Beginning Exposure Therapy

[SwordsPandaGirl]

I'm starting exposure therapy next week and don't know what to expect. I'm terrified that it will shatter the progress I have made this year and that it will make my symptoms worse. I don't want to bring all these memories to the surface but my therapist has told me that is necessary for progress. If you have gone through this therapy/ goin through it, could you explain what I should expect? Any advice on how to cope? Thank you

 

[hodge]

Oh, I'm sorry, SwordsPandaGirl. You should expect to relive your experience or experiences and feel the way you felt going through it or them. Only now you will be going through it in a safe environment - I hope, right? Do you feel safe with your therapist? If so, then it would be good for you to go ahead and go through the experience(s) with your therapist, who can be your helpful guide through distressing stuff, help you understand each twist and turn and how to recognize through each of those twists and turns that you are not to blame, and how to help you get your anger out, process it, and all the other feelings. How to cope? Keep in mind that you are helping yourself heal by doing this. You know how medicine didn't taste good when you were a kid? Well, this doesn't taste good,either, but it will help you. Continuing to try to shove it to the back burner does not help . . . back there, it festers and leads to more painful emotions. You need to bring it out into the open where you can face it squarely as the adult you are now (I'm assuming?); if not, you still need to face it down in order to take away some of its power to hurt you. Now, practical advice . . . if you can only handle half an hour, tell your therapist that. I had to tell mine that last week. You don't have to go through a whole hour of this stuff at a time. A good therapist will go along with the limits you set. You are paying them, after all. I hope this helped?

 

[Tanishq]

Hi SwordsPandaGirl, I have not been to therapist yet, so I have nothing to offer you.

But I understand exposure therapy can be very exhaustive and requires lot of work. I wish you best wishes for this therapy. :tup: :hug:

 

[Biz]

I did exposure therapy for a short time, SwordsPandaGirl, my therapist at the time and I did not have enough trust, long story short, I ended up quitting. Your therapist will have you tell your story, starting at a less detailed level and increasing in details with each 'exposure.' He or she will likely record the telling and you will listen to it between appointments to continue the 'exposure' (which sounds hard, but if you're intrusively thinking about it most days, you're likely doing a lot of exposure yourself).

If I did it again I would make sure I trust my therapist, communicate when it was too much or too fast, and have in between weeks of appointments w/o exposure to process. I have more coping skills and just a generally better base now. It's definitely painful, but it was not as shattering as I thought it would be. I hope it goes well for you; keep us updated with what you need.

If I were to do it again I would need to do some serious pre-work with a therapist about the actual method/tools of exposure therapy being triggering to me. I didn't know prior to but I was NOT comfortable being tape recorded (although I consented), and I found after my first exposure appointment that hearing myself speak and having a recording really f***ed with me. I have some non-real thinking and lots of dissociation so it could have been this stuff but it really distressed me to have to hear myself, much more so than telling the story over and over. I haven't found out what that is yet (although it's come up since with things being read aloud by a therapist I trust and in general with things being said aloud).