Has Anyone Conquered Dissociation In Therapy?

[Abstract]

Barefoot, I hope it goes well. You obviously hit a hot spot with this topic from everyones responses and I am grateful you posted. The amount of response may be overwhelming so feel free to do whatever is in your interests.

This is a bottomless topic for me but when there is too much to say then I tend to say little.

I think for me there is a few different aspects of dissociation. I totally agree with Justmenow about grounding needing to be all the time no matter what. Its like I have had to change my main way of interacting with the world from trying not to notice things and to rather block them, into taking note and staying aware. That fundamental change doesn't happen if you just do it some of the time. And heading off dissociative episodes works much better than trying to get out of them.

So anyway, I have general dissociation and a lot, then dissociation in response to trauma cues, then we have dissociation in therapy. And this internal conflict. I haven't been in therapy for a while because of this issue and i may be being unfair to myself but am unsure that the huge progress I have made when it comes to dissociation will follow through in therapy and improve things there. And the next level step after that which is talking about trauma.

Working on having an open and vulnerable relationship with your therapist about your present life now, even about this struggle, is a huge part of the work itsel

And this is a big stumbling block for me personally. This alone gets me so I can't get any further than that. Quite frankly it terrifies me and is totally counter intuitive.

"I don't know why, but I'm really scared of you right now."

and this is another stumbling block. This requires a certain level of trust and trying to do something like this (tell the t what I need or what is happening for me internally) is enough to shut me down entirely. The last lot of therapy I had I would normally only get 2 sentences out the entire session.It took me a lot of therapy to just start understanding I wasn't doing this.

Over the last couple of years I have been trying to do exposure to these things and break them down by posting on here and trying to speak and tell people more (after evaluating safety). I have made a lot of progress in this too. I broke down what I think the different components are and have been tackling each. Maybe I would be surprised by my progress if I actually got myself back into therapy.

Unfortunately I also don't feel Ok doing anything to do with inner child work. There is a fear of feeling more split. Not sure if its wise or stupid (for me). I don't know what the internal conflict is but I now have more of a sense of what it isn't and do have some connections. It isn't normal internal debate or two mindedness and it does change a lot depending on how symptomatic I am. I am accepting it is a trauma response of some type.

I know I'm not speaking as specifically here about broaching trauma in therapy but that is what I want to do and have huge problems wiith. Its just that this other stuff doesn't even allow me to even close enough to start dealing with all of that.

PS, Well yabbered quite a bit after all! ;)

 

[maurybrooks]

My biggest challenge in sessions is dissociation. When we get close to trauma - even just slightly touch near it, not even diving in deep - I get spacey, shut down and dissociate. I can go from being fine to being full-on, severely dissociated, completely "gone" very, very quickly.

I had much of the same challenge. I lived the first half of my life very unconscious, shut down and spacey, the second half trying to figure it out and finally I am at a point where I can cruise most of the time. When I am doing trauma healing I go into massive yawning even if I was wide awake before it started.

1.) Ask T she can work with the energetic charge of your issue rather than the words. Releasing the charge of an issue is the critical step to prevent the reactions. You might be able to draw during a session or write instead of talking and have her support your reactions as they come up. This lets her focus on you and how you are dealing with the issue instead of the story.

Personally I find the story has minimal value compared to the charge. Each moment of a story has its own charge. Collectively these charges compose a bigger energy field or the bigger story. When working with the charge you do not need to access the nitty gritty details of the story. Peaks and low points of the charge are the same as peaks and low points of the story such as the one which is sending your off to another zone. When you view the series of charged moments consecutively troubling anomalies are easy to access so they can be dealt with. The beauty is you do not need to be wrapped up in unearthing and retelling a long buried story.

2.) Find a small stone or crystal which you resonate with and hold it in your hand during as session. When the going gets tough you could hold the stone tighter, rub it, or hold it up to your heart. There are many variations of this so you need to do what feels most supportive, using the stone to stay connected. The main message here is figure out what support you to stay connected and have your tools ready.

In additions to when doing my own trauma work spacey issues would come up in stores and my body would go into a quasi shut down mode. It may have been allergies or a combination of issues since I have very extreme allergies to most foods (thankfully sucessfully managed now). When I was working on this now resolved issue my partner would bring me a fresh pressed (pre-maid) juice and this would help. I also carried a crystal or other stone with me. I usually wear stones now on my neck of wrist just so I have one handy when needed.

