Bad therapist opened pandora's box- how to close it?

[Fancy Dancy]

I just joined today. I've browsed the forum only briefly. Normally I spend awhile scoping out a forum before I join, if I do. What I've read already feels amazing; people describing things that I've struggled to convey to others.

I'm hopeful that being here will be educational and helpful.

Here's what's bugging me: I saw a therapist last summer for family relation matters. But all of my trauma issues came out during our sessions. I spilled all my beans to her. Things I've never said out loud.

At the time I had been 12 months with no panic attacks. I was in the healthiest living situation I'd ever been in, living with two friends. I was doing well! A big part of that was also that, for the first time in 3 years, I felt like I was safe from my ex, I was certain he didn't know where I went and that I could finally breathe and stop looking over my shoulder and sleeping with a gun next to my pillow.

So this therapist had no experience with trauma and after 3 sessions said "I think you might have PTSD". I already knew very well that I did. She decided to try EMDR with me; she had never tried it before but had apparently read all about how effective it is.

I immediately didn't want to. I told her it was only going to create a trigger with vibration (she had me hold 2 pulsing remotes) and then I'd have another trigger to deal with. She insisted and insisted and pushed me. I did a couple rounds of EMDR. One session I threw the remotes down and fell apart crying and had to stay in her office for 2 hours trying to put myself together. For the 3 weeks of our therapy I was a constant mess at home. I was paranoid, panicking, and my anxiety was stifling. I eventually told her I couldn't continue but she insisted on doing more and that I had to see the process through or it wouldn't work.

Long story less-long, she decided after 3 weeks that I had PPD and was borderline schizophrenic with a real threat of becoming out of control. Which I can now confidently say I am most definitely NOT either of those things. She completely delegitimized my trauma and turned it on it's head, made ME the problem, not the horrible things that have happened to me.

So this just happened, and I kid you not; not 1 week later, after our last session, my ex was granted an early release from his years-long parole (domestic abuse against his wife) and the NEXT DAY he drove by where I was staying and announced himself. I was a mess. It was horrible. I tried to get the cops involved, I tried to get a restraining order, but the judicial system isn't there to prevent messes, it's there to clean them up after they've happened.

I was spiraling. I was no longer safe. I started to internalize what the therapist had said; I was the only one who saw him, there was no "proof", maybe I was literally nuts and this was it coming to a head. It's all a blur of hot fear and very deeply rooted self-doubt.

It's been a year since this happened, I now know and understand that I'm perfectly sane, this woman just did a horrible thing to me (hopefully with good intentions?) at an unpredictably horrible moment and I turned back into a panicking mess; not sleeping, not eating, mostly in a state of borderline-catatonic panic, waiting for him to show up and kill me like I've always knew he would.

Almost a year later; I'm doing better and am in a healthy place with a healthy partner, many hundreds of miles away from this dangerous man. But I've fallen back into frequent panic attacks and really sensitive triggers since this all happened last summer/fall. I feel like, before this happened, I had finally shut the box. I could breathe. For the first time in 4 or 5 years I could relax. I felt SAFE. And now I'm back to having nightmares about him, having episodes probably twice a month, and my anxiety is erratic and feels like it's getting worse with every episode. It's been 7 years, I want my life back, I don't want to be thinking about him every day.

I can't shut the box. I'm in a wonderful place in life right now, I don't want to have this shadow-creature hovering behind me all the time, reminding me that I'm in danger, and whispering the past into my ears. I don't trust therapists; never had a good experience with one. And I also can't afford the level of intensive therapy I probably need.

But surely there's SOMETHING I can do myself, something people who deal with the hell of trauma have learned. Some coping method I haven't discovered yet. I'm very pro-active about helping myself and healing, but I feel like I've hit a wall. Some nights, just as I'm falling asleep, right at that moment, my body jolts and a panic attack slams out of thin air. It runs me ragged and always consumes several days of my life trying to re-adjust and recover; anxiety, fear, emptiness, dissociation, depression, sadness, exhaustion, then finally getting back on my feet.

How do I close this box that was opened last year?

