Other Becoming More Familiar With Ptsd

[Deleted member 1860]

Its very hard to answer your question because we all respond to treatment differently. We all find that specific coping skills work for us, while others, not so much. It really IS like piecing together your own jigsaw puzzle with no picture to look at. And no cheating by finding the answer on your neighbor's exam, because it doesn't work like that.

Yes, there are "standard" coping skills and then there are less standard coping skills. We all have to find out what works for each one of us. I won't even begin to talk about my go-to skill because its not up for debate (sadly, its one of *those* things, but no, its not unhealthy, so no worries.) And then you have those who heal best using the go-to PTSD therapies such as EMDR, CBT and exposure therapy, while there are others (such as myself) who have had to go find alternative therapies that have yet to be widely proven, and then you have those who are so desperate for SOMETHING to work that they are willing to do MDMA experiments.

Long/short, the more you try to figure out "the way" the more you will get lost. We are all individuals and we all heal in different ways. I'd be shocked if you read through two (in depth) stories and found two people who healed in exactly the same way. It really doesn't work like that. Sure, lots may say "EMDR worked!" but its the little things that helped in addition to EMDR that will vary. Make sense?

I suggest reading the forums. I also suggest NOT asking personal questions about an individuals trauma. Not to be rude, but yes, it is quite rude to ask someone about quite possibly the very worst moment of their life....I made a thread about that just a few weeks ago. So I say read, read, read, ask questions about treatment and healing, but steer clear of asking anyone about their trauma or any facet of it.

 

[Justmehere]

@Sighs - I think you have been asking excellent questions from the get go!

 

[sun seeker]

I know as a counselor we seem like an "expert" in the psyche and yes we have a understanding of the textbook version of a disorder and as time goes on with more experience we see different ways to help a client (as a counselor in training I am still working on the experience part). However, I see the client as an expert too.

Okay. There are a few things here I can make a stab at providing responses to. On reading the above paragraph I had seemingly contradictory reactions of bristling and agreeing, but on reflection these reactions make sense. Yes, we are experts. At the same time, when backed into a corner by triggers, we don't have access to the knowledge we may possess on an intellectual level. Integrating these two realities is one place a good therapist can be helpful, but many are not.

Personally, I have read what amounts to several thousand pages on what trauma does to the brain as well as other aspects of psychology and various healing modalities. Over the years I have tried dozens of modalities ranging from traditional talk therapy to EFT. Looking for ways to heal myself has been my career. Many of us here will share my sense of having become experts by necessity. When you say counselors seem like experts on the psyche, I have a lukewarm response. My personal experience with several counselors is that most really do not have adequate understanding of what trauma does to people, and I also find many to be incredibly naive about the extent of child sexual abuse and its effects. Many seem to have little to no training on recognizing and working with dissociative symptoms, for example. Some also seem to have the idea that explaining a client's mental processes to them is automatically going to make the problem better. Umm, no. I understand perfectly well why I have the problems I have. I can explain it in plain English or I can explain it in psychological jargon, but that doesn't make the problems go away.

The other thing that got my attention was the sentence "However, I see the client as an expert too." I'm thinking "yes, but..." You'd think from what I wrote above that I would enthusiastically agree with this. To a point I do. The trouble is the way some counselors I have worked with have used this or similar phrases. Others may disagree, but for me, I have noticed that I have often been told I'm the expert when I am in crisis and at a loss for what to do. At that point, being told I am the expert or that I know what to do or that I am in charge, feels like abandonment when I am at my lowest point. If you don't have PTSD it's very hard to describe what that state of being feels like. If you imagine yourself rooted to the spot, adrenaline flowing, while a hungry lion is about to pounce on you and simultaneously all the authority figures in your life are shouting at you that you are a worthless piece of scum, you'll get some idea, but only some. Imagine then that someone comes along and calmly tells you that you are the expert and know what to do. Most likely that isn't what you want to hear right then. You want that person to call off the lion, to begin with. You can explore building your sense of power when the sense of danger is less.