3. Watch your breath during the session (always). Your breath will tell you exactly where you are being triggered IF you are accustomed to watching it. When it starts to go into temporary shut down mode, you are triggered. If you catch this initial moment you can develop strategies to deal with the series of responses your body goes through and be on a path towards nipping the reactions in the bud. Your T might be empathically sensitive to this change in you.

I was surprised when I started to discover the patterns of reactions in my body and mind. For me, after the breath started to lock up, my right hip started to turn inwards and many other compensating reactions followed.

4. Definitely keep your therapist if you are comfortable with her. You might consider supplementing your process with a healer who specializes in dealing with trauma from the energetic perspective. The right healer can quickly open up a few most challenging charges to make it easier to access the rest via talk, art, writing therapy with your T.

5. I saw someone mentioned working by telephone or video chat. That can be effective if your T is empathically sensitive to you without the need for body language. T needs to be able to sense when you are drifting or I would not recommend it.

 

[barefoot]

Thanks all of you for your very open, detailed responses - I really am grateful for the insights here.

I'm feeling very nervous about my therapy session tomorrow. I'm currently convinced that my therapist is going to stick to her guns re I need to accept I can't work directly on the trauma and that, as a result, she will say we should stop working together once my prepaid sessions run out in a few weeks because there's no point in doing any more. Intellectually, I know it is possible that she won't say that and that I am in worst case scenario zone - I have been swinging from this current position and a more positive, optimistic position and back again all week, which has been exhausting. Right now, I just feel incredibly anxious about it and find myself catastrophizing.

I would normally go through and respond to each of you, answering your questions and commenting on what you've raised but I'm feeling so stressed and overwhelmed that I don't think I can do that at the moment. So I hope you will all accept my blanket "thank you" and know that every post in this thread has helped in some way and I so appreciate it.

I think the key things I am taking away - and I'm going to try to include these points in my session tomorrow - are:

- Stabilisation and grounding are key and I think I have taken my eye off the ball with this stuff. So, I think I need to go back to basics and almost start over with this crucial foundational work.

- I think I need to talk to my therapist about the discrepancies between how I present and how I feel, which leads to an element of mind reading and guessing games on both sides. Feeling like I have to look ok and prioritising not getting (i.e. looking) upset in sessions is not helping me. I need to find a way to be more honest about how I feel and what's really going on behind the scenes/under the surface.

- More understanding of the internal conflict between me and "the other aspect of me" that shows up (whether it's an inner child or whatever) might help to allay some of the current fear and confusion I feel.

- This thread has been a useful reminder that, although dissociation in therapy causes me so much frustration/irritation and I've been so focused on "having to" overcome it - the dissociation shows up for a reason and has a function. A few of you have made the point that when your dissociation improved/disappeared you were left with something else. In particular, you were left with a lot of feelings. I have to give this serious consideration. I want to stop dissociating. But I'm not sure I'm ready for all those feelings. I don't know how to sit with them, what to do with them, how to ultimately be more-or-less ok with them. I don't even know what the feelings are! So, am I ready for that? Can I deal with that? Or would it be too stabilising when, for now, for the most part, I am pretty high functioning?

- Having just said I don't know what the feelings are, I think there is one that is screaming at me and I saw it mentioned in lots of your posts too. Shame. We haven't really talked about that apart from to just name it a few times - and it's generally been my therapist who has named it, not me. It feels like I need to work on the shame. But I don't know what "working on shame" means/what it would look like. But I suspect it would make me dissociate!

- So now I have some ideas/intentions and I feel determined to have this discussion in my session tomorrow and feel determined to move forwards with the work and make more progress (not just with dissociation but with the whole lot) But I know my intentions often seem to count for nothing once I'm in the therapy room - they just disappear, like smoke. If my intention was enough to overcome all these challenges and get all this stuff sorted, I would have done it by now. So, I guess a crucial part of this whole discussion is how my therapist can support me to do this. And I just so desperately hope that she will say she is hopeful and willing to continue to work with me on all this and for us to try to find some new things to try. If she says the opposite, it will just feel so devastating :-(


Thanks again for all the input - and for persevering with my numerous long, rambling posts!

 

[Justmehere]

That's a wonderful and very pro-active plan @barefoot! :hug:

 

[maurybrooks]

When an unwanted entity is coming through myself or a client I tell it to leave and that it is no longer welcome here. This will work in many cases. In some cases you may need to call on a spiritual entity (Saint, Angel, ... ) and ask it to remove the entity. Many time this is no big deal to get rid of an entity. Once in awhile they can be a real doozy though. This process can make a significant difference with this issue.

