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How many times did you go through your trauma narrative in therapy?

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I spent a few weeks writing a trauma narrative in therapy.

Typically I would write the first half of the session, then he would read what I had written and discuss for the middle of the session, then we'd return to baseline for another 10 minutes or so. And that's how that would go for the most part. Last week I finished writing it. Then yesterday my therapist and I read the narrative all the way through together.

It was the first I'd heard it out loud, which was a good deal different than having only written it down, and I felt very overactivated by hearing it. At the end of the session he asked for my thoughts on having finished processing the trauma. I was a bit surprised because I wouldn't have thought I was finished processing it with the way I felt, if anything the trauma felt very unprocessed when we read it. I felt awful all day yesterday, didn't sleep last night, then again awful all day today. Nothing is getting me back on track.

Am I doing something wrong? Does this sound like I'm finished processing it? Should I be asking him to go through it more until I feel less reactive? Part of me thinks that might help, while the other part never wants to hear or think of that narrative again.
 
We don’t directly talk about my trauma in therapy, 4 years in. We do flash emdr because I still find the trauma memories too overwhelming. My previous therapist just had me dive in head first and it nearly broke me. All it did was activate my ptsd.
 
I went through my narrative probably over a hundred times over the span of four or five therapists. Well, it felt like a hundred times. Realistically it was probably only 20.

It was excellent for me because I slowly discovered exactly why it happened and my past's role in why it happened. I uncovered every nook and cranny of it. Definitely not for everyone, but perfect for me.
 
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we refer to it but not go through it pretty much every session . Since the first visits with this therapist when I went through it with her we retouch on aspects regularly. When will I have finished processing it? I don’t know- I guess it depends on what that means? When will I stop reacting? I react less, but it still shapes my life. It will always shape who I am, it’s part of my psycho biography, so maybe when I shrug and know that and no longer have PTSD symptoms? Or for many of us when we manage a balance of life not ruled by ptsd but making gentle space for ourselves and knowing we might be symptomatic at times if we don’t?
 
At the end of the session he asked for my thoughts on having finished processing the trauma. I was a bit surprised because I wouldn't have thought I was finished processing it with the way I felt, if anything the trauma felt very unprocessed when we read it.
I suppose there's a slight chance he was asking you, how does it feel to have finished processing the trauma for the first time...?
I felt awful all day yesterday, didn't sleep last night, then again awful all day today. Nothing is getting me back on track.

Am I doing something wrong? Does this sound like I'm finished processing it? Should I be asking him to go through it more until I feel less reactive? Part of me thinks that might help, while the other part never wants to hear or think of that narrative again.
You're not doing anything wrong - and I do think you can and should talk with him about continuing to process. There's no one-size-fits-all approach to memory re-integration, you just need to go through it until it recedes into the past, where it belongs.

The part of you that never wants to hear or think of that narrative again - that internal reaction is very instructive, as it's letting you know that you're not done yet.

But really great work on having laid out the narrative fully. That is an accomplishment (though I also really empathize with it feeling more like a failure than a success). Stick with it, and you'll start to see that pieces of it gradually become less activating. It takes some time, but you've done well to get this far. I encourage you to talk with your therapist, and stat working through it again.
 
this particular approach never came up in my own therapy sessions, but a recurring theme throughout my recovery is that processing repressed emotions is always harder and longer than my logical mind expects. there is no right or wrong to the process. recovery takes what it takes and every journey is unique.

steadying support while you process. easy does it.
 
I wrote letters (or I guess diary entries?) for my therapist to read. We found that reading it outloud REALLY destabilized me so he didn't, until he did. And then we moved to me actually telling him about it outloud. All of this is super uncomfortable and really destabilized me. I've learned how to restablize myself after therapy but that took a while. I guess where I'm going with this is therapy needs to progress and that isn't comfortable and can destabilized you until you learn how to stabilize yourself again. It's all about practice.

I also give you kudos. You were able to hear it outloud and though it made you feel destabilized, you did it and that is hard. Give yourself space to see that you are moving forward and as hard as that is and feel, you are moving forward and that deserves space to feel proud about!
 
How many times did you go through your trauma narrative in therapy?
To get through a very brief snippet of it, in order to be able to testify to it, a few thousand times over several months.

That did not fully process even that snippet of my trauma history. It only got that snippet to where -for awhile- I could talk about it clearly, and concisely, without -completely- losing my mind, or killing anyone else or myself.

To be fair, I wasn’t ready to begin processing ANY trauma, much less with surgical precision focusing on any single area (complex trauma is all tangled up with itself, like trying to unspin a spider’s web; focusing on a single area leaves all those connection points intact, so nothing is actually processed-processed, and as soon as any point in the web shakes? It all shakes loose, again.

The parts of my trauma history I HAVE fully processed? The narrative itself was maybe 10-20% of that work. The stuff I processed on accident? (Just got lucky / I wasn’t attempting to process it) the narrative was maybe 2%).

And ^^^this^^^ is NOT to minimize how useful/difficult a narrative is. It took me the better part of 2 years just to get my timeline written down, without losing my mind / losing control. And that’s a timeline of maybe 7 or 8 items. All in a list. That simple. Not an actual narrative of any singular event, nor outline, just timeframes of my life. That I worked on nearly every day. For 2 years. And that I still cannot call to mind at will, most days, much less write/talk about. I can think/write/talk about my unprocessed trauma in pieces, sometimes, some days, in some ways. But All together? Nope.

My fully processed trauma? I can think about, write about, talk about, at will, at any time, for any length of time. The exact same way I could talk shoes or celery or horses. Shrug. No worries. No problems. I can also be around both that trauma type, players IN that trauma (or new players), or even re-experience that trauma all over again, without any of the past lurching forward. At all.

Am I doing something wrong?
Doesn’t sound like it.

Does this sound like I'm finished processing it?
Sounds like a good start, for sure.

Still being at all reactive, in any way, I wouldn’t see as finished.

Should I be asking him to go through it more until I feel less reactive?
Definitely.

As well as? Have a discussion of how fully processed trauma looks/feels, and how to get there.
 
So many times I couldn't guess is the answer to the question posed by the title of the thread. But rarely ever more than once or twice in total before breaking down swallowable bites to chew on one at a time.
"Gotta feel it to heal it" was a favorite line of a past T. He is writing a book and I think it may be his title. Fired him and hired another and another and went through the same narrative everytime, thats the price of admission.

"so, what brings you into my office? how can I help you?"
"i don't want to talk about it, lets see if you can guess and then help me get past it'

not a good way to get from here to there. I tell all, all the time. What else could possibly lead to relevant work?
 
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