Cannot Talk About My Trauma In Therapy

[Marcie]

I had my fourth session with a psychotherapist yesterday and I just shut down. The first few have b...

Brokensoul -

Don't give up on yourself. You will talk when you are ready. I am a huge advocate of counseling, but sometimes you have to go through a couple different counselors until you find the right one for you. I am a survivor of rape and I have yet to really get down to the nuts and bolts of what happened, but in other ways I am getting passed it. It has been over 20 years since it happened to me and talking about it now is still very difficult. I finally started counseling about my experiences with assault but my counselor never asks specific questions. My suggestion would be to reach out to another counselor or express your concerns with your current counselor and see if he/she will try a different route.

As for your new house, congratulations! Decorate it...nothing is for waste if it makes you feel better. Your happiness is key to your success. Don't lose hope in a better day.

 

[Brokensoul88]

Suzetig what I want from this is to not be always thinking about what might happen next. Not jumping at the slightest sounds, not feeling crippled when someone is standing too close in the checkout queue, not living two lives. One life faking the happiness (only two friends know) in front of friends & family pretending I'm ok so that they don't ask questions, and the other me wallowing, living in fear, feeling completely desperate on my own. I know it'll never be gone & my outlook of the world has changed but I would like to find somewhere where I am....ok with how my life has gone so far & doesn't have to play happy joyful whilst really I'm dipping my toes in the fires of hell.

Stickler thanks for the link, I've always given up on grounding, I think I've just never tried hard enough, I think once I start to wallow I don't have the wish to be pulled out of it and sometimes it consumes me to a frightening level.

I will maybe just wrote some points to better structure sessions, talking about anything is better than the silence & panic that comes from that

 

[BloomInWinter]

Breaching the trauma in therapy before adequate grounding skills have been acquired and practiced can actually counter-productive.

Establishment of safety is job one. If our actual life outside of the therapy room is not safe, or lack supportive people and resources, opening up trauma can actually be dangerous.

Before I was even ready to begin truly processing my traumas, I spent a long time learning self-regulation skills in many different situations. I had to learn how to ground myself out of vigilance and dissociation. Once I was able to do that outside of therapy, and learned assertiveness skills to be able to keep myself safe from invalidating or abusive people, I was finally able to approach the traumas.

I still have a long way to go but I don't regret it taking me a long time to set down my defenses. My true self was hidden from me behind them all. First I had to be helped out of my self-defeating behaviors. I had a conditioned fear of sleep that it took a long time to get over. But traumatized brains need sleep, and healing is not possible without it. Now I actually like and look forward to sleep. I actually wake up some times fully rested.

I needed to also learn how to escape conversations that were triggering or invalidating or frightening for me. That took some Dialectical-Behavioral Therapy (DBT) skills. Now I can finally walk away from any conversation where I feel disrespected and not feel guilty, instead of feeling trapped and victimized.

I needed to find some safe, validating friends I could just talk with in the evenings or weekends when I needed to. Also, develop routines to fall back on when my brain is being pulled back in time.

Slow and steady wins the race. I remember being so frustrated at how long it was taking. There is no easy, fast cure that works in the long run. Self-care is really important. Go easy on yourself. You're doing a lot better than you seem to be giving yourself credit for.

 

[Gadgie]

When I found it difficult to talk to the T when I first started going to see her, I used to write my thoughts and questions down, and bring it with me, as I found that easier to do.

I've always found it easier to write rather than talk, I used to enjoy writing, I even used to write short stories about some of the past events of my life, for a well known web sites news paper.

But I haven't managed to write anything for some time now, as there has been so much negative stuff happening in my life over the last few months, I don't think I ever will now, the heart has been knocked out of me.

 

[Suzetig]

@Brokensoul88 all of that seems reasonable for 20 sessions - being able to talk through what makes you hyper vigilant and how to ground yourself, how to find authenticity despite trauma and how to put the brakes on when you're triggered are all things your therapist can work on without needing to know the details if you're not ready to share. Take it easy on yourself, you sound like you're doing well.

