Need A Solution

[Jane.l]

Had therapy yesterday found it impossible to stay present and talk - I know a lot of you have the same problem . Just wondering if it's possible to use Emdr in anyway to tackle this problem.

I really need my T to help me right now but if I can't talk he can't help and I desperately need to find a way - otherwise my situation is fast becoming totally hopeless

 

[desiderata310]

Do NOT do EMDR if you are having trouble staying present. It puts you in a mild dissociative state and if you are not able to ground you really shouldn't be doing it.
Talk to your therapist about what's going on so he/she can help you ground when you get there. It took me and my therapists months to sort out what was happening but I would dissociate and have flashbacks and get really lost in therapy and my therapist thought that I was just thinking or grasping for words. He's gotten pretty good at reading what is really happening and bringing me back.

 

[Jane.l]

I have been with my T for a year and a half - he is great at knowing when I am dissociating but at the moment every time I try and talk I zone out and the whole session is just me drifting and him bringing me back . I have done a little Emdr for anxiety and to help come out of flashbacks just wondered if it can be targeted to help with this problem at all or if anyone has tried that - or if it's just a stupid idea

 

[FindingMyself88]

I definitely agree with @desiderata310 EMDR will only be worse like this. My T is great at noticing when I start to dissociate and she also periodically checks in with my feelings throughout the session. Have you talked with your T about this? They might be able to help, mine does. She has scented oils for me to sniff, textural things for me to hold, paintings to look at, etc.

 

[Justmehere]

It's not a stupid idea. I can Tell that you are desperate to talk and be present, EMDR is a good thought, it just tends to make dissociation worse when it's like this. But don't lose hope! There are other tools out there.

I used to really struggle with numbing out and shutting down in session. I could not say anything... What helped was a lot of work on grounding skills and gentle mindfulness. In time, my brain learned it was safe to talk.

I also wrote a lot of letters to my T outside of sessions and brought them in for her to read. Numb or not, she would at least know what I want to communicate. At first, I wrote about how I was scared of her. I could never tell her out loud but I was able to write it. It took time, but it did eventually get better for me.

Those are just a couple of things that helped me. I don't know what will help for you, but I do believe that eventually you will find what will work for you.

 

[Suzetig]

Is this a recent thing in your work with your therapist or has it always been like this? My thinking is that if you've spent a year and a half dissociating in session your therapist might have some strategies for helping you stay present in the longer term eg thinking about homework type things, pulling back on the intensity of what you're working on etc. if its a relatively recent change, you may be moving too fast and need to slow the pace down some. Simply put, when you feel safer, you'll be able to be more present so work on safety rather than talking about or processing trauma?

 

[BloomInWinter]

Pacing is an essential safety consideration in trauma therapy. The more we push, the slower our progress. Developing tolerance for the frustration of needing to allow it to take it's time isn't easy or fun, but necessary.

Eventually it will get better. Using the dissociation in the therapy room as a tool to help us develop our grounding skills provides a lot of benefits out in the world. As we work with our therapists to recognize and come out of dissociation, we learn how to manage it when triggered in real life.

It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's simply a coping mechanism that is there until we can find and practice other coping tools. Be gentle with yourself. Just recognizing it is happening is a huge step forward, even if it doesn't feel like it.

Hang in there. It gets better.

 

[Jane.l]

Thank you for your replies maybe you are right perhaps I am trying to move too fast . The frustrating thing is that I started out barely being able to talk and then I did get better for a while but now everything makes me dissociate - we haven't talked about trauma much in session for months because I was getting periods of very intense lows and feeling too unstable - so we have focused more on trust issues but I can 't seem to talk about anything I have any emotion attached to . My 'rush ' in trying to move forward here is that these unstable times are consuming me and I feel I need to 'do' something before it becomes too much .

I feel like we have been taking it slowly and I do agree that not feeling safe enough to move forward may well be at the root of it - that does make sense but what can I do about that ?

 

[Suzetig]

For me trust is so tied up in my trauma - I was badly traumatised by abuse at the hands of trusted carers, that to even talk about trust or vulnerability made me have awful flashbacks and I couldn't keep myself present in session. The only thing that has worked for me was my therapist being very consistent, non-blaming, going with whatever I could manage and literally moving on immediately when I couldn't/wouldn't talk about an issue. She literally spent six months listening to me cry and demonstrating she's safe for me.

The good news is that once I did feel safer I immediately felt more able to engage - like everything fell into place at once, even last session I was able to talk reasonably well about something that 2 months ago had me in terror. It is slow, painstaking work but the process does work

 

[Jane.l]

@Suzetig thank you maybe I am trying to tackle this in the wrong way and I need to keep going with the trust work - just desperately want to stop these lows .

 

[Suzetig]

Advice I was given by a wise soul here was to find things that were easy, easy to talk about and that didn't require much in the way of trust or exposure. Then once that felt ok, to try something a little more challenging and to not push too hard. Once you see your therapist being consistently safe, the rest will follow.