Spiraling And Feeling Done With Therapy

[HëllaBubz]

Hi Monster,

Firstly, what Solara said about processing is indeed correct, and does NOT assist a person in dealing with trauma effectively. Everything I know about physiological responses of the body to trauma indicates that TRAUMA FREE processing is THE BEST way to assist your body and mind in over coming associations and symptoms to a manageable state.

I keep telling him I'm having flashbacks and remembering trauma, but I feel like he discourages me from talking about the trauma.

He will talk about symptoms this trauma can cause, and how processing it with help relieve the symptoms but no processing.

I asked how I should process it and he said I could write it down until it doesn't bother me or tell him. I said I would tell him but off he goes unto another subject.

I made a mistake in my example and he kind of rubbed it in

The way your T is dealing with you does not provide an equal and trauma free method of dealing with you, but rather forces you to retraumatize countless times until you have less of a feeling/symptom when dealing with it.
As most of us would know, we have had pretty thick skins for a LOT of shit over the years, but retraumatizing yourself will make for VERY slow progress. He also sounds like a bit of an asshole.

And here's something to think about - why develop a thick skin for something, when there are ways to remove/break down the connection entirely?

From your T, what I'm seeing is this....

You: I'm having symptoms.
Him: Goes onto different topic.
You: Hey! What about my symptoms?
Him: They will go away once you process them.
You: And how do I process them?
Him: Write them down until they don't bother you (retraumatize) or talk to me about it (which he's avoiding anyway!)

Darl, you know I'll support you whenever, and where ever I can, however I do have a question for you as a completely ignorant fool when it comes to Buddhism and trauma.

I'll preface it by giving an example from my own background, to try to explain what the hell my brain just said to me.

I have suffered for a long time with guilt about an episode in my life that involved my siblings, and people's response to that, the extreme perspectives that my father enforced on us led me to be conflicted about - "Am I really a bad person because God has supposedly said he hates something?" OR "Just because God hates something, doesn't mean what happened is MY fault, it's my father's."

Religious overtones in many areas of life does not often get applied to the way that it is proven that humans process trauma and horrible things happening to them.

Now then.

My EXTREMELY limited understanding of Buddhism is that it has it's roots in mindfulness. For me, mindfulness is about using the 'Noticing Brain', part of your frontal lobes, to check out information that the 'Smoke Alarm', Amygdala, is feeding into your brain from your body.

IF you therapist was truly applying this mindfulness to his working methods, then WHY is he ignoring EVERYTHING about mindfulness by tell YOU to IGNORE the input from your body (processing) and instead just try to desensitize you (retraumatize) instead?

Perhaps looking for a T, who rather than having a prerequisite of being Buddhist, is actually a practicer of mindfulness may be of use to you. Because from what I can tell, this idiot is NOT using the most important aspect of your faith which could actually HELP you in understanding, processing and therefore managing your symptoms.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this.......Buddhism seems to have some pretty useful aspects to it, when it comes to heightened awareness of one's self. However, what I know of standard, mainstream, psychiatry actually can conflict with Buddhism, so would it be an idea to look at removing Buddhism from the list of requisites you may have when selecting a psych, and instead look for a psych that lists themselves as using specific components of it, with out being an actual Buddhist?

I found that once I stopped looking for what I wanted/expected of a T, and went for the complete opposite, that's when I found my perfect fit.

I'm really not sure if I've explained myself clearly here, so please ask me to clarify. I am by NO means taking a dig at Buddhism, I think it's quite useful, but I'm not sure it's methods when it comes to T's is being implemented correctly.

 

[Abstract]

I think its pretty amazing that you managed to work through this yourself like that. Its sounds like its huge progress too. You managed to step back and look at it and without anyone telling you that you should.

I also think it does not mean you shouldn't look at your feelings more carefully too. In other words I think its fine if you realise that an important part of what is happening is attachment and possibly splitting based and that you still get to look at your concerns more deeply.

I am no good at commenting on processing trauma as it is what I know least about. I am surprised and interested to hear that people think writing trauma out is re traumatising. Especially since people do it on here a lot. :confused:Confused to be honest and hope someone explains it to me. Writing things out has been one of the only ways I have managed to stop my thoughts spiralling etc at some times. Not details though. More of a way to put it on ice.

talking about boundaries and I asked for help setting boundaries with authority figures.

