Would Love Some Input About Trauma Clinic Experience

11 years ago I was in a trauma clinic. It was a very important and positive experience on a relational level. However, I only recently recognized that there was a lack of insight and explanation.

1. I was in the art therapy group. The first time I was there I could not/didn't want to paint and just stood at the window without moving, looking outside for 2 hours. I just could not do anything else. I didn't want to be in that situation. My individual therapist told me they had never seen this happen before. She didn't say it in a condescending way, just as a fact. Claude (I know that AI makes mistakes) described this as a possible freeze response. Simple as that. Not that strange.
2. Early on in individual therapy we made a genogram, which triggered me heavily, I didn't know why. It was the first time up to that point that something had overwhelmed me in therapy. For at least 2 weeks afterwards I was "paranoid" and anxious. I quickly had the feeling that someone was behind me and more but none of it was clearly psychotic. It was worrying though. This could have been hypervigilance, but no one explained it to me. It makes more sense to me now, because the topic that triggered me came up again a year ago, still vague but more severe than back then.
3. I had an inner voice that threatened me to stay away from that topic. One therapist said it could be an internal persecutor, but my individual therapist didn't think so and didn't explain anything about it to me either. Perhaps it was too strange, or too much, I don't know.
4. After those two weeks everything was as before, as if nothing had happened. Claude described it as compartmentalization, which could make sense. It is "gone" but not processed.

I need some opinions. I never really had trauma therapy, just therapists that used the term trauma but never followed up. I think all of this made me unnecessarily insecure. I could never explain what happened without worrying about how strange it might sound. And also how difficult. I can't integrate the different states, but I think this might also have to do with the lack of explanation and insight in previous therapies.

I have never been to a trauma clinic, so take what I say with that in mind. But from what I have learnt about trauma, it seems a really odd thing that they said they hadn't seen someone stand and look out the window for 2 hours in an art therapy session. And odd that they didn't think about triggers impacting in the way it did for you. And odd that they didn't talk about parts.
Seems like the opposite of what I imagine a trauma clinic would do and understand. Sorry you had that experience.

I harp on about this book all the time but it really really was fundamental to my understanding: Healing the fragmented parts of trauma survivors by Janina Fischer. It explained so much to me and made the shame of it go and just normalised reactions to trauma. It might help give some answers about what you're experiencing.

Calmdown said:

I was there I could not/didn't want to paint and just stood at the window without moving, looking outside for 2 hours.

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I’ve done a lot of art therapy, and a good portion of that art therapy was on a trauma unit, doing art therapy on my trauma.

I’m sorry the staff at the time made you feel like this response was somehow unusual. On a regular art class? Sure. But in art therapy, for someone with complex trauma? It’s actually a very normal response to feeling overwhelmed, which art therapy very often is.

Art therapy was reliably one of the most confronting therapy sessions I went to on the trauma unit). Common responses ranged from folks not being able to enter the room, to folks shutting down in the room or, at the other end of the spectrum, having dissociative episodes or panic attacks throughout the session. All normal coping strategies given the context.

Calmdown said:

I had an inner voice that threatened me to stay away from that topic. One therapist said it could be an internal persecutor, but my individual therapist didn't think so and didn't explain anything about it to me either

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Internal voices are pretty normal - it’s okay to have internal voices. What’s less okay is when they cause distress or dysfunction. Labels like ‘internal persecutor’ may be an incredibly helpful to understand why this voice occurred when it did, in the way it did. Probably the bigger picture is more important, though - do you experience various internal voices a lot? Do they cause you distress? If so, that’s worth exploring.

There’s a lot of different conceptual structures you can put around internal voices (like IFS or Structural Dissociation, or pathology like schizophrenia or dissociative disorders, to a whole shopping list of other therapeutic, cultural and spiritual explanations), but the important thing is: knowing yourself, and understanding yourself, is worthwhile. If this is causing you distress, or you just want to understand it better? It’s worth exploring more. Loads of people have internal voices that come and go, for loads of different reasons - understanding what’s going on for you is worthwhile.

Calmdown said:

I could never explain what happened without worrying about how strange it might sound.

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This is like the art therapy thing, I think? Context is important. Talking to your hairdresser about this stuff? May get you some weird sideways glances. But with a trauma therapist (with experience)? It should be par for the course. Which is not to say your distress or experiences are non-events, just that this sounds like trauma stuff.

Calmdown said:

I can't integrate the different states

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Integration is a goal for certain types of states, for some people.

But it’s not always relevant. For example, dreaming and being awake are 2 different states. But, we wouldn’t attempt to integrate them - they serve different, important functions. We spend time in one, then time in the other, and that’s okay.

Other states, like dissociating, freezing, trance - there’s tonnes of them - are similar. They are altered states of awareness, but not necessarily states that we’d seek to ‘integrate’. The goal is usually more just ‘awareness’.

There are altered states that people can have that they want to integrate, but most altered states don’t fall into that category. Even for folks with trauma. Fair disclosure: I’m underwhelmed by both the concept and apparent goal of integration even when it is (at least theoretically ) appropriate!

You made some good points and I wanted to respond but I can't. I think there are certain things I can't really talk about and if I try it seems to trigger me. I wondered if I should just push through that resistance but it always has been a bad idea and it is now too. I really don't know how people deal with it but I can't face it now. I don't know how I could talk to my new therapist about it, because if I'm too direct it feels like too much and dangerous, but if I stay vague it sounds even stranger. Just a tiny bit of information: The different inner parts mostly seem to show up when I'm overwhelmed, like a last line of defense, or at least those are the situations where I notice them most. That particular inner voice was only there for a few weeks while I was in the clinic. Ultimately all of this is preventing me from facing it, and I don't know if that is a good or a bad thing.

I don't know if this helps any: I think the best analogy for trauma therapy is like the game 'pass the parcel' (if you know it)

You pulled back one layer at a time. Getting closer and closer to the core issue. In some layers you pull back, there is a surprise that needs attending too. That surprise can be something really great that never seemed possible before. Or that surprise is something that destablises and needs stabilising before you continue.

Tackling the trauma head on is rarely a good idea. It's too traumatising and has potential to make you ill.

My T would always she she doesn't need to know the details of the trauma to talk about it. We talk about the feelings it evokes. So starting off with the worry about talking about it etc.

Being vague is okay. It's still working through things. And as the layers get worked through the vagueness reduces.

Calmdown said:

You made some good points and I wanted to respond but I can't. I think there are certain things I can't really talk about and if I try it seems to trigger me. I wondered if I should just push through that resistance but it always has been a bad idea and it is now too. I really don't know how people deal with it but I can't face it now. I don't know how I could talk to my new therapist about it, because if I'm too direct it feels like too much and dangerous, but if I stay vague it sounds even stranger. Just a tiny bit of information: The different inner parts mostly seem to show up when I'm overwhelmed, like a last line of defense, or at least those are the situations where I notice them most. That particular inner voice was only there for a few weeks while I was in the clinic. Ultimately all of this is preventing me from facing it, and I don't know if that is a good or a bad thing.

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Maybe you could say exactly what you wrote here to your therapist, you could hold off on sharing your traumas until you feel comfortable doing so, but the therapist would have the awareness about why you sound so vague and understand that sharing that for you is deeply uncomfortable which makes it easier for them to navigate the topic by not pushing you too much and help you feel more comfortable and understood during the session.