Bad Session? Don't Know What To Think

[scout86]

Great job! I want to give you a high 5 too. Being able to go through with that is a pretty big step, don't you think? It's the kind of thing that helps build a relationship too.

 

[BloomInWinter]

I understand your feelings, @macca. Your feelings are perfectly normal.

I would love it if my therapist had perfect memory recall of everything I say in therapy which has the most meaning to me. My trust issues, combined with dissociation often "hides" the most difficult things from her and my other therapists by displaying an "affect" which makes it difficult for them to discern what is most important to me - the "hotspots" - until I can actually verbalize them.

I can't remember every detail of what I said to my kids this morning, even though they are super-important to me. I can't recall every detail of conversations I had with customers last week, as I was focusing on problem-solving rather than committing extra details to memory which are not immediately affecting the situation troubling them at the time. I do trust them to bring details that need addressed to my attention, as many times as necessary, until it gets fixed. I do my best to fix it the first time, but sometimes there's not enough details to work with and it takes time to find the other pieces of the puzzle. I work as a webmaster.

I don't expect my therapist to know something is an issue for me before I say it clearly. The amazing thing is, over time, it turns out s/he knew all along and was working on it, even though it wasn't apparent to me at the time.

No therapist will never be able to avoid a trigger-free environment. Even if your therapist did remember, the act of you bringing the topic again and introducing more detail is a huge step forward in the therapeutic relationship. It's frightening and irritating. It stirs up our feelings even more. But it is just a normal process of healing to do so, be triggered in the therapy room, and practice our skills for dealing with those feelings in-between appointments. It allows us to have a tolerable level of exposure to the memories and process that bit until more and more which can be faced, then processed in therapy.

It's no fun but it is necessary and normal.

I wouldn't read too much into the ghost comment until you ask her directly if she meant ghost as in past memories which haunt us, or actual supernatural ghosts. Most educated people who mention ghosts are more likely to mean memories. You'll never know until you ask, so best not to feed therapy fears without factual information.

It's very normal to experience chaotic emotions after therapy. In the beginning, especially for those of us with multiple traumas, we trip so many triggers just by showing up that we're in urgent need of establishing some self-care routines for before, during, and after sessions.

I always buy myself some nice gum and a bottle of water before my appointments. I go lay down as soon as I get home, and the kids do their homework laying near me. I don't make any appointments or accept any phone calls after sessions, unless I have to.

It was a hard-fought battle for me to learn that therapy is just like anything else, some days will be better than others. My therapists and I have hit many triggers by accident, and had many miscommunications along the way.

Just the process of talking these things through has been very healing. It has taught me how to trust, how to allow my feelings to come through, how to handle conflicts big and small, and how to forgive myself and others for just being human. That's not even the trauma processing, it's learning how to live life as a healthy adult who can identify my own choices and boundaries and respond to challenges to them.

When I was where you are with distress tolerance, I remember going cold and shaking for days. I did start a thread with some of how I was dealing with it at https://www.myptsd.com/threads/toolkit-affect-regulation.21707/.

I can honestly say that just about everything I doubted my therapists for over the years turned out to be part of the plan they had for me. I've learned that any negative feelings that come up in therapy actually stem from my traumas or negative cognitions I picked up along the way.

It's only my resistance to dealing with those traumas that instead cause me to project those feelings onto my therapists. I know I do this so I don't have to actually look at the origin of my feelings. It has rarely turned out to be the therapist.

I no longer focus on the content of what is said in therapy so much as the goals of the sessions, and allowing myself to experience the feelings and express the thoughts I notice coming up. My sessions are far more productive that way for me to go after the healing I want.

I no longer choose to waste my time in or outside of therapy contemplating the imagined meanings behind what my therapist says. Not that I don't, but I try to stay focused on me and what I can take out of every experience. If I have a question, I just ask rather than sit in uncomfortable rumination of things. All too often my fears turn out to be just my traumas coloring the way I experience my therapist's input.

I try to look inward and think about the feelings/thoughts, and trace them back to any other experiences in my life where I've felt similar feelings. I will say that a real turning point for me building trust with my therapists was asking for and being given permission to record my sessions and listen to them before the next session.

The inflections of emotions I perceive while in therapy turn out not to have been there upon re-listening. I truly hear things differently, almost always with a negative feeling.

Since I dissociate so much, it really helped me believe that I could be helped to experience my dealings with other people in a more balanced, neutral frame. It has helped me be able to not create conflict where there was not any, to not shut people out without clear evidence, and to know and stand up for myself.

Be gentle with yourself. This sounds like typical PTSD therapy dreck that is part of the process. Crappy as it is. It will get better, sooner than you think.

 

[macca]

Thanks everybody. You've made me feel cared about, despite my crazy stuff (which I've always hidden wherever possible!). I feel like I trust my T a lot more after yesterday, and that this might have been an important session.