 

[Deleted member 29920]

I can relate to the difficulty saying it and think all the above advice is great, I can also relate to crying about adverts, seeing people acting like they're a happy family really upsets me and anything to do with babies makes me sick. I hope you can heal fully at the pace that's right for you, :hug:

 

[Brokensoul88]

I had a Nephew born last week, the day before I got the house and I haven't met him yet. I have been busy with the house but at the end of the day I could make time & I haven't tried that hard to go and see him. I couldn't even bring that up at the session because I feel ashamed. The thought of seeing my sisters joy knowing that she has the life I wanted hurts. There have been tensions between us because of her choice of partner (he's not nice) and because of the way she has treated me in the past but I want to be able to put that behind because family was everything to me....Now I see my brother & sister with partners & kids and I am jealous, I don't want to be that person. I'm crying writing this. I keep on the move all the time because if I stop there is always something there to get me upset. My point is to get out of the other side to enjoy the kids I need to process what happened to me, it's like trying to climb that huge wall you see on assault courses, and I'm short anyway! I as any epiphany the week before in therapy. I was ranting about how I don't understand people who don't want to associate with certain people ie different colour skin, different religion, beliefs and how people like that are missing out on meeting amazing people and I sat there and thought I am such a hypocrite! I am doing exactly that, tarring all men with the same brush. And she smiled at me working that out myself, it sort of set me up for a fall the next week because it was productive and then bam!! this week "Can you tell me what you mean when you say you don't understand how you reacted when you were attacked?" Total lock down.

Marcie, thanks for the encouragement & thank you everyone for your comments

 

[Stickler]

...Hmm...
Trigger versus prejudice...What happens when they overlap?

Fortunately, few men rape. Unfortunately, the ones that do usually rack up victims.
https://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-predators/

How can you tell them apart? You approach with caution. You see how they react when you say no-arguing with you is not a good sign. You see whether they treat others respectfully. You look for signs of dishonesty or aggressiveness.

Edited to add:

How you reacted when you were attacked...is somewhat involuntary. The autonomic nervous system flips into an adrenaline dump-in which case you fight frantically or flee at high speed.

But if you get a noradrenal flood...you get the freeze or fawn reaction...you go away entirely, or you co-operate in a daze.
The conscious mind is not doing the switch-flipping. It's too fast for that. It's more automatic than you carefully considering the correct response. It's meant to keep you from getting eaten by lions and such, evolutionarily speaking.
So however you reacted is something that happened.
Please to not blame yourself for it, if you are.
It's your animal response at work.

 

[Anarchy]

Hi broken soul,
Sorry that you are experiencing such pain.

I remember you posting when I first joined here.

There is a very good neurological reason why you could not speak.

When people are triggered, the largest deficit in functioning is the Broca's region on the left side of the brain.

It controls the word content of speach, and it just shuts down. Bessel van der Kolk, has published fMRI scans of volunteers experiencing flashbacks which show this.

Hope this helps.
@

 

[Brokensoul88]

Anarchy, thanks for that, it makes sense, on the one hand it was like I opened my mouth to speak and my brain just decided it was a bad idea. But I look at it now and think perhaps it was good that this happened because even when I gave a transcript to my old support worker it wasn't a relief. It was more like this massive secret I should feel empowered about sharing instead felt like it had lost meaning and perhaps context within my life and the significance of me in this world was nothing.

 

[roaringrachel]

I had my fourth session with a psychotherapist yesterday and I just shut down. The first few have b...

Don't pressure yourself. 4 weeks is very little time.

Are you seeing someone who specializes in trauma? Most would know that the tough stuff may take a while to be able to get it.

 

[Chava]

I don't think I even looked at my therapist for months. It takes time. I do body psychotherapy for trauma, so there isn't the pressure to talk, which has been life-saving for me. But when it's hard to talk are you able to even just describe that, like "I can't talk," or "I can't talk about that" or describe what you are feeling or what is going on internally? For me, it helps to just stay present and make some kind of contact. It talk therapy I used to zone out and stare at the floor. My current therapist is good about asking easy questions, like just about what I'm noticing in my body or anything. Keeping grounded. We do talk too, but I don't have to talk about details. It's more focused on regulation.

Feeling safe is #1, so it's good if you sense your therapist is patient. Don't push yourself. Silence is okay too...for me it helps me to feel that I'm still safe and my therapist is still there, and i'm still there...a lot of safe feelings can happen even in the silence if you can remove some pressure to talk.