 

[EveHarrington]

You can’t.

That’s why it’s called Pandora’s box.

Keep plugging away with coping skills and healing.

The best you can do is practice coping skills until you find one that works.

And by practice I mean PRACTICE each one for awhile before determining if it works or not. My best coping skill took almost a year to master with many months of nada.

Sorry this isn’t what you want to hear, but it’s something we all have to deal with. There is no magic bullet coping skill that works for everyone.

 

[Fancy Dancy]

You can’t.

That’s why it’s called Pandora’s box.

Keep plugging away with coping skills and healing.

The best you can do is practice coping skills until you find one that works.

And by practice I mean PRACTICE each one for awhile before determining if it works or not. My best coping skill took almost a year to master with many months of nada.

Sorry this isn’t what you want to hear, but it’s something we all have to deal with. There is no magic bullet coping skill that works for everyone.

No need to apologize. I'm not hear looking for a specific answer!

What coping skills work best with you?

I'm not sure I have ANY coping skills when faced with actual panic. My anxiety I can work through, sure. Depression, yeah I can get through it. But the panic; reliving, feeling, hearing, seeing. I can't stop it. I've been having panic attacks for 18 years, and this particular man fed on my fears and the things I opened up to him about, and used them to terrorize me, magnifying my existing traumas and compounding them with the things he did. Early on I self medicated with med abuse and alcohol. That was my teenage coping. Now when I feel panic coming, I either try to fend it off and fail, or let it take me, knowing that the attack will subside at some point and within a few days I will be back to normal. Just give into it because I've never been able to stop it.

I guess I'm also at a loss because the when I did feel like I had this finally under control, it was because I was in a safe place and felt out of reach to the danger.

Now, where I'm at, I'm literally not in danger, I should know this. Where I'm staying literally doesn't have an address, I'm not traceable to a stalker. But I can't seem to re-grasp that feeling of safety. And my nightmares are always him finding me, using people and information to hunt me down, using friends to get to me, kidnapping me, and no matter where I go in the dreams he finds me.

 

[SunDog]

First of all... Welcome to the forum and I hope you find it as supportive and useful as I have. I'm in a similar situation now where I've opened the box but can't put it back in. My advice to you first of all, above all else is to look at the things your head is telling you and try to look at them realistically, not through the lense of PTSD. I have often found writing thoughts down and think about what I would say if it was something someone else was saying.

For example, you said 'he'll kill me like I always knew he would'. Look at just that statement and apply a logic bomb of sorts to it. The way he made you feel and what your thoughts are sounding like feel extremely real and true. But you have managed to survive and thrive with him out of the picture. You don't know he will kill you. That is not a fact nor is it certain. It feels that way absolutely. But what I'm trying to say is... Try to write these reoccuring thoughts and look at them cold. See where the distortion is and adjust the sentence to one that would be factual and clearer. It may help you make sense of your thoughts and when they do reoccur you can remind yourself to correct them. It is one of those things you will have to do again and again and again. Until it starts to feel like it fits reality. It helped me coping with it on my own.

Mine would be "everything will go to shit and I can't be happy because it has to go wrong". I adjust that to "I am afraid to be happy because I feel like I don't deserve to be or it's too good to be true. I don't know what the future holds and the world doesn't work according to my rules. I can be happy and have been all this time. It isn't a certainty that things will go wrong". I found I end up thinking the way I used to when I was in the situation. Almost like you age backwards.

If it helps, take notes on how to secure your home to make you feel safer. Little things like cleaning my computer, changing passwords, antiviruses etc. Look at how to secure your home. It helps me feel safe from my stalker who has finally backed off. The adjustments I made, made it hard for him to stalk me. It also helped me sleep at night knowing something that was a vulnerability no longer is and helped me feel in control of my own space.
I really hope that makes sense. I hope that helps.

 

[Fancy Dancy]

First of all... Welcome to the forum and I hope you find it as supportive and useful as I have. I'm in a similar situation now where I've opened the box but can't put it back in. My advice to you first of all, above all else is to look at the things your head is telling you and try to look at them realistically, not through the lense of PTSD. I have often found writing thoughts down and think about what I would say if it was something someone else was saying.

