I don't think it's OK to tell your T you're worried she may be a serial killer

[barefoot]

This sounds stressful @Sandstone - I hope you’re able to find a way through it.

FWIW, I don’t think you sound ridiculous. It sounds like you’re very aware of a long term trigger around being unsafe when you and one other are shut in a room together. And that these other things (the high fences, the laying of the patio etc) are now providing possible further “evidence” to exacerbate and enforce that triggered fear.

I don’t think your T would find it ridiculous either. Nor do I think she would feel insulted.

I would push back on hypnosis too - I find the idea of it pretty terrifying, whether I suspect my T of being a serial killer or not! The high fences and locked gate thing...I think that would actually make me feel safer...because I think I’d feel that that means no one else could get in and intrude. Which, for me, feels secure....though I can see how for others that could feel the opposite...dangerous and frightening that they couldn’t get out.

That said, in my T’s old building, she used to lock the door to her room at the start of every session and that did always create an anxiety spike in me....the idea that she was locking me in. After a while though, I decided that I would rather be locked in with her than feel that anyone could just come bursting into the room at any point. Not that it was likely that anyone would come bursting in. But, you know....since when am I that bothered about what’s actually statistically likely?! ?

 

[Sandstone]

Well, I didn't tell her in any detail , though right at the end of the session I said that I needed her not to talk about hypnosis because I need to be in control of myself. She went into some detail about what she wants to use it for - to implant a more positive self image - but then realised that she was doing exactly what I'd asked her not to do, and stopped. I have wondered if I need to set myself a boundary about it, and plan yto leave if she raises the subject again
On the way out I carefully inspected the gate and its two bolts, so now know what I'm looking for if I ever need to run.
I don't know if that will be enough. I was aware that I appeared grumpy and short.

It's interesting that the occasion I ran from a session with my last T came up. That was about approaching a particular trauma.

 

[Sandstone]

hypnosis ....it’s contrindicated for treatment of PTSD, and flat out dangerous if you sit high on the dissciative disorder spectrum.

Can you link me to anything authoritative on this? I think I need to look at whether I'm being rationally cautious or over defensive.

why have you assigned her as a serial killer - of all the criminal mindsets she could have - why this?

Oh and don't take this the wrong way - but - why you - as her (next) victim? What do you think her profile is?

I see serial killers as cunning, manipulative and impossible to outwit. The flip side of therapists, who know better than us what is going on in our heads and, we hope, use it for our good. ( I also have a bit of an irrational fear that my great grandfather was Jack the Ripper, so maybe it is an idea that hangs around me)

The major reason I see myself as a victim is that I have been the readily available one so often. I'm there, and I don't resist.

 

[ladee]

You are not sounding like a victim in this case Sandstone. You have an awareness of your surroundings that you find unsettling. AND, you checked the bolts on the gate in case you had to leave. That does not sound like 'victim' thinking at all.

And you can let her know, to save yourself any further stress about this hynosis thing, that you will leave if she continues. There it is,out in the open. You are saying NO, and it doesn't matter why she wants to do it... I would not allow myself to be hypnotized either. For any reason, said theraputic or not.

 

[Sideways]

Can you link me to anything authoritative on this?

@Friday - can you help out with this? I don’t have access to scholar stuff on my phone and (I may remember this wrong) but I think you may have linked this stuff before?

 

[Abstract]

Therapists have tried to convince me about hypnosis as well. When I was very young and less aware I tried for one session but was so affected by my wariness I practically had a panic attack then dissociated. Since then I have done research and there is zero way I would do it. Partly too because I now sometimes respect my brains need to section things off and feel I need to work with it rather than circumventing it. I have read some of the research mentioned before but wouldn't have brain space now to find it since brain left me stranded. Sure friday will come to the rescue.

So that you dont write her off as totally suspect I have "met" many people on here and elsewhere who have been helped by it. That doesnt mean I am going to do it by the way. You say she has a trauma past and in context of what you have said it sounds highly likely she has been helped by it. Her past may also explain the gates and bolts etc.

Not wanting to put my experiences onto you but I know one of the reasons I am so hypervigalant in therapy is because I cant trust myself to stay aware or fight run in response to a situation. Its that freeze dissociative state of mind that sabatages me as it makes me not trust me. If I trusted me more I may be able to risk trusting a t more. If that makes sense. But in truth I am not the way I was. If you are truthful I suspect you are not the way you were. You are more self aware and are taking active action to look after yourself. You can build on that in this situation and its OK to do it.

 

[Friday]

Ditto... on mobile, for the time being so I don’t have access to my usual resources... but where you’re going to find them (scholarly articles) @Sandstone are the peer reviewed articles from the 90s when they gave up this line of research due to the consistently bad results across (I hesitate to say every study, because there were probably a few outliers, but it was that much of a landslide of bad juju) across the board.

Just sharing what I’ve learned in school?

...People were crazy excited about using hypnosis on trauma victims in the 80s, because there were so many flashy results about instant memory access & sleep aids & bossing people whilst in a receptive/vulnerable state to do what you wanted them to do, but by the 90s it had been shelved as causing far more damage than any assistance justified. IE it could help the therapist (assuaging curiosity as to what happened, or in giving them more control over the client who was compelled to obey what you ordered them to do for short periods of time) or investigators who needed the gory details to make their cases stick, but it had a bad habit of destroying the people themselves who were either forced too hard / too fast, by nature of the process (unlike EMDR, or meditation, it’s not self directed), or who could no longer tell the difference between their actual memories and the false ones the therapist wove into them ...& now had a delusional issues to contend with, in addition to their trauma disorder. Whilst false memories and blurring the line between fantasy and reality was a big piece of that, also the hugely bad idea it is to force total recall on anyone // knocking down walls with no idea what’s behind them, or why the brain walled them off to begin with (this is a big part of where “know why a wall is there, before knocking it down” came from in trauma therapy).

Ha. Found one of the last studies (1990) that attempted to rewrite history for people. Take that mobile.
New uses of hypnosis in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder. - PubMed - NCBI

Hypnosis can be used to help patients face and bear a traumatic experience by embedding it in a new context, acknowledging helplessness during the event, and yet linking that experience with remoralizing memories such as efforts at self-protection, shared affection with friends who were killed, or the ability to control the environment at other times.

Shudder.

How was this not glaringly obvious it would f*ck people up??? Rather than changing your own cognitive distortions and core beliefs, leave those there fully charged and operational, and place someone else’s morals & imaginary version of events on top of them. What could possibly go wrong???

Another thing I don’t have in front of me is https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00KFNCQJK/?tag=ap0f5b0f-21 which I believe mentions contraindicated methods & techniques?

I’m a bit scattered today. Anniversary land. When I get back to my resource files & textbooks & Schtuff, I’ll add on better references.