Hello, And Being Honest With Your Therapist

[drannepratt]

I saw a post on Twitter that I hoped to respond to (hard to be honest with your therapist) but once I joined I realized I can't respond to it directly. I'm Anne Pratt, a psychologist with about 20 years experience treating trauma, and a survivor as well. Currently I have escaped from an administrative job and am doing clinical work again, at a place called Family Care Medical Center in Springfield, MA. I love it! I am not cut out for administrative work and not doing clinical work was very demoralizing. It's different (and kind of a nice change) working in a medical setting.

If I could respond to the person who is having trouble talking to his or her therapist, i would say, try talking about talking about it. (Nope, not a typo!). Talking with your therapist about how hard it is to talk about the important stuff can open up a truthful dialog without putting you over the edge. Hoping that your therapist is sensitive to your need to do this, you can make great gains just "talking about talking about it," even without getting into the details. If you find you CAN talk to him about fearing revenge from your father if you are honest, that's a good topic, too. There's a lot you can do without describing the actual details.

I'm glad to be here! I find the restrictions restrictive, but totally understand the reasoning behind it. Safety first!

Anne

 

[vallie000]

Welcome, Anne. I hope more therapists, survivors or not, come to this site. They could learn a lot. Glad to hear you are back in practice, as well. You are much needed.

 

[AdamAnt]

Welcome Anne! Thanks very much for going to the extra effort to help. I'm sure we all hope you find this a good place to hang your hat from time to time...Good advice up there!!

 

[gdf]

Hi Anne,

Welcome to the form.

Suspicious as I am, I always find it very helpful when researchers and mental health professionals are willing to share their credentials to a reasonable extent when they arrive on the form.

I would like to pick your brain regarding EMDR if you feel it is within the realm of your expertise to answer. I am wondering what qualifications are required to use it as a therapy technique (appropriate education/licensing as a given). Is there a specific regulating organization that trains or sanctions the training for the technique? Thanks.

Gina

 

[kers]

Talking with your therapist about how hard it is to talk about the important stuff can open up a truthful dialog without putting you over the edge.

This has certainly been my experience. At times, I have talked about talking about something for weeks--even months--and my therapist has patiently wlaked through it with me over and over again. When I finally talk about the scary thing, I always feel like I am doing so of my own volition, because I want to (eventually it is boring and/or a pain in the rear to talk around it).

I have read here of many people whose therapists expect them to unfold the trauma as in some sort of textbook, in 12 sessions or less--and it generally fails miserably. I think trauma therapists must walk the line between pushing and pausing quite carefully, but when they do, it definitely works.

 

[Jubilation4Me]

Hello Anne,

Welcome to the forum! It's been a most helpful place for me......I've gained quite a lot of valuable information here.

Take care,
J4M

 

[James B.]

Hello Anne -

I read your intro, and see you feel it important for the client to initiate dialoge with the therapist regarding subjects generally regarded as difficult to broach.

So, it seems you understand this to be a common thing, for a client to feel inhibited to initiate discussion regarding "difficult" topics. Ok, though it seems to me one of the universal benchmarks for rating the quality or effectiveness of a product or service, is how well it anticipates the needs of the consumer/client.

My point being, maybe if the therapist initiated dialogue, mentioning awareness of how tough some topics can be to discuss, maybe this would break the ice, so to speak. After all, if it was an easy subject to discuss, then the client probably wouldn't need a therapist to begin with. IDK.

Note I said "initiate" dialogue, not lead the discussion. For instance, if a therapist showed awareness of subjects that would, by common sense consensus, be difficult to talk about, it might put the client at ease, knowing they aren't limited my boundries used in casual conversation.

A few subjects come to mind, things like incest, rape, molestation, torture, family code of silence, domestic rage and violence, and evil, etc.

Not to mention the whole slew of typical issues trauma survivors face, like low self esteem, self-hate, eating disorders, OCD, poor emotional regulation, sex problems, high-level judgement destroying anxiety, anger, rage and a wide variety of fears, both rational (based on the survivors experience) and irrational, etc.

These are a few of the things that might be difficult for a serious trauma survivor who is sitting in a room closed door with a complete stranger, to *know they can* talk about, it seems.

JMHO.

Welcome to the forum.
James B.

 

[Iam]

Hi Anne and welcome ;o)

I agree full heartedly with talking about how hard it is to talk about some issues, traumas and feelings. I have been telling my therapist how terrified I am to talk about the details with him. It has nothing to do with trust as I do trust him. I know from 9 months of experience with him that he won't judge me or act shocked. It's just horribly humiliating.

James, one question. How is the therapist supposed to know what to broach if we haven't brought it up at all? Not arguing with you, just a question. I think I have shared with you what I found to be the safest way for me.

I have chosen to type up my timeline diary and gave it to him at the end of our last session 2 weeks ago to read outside of our sessions. I don't even want him to read it in front of me. I figure that is a start, especially given the fact that typing it up caused so much anxiety that I think it has taken the edge off if you know what I mean. Now I can let him broach the subjects he thinks we need to discuss. Does that make any sense?

Anne, a question for you. I don't know if you are a christian. My T is and we have been talking about David Seamands book "The Healing of Memories." I am about 1/2 through my second reading of it. We are considering the healing of memories process he lays out in the book. In essence, taking Jesus back into the memories and reliving them with Jesus there to heal them. After that we will spend however long it takes to do the reprogramming of my brain, ie thought patterns. Do you have any experience with that technique?

 

[James B.]

Iam, if I went to see a therapist and told the therapist "I am an incest survivor, early prolonged trauma, alcoholic parent" for example. And I knew from information provided by that therapist perhaps in the form of a list/reading material, that they were emotionally able and trained to deal with the topic of *torture* - then I'd know the topic was ok to discuss.

Even the word will freak some Therapists out, it blows there doors off.
I know, it happened to me a few times. :-) LOL.

Iam, I don't think Anne would be here if she wasn't looking for broad based feedback from the field.

Once again, welcome to the forum.

 

[disconnect]

:hello:

I just wanted to say hello.

 

[Iam]

James I am in total agreement with you. A good therapist will have good intuition about what is going on with the client. We are so damned confused about ourselves that many times we can't even begin to untangle the web and know what we need to talk about. My T usually has a pretty good sense of what to ask me to get me thinking. Frequently I wont see myself in the question or info he gives until I think about it over the week and then it is like a light switching on. I am always amazed when he knows how to gently lead me into making/seeing the conclusion for myself. He really avoids giving his "opinion" and only does so when I am very insistent that I need it.

There have been times when I have gotten stuck and my T starts throwing things out, kind of like throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks LOL! Then he'll hit on the right thing and a whole new part of therapy starts up.

I hope this helps Anne. Sometimes we just don't know the subject to broach, sometimes we are too scared and need your assurance that we can bring it up. If you see that your patient is struggling and think you have a good idea as to what it is about, ask questions. If your patient reacts but still can't talk about it....assure them that it's ok, that you have dealt with the same issue with other patients. It really does help us to feel safe opening up.