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Help with long term therapy?

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Scarlet13

MyPTSD Pro
Hi,

I need advice on how to handle/navigate being in a long term theraputic relationship.
I have been seeing my T for 2 and a half years, already and still need help.

We are working on my relationship/attachment issues.
But I took a break to move and now am back, but since coming back it has felt stagnant with lots of dead air. This week I felt the need to talk incessantly for fear of the silence which when that happens she just gives me her therapy look. I

I love her, but don't know what I am doing.
She knows all my stories already.
How do I keep moving ahead?
 
Can you tell her that it feels like you are covering the same ground without making much progress? Can you explore with her what you could do differently, either with her or another therapist? I was in a long-term therapeutic relationship that didn't make much ground. It took me a few tries to find the right path, but I'm now making good progress with a different therapist. So if you are in a rut, I think it's okay to say the relationship is in a rut.

Or is the silence because there is something that you are afraid to bring up?
 
It’s just as much....if not more....her job to keep the session flowing.

I mean she’s trained in doing this.

If she isn’t finding things to say to you or bounce off you, she’s pretty useless imho.

Are you sure she’s actually a good therapist? Maybe in the past it was just you doing all of the talking and her lack of skill wasn’t evident.
 
She knows all my stories already.
Maybe it’s not about the stories?

Meaning it’s not about keeping her entertained with new material, or looking for reasons why, when you both know the reasons why. It’s about working on what you already know.

If you’re doing EMDR or certain other types of exposure therapy, then repeating stories is a tool that’s used (repetition really ain’t wrong)... but if you’re not? You’re not looking to explain where something came from. But how to change the thing.
 
Ask her what the plan should be from here on in.
It's always evolving so it's good to update and make sure you are both working together.
Ask her about goals and objectives - what they might look like and how to get to them.
 
I agree with @Friday in that if you are doing emdr, or exposure therapies, you are repeating until it looses its power. Wash, rinse, repeat until it is clean. It isn't easy, but it is effective.
 
I walk into my T sessions with my psydoc feeling incredibly wary, disconnected and defensive. But it was something she said in our first session that keeps me coming back. I confessed how lost I felt and that I didn’t know what to do despite having read every damn journal article and text book I could get my academic hands on and brain around. She said: “You don’t have to. That’s my job.”
 
Let us say you were at a party and were having a great conversation with a person and all of sudden or gradually the conversation stopped and there is a lull between you.

You may feel ooh I have to say something but it is also just as plausible the other person is feeling the same. But let us say, you were comfortable feeling quiet maybe you like quietness and the other person is going crazy inside like say something or should I or vice versa.

You see both people are affected by the silence or not. But the silence is real.

Now you are in therapy and you are filling the silence. And it is never the job of therapist to fill the silence. The therapist must be comfortable in any situation. The reason this is because let us say you grew up where you were left alone for a long periods of time or you were ignored so much as a child that you find silence unbearable, then most likely you will bring this to the therapist. So the therapist should not be mixing what you bring but understand. It is like you are watching monkeys in their natural habitat to make a research, you would most likely not interfere with their daily lives right so you are not interfering. Otherwise, it would no longer be natural habitat but a habitat being interfered by the researcher! (I just watched Jane Goodall’s doc on Netflix). (-: quite interesting. So I borrow her life to illustrate yours.

So if you are sitting in silence is making you uncomfortable that is good. You are acknowledging a feeling now the next thing to do is say to the therapist, I feel uncomfortable in silence and then she or he may ask you tell me more and a conversation in born. If you are feeling truly more uncomfortable saying even that….acknowledge that especially in your body, where the discomfort sits, because this means it is from the past not from the therapist. Cause guess what? If you cannot say that in therapy, where else in the world can you say that? So it is a fundamental wound that needs to be bring up in the surface for real dissection with a therapist.

Of course you can always leave this therapist but that silence, the ability not to say its name in front of another person, the discomfort of expressing a feeling that you have, they all follow you to the next therapist. The difference is you may eventually meet a therapist that “fixes” this for you. Who fills up the space for you, who can tell you your feeling to you, who just as what happened in the past as a child, overrides your own self agency, and you may feel a relief, just like you did in the past as a child, but you do not change or learn to live through discomfort enough to say: This silence is deafening and why is it happening to me? And find the meaning behind it and move past it so you are not like you used to be in the past. You open a new door. It is scary! It is unknown. You could never say a feeling to another person. There are many repercussions in this like humiliation and fear and laughter and attack or ignoring. But, the beauty of therapy is this is the only place in the world you are allowed to test the water. You may feel a bam of negative feeling because this is your natural tendencies and THEN RIGHT AWAY REALIZE wow that was all me. The therapist is concerned for me and not laughing or telling me to shut up and sit there or ignoring me etc whatever else that may happened. And boom you are learning there is no fear here! That was so yesterday but your body carries it.
 
The reason this is because let us say you grew up where you were left alone for a long periods of time or you were ignored so much as a child that you find silence unbearable, t

With all due respect @grit , were this the case ^^ , I think it's far more probable that one would feel comfortable with silence, as one is both practised with it and it was the 'norm'. Not to mention people are various levels of intro or extroversion, let alone anything (everything) else. JMHO though, but good not to predicate reasoning on a false premise, I would think?
 
With all due respect @grit , were this the case ^^ , I think it's far more probable that one would feel comfortable with silence, as one is both practised with it and it was the 'norm'. Not to mention people are various levels of intro or extroversion, let alone anything (everything) else. JMHO though, but good not to predicate reasoning on a false premise, I would think?

Just an analogy. I have no idea this person's childhood, I was trying to give some description around why being uncomfortable in silence could be a real wound in therapy that needs processing.
I hope that does not take away the issue on hand.
 
Is there anything with your relationship or attachment issues specifically that you want to work on? After a break, it can be hard because you don't have that forward momentum carried over from all of your other appointments. When I'm seeing someone on a regular basis, I continue thinking about what we talked about in the last session and that shapes what I bring to the next one. Before looking for a new therapist, I'd want to think about what it is that I want out of therapy. Finding a new therapist is a stressful process, and I think not knowing what you want or need can make it even more difficult.
 
Well so I do not want a new T.
She always says to use "wise mind".
My wise mind tells me that she is good.
Thanks @grit your post was helpful.

I like this:
So if you are sitting in silence is making you uncomfortable that is good. You are acknowledging a feeling now the next thing to do is say to the therapist, I feel uncomfortable in silence and then she or he may ask you tell me more and a conversation in born.
And this would work with her.
She looks at me engaged and allows silence to happen and then I feel fear.
I fear she may not be invested in me anymore.
I know I need to share that.
I had a very rejecting mother so I have "anxious/avoidant" attachment issues.
I think the work is good with her, but I worry, what if it's not?
Its like my move from one house to another has uprooted me in therapy.
I just don't feel the connection.
It was always so good that it felt that she was inside my brain and heart.
Now it just feels like we are exchanging words.
I always struggle with this in one way or another.
 
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