So yes, we are experts on one level, but on another we are the person trembling in fear of the lion, and that person doesn't have access to all that expert knowledge. That is one tip for you: learn to recognize what part of the client's brain you are talking to in any given moment. When you have access to the neocortex, sure, you can discuss insight and the psyche. When the reptilian brain takes over, however, if you try to do that all you will get will be a further dissociated and frustrated client. At that time you need to have a good supply of bottom-up techniques to help the client calm down.

I don't know if this helps at all, but I wanted to respond because this gives an example of how much easier it is to answer specific questions than generalizations (though I recognize that these comments weren't meant as questions).

 

[Suzetig]

One of the main parts of counseling is helping a client find resources that can help, especially outside of the counseling room. How have people found out about this site and felt when first posting? How has it helped?
Another important factor is identifying barriers and issues that a client comes in contact with on a regular basis..

For some reason, I'm really struggling with this. The main part of counselling is surely listening to your client, gaining an understanding of their experience, valuing them and being with them in their struggles. Yes, there are coping skills, grounding techniques etc that I'd hope my therapist was aware of and could help me practice but there's lots of books and resources to help you learn about those and what works will vary massively from person to person. I actually need my therapist to stay very close to me while I go through whatever I'm going through, and luckily my therapist is a superstar at doing just that.

There's no "standard" PTSD client and no one way to treat them. i don't know what modality you're studying but i would suggest you work on developing empathy and care for people, which will drive you to research the particular challenges your particular client faces. Use supervision, consult with more experienced colleagues and read, lots.

Asking random people on an online forum about their very personal experiences strikes me as the worst way possible to research something as complex as trauma response. If I were you I'd be challenging the validity of your assignment.

 

[Anarchy]

@Caity
As a first exercise, take a look at the metadata. The different numbers of posts in the different sub forums will give you some vital information; sexual abuse generates approximately 100 times the number of posts than combat policing and emergency services, does that reflect the relative proportions of traumas?

take a look at what the researchers are looking for: mostly combat cases - what does that tell you about the funding priorities?

What will that imbalance in funding lead to in terms of an imbalance in the published academic papers?

What biases and misunderstandings will that distorted lierature result in for people like yourself who are training?

there's a lot of work to do before you even begin to read the posts

 

[Deleted member 1860]

@Caity
I applaud your efforts to learn more about PTSD. We have all been living on the inside, as either a sufferer or a supporter, and even so, most of us wouldn't really know where to begin in answering your questions. PTSD is so incredibly complex... Asking what PTSD means to someone like me who was traumatized at a very young age would be akin to asking a person who was born blind what its like to not be able to see. We don't have a reference point of "normal" (for lack of a better term) so its hard to see how things are different, or rather, how they should be. I can sit here and dream, but the truth is that my trauma changed me forever, and even if I am able to clinically lose this darn diagnosis one day, I will never know what it is like to live a life unaffected by trauma.

Oh, I do want to say this.... Read up on Pete Walker's work. Its good stuff. I wish his work was required reading for all therapists! Sadly, many therapists have no clue what an emotional flashback is. I was misdiagnosed for 25 years until I finally had a visual flashback (that is, through many, many different therapists and psychiatrists). Those have since ended and I'm left with just the emotional flashbacks once again. Oh, and if you're working with children, I wouldn't say to throw out the list of "typical responses of abused children" but be willing to look beyond the box. There are SO many of us who don't exhibit any of those characteristics so we fly under the radar. One of my few reactions was extreme aversion to leaving the house to go to daycare/school. I'm in my 30's now and the other day I mentioned how I threw fits every day before school. My dad made a joke before I pointed out to him the real reason, and then he went silent when he realized I was freaking out because I didn't want to be molested again. Which brings me to another point......don't assume that we all have the same reactions. I've noticed that some go one way while others go the complete opposite. Some may develop extreme anger issues, some may keep it all inside and live in silence. With sexual abuse survivors, some become promiscuous (the trait that teachers and such are told to look out for) while the truth is that a good proportion of us swing the opposite direction and become prudish, you might say. So yes this is where my *vent* comes in as many professionals are taught to look for a standard set of symptoms, but there is NO standard set. We go left, right, up, and down, but its all a part of the disorder. I think I need to stop now before I time out....

