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It’s a really normal feeling - I’ve so been there, for me it comes from fear that she’ll see me differently, be disgusted by me or not want to work with me and it’s artachme driven in that I feel like a child wanting to check her mummy still know she’s there. It sounds like she responded well...

I think sometimes we really do need to stop and deal with stuff. I know I’ve needed to completely drop everything before - work, friends, social commitments, everything and just try to breathe through my feelings sometimes hour by hour. At that point everything goes to shit - my self care, any...

Was your mum abusive generally? I ask because raising kids is very hard - I work very hard to stay calm with mine, they can drive me to distraction and yes I feel very angry with them at times. Even when I sound calm on the surface, I can be furious underneath. Now, I would never hit them...

Did she actually say “go do something and you’ll be fine”? The reality is that having something planned in our day is a good way to keep some level of functioning. Having a class or voluntary job to commit to can give us a reason to get out of bed, manage our moods and regulate our feelings even...

It is, of course being hit with a hairbrush is abusive, but that doesn’t mean your mum had any intention of being abusive - it’s one of those where the motive can be good but the action and outcome be quite harmful. She may very well have meant that she loved you, and may have very calmly saw...

I wasn’t harsh, I was direct and most people who know me here would recognise that I’m pretty direct. You may have experienced that as harsh but given your reaction to what is a helpful expression of care by your T could it be possible you’re reading a tone into what I wrote? I don’t see...

One of the helpful things about EMDR is that you don’t need to verbalise the worst things - so for stuff that is pre-verbal or too difficult for talk therapy EMDR can be a real game changer. And there’s no need to dive straight into stuff that is the very worst, you can feel your way in in...

What do you want from therapy? Because this sounds like you’re testing your T, trying to discipline him in some way into doing/not doing what you want. You emailed him, he emailed you some suggestions about how you might move forward and that “got him an angry email”? What did you actually want...

I think it’s a difficult one because we’re trying to place historical behaviour in a modern society where much more is understood about child development. At the time of my childhood it was usual for children to be hit regularly - smacking or spanking wasn’t seen as an issue and my parents were...

Your therapist is there for you, in session, to listen, ask questions, support you any way she can. Outside of that it’s not her job to be there for you indefinitely - that’s the role of family, friends and other supports. On a purely practical level a full time practice for her might be 30...

This. Your mum needs to make her own decisions - and she’s deciding not to sort the house out. You can’t control what she does with her health or her home so as much as you might want to be there to direct her to care for herself, if she doesn’t want to do won’t. If theres a way for you to...

Had you got back to her to say you did want the session? It happened to me once where my T offered me an appointment time and in the time between her offering and me accepting, someone else had booked the session so it wasn’t available any more. For one reason and another I couldn’t accept the...

It neglect is so much more than not being loved, for me it mean not mattering enough to be given clean clothes, to be fed regularly, to be woken and got ready for school, to have a place to study when I needed it. It meant the house being filthy, have a wet, urine stained bed, being dirty myself...

I hear you, it’s so bloody difficult for me to talk about and I massively keep my T at arms length on that one. I’ve been used to taking care of myself from a very young age, so letting someone else show care for me is really hard. And on some level I don’t want her to see whatever my mum saw...

I don’t know that it is necessarily a misuse of therapy, I was asking more from a place of sometimes knowing what “being done” will look like can help us know what still needs work or where the work should focus.

What change can you see in yourself? After this long I’d hope you could really identify a lot of ways in which life is better/easier/less symptomatic, how will you know that you’re done - eg is there an end point that you’re aiming for or is it a case of just going until you feel fixed or...

The short answer is that you can’t. People, places, things will trigger the hell out of you and the fact that she’s your mum won’t stop that and honestly, it’s not her job to watch your triggers because simply put anything could trigger you. Yes, you can set boundaries but you then need to...

There are loads of ways to self manage anxiety and really any T would help you do that - not so much through self EMDR or TRE but through breathing exercises to regulate your system, mindfulness to help manage racing thoughts etc. The danger with any therapy (including what you describe as...

I have trouble staying with the any kind of guided meditation (think of 5 things etc), and mindfulness doesn’t help me much at all. What does help is having a nicely scented hand cream that I can use when I’m about to “go”, the motion of rubbing it in coupled with the scent help bring me back to...

I agree with @EveHarrington, regardless of how you label what happened, you’re not ok with it and need support. In saying that, no matter what age he thought you were, if you were moving his hands away and he started choking you, I think it’s safe to say he would know you didn’t want what was...

With respect, that isn’t how a discussion board works - I’m not disagreeing with your right to hold your opinion, I’m not actually disagreeing about the Ts boundaries either, and yes it’s a tiny part of the OPs concern and I’m more than happy to let it rest. As far as feeling safe, this isn’t a...

The OP didn’t say the T gave him hell, he said she was abrupt with him - which I think is fair enough if you’re in hospital being phoned by someone who you’d specifically contacted to say you weren’t available. The T certainly has a case to answer but the OP needs to take responsibility for...

I think self care is massively important- folk have my number because they really need it, and it’s part of my job to be available. I might get a work call to my personal phone once every 6 weeks or so because people knew only to call in an emergency. Folk don’t contact me unless totally...

I work in a job where people I work with need to be able to contact me directly. I don’t keep their numbers stored on my phone under their name so is someone phoned me I’d most likely answer especially if I was in hospital and maybe expecting a call from someone worried about me. My T recently...

I don’t think I have “keen insight”, I’m just reading what you’ve posted about the fairly usual suggestions your Ts have made and you not being able to set boundaries in those relationships which have been harmful to you. A gate and a camera won’t make you feel safe if you don’t feel safe within...