How Have You Processed Your Trauma In Therapy?

[Deleted member 1860]

I am curious as to others experiences when processing their trauma in therapy.

Let me explain what I'm getting at.

Most therapists, whether via EMDR, art therapy, EFT, whatever, focused on the heart of the trauma. This was retraumatizing for me as, I believe, it reinforced my "freeze" moment. And, reinforced those negative neural pathways in my mind. There was no happy "before", there was no happy "after". The attitude was "talking about the worst of it is how you heal". Well, not so much for me.

During intensive trauma therapy last December, the ENTIRE trauma (before, during, after) was processed. This was new to me. And this process was reinforced three times, first thru hypnotherapy, then thru art therapy, and finally thru a re-presentation of the trauma. Low and behold, my "freeze" moment/memory is "broken" in that my mind automatically continues to my happy "after" image. I no longer feel that the trauma is still happening. I now KNOW it's over.

I know I can't be the ONLY one who has these therapists who focus only on the trauma itself. Therapists who believe that re-hashing these traumatic moments is healing, without focusing on the happy before and the happy after. And, in light of the fact that we as PTSD people are "stuck" in those traumatic moments, I believe it can do more harm than good to not show trauma on a continuum.

So in your processing, has your therapist stressed the happy "before" and the happy "after"? Or do you just focus on the trauma itself?

 

[Anna]

Strangely my therapist did the old "tell me about your mother" routine. Well, she was right. I never talked about happy before or after because there is none. My therapy was more based on what and why certain events happened and what was the trigger. We focused on the trauma quite a lot though and coping strategies.

 

[anthony]

There is no one method that you can isolate to spread across trauma sufferers. A therapy is a therapy, however; the therapy comes with a broad context and range of uses. Application of any therapy is based on the skill of the therapist... which does not mean a qualification, it means the persons ability to interpret you as an individual.

Normally, you need to talk about yourself, about your past to some degree, in order for the therapist to gain insight into your unique personality.

Quite honestly, the before and after approach is what a therapist found worked for you. The guts of therapy is near identical for trauma and how it gets processed. The method how you apply that is what MUST change on a per person basis.

IMO, the more apt question would be to any therapist... being, anyone who tries a single approach to blanket all trauma, then they're doing it wrong. You take a trauma therapies principles, you get to know the individual and how they function, then you custom apply the techniques to the personality.

Unfortunately, like one of my instructors said the other day... usually the higher educated the trauma therapist, the worst they are with the method of therapy, as they are so engrossed in theoretical application, they often re-traumatise the clients. Not all, but a good majority.

Now that is scary!

When you find a therapist, you need someone with lots of experience surrounding your specific problem, who has a diverse range of therapies they know, which they can tailor make any combination to apply uniquely to your personality to derive the end result... being your improvement.

Glad to hear though that you found someone to provide that for you SOL. Well done.

 

[milbert]

The guts of therapy is near identical for trauma and how it gets processed. The method how you apply that is what MUST change on a per person basis.

Art Therapy is often mentioned as an additional treatment, to be done in conjunction with a "primary" treatment (EMDR, exposure, CBT, etc.) in many books, websites and articles. For example, on the PTSD Forum Therapy Wiki, Art Therapy is described as helping communication with traumatized individuals but not necessarily in confronting trauma.

In your experience or opinion, can Art Therapy alone be a way to fully process trauma, or will some other form of therapy always be required?

 

[anthony]

Art therapy is not a trauma therapy... therefore it doesn't actually process any traumatic memories. Saying that, if you processed your traumatic memories and changed all negative emotions into positive emotions via art therapy, then yes, you are doing trauma therapy, though that does not make art therapy a trauma therapy. The more accurate reasoning is the person actually processed their own memories in combination with relaxation from art... thus they performed self cognitive trauma therapy, without the need for a therapist.

At the end of the day, a therapist doesn't actually process memories for you, you do all the work and process your own memories.

You have to think of trauma therapy as a set of guidelines that most people actually know just through growing up, education, etc. We all learn facets, some are more practicable than others, some more theoretical, etc. Some people can apply logic, reason and commonsense to their trauma easier than others. It doesn't make anyone smarter or dumber, it just means some people can process all the chaos easier... they just need to relax in order to do it.

This gets a little trickier... as it would actually be correct to say that a minority of people don't know how to process their own traumatic memories. Yes, you read that correctly. Every person on earth suffers trauma, and the majority of people on earth actually self process their traumatic occurrences, they grieve, they recover, they talk, cry, etc... even those who endure an entire childhood of abuse, many actually recover themselves, some simply cannot and endup with PTSD, some lifetime PTSD.

Think military. They send 100,000 troops, all whom are enduring trauma, 70,000 may return with some symptoms they didn't have before leaving, yet of that 70,000, 55,000 of them will actually self recover, process their trauma and be able to get on with life by talking with family, time, crying, etc. A minority (15,000), won't be able to... thus to the point, they need assistance to process negative emotion to positive emotion... hence, therapy comes into play.

What therapy works for every person... completely unique based on environmental influences within their life. If a person has chosen a more naturalistic approach, then they will pursue natural healing methods and therapies, such as art, massage, acupuncture, meditation, etc... and can even process their own traumatic memories simply by being in a relaxed state. Does this make those therapies trauma therapies? No, it does not, as they actually didn't process any of the trauma, they just relaxed you to help your individually process your own trauma.

Trauma therapies are specifically designed to provoke a direct region of the brain, typically prefrontal cortex stimulation, being the controller of many other facets in the brain linked to memory and such.

 

[Hashi]

My experience is just as anthony says, each of us responds to different things. I don't see an art therapist, but I do art and talk about it with my therapist and it's incredibly healing for me. Another person might find it doesn't help them.

I was interested in what you said about the pure trauma focus being retraumatising. Like Anna, I don't have a happy before and happy after (unfortunately for some of us our lives are a continuum of trauma), but I wonder if what your therapy was doing was reinforcing your grounding and coping skills and for you that happened to be the happy before and after.

I'm reading Belleruth Naparstek's book "Invisible Heroes" and she talks about how she as a therapist realised that in making her client focus on trauma before the client was ready to, she was retraumatising her. It was only when her client had found the thing/s that she could hold on to through the process of facing what happened, that she could face it in a way that was healing and moved her forward. Perhaps the happy before and after was what you could hold on to, and art is one of the things that I can hold on to, and something else altogether will be what someone else can hold on to.

Interestingly, Naparstek also talks about the non-verbal/non-cognitive nature of trauma and trauma reactions, and how early in the healing process talking therapies can be traumatising because we're trying to reason something that was instinctual and put something that can't be articulaated into words. For that reason, art and other creative therapies can be very effective for trauma. I always find it easier to express myself symbolically with art before I can put anything into words - usually I can't even form the thoughts before the art is there and some processing has been done in that way.

 

[BloomInWinter]

Gads. If *only* there could be a 'happy before' to go back to.

I do think my T. initially really thought there *was* a before the major trauma that brought me to him. So,t the process of going my life looking for the 'before' caused me to be retraumatized as we were uncovering all the disavowed ones.

It sent me over the edge. But he's a CBT counselor. So he had no way of knowing given there's very few trauma therapists around, and they don't get training.