Does Going To Therapy Every Week Make Me Believe I Need To Go To Therapy Every Week?!

[Sideways]

Sounds like some time out may have been really good for you;)

Just so's you know, it's really encouraging to have a thread like this and watch someone change their headspace from "No more therapy" to "I'm going to make some changes that work for me". Keeps people like me inspired to keep trying. So thanks for sharing your thought process here:)

 

[barefoot]

Ah, @FridayJones - your post rattled me a little...so it's good for me to dig around in that a bit to get to the bottom of why that was the case... ;-)

It sounds like you've fallen into the trap somewhere along the line of thinking therapy is supposed to feel good

Actually, no, I don't think it's supposed to feel good. It's bloody hard work and massively uncomfortable and I'm the first to say that to anyone else here who touches on this kind of thing and that it's likely to all feel worse before it feels better when you're dealing with trauma.

Bringing her the stuff that feels good to bask in

There's not a whole lot of basking in good feelings going on in my therapy sessions. I'm not sure if that's what you meant or not, so apologies if I'm misunderstanding your meaning...I actually spend quite a lot of time drowning in shame in my sessions. And that certainly doesn't feel good!

Do try doing it yourself, instead of bringing it to her

I get your point. But I think I do this - I work pretty hard outside of therapy sessions and generally do a pretty good job at working through a lot of stuff on my own.

friendship

We get on well but I don't think of my therapist as a friend. I want the boundaries we have in place.

manageable problems / momentary irritations

I guess the sorts of things I mean are things like getting triggered. So I will tell her when I see her if I've been triggered by anything since I last saw her. And we'll talk about what happened, what I did, what worked, what didn't etc. So, yes, I think there's probably more I need to do around identifying and managing my triggers.

The other list - the bigger problems e.g. intimacy, feeling needy - we are working on together but as these are the more challenging things, this is where I'm more likely to dissociate.

I do appreciate your thoughts and they have given me some ideas to chew over. I think it was actually your language that caused my initial rattle ;-) The implication (and I don't know if this was actually what you meant) that I expected/wanted therapy to be easy and that I was having some "basking" experience every week with my best buddy, my therapist. That isn't how it is. My reason for posting wasn't "boo hoo, poor me, therapy is hard and I don't wanna do it". It was more "actually, I feel ok at the moment and is this a sign that I could go without instead of keeping on with a habit where I keep getting in my own way." But then I know I went off on about a hundred tangents and then probably derailed my own thread by just spewing a load of wobbles about all sorts of stuff! ;-)

 

[barefoot]

it's really encouraging to have a thread like this and watch someone change their headspace from "No more therapy" to "I'm going to make some changes that work for me".

Ha! Well..in my OP I think I said I wasn't seriously thinking of quitting...it was more of a mulling over where I was at with it. But thanks for your kind words :-)

 

[barefoot]

I forgot these bits!

Are you *actually* less isolated and more normal, or do you just feel that way?

being confidant enough not to need external approval

If you still need someone else to tell you ABC? (Or if they don't understand/ validate/ & accept, or disagree, it crushes you or throws you into confusion?

I was really meaning in terms of talking about the trauma because I haven't talked to anyone else about it. So, yes, the fact that I've told her what happened makes me feel less isolated in terms of isolated with my thoughts/experience, if that makes sense? Not in terms of socially isolated. Just someone I feel safe sharing some of it with...to a point...until I dissociate ;-)

So it's not about wanting external approval or needing someone to agree with me on something or else I'm crushed. It's more than I'm trying to make sense of what happened and left to my own devices of it all just whirling around in my head I just end up chasing my tail and going to places of minimisation and denial. So it's helpful to me at the moment that she calls me out on that stuff. I think it's about what @sun seeker said about that pivotal moment of making a decision about the trauma (I'm still needing to revisit that post another time!) - I'm not at that point yet, so without my therapist's input on the subject just now, I would likely be convincing myself all the time that I've made it up. Whereas I try to see now that there are different options. I just haven't managed to choose one to fully believe yet...

 

[JEKBreatheandBelieve]

Maybe we need to go back to the drawing board and find some new things to practise. I just find it so frustrating!

