Poll How Long Have You Been In Therapy For Your Ptsd?

[Sterre]

How long have you been in therapy for your PTSD?

I've been in therapy off and on for over twentyfour years now. I started therapy when I was 17, and now I am 42.
I am diagnosed with CPTSD.

Will there ever be an end to all this therapy we do?

 

[Ted Moen]

I started therapy for ptsd in 1984 with the outreach program for Vietnam vets. These days I am in contact with my therapist, but I am down to one formal appointment a year to check the status of my recovery program. In addition, I see my psychiatrist once a year to renew my script (Paxil). I think once you unravel the trauma and related stuff, once you make it past the negative side of therapy (focus on not doing stuff) to the positive side (focus on positive stuff and recovery plan) and accept responsibility for your recovery plan the need for individual and group participation kind of winds down, though the need to have an established support structure in place remains and is part of your recovery plan.

Ted

 

[Innordinate]

welcome to our lives neh

 

[Srain]

It was difficult doing your survey as you put 1-5mo then 1-5yrs ...(sorry for being nit-picky)

I've been in less than a year for what I view as actual PTSD but in therapy since I was 9 at my father's doing. I just never knew it was PTSD. I wasn't Dx'd until 10yrs ago and I didn't accept it or actually find the right trauma therapist until less than a year ago..the others were for Depression or Bipolar or "other" :confused:...unspecified....a catch-all phrase

I had so much going on - the "Drama Rama Queen",- that mostly I could not or didn't know to communicate what was happening. When I felt well I left therapy, when things when poorly I went in. I went for "couples counseling" then I left, I went to the "rape center" then I left. When memories of abuse came up and court issues were involved I was active for years, moved, changed tdocs, moved changed, etc...I couldn't sit still, so how effective all that was..is evident in the fact that I was hospitalized over and over before turning hopefully to a TT and admitting I couldn't do this anymore.

Thank goodness for finding others and this forum.

peace,
Rain

 

[CaringMomma]

I started therapy for my Ptsd about 4 months ago. I have been in and out of psychologist offices since I was 12 years old. I don't remember any of those psychologists suggesting that I may have Ptsd. My guess is that my mom didn't like what they were telling her so she kept it a secret. My mom never really dealt with things very well. So, here I am at 41 years old trying, desperately, to sort through all the mess and keep myself from losing control. This forum has been very informative and comforting.

 

[Marie E.]

It helped till the 2nd year my 2nd therapist (which my 1st got promoted and left, leaving me with num 2) when she lost my full confidence and trust. I got to get off of my butt and start shopping for another one! I need one as I was recovering, even when I lost my kids to my abusive ex in Sept, it was when I came home, things got so out of hand. So, thanks to my ex fiance, I got to seek out another therapist ever more!

 

[Marie E.]

I started therapy for my Ptsd about 4 months ago. I have been in and out of psychologist offices since I was 12 years old. I don't remember any of those psychologists suggesting that I may have Ptsd. My guess is that my mom didn't like what they were telling her so she kept it a secret. My mom never really dealt with things very well. So, here I am at 41 years old trying, desperately, to sort through all the mess and keep myself from losing control. This forum has been very informative and comforting.

Like I've said, glad you are here, hope things work out alright for you :)

 

[Deaf Global Nomad]

I have been in therapy on and off since I was three years old. I have tried countless types of therapy, some were age appropriate and successful. Others ended up being behavioral interventions for adults which caused more damage in me as a child under the age of 10.

In the past 7 years I have worked with 24 different therapists. For various reasons 23 of them terminated therapy for one reason or another. I have been working for the past year with the best therapist I have ever had. She tailors her work toward my work. Her training is extremely broad and she is licensed to work with children, adolescents, and adults. She uses talk therapy, cognitive-behavioral approaches, play therapy, sand play therapy, creative arts therapy, and somatic-experiencing therapy.

My language difficulties, being Deaf, fluent in 28 languages yet a native of none, make all of these approaches useful at different times. First I need to describe to her what happened during an incidence of what I want to discuss. As the trauma likely happened in a different language than my therapist uses makes describing difficult. So I use my hands, pictures, toys, sand play, acting out of what I want to convey. Once that has been understood, then we deal with how it made me feel. For that we usually use Somatic Experiencing. Before I leave she makes sure that I am calm and safe by going through relaxation exercises.

 

[CaringMomma]

Like I've said, glad you are here, hope things work out alright for you :)

Thank you, again, Marie E.!!!

 

[Emilie]

I'm really just, severely depressed at the moment...(which my T knows by the way) I had therapy yesterday and we attempted to create a "safe place" for me to use to control my anxiety, but it ended up creating more. My T said that because I've never been in a safe or comfortable situation my entire life since being born, trying to create a place where I feel safe only makes me feel more unsafe and more vulnerable. Because of this we can't start the EMDR and it could take a really long time for me to heal my chronic PTSD. She said that just being there over time and talk can help me to change my outlook and brain patterns to become more positive and to become more comfortable. I feel like I'll be stuck this way forever...or for probably at least another 10 years until I can start an actual treatment like EMDR. The medicines help...but I'm on low dosages right now, and I really just want to be normal and not reliant on drugs to be happy.

I wish there was some type of brain surgery that could just eliminate the problem.

P.S. I have been in and out of therapy for 10 years, and 2 consecutive years (28 visits) with my current T. As well as 4 visits so far with another psychiatrist that works with my regular T.

 

[Helliepig]

I have/had a similar issue with lifelong trauma- abandonment and sexual abuse since babyhood.

I couldn't get anywhere until I met my current T. We do EMDR, but we started out with a lot of inner child work, guided visualistaion, and tapping (TFT) for the deepest darkest preverbal stuff. I was very very sceptical but it has been amazing and I still use both those techniques now.

The idea is that you put things into place using your imagination and adult knowledge of how to care for a baby, and tap it in - the brain doesn't distinguish between that and what happened. It was like, I wanted to stick to my real memories and process them and process them and heal, and then suddenly it was like realising, hang on, but there IS nothing in there apart from scared and scarrred neurological pathways with this bad stuff seared into it... the only way to stop it feeling bottomless and forever and dreadful was to start to give those baby parts of me some positive input.

The images were very powerful - i saw my baby as a dusty flat skeletal baby in the dust, like after the vultures had been, and it was hard to reach her. Marvellous though I think EMDR is, and I do think it is AMAZING, without someone trained in developmental psychology I don't think I could have done it.

There is also an article i've read that talks about creating a room in your head to rescue your damaged parts to - I can't find the link at the moment but I'll let you know if/when I find it - which, despite never having had a safe place in my life, I found to be really really useful and sometimes really powerful too...

Could you talk to your T about any of these things??

 

[Emilie]

thanks i'll definitively ask her about that kind of stuff. I think what her plan to do was that "creating a room" thing that you mentioned. I think she's afraid that I am still not that comfortable with her- sometimes i am and sometimes I am not, so she's right I suppose. My first T tried to get things out of me with hypnosis a few times but she said that it shook me up too much and that I had to stop. I'm just glad to hear of your progress and that there are some other alternative things.