connection'

I'm sure you can think of others. So, the thought is still intact - all you are doing is purposefully placing it at a point in time (making it temporal), rather than allowing it to be a thought that is free floating constantly. You don't need to follow it with some optimistic nonsense you don't believe in, like 'but I believe I can over come my problem' - you don't have to believe that. You just need to place the thought in time - and if you think it a bunch of times in sequence, then that's what you did - 'I repeatedly thought that I am never going to make a connection.'

I guess it all boils down to - don't lie to yourself, but be specific about what you are thinking and feeling, and when.

(I think I have a similar problem to you, in that I know how to say it 'right', so I often do - but in those cases, I'm not actually saying it right, I'm minimizing my own experience, and that's not the point of cognitive work)

 

[DogwoodTree]

You don't need to follow it with some optimistic nonsense you don't believe in, like 'but I believe I can over come my problem' - you don't have to believe that.

So glad you said this. I hear stuff like that all the time from sooo many different people..."every problem isn't really a problem, because I believe it will go away once I start believing it doesn't exist." I did this for a looong time. Got to where I couldn't even put words to a problem I was experiencing for fear that I would strengthen it simply by acknowledging it existed.

I think there were three of them in the moment, but I know at least 2 other people on this thread agree with me, so that makes it 3 to 3.

As my mom would so quickly point out: but you guys weren't there, and if you only have my distorted version of the event to go on...

I try to remember events accurately and talk about them accurately when talking with people about whatever happened. But there's no way I'm completely unbiased, and I only have my perspective to go on. Anyway, I guess it really boils down to the question, Do I think it will be beneficial to keep working with the equine T, or is it a better use of my resources to look for other options? Whether she did anything wrong or not...the real question is whether I think it's a good plan to keep working with her. However, at the same time, I'm paranoid about giving up on a constructive thing too soon, just because it gets painful and difficult. I know this is gonna be tough and painful...that's fine so long as it's also productive.

If you felt completely, utterly, fully out of touch with the whole, whole point - that is valid, you don't need to undermine that. But what might you have been thinking that created that feeling, and what action got the ball rolling?

Well, I felt out of touch with the point of the session last week because there was no communication in either direction. I came in with the intent to be more teachable...more responsive to her guidance than I had been in the past, rather than fighting her on everything. And then she offered no guidance to follow. I told them that today, but the equine T asked if communication (i.e., talking) is required in order to be connected. And maybe that's the piece I missed last week, and typically miss in all attempts at connection (thus, my other thread asking about what it means to be with someone). Maybe it's not so much "exchange of services or information" as it is simply being present together.

I felt out of touch with the point of the session this week because every time I tried to approach the relationship with what I thought was expected of me or what I thought would express what I needed, I didn't get a helpful response. So I would try again, and still not understand what she was saying. She kept asking, "I wonder what..." type questions, and not giving guidance or meaty information. She's said that one of their goals is to help me get to know myself better so that I can bring that self into connection. But if I knew how to do that without help, I would've done it already.

So it seemed like...everything I tried, as a genuine expression of my desire to connect with her thoughts/experience and understand what she was trying to tell me...left me feeling like she was refusing to address my questions and just mirroring everything back to me with no real interaction. She pointed out that their expectations for me shouldn't be my focus...that I should figure out what I want. But what I wanted was to figure out from her what she knows that I don't that could help me get better.

I don't know...now I'm confusing myself. It's 3:30 am...I hope this post makes some kind of sense. :meh:

all you are doing is purposefully placing it at a point in time (making it temporal), rather than allowing it to be a thought that is free floating constantly.

"There's no connection for me ever" comes from...if I think back through my life, I can't think of a single example where I've been able to relax with a person and just be myself, even when I was little. I'm always guarded and monitoring myself and trying to read them and give them what they want. So...if over 41 years of living I can't think of a single exception, despite spending all of that time trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong and fix it... I guess it would be slightly more accurate to say, "There's never been an experience of connection for me on my side of it", and now I'm 4 decades along, and wondering if it might be too late for me to learn how to connect in a healthy way, even though I can train myself to relate in healthier ways, but I can't imagine what it would feel like to fully relax with someone and be present and not try to manipulate their impression of me and instead feel their acceptance of me and know what it's like to be treasured for my true self no matter how messed up that is and feel so safe with that person that I look forward to more time with them and their hug actually feels good and safe and there's no threat in them and the relationship is full of mutual freedom and respect... :notworthy: I've got too much junk inside of me for anyone else to be able to offer me that. And it's under too much pressure from being boxed in, for me to keep it inside and be "present" at the same time...and it's hidden under too many layers for me to be able to just pull it up and let it out when I don't already feel safe enough with someone.

I don't know what safety is, if it even exists. I'm slowly giving up on ever finding it.

Sorry if this sounds whiny. I'm too tired after working late to go through and clean it up. Off to bed...

 

[scout86]

But what if I don't actually believe what I've said that is relatively distortion-free?

I'm sort of having a hard time staying focused this AM and honestly kind of skimmed what you wrote. MY answer to your question there would be "Then don't say it." MY reason for throwing "yet" in is not that I'm SURE things will change or that I think a more absolute way of looking at things is necessarily inaccurate. It's just that I want to allow the possibility of change. In my experience, when I say that something will never change, sometimes I'M the one who closed the door on the possibility of change. By saying "yet", I don't look at it as a promise that change will happen, I look at it as allowing for the possibility. There are a fair number of people, including some I think of as friends, who take the whole "word game" approach to things as meaning that the way they are thinking is "wrong" now. I'm getting to where I kind of get that (but still see it differently myself). It seems like a valid point. I find, for myself, that being aware of my language is useful. I'm not so much interested in lying about how things look right now as I am in allowing for the possibility that they might look or be different at some other point.

I really do think I'm not capable of real, emotional connection like most people experience it.

I don't have Asperger's but my T says he thinks I have something called "Alexithymia". Similarish but different. When he first said that, and I looked it up, it prompted a "Great! ANOTHER way I', F'd up!" reaction on my part. (Up till then, I honestly hadn't thought about comparing and contrasting how people experience emotions.) His response to my response was "All this stuff is a continuum. Everyone falls somewhere on the curve, experiencing things more or less. You happen to be a little further out to one of the curve than "most" people. It's not a big deal." That's not a direct quote, but it's the idea. I try to not worry about how "other people" experience stuff. I try to be the version of "me" that works the best way possible, now.

What's your idea of "forming a connection" with a person or an animal or anything else?

On the therapy thing....... Your T sounds pretty good. The "equine therapy" people? Them I kind of have doubts about. Really. Not that they're doing any harm. I'm just not sure how much actual "good" they're doing. But then, we all have bad days and days when we're a bit off. Maybe that was one of theirs.

I don't know what safety is, if it even exists. I'm slowly giving up on ever finding it.

The first time my T asked "What does 'safe' mean to you?" I told him it was a fairy tale, told to children. (I may have expanded on that a little, at the time. LOL) We've talked about it some since then. (I think his "Plan A" involved me being able to imagine a "safe" place.) We've agreed that the world ISN'T a 100% safe place and gone on from there. Seems more realistic, to me. I told him I've decided I'm just learning stuff in the opposite order from most people. Most people, as small children, seem to think that ALL people are "safe" and have to learn not to trust. I think it's also possible to start out thinking NO people are "safe" and then learn that some of them actually are, at least some of the time.