I completely understand the frustration! My therapist if pretty good at catching my dissociation now, but getting me out of it is still hard. I, like you, will often say I am fine when I know I am not or have not really realized that I am not. It is very frustrating. I have been working a lot on stabilization skills and have generally been sticking with ways to cope in the present- like you mentioned in one of your comments realizing how the present issue is connected to the past. I have been doing a lot of separating out the past from the present. It is a hard road and it is really hard when the moment things get scary you dissociate. I will definitely validate that for you!

 

[Friday]

I'm sick as a dog right now, so it's entirely possible I misread. <rueful> Hell, it's entirely possible I misread stuff even when not sick! :p I think, though, that I just explained myself badly.

Because I was all like, Hell yeah, Barefoot! Right on! You're doing awesome! (Meaning the complete arc, not just handling things while at is away). So awesome you've got 2 really distinct lists!!! So exciting!!! I love where this is going! <insert really excited dance>

Cough...aaaaand it seems not to have come across that way.

So rather than try to re-explain and possibly just confuse things further? I'll touch base back wih ya / in a day or three when my head isn't quite so stuffed with fluff.

 

[Sandstone]

@barefoot your experience seems so similar to mine that I haven't been replying for fear I'd only be writing to myself. I recognise the questions you are asking yourself, the difficulty in knowing when dissociation is getting a grip and the frustration at not safely being able move into talking about the roots of it all.

I'm interested in the day to day issues you don't take to therapy.

I suspect though that, by the time I see her in 10 days, the current thing that's bothering me and that I want to talk about, will probably not matter any more....I'll probably be over it and won't need to bring it up.

I've become aware that often those things aren't actually resolved, they are just dissociated and I don't have access to them or their background. Is there any mileage in collating them?

I just feel like we're waiting for me to magically be able to do the work and that clearly isn't going to happen - I'm not going to just wake up one morning feeling ready and able to dive into the trauma work and know that my head will stay in the room.

That is so familiar. Maybe it is a sign that you need to circle back to the beginning again and build a new set of grounding and coping techniques. As well as that , I think I need to find myself some cues that say I need to use the techniques I have NOW

 

[barefoot]

Thanks @FridayJones
Yeah...I didn't really get that you were telling me I was awesome ;-) But I've just re-read it and I think I can now more see what you were saying.
Hope you're feeling much better soon!

 

[barefoot]

@JEKBreatheandBelieve and @Sandstone - thanks both for your words of support. It does actually help to know that others are sharing similar frustrations - though, of course, I wish none of us were struggling with this stuff!

@Sandstone - the day to day issues I don't take to therapy...? I guess they're mainly times when I've got mildly triggered or when my anxiety has spiked...so, at the time, I don't feel great, but then it just sort of dies down (or, of course, I expertly manage it and ground myself - ha!) So, I suppose I don't always take them to therapy because they're nothing new, they're just another example of something we already know. If I'm still really bothered about it and can't calm down about it on my own, I would probably tell my T so that we could talk it through and she could help me get my reaction under control. But, most of the time, I wouldn't feel I needed to do that.

I journal fairly regularly, so that's a way of working through things on my own and also keeping some kind of record of what's gone on. Sometimes I can then identify patterns or things that go together, which can be helpful. And if something interesting comes out of that, I can raise it with my T.

In terms of other things I don't take to therapy...I don't generally tell her if I've felt depressed, I don't tell her if I've hurt myself, I don't tell her every time I have a night terror, I don't tell her when I drink vodka and take Valium in the middle of the day because I just want to be nothing and do nothing and feel nothing (I haven't done that for a long time!) and I've never told her about all the times I've gone to bed at night hoping I don't wake up in the morning. And maybe those are all things I should be telling her! ;-)

The circling back around to build a new set of techniques and finding cues to use current techniques - yes, I'm with you on both those things.

 

[barefoot]

You probably know this, but not feeling anything about it doesn't mean it isn't affecting you.

Yes, I see what you mean...there just seems to be a real gap between what I think about what happened and the impact in the here and now. So, having PTSD, having night terrors, dissociating, my anxiety rocketing off the scale when I get triggered, the fact that I can't bear physical touch...all these things are obviously showing me that something isn't right. But I still don't see how it can be caused by what happened. It feels pathetic :-(

I had to get to the point where I had more to lose by not believing than by believing.

