Sometimes Therapy Is Not The Answer

[bell]

Just a thought, sometimes "feeling worse" in therapy actually means you're on the right track. With PTSD and therapy, it gets a lot worse before it gets better. But it *does* get better and therefore, is worth the hell that is the start of therapy.

 

[rightkindofme]

Well, processing intense emotions often feels bad. On the other hand you could carry them forever with a slow toxic leak into your life. If you have to lock your feelings away you aren't feeling joy either.

If you think people supporting you is bad do you also think it is terrible when people need help from you?

 

[Animalliberator]

If you think people supporting you is bad do you also think it is terrible when people need help from you?

Stuffing down emotions can be very useful in life. In fact, doing so is sometimes necessary. For instance, one has to be strong if one is a parent. Children - and companion animals - need parents who are stable, dependable, and able to protect them. They are wholly dependent on an adult caretaker. The adult in the room has to put emotions aside to focus on those who need them.

I'm there for many people. But their problems are pretty vanilla and, more often than not, easily remedied. Mine are complex and hard for most people to understand.

Also, people have rejected me when I did open up. I'm considered a leader in my career field. A few years ago, I fell into a terrible depression and had to inform my colleagues I could not carry on with my work. I got not sympathy or support! Instead, I was told to "grow up", that I was "f*cking over" those who needed me, that I was "faking it" (mind you, I was suicidal), and that I needed to "get your shit together."

So, no, I don't share my feelings with others.

 

[Venusian]

I have been reading your threads, the ones that have already been locked and this one. It is interesting that you keep arguing that you do not respond to therapy and that you do not need anyone to help you with your PTSD. I am sorry that you have gone through so much therapy and still have found no relief. I know how you feel about not burdening your family with what you are going through, I have not had the ability to talk to my family either. It is easier to reach out here online with people who understand. I live alone, my children are grown and my family live hundreds of miles away in all directions. I have no support system except for this forum and my therapist.

One thing with therapy is that it is very subjective, what works for one person does not mean it will work for another. Also, you have to be in the right frame of mind for it to work. It is not like hardware, there are no guarantees it will work for any one person at any given point in time. The forums are filled with people that had tried therapy when it was forced on them and many had no benefit because it was forced upon them. You have to be ready for it to work and only you know when that is. If there is a psychic wall built up inside towards therapy then nothing will work and no one can get through. Therapy, when it does work, will make things worse for a time because of all the emotions that have been buried for so long will start to come to the surface. If you are going to build something first you have to dig out the foundation and that involves digging and getting dirty before you can start to rebuild. I spent many, many years trying to work things out by myself. If it isn't time for you then maybe it isn't time.

I tried EMDR and I thought it would be great. I responded the first session and after that my mind refused to go anywhere near the trauma, it just would not. After a few more attempts my therapist just let me talk about what was on my mind and helped me understand how my reactions to situations were influenced by all the blocked memories I had. They were all beginning to surface and they were terrifying, they still are but now I can tell they are in the past. It took a few years and different therapists at different points in this build but I can see things getting better finally.

I hope that you do find something that helps and if that means stuffing it all back inside for now and keeping it locked away, I hope that you continue to stay on this forum. You have a lot of good things to say and a lot to contribute and I hope that you can find some answers here too.

 

[rightkindofme]

My experience is that being a parent makes it much more important for you to deal with your emotions than it was before. Now I have to teach them how to be a functional adult instead of a hollow shell. That means I have to learn myself.

 

[Stanley Shi-Yume]

I think the big wounds can't even really be healed. To get anything positive from therapy, counterdependence has be fairly well conquered. It's a huge challenge.

Quoting an earlier post of mine that I have kept in my journal:

For PTSD I don't know that there is any true treatment. Something my therapist has said to me several times, they don't really know how/why talk therapy actually works. So I have come up with a new impression of what therapy is for recently.

Sometimes it just takes the right person with the right skill. ultimately I've found that regardless of how educated or experienced someone is or wants to be with things such as PTSD or anxiety, the fact is that we all experience those inhibitions differently, we are human beings,--before anything positive will occur in a therapy setting, a human connection has to be made. The person across from you has to be in tune with authenticity. Sometimes other people need OUR help to support us, we have to treat them like we deserve their attention, and reach out for their support. That's the hugest challenge.

A slight tangent I think you might find relevant--- I read Mike Langlois' book, Reset, and found that he compares therapy to play. It is NOTHING like two friends having a conversation, being cheered up, or anything of the sort. In therapy, we are CHOOSING to battle monsters that we do not have to face. It is an EPIC undertaking. Ultimately it is a journey toward the center of yourself.. to ascertain your own identity for what it is, a particular challenge for the PTSD-afflicted. no one else can tell you your identity, they can only stand by your side, seeking to be on your team in the process.