 

[amosmorris]

Good for you @barefoot ...you're definitely inspiring me. Working on the shame: for me that feels like admitting the thing to my T that makes me feel or look childish...I'm typically very ashamed of those feelings, needs, impulses, "weaknesses" (as I typically relate to them). That's where my example came from of admitting to her that I have a hard time calling her up visually in my mind after sessions...I was super ashamed to admit this for all those reasons/associations...but it also gave her the opportunity to respond in a way that better accommodated me. I still feel ashamed but can't deny the value of spilling it. I hope that's helpful for you as you pick and choose where to focus with your T tomorrow...:hug:

 

[estelle beninson]

I am at a frustrating point in therapy and am feeling pretty upset about where I am with it now.

I've...

I am still trying to cope wit dissociaton after about forty years after the event. I have had some good therapy but some therapists, no matter how good on other things, dont have experience of PTSD. Some even rubbish the idea that you have it.

Interesting dissociation - I used to space out whenever I sat down to a meal, come round, found I had eaten the meal and not remembered it. I dont know how to stop dissociating. I just permanently go into away states. Before this happened, I had continous feelings of being conscious, now I am only "here" for a few minutes at a time and then I come back and realize I have spaced out again. Dont know what to do about it. It helped to have something really interesting in the here and now, like when I went abroad and had to stay focused to avoid getting lost. Maybe putting more interesting events and things in the real world might help.

More important, I also want to gt my memory back for day to day events. I dont have a past, like other people, it stopped forty five years ago. I want to study something, like a language or maths or anything, just to take in new information. Instead, I am going over and over and over those sodding events and I cant stop it.

I am really ....... off with ptsd. I hate it. I want my life back before its too late.

 

[Abstract]

Well done for not responding individually when you are already overwhelmed. There a lot of replies here.

I think you have an excellent plan. I didn't say this before but what I have done specifically is look at where the roadblocks are and then try to break them down individually. It sounds like shame is one of those for you. It is for most of us. I circle around the trauma and try to break in towards whenever and however I can. And I work continuously on grounding, coping mechanisms and relationships. The last in an attempt to be able to tolerate the t relationship and hence do the work.

I would be very surprised if you t didn't see working on stabilisation and the roadblocks around this as an important next step. She should.

In my last round of therapy I was determined I was going to do trauma processing and now. It was humiliating having to eventually accept that I needed to approach it differently thereafter as my mind was obviously just not ready. A couple of years ago someone wise on here said to me that you can't force these things and rather need to up your safety, coping, relationship in order to do the next step.

One more note about what is left behind after the dissociation - I relate to what the others have said but I would try not to think ahead as there are many pluses as well as the new challenges. It is so worth doing. Rather take the steps and you will deal with the results as they happen. Your mind will always only do what you are ready to do. Good luck and let us know what happens.

 

[Sandstone]

@barefoot that is an admirable example of focussing productively on a problem. I would expect your T to be delighted that you have put so much work and thought into it. I do hope it goes well for you and you are able to bring it all out tomorrow. Good luck, and sleep well.

 

[OrganicRobot]

Maybe you can first write out your trauma in a safe space? Away from anyone else or any distractions? Pushing the trauma into the world (via writing or some form of artistic expression) will help you naturally distance yourself. Because your brain will now look at the trauma from afar/detached point of view.

For me, about 30 mins - 1 hr of writing takes a few days to realign myself. And I stopped writing for a bit because I'm just not able to get to the other parts yet. But I got a lot about. Mainly early childhood. I'm stuck on the teenage years (still gives me anxiety). Perhaps start with early childhood or a less severe memory first will help. Even if it is just outlining what happened. Like writing a list of the people who were there or a description of the environment at that point in time. Basically fact collecting compared to reliving the emotional aspects.

I like using a wide variety of colored pens too. Helps me organize the information and doodle if I need a quick distraction.

Then after you do your writings you can gently broach the subject with your therapist again. Hopefully this is helpful. Best of luck.

 

[The Albatross]

I didn't conquer it in therapy... but I had great gains using cranio sacral (sp?). I still bug out but the only trigger now is BIG physical pain.

I was though fortunate enough to have access to a very well established and regionally recognized practitioner. Just sayin'.

I still ditch the body at times cuz it was not a "safe place"... but between cranial sacral and learning via exposures how to manage triggers... over all big improvements.

 

[ButterflyBean]

@barefoot - I just wanted to say that I'm thinking of you and my offer for a PM still stands! I'm sure today's session was quite draining, although I do hope that it was productive and shed some light on the issues you are dealing with! Looking forward to an update when you are ready! Compassionate hugs if you accept them!