@BlueOrange thank you for your generosity and clarity. This is really helpful.
It's affirmed that I need to really express ALL my concerns in detail to the therapist.
We're at the stage of doing narrative work, first session this week, so early days.
I feel scared that she is just wanting to move through the phases without checking in with me.
In reality she has done nothing to indicate. I think it's her slightly 'let's crack on', 'we'll have to see how it goes' attitude.
I mentioned the concern about me having complex ptsd and the process not beings as 'clear cut' as it might be in cases where trauma was caused by one discrete incident.
She responded by saying that in complex cases the treatment can be a little more unpredictable, we'll have to see how it goes, and then quickly moved on. Just writing this out helps me to know we need to talk about this a bit more.
She has said that she thinks I'm ready to do this work, partly because I engage in grounding practices and do some trauma releasing work.
My concern is that she thinks because I can do these things on a good day, I can on a not so good day. In reality I haven't been able to regulate and sooth healthly for two and a half to three years. Even after the TRE trauma release exercises, this can be problematic.
I've had this trouble with a therapist before who was so caught up in how many tools/practices I have that she didn't want to hear that I couldn't engage with them on my worse days and the times when I could they didn't help. In fact, one of them, mindfulness practice and meditation was actively making matters worse!
(She was not a trained trauma specialist and clearly not up to speed on links between mindfulness and dissociation)
I've totally disintegrated over the last two and half to three years because my coping skills hit their limit/no longer work, and of course because time/circumstance has eroded another layer of defenses.
Yesterday was the first day in all this time that I managed to identify that I was having a flashback and get some distance from where the thoughts were wanting to take me. Like yourself I've also been actively suicidal this year.
An on going part of my distress has been my inability to be kind to myself. I was concerned about it before your post, and now feel definitely need to spend time working on this with the therapist before starting the actual EMDR.
It is hard for me to identify how much of my concerns are entangled with trust and control issues. As well as wanting an unrealistic minimally painful and perfect process!
I sense as the relationship develops that we'll see. Your post has certainly helped me to see that some of my concerns are valid and to clarify them.
Apologies if I just gave you a bunch of information you didn't ask for. Guess I just felt fo share where I was coming from with this. Plus it was a useful process to write this out.
If you feel to let me know how the treatments unfold. Wishing you all that you need for the process.
Thanks again @BlueOrange, much appreciated.