So the paradox for therapy to PTSD is that the core thing that's hard is trusting someone or making a connection with them at all. But that's what its for... to make the connection and have an ally who helps us travel inward and battle those enemies we contain.

 

[scout86]

I have found that's stuffing down all my emotions often works better than therapy.

What do you imagine "therapy working" to be? I'm not sure that's the best way to ask the questions, but I'm wondering if you have an idea in mind of what "working" looks like. If you do, what is it? Just curious!

 

[Animalliberator]

I tried EMDR and I thought it would be great. I responded the first session and after that my mind refused to go anywhere near the trauma, it just would not. After a few more attempts my therapist just let me talk about what was on my mind and helped me understand how my reactions to situations were influenced by all the blocked memories I had. They were all beginning to surface and they were terrifying, they still are but now I can tell they are in the past. It took a few years and different therapists at different points in this build but I can see things getting better finally.

I had a very intense and frightening experience during the 15 EMDR sessions I endured. Though I am well aware of the violence I grew up with (daily physical, emotional, and psychological battering), I have no recollection of being molested. But during EMDR, extremely vivid images came forward of me being raped by an uncle at around the age of four. No one in our family has any knowledge of such sexual abuse of me. And, as I noted, I have no memory. So EMDR actually traumatized me more because it brought forth images that may or may not be true. Those flashbacks - which included visuals, physical sensations, even smells of old man sweat on me - could just be a fabrication of my mind. I may not have ever been raped as a boy. But now I have these horrible images in my head. I would argue that kind of therapy is very destructive.

 

[Venusian]

When I first began to research EMDR one of the things that came up was that it was not recommended for complex or multiple traumas. What you experienced is one of the reasons for that. It can bring a lot of buried emotions and bits and pieces of memory to the surface that our minds can than interpret as a single event. For me there was a single event and I had already begun to remember but the memory seemed to be stuck, like a record skipping in a turntable. I couldn't shut it off. The EMDR helped at that point but any further attempts didn't work maybe because I wasn't ready to face anything else that could still be buried. I am sorry that your experience went so wrong.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Honestly I'm not surprised that EMDR was a big fail for you. In order to do EMDR not only do you have to be relatively stable but you must also know how to calm yourself. This is primarily achieved through grounding techniques which will bring you back to the present moment. You refuse to put in the hard work which is required to learn grounding skills as it is all woo-woo gobbledygook to you. I say you haven't put in the work because you attack it from the outset and say it's hippy-dippy, which is indicative of someone who has a mental block against the technique, not someone who has genuinely tried the technique with an open mind and can later say without attacking that it simply didn't work for them.

I've said it before and I'll say it again----because well, it's what you want to hear. As is, you are untreatable. Some part of you must want help or you wouldn't be here (unless you're trolling and looking for an argument). It's sad because right now you are your own worst enemy.

 

[Lucycat]

When I first began to research EMDR one of the things that came up was that it was not recommended for complex or multiple traumas. What you experienced is one of the reasons for that.

WAS NOT are the important words. It is now accepted that *with caution* it can be very helpful in complex trauma.

 

[Abstract]

Therapy, when it does work, will make things worse for a time because of all the emotions that have been buried for so long will start to come to the surface.

I very much agree with this. For me part of that is my interpersonal issues and they make therapy an ongoing stress inducing situation for me too. Sharing my personal thoughts is very counter intuitive for me. As stanley mentioned I am counterdependent too. The next time I go into therapy I expect to feel very bad and disregulated for at least a couple of years compared to now. I have to lance the boil if I am ever to get better but I need to do so without ending up with a secondary infection and an even worse state. They are two different things. Pain because of treatment and pain because of further damage.

Feeling better straight away would mean I am not doing the work I need to do.

EMDR seems to remove the blocks or filter that we have in place that keeps a lid on things. In the same way that doing mindfulness excercises can do. I suspect it is particularly dangerous when there are things there that we have blocked out because our minds are not ready for them.

Having means of controlling the flow of going back to the past and bringing us back to the present is absolutely essential if we are not to be re traumatised. You don't have those skills and I can truly see why these things end badly for you. Both because it sounds like you have a coping pattern of suppression and have a lot of trauma, and because you have no coping or grounding skills and don't believe in them. In my opinion doing any exposure therapy without adequate coping and grounding skills is a recipe for being re traumatised.

You are certainly not alone in your responses to EMDR and other things and you will find that others with similar experiences have had to work hard on acquiring many safety skills before they are able to process trauma safely.