When I was doing this I would discuss how I handled something and my T would put other alternatives to me and sometimes point out the disadvantages of the way I had dealt with it. I found it the best way to learn boundary setting and my goodness it was hard work. She was quite tactful though.

he kept acting like I was wrong, and deserved what I got,

set myself up to get walked over and its my own fault,

So I am wondering why you are feeling like this. I know for me that if I was doing it perfectly then I wouldn't need help to change. So either it is a sensitive point regardless (I understand that as it is easy to go into feeling criticised) or it is the way he did it or the way you perceived him doing it that is the problem. I know for me sometimes projection is part of the problem as I judge myself. An easy way to help figure out is if you feel the same way about the topic as you think he does. But it is also important to look if there is something he is doing when he approaches this that bothers you.

The other thing that occurred to me about the trauma processing issue is that he does not feel it is safe for you to process trauma at present. That he is putting the break on until you stabilise again a little. Is that possible?

You say you were in hospital 2 weeks ago. What was it like before that regarding processing trauma?

I think we all misunderstand sometimes and so it's helpful to ask for clarification. And we are also allowed to look at things more carefully to see if there are problems.

And oh my goodness the relationship itself is an absolutely huge part of therapy too. Agreed.

 

[Hashi]

Hashi, tell me about the Buddhism thing. I was a Buddhist in the 80s, then became one again in 2010. I am much more attached to my practice this time, and I'm trying to push past a lot and let go of a lot of suffering but sometimes I get mired in the suffering.

My experience was with a somatic therapist, not a psychotherapist. The somatic therapy seemed a perfect fit with his beliefs about letting go etc because it helped the body release trauma energy without involving the conscious mind/ego. He was a fantastic somatic therapist and helped me incredibly in that way. It was only after having somatic therapy with him for some time, and starting to see a psychotherapist as well along the way, that some incompatibilities started coming up.

For me, it's summed up in the focus on the two things you mention - him identifying what I did as either letting go of the suffering or becoming mired in the suffering. There didn't seem to be a fit for my view of trauma processing, which is that you need to spend time with the trauma/suffering, maybe a very long time, to recognise it, validate it, understand the meaning of it, and change the power that it has over you.

He started to feel that I was getting too mired in the suffering while I felt I needed to be working on trauma for as long as it took - which for me is a long time. He felt that after a certain point I needed to let go where I felt I needed to face things and be present with them until they were still with me but de-activated. He seemed to lean towards accepting things as an enigma or something for which understanding would come over time, while I needed to work on the meaning that things have for me. His approaches seemed to be more towards transcendence. Mine were about transformation - working with and alchemising the trauma.

I've spent a lot of time in dissociation, depersonalisation and derealisation. Above all else, I needed to connect to a solid reality, become grounded, stablise, face things, feel things and engage with the world around me. It was unhelpful to be given ideas about non-attachment to the material world, questioning how I perceived things, letting go, and seeing suffering as an illusion.

He wasn't even working with me psychologically, but this incompatibility of approaches began to affect our work together. The way I experienced/perceived his beliefs may be different from your interpretation of Buddhism, and how your therapist works with it, but from my very limited understanding of Buddhism I do see a difficulty of combining it with trauma work.

In fact, I see a difficulty in combining many spiritual/metaphysical practices with trauma work. I think that just as trauma affects our brain wiring, it also affects our "spiritual wiring". A spiritual or metaphysical concept as it applies to other people doesn't apply to a trauma survivor in the same way until trauma has been processed. Usually because the concepts involve questioning and challenge on a deep level, and a trauma survivor's context for that is too different.

Spiritual systems can help and support us through trauma work, they can have concepts we can draw on, but I think that's different from doing trauma work within a spiritual system, or trying to learn and follow a spiritual system while working on trauma.

Personally, I think there's some very particular spiritual/metaphysical work that has to be done as part of trauma work, and that's not the usual spiritual/metaphysical work that applies generally (if the client wants to work with spiritual concepts). I also think to an extent trauma has to be processed in a purely psychological way, quite apart from spiritual teachings.

That's just my view.

 

[HëllaBubz]

What Hashi said! I feel half human til someone comes along and explains coherently what I've made a mess of!

 

[Hashi]

I just remembered I was hospitalized 2 weeks ago, which is probably why we are not processing trauma, and misunderstanding him had been a huge problem during therapy, and I think it keeps coming up because I have yet to handle it the way I want to.

I'm sorry you were hospitalised. If that's the reason for not processing trauma now - and it sounds like it might be - why wouldn't your therapist discuss that with you rather than change the subject?

Have you talked to him in general about communication? In my view, if this is a difficult area for you then as the therapist he needs to take responsibility for checking that things are clear, checking with you what your understanding is of what he's said etc. However, he won't know to do this unless he knows it's an issue, so I wonder if that needs talking about more?