My T said a few months ago that, until I can let go of the belief that what happened wasn't bad enough, we had reached an impasse - something that caused quite a rupture in our relationship and she later apologised for a poor choice of words. But I see what she meant and I get what you're saying. I've been trying to open up different possibilities but it's hard (understatement!) to overwrite a default belief that I've held for all this time. I don't know how I choose one thing over another when I don't believe it...? Hmm...

Do you and your therapist mainly just talk? Does she have other modalities in her repertoire? I am wondering whether there are body-focused therapies that would be a better fit, if it is this hard for you to talk about the trauma

Yes, we just talk. Which is very difficult because, even if I don't dissociate, it's like my voice gets hijacked sometimes and I just can't make myself speak. We've talked about this challenge before and she's mentioned that we could use other methods such as art and writing for me to express myself, but we haven't really done that.

I'm not very connected to my body and am getting increasingly freaked out by it, so whenever she has tried to do more somatic stuff (just really basic stuff about where I'm feeling things in my body, what sensations I can feel etc) I have a tendency to panic and then dissociate. Just the thought of "body-focused therapy" makes me feel very anxious...but I'm aware that's based on nothing at all because I don't even know what body-focused therapy is and what's involved. I think I'm maybe worried that it's going to involve someone touching me and I don't want that...

k whether you are taking any medication,

I don't take any meds. I have some Valium, which is really just a back up for if I have a major anxiety attack and need some help to take the edge off. I take it very rarely - usually when I'm feeling so anxious that I can't get to sleep or when I'm in major hypervigilant mode. I did ask my therapist if it would help if I took a Valium before a session as then I might not get so anxious and panicky and then dissociate. She said she didn't think it was a good idea. She actually then said that if I was going to take anything it would probably be a mood stabiliser but it was like she'd accidentally blurted it out and then she wouldn't say anything more about it and I got the impression that she wished she hadn't said it.


Thank you...you've given me lots to think about.

 

[Sandstone]

And maybe those are all things I should be telling her! ;-)

Do you leave them unsaid because they are too big, or too small?

I have a tendency to think they are all part of the territory and don't need mentioning, but T says she does want to know, and they aren't trivial or to be minimised. But even more than the scale of them, I struggle with their invisibility to me. I can have spent Monday grappling with the desire for oblivion by any means, but by therapy on Thursday, that struggle is so remote it might have happened to someone else and I won't even recall that it was there to be reported

I don't know how I choose one thing over another when I don't believe it...? Hmm...

This is such a familiar struggle. So much of the time I can't believe there is enough to justify PTSD, let alone dissociation. Currently I'm judging what I believe by my actions. I'm fighting on multiple fronts to get treatment, so I must think there is something that justifies that treatment.

something isn't right. But I still don't see how it can be caused by what happened. It feels pathetic :-(

There is my scariest option - maybe more happened than I can recall. Much more likely, we aren't able to get our traumas right-sized. Since we can over-react to trivia, and under-react to real danger, it doesn't seem unlikely that we are unable to judge the true scale of our pasts

 

[JEKBreatheandBelieve]

She will try to make me stamp my feet and feel my body...she has tried before to make me stand up and sort of dance around with her in the room but I think I often just refuse to get up because I'm just sort of sitting in a frozen, zoned out state so I think the idea of getting up and jigging around is just...incomprehensible in that moment...

My therapist does that too! And I use mints, too, and when I am too far gone, I won't be able to think about them or understand the idea of them. I have a lot of other grounding techniques that involve looking around the room. We play "I spy" sometimes and it usually works. On my own I look for things of a certain color. I never count them but other people find 5 of one color and then 5 of another color until they feel more grounded. (I have a part that sometimes takes over when things are to hard and she counts to 5 over and over again so I try to stay away from techniques that involve any type of counting). Perhaps you need more of a repertoire of grounding techniques. I know there is at least one thread on here about them already and are probably several. Your therapist probably would have some good suggestions, too, because she knows you.