For example, you said 'he'll kill me like I always knew he would'. Look at just that statement and apply a logic bomb of sorts to it. The way he made you feel and what your thoughts are sounding like feel extremely real and true. But you have managed to survive and thrive with him out of the picture. You don't know he will kill you. That is not a fact nor is it certain. It feels that way absolutely. But what I'm trying to say is... Try to write these reoccuring thoughts and look at them cold. See where the distortion is and adjust the sentence to one that would be factual and clearer. It may help you make sense of your thoughts and when they do reoccur you can remind yourself to correct them. It is one of those things you will have to do again and again and again. Until it starts to feel like it fits reality. It helped me coping with it on my own.

Mine would be "everything will go to shit and I can't be happy because it has to go wrong". I adjust that to "I am afraid to be happy because I feel like I don't deserve to be or it's too good to be true. I don't know what the future holds and the world doesn't work according to my rules. I can be happy and have been all this time. It isn't a certainty that things will go wrong". I found I end up thinking the way I used to when I was in the situation. Almost like you age backwards.

If it helps, take notes on how to secure your home to make you feel safer. Little things like cleaning my computer, changing passwords, antiviruses etc. Look at how to secure your home. It helps me feel safe from my stalker who has finally backed off. The adjustments I made, made it hard for him to stalk me. It also helped me sleep at night knowing something that was a vulnerability no longer is and helped me feel in control of my own space.
I really hope that makes sense. I hope that helps.

I appreciate the input.
"everything will go to shit and I can't be happy because it has to go wrong". I adjust that to "I am afraid to be happy because I feel like I don't deserve to be or it's too good to be true. I don't know what the future holds and the world doesn't work according to my rules. I can be happy and have been all this time. It isn't a certainty that things will go wrong".
^ this is another thing I struggle with, seeded more in childhood than in trauma. I'm slowly working through it as I'm growing in my new environment and cautiously starting to accept that maybe it's for real and isn't going anywhere, maybe it's okay to anticipate things being good for a change, etc etc.

"But you have managed to survive and thrive with him out of the picture. You don't know he will kill you. That is not a fact nor is it certain."
This is true, yes. It is unlikely he will find me here. I have safety and protection here. True, I do not know what the future holds. But the thought process is rooted in the reality that his man is VIOLENT. He is a true psychopath. He is manipulative. He is obsessive. He has EXTREME PTSD and is unstable. He has a paranoid stalker mother who tracks people and finds them for him. He has KILLED PEOPLE overseas and considers himself a murderer for shooting unarmed civilians, and from what he told me in his own states of trauma, there may have been an incident of torturing and killing a man with some other soldiers. The military discharged him and told him "You will snap and go on a shooting rampage someday". He repeats this to himself, repeated it to me frequently, and has internalized it as his fate.

For years I told myself "I hope he's happy in his marriage, as long as he's happy I'm safe".
I didn't know he'd snapped and beat his wife. I didn't know he was in prison. I didn't know he'd just been let of probation when he showed up (I said parole above, I meant probation). I didn't find out until I got the cops involved and they went on red-alert when they pulled up his profile because his VA psych evaluation did not bode well.

That's when it came crashing down. He did it. He finally attacked his wife. His marriage is going down the toilet. And now he's coming back for me. He's convinced himself that I ruined his life. He made that obvious when I left. I was his first love, I broke his heart, I ruined everything. It's my fault.

He did everything I knew he would do happened, and the stalking began like I knew it would. Luckily I was able to get out of there within 2 months and am now very, very far away.

I process this a lot with friends. Verbally. I have some processing partners that I can talk at/with and hear it all coming out, sort through it, weigh it, etc. I wish my fears were unfounded but I don't feel that they are. I certainly can't convince myself that they aren't.

But my fears do continuously try to tell me that he KNOWS where I'm at, that he IS COMING, and it's a matter of time. For now, I am anonymous and safe, I KNOW this. I can't seem to overpower the fear though.

I don't know what to do with that.