I have been in EMDR since September, with a therapist who mainly does CBT but does EMDR on the side (actually, being a therapist is a side profession for him too). EMDR has been really, crazy effective for some war trauma I picked up as an adult.
Fairly early on, the practitioner moved into CBT- which helped once I had processed the war stuff through EMDR already. Before EMDR, I was unable to tell him anything I was thinking or feeling during or about the trauma we were working on and couldn't remember important parts of it. I only knew these things after several EMDR sessions addressing it- and then CBT was helpful to identify when I was blaming myself for things that weren't my fault, bad thoughts about myself without evidence, etc.
BUT
I have a history of complex trauma and my therapist isn't used to working with this (most of his other clients are men who have had car accidents, or at least the ones he talks about with me are) . Right now we have moved into my childhood full of sexual abuse. He would rather do CBT about this than EMDR because he has identified core beliefs of mine that he believes should change- one being my belief that child abuse is incredibly common. He believes it is incredibly rare and that I would be healthier if I could think that too. We have been stuck on this point for several weeks- talking for hours and hours about it. He googled how common it is to try to prove his point to me- but when I later read the web page he found, it agrees more with me than with him. He hasn't done much reading in this area and I'm struggling to find any factual basis for his opinion about it. Something about the struggle to articulate my reality to a man who thinks it is just not real and I need to submit to his understanding is so deeply triggering to me- it's like he is trying to overcome my resistance.
I absolutely have beliefs that come from being raped repeatedly by my dad that I would love to change. But this is just not one of them and feels like a massive waste of time to me to spend hours every week trying to defend my right to feel that way. It feels retraumatizing, actually- and him typing 'emotional reasoning' into youtube and having me watch the first video about it that comes up doesn't convince me that there isn't truth to my feelings- especially when I can so easily find evidence that child abuse is exactly how it feels- widespread, endemic, everywhere.
I don't feel like I will get anywhere with this therapist if he doesn't learn to drop this, and let me identify for myself what my cognitive distortions are. He probably won't do this if I don't ask him to, as he has said that he finds these discussions productive (whereas they make me feel like i am dying and don't have a body and am reduced to a body all at the same time) . We won't see each other for a few weeks and he asked me to email him how I am getting on. I think I will have to ask him if we can leave that topic alone, or if he can do some research into it and accept the consensus about it. I have never done something like this before, asked a therapist to do or not do something.
Has anyone been in this position before? How have you handled it? Have you encountered this problem with CBT being applied clumsily?