 

[StarChild]

Why are you asking us? We're just the dumb shmucks who don't get to leave it behind when the hour is up.

Or are you happy to read the posts on the forum?

Why are you so mad at Caity? These are no questions, but assumptions and attacks.

Perfectly expressed my frustration without the anger and hostility that was in every draft I wrote!

Then why @Sighs, don't you simply apologize at Caity for the (poor) things you wrote or assumed, instead of creating a new thread about "My Hostile Reaction"? And did you notice at all, that she answered all your aggressive "questions" open, friendly and calm?..

 

[sun seeker]

sexual abuse generates approximately 100 times the number of posts than combat policing and emergency services, does that reflect the relative proportions of traumas?

Good point. Something else I forgot to mention in my list of typical gaps in therapists' training is in working with recovered memories. Several respectable studies show that around half of people who were sexually abused as children have a period of amnesia around the abuse and may not remember for many years, if at all. The effects on a person's later life run the gamut from low self esteem to eating disorders. Wouldn't this suggest that a large percentage of people, especially women, seeking counseling would be survivors of sexual abuse who may be in the process of recovering parts of those memories?

Yet very few counselors have specific training in this issue. Some of course have been swayed by fear, but it is surprising how little awareness there is of the issue at all. For example, DID is a very common condition caused by extreme repeated childhood trauma, yet few counselors have any experience even recognizing it, let alone treating it.

The last time I worked with a counselor I was beginning to recover memories of abuse. One of the questions I asked her in the first session was where she stood on the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. I could hardly believe my ears when she told me she had never heard of it. I later asked what experience she had working with clients who were recovering memories of sexual abuse. She easily answered "Zero. You are the first." Okay, someone has to be the first, but for someone with the job title of women's counselor to have no specific training on an extremely common issue facing women...?? To be fair, I'm not sure she said she had no training, but she certainly seemed to have no experience. When I started talking about a specific flashback that seemed pretty outlandish, she immediately assumed that what I was seeing was symbolic. Huh? I never felt comfortable discussing the specifics of what I was remembering with the therapist, the supposed expert, because she was just too naive to make me feel safe sharing. Instead I would go for support to friends who had gone through similar enough trauma that they could hear me without flinching.

My advice is don't limit yourself to the textbooks. Delve into the reality. Talk to real people, read through some of the trauma diaries here, read some of the many biographies and other books available on real people's experiences of trauma. Some people do terrible things to other people and one thing a survivor needs is a therapist who is strong enough to hear about it this week, and next week, and the next and the next. One thing that makes life so hard for a survivor is the sense of being different, separate from the rest of the world. The therapist's office should be an oasis where we can feel it's okay to be all of who we are, but so often it is not and we end up discouraged or at worst, retraumatized.

 

[Anarchy]

she immediately assumed that what I was seeing was symbolic. Huh?

Freud, the "man" who actually took the time and made the effort to listen to "hysterical" women, who opened up to him about the traumatic abuse which they had suffered - he even wrote it up, and published.

Then whether because he was leaned upon, or whether he realized that the sexually abusing fathers were the ones who would pay his bills, or whether he just could not face exposing a goodly number of the emminent gentlemen of Vienna for the kiddy fiddling (child raping) perverts that they were - he retracted, and over a century later, harrowing accounts of real traumas are still dismissed with his BS fudge of "symbolism".

If I'm ever in Vienna, I will make time to visit Freud's grave, and to piss on it.

 

[Ed Norton]

I personally think that it's a good thing to learn how to treat trauma patients. I appreciate your humility @Caity and I do think that there's much more to learn from us than can possibly be gleaned from textbooks or the literature.
Welcome Caity

 

[Pencil]

Well, @Caity, I'm sure you now realize that you can expect hostility from PTSD clients! I guess it comes with the territory - based on the responses here.