Sick Of Hearing It's About My Dad....

[Dana1010]

....or about my mom.
....or about my early home environment.
....or the fact that I had no friends when I was a kid.

Don't get me wrong. I had a horrible childhood, and I'm sure all of those things contributed to my current state of disrepair, but for once, can we just please, please, please talk about what's bothering me? The loop in my head playing like a movie and ruining every day of my life?

I'm back in therapy, and she's already rifling through years of history looking for what's really causing the PTSD. Why does it have to be something else? Why must you fall back on the old Freudian standbys? Can we just address the one event and talk it to death and see what happens? Am I saddled with another therapist who's going to make me beg to talk about what's bothering me?

For members whose main trigger/recurring memory happened to you as an adult, what do you think? Is going back through your childhood to find what it's "really about" helpful or just gobbledygook? Why are so many therapists in such a rush to say it must really be about your childhood?

 

[shimmerz]

I had a therapist who helped me a ton ..... because he spoke about what was going on in the moment. Dysfunctional family and how to cope, give me perspective. It took a while but I made changes. Not the drastic changes I have made to date, but real changes. It slowed my head from what was going on now (which was actually then).

Not sure if this is what you mean, but it really helped me.

 

[Nevermore]

I have an issue with this too! The worst thing that ever happened to me happened when I was 23 - and I had the same experience as you with therapists jumping over that to go back to my childhood.
My childhood probably makes sense of how I came to be so accepting of abuse in my life - but I agree that should come later. First you have to be able to deal with the now!
The person who really helped me was an art therapist - it's totally different. Less analytical and more experiential...

 

[Friday]

Not childhood... But still a long ass time ago.

I went to therapy a year into my divorce from hell, seriously sliding into a major PTSD tailspin ((I recognized the signs of my life going sideways, I'd been here before, I just didn't know then -either time- that they were PTSD-badlands, as opposed to just me being f*cked up.))... And my therapist didn't want to talk about my divorce. Well, he did. He was pretty freaking awesome, actually. If all that was going on in my life was hellish divorce? He was TheGuy. For real. Super, crazy amazing, helpful.

But he had this belief, that for some reason, all my divorce was, was a stressor. (All? Hello! This is big freaking stuff here!!!...and it was. CritA several different ways level of big :wtf: ) That maaaaaybe 10% of what was f*cked up in my life was current divorce nonsense, and the other 90% was my PTSD from a million years ago reacting the way PTSD does to new trauma & big stressors. I think he may have even used the word textbook a few times. Right along with, I don't expect you to believe me. Look it up. See if you can see the (great big flashing glowing neon) signs, I am.

I was adamant. Nope. That's not what this is. Ignore the freight train steam rolling over me from the past. What I'm here for, what I need help with? Is this. Clearly.

He was right. I was wrong.

It took me about a year to admit it. Less out of stubbornness (I can be stubborn until halfway to forever), and more because by then my life had spun completely and totally out of control / I was no longer functional in any shape of the word... And it was so glaringly obvious* that even I couldn't miss it anymore.

* Every stress, every new trauma... My mind no longer even paid lip service about it being about them. Freight train. Every ghost. Every horrible f*cked up impossible situation. Everything I ever did, or didn't do, or was done to me. Hit with. All from back then. Not from the traumas that followed. Not from the stressors of today. All from a million years ago. All triggered by what was going on in my life today. That had been true from the beginning. Anyone who knew anything about trauma could see it on me. The only person who couldn't see it was me. None so blind as those who will not see. Damn quotes. But I wasn't, never had been, responding to things like they were happening now. I was responding like they were happening then. Triggered as fawk. By new trauma & stressors. PTSD doing what it does.

It's only been in the last year, year and a half, that I've been willing to attempt to deal with the past, that I've gotten any traction on my present.

What I've come to learn? New trauma? Big stressors? Both things need dealing with. Can't isolate one from the other, much as I'd like to. Can't ignore the past (it makes damn sure I don't), and can't ignore my present. I have to do both. It's a bit of a balancing act. That I suck at. But it's also the only way I've even started to keep my head up above water at all. Any time I try and ignore one? Things go bad. In the beginning, fairly slowly. Now? Fast.

Childhood vs Adult could make it a whole different game. IDK. But I was wicked wrong, thinking I could ignore the past, and paid a big price for it.

 

[Dana1010]

But I was wicked wrong, thinking I could ignore the past, and paid a big price for it.

It's not that I want to ignore the distant past to focus exclusively on the more recent past. I just feel like if there is a memory going off like an alarm in your head, isn't that telling you something? Isn't this memory saying, "Me. Now. I'm ready to be processed. Ping!" Sure, there is probably a whole train of bad experiences and resulting memories lying in wait behind this one, but you have to start somewhere and why not start with the one that's presently reaming your a$# (excuse my French)?

 

[Nevermore]

Yes Dana! I know for me when therapists kept ignoring my most current trauma to concentrate on my childhood it was like total overload!! I couldn't deal with the present let alone the past - not then! That came later as a way to understand how I got there.
Therapists can make you feel invisible and like they are the authority on you more than you are when they do that!
You know what you need!!!
at the start of my journey to understanding I got so confused and disempowered by bad "therapy"

 

[Tinyflame]

* Every stress, every new trauma... My mind no longer even paid lip service about it being about them. Freight train. Every ghost. Every horrible f*cked up impossible situation. Everything I ever did, or didn't do, or was done to me. Hit with. All from back then. Not from the traumas that followed. Not from the stressors of today. All from a million years ago. All triggered by what was going on in my life today. That had been true from the beginning. Anyone who knew anything about trauma could see it on me. The only person who couldn't see it was me. None so blind as those who will not see. Damn quotes. But I wasn't, never had been, responding to things like they were happening now. I was responding like they were happening then. Triggered as fawk. By new trauma & stressors. PTSD doing what it does.

..What I've come to learn? New trauma? Big stressors? Both things need dealing with. Can't isolate one from the other, much as I'd like to. Can't ignore the past (it makes damn sure I don't), and can't ignore my present. I have to do both. It's a bit of a balancing act. That I suck at. But it's also the only way I've even started to keep my head up above water at all. Any time I try and ignore one? Things go bad. In the beginning, fairly slowly. Now? Fast.

Yes. This ^^.

Not sure how to describe it but if it wasn't for the past the present wouldn't be so over-laden with the pain, pressure, burden & fear it has.

 

[halflifeguy]

Dana,

Sounds like you're frustrated with progress. Coincidentally, I'm at a similar place with my T, lots of digging and explaning but no solid progress. It's like sessions are superficial.

Are you getting any benefit from the sessions with T?
Have you said how you feel about the sessions to your T?