The Miracle Question

[Chava]

Then it feels almost like being a kid, when they get really into saying impossible life dreams, but we encourage it anyhow because kids are supposed to dream big.

Relate to the trauma issue of not being able to imagine the future or feel hope. I can understand feeling angry about being asked to imagine anything at all, because we really are used to feeling just plain trapped. Is that kind of how it feels? I don't usually know how to imagine or move beyond where I am at, so there is anger in anyone assuming I could even think up another option. But my take on this is a little more like uncovering a "self" that is not defined by the trauma, perhaps...maybe not so much the impossible "what ifs", ??

it's grief and hope and fear and pain and breathing - all colliding together in one big mess.

Take a break from it. Doesn't sound like the kind of challenge I'd be able to sort out in any one-stop journal exercise. Take your time with the idea (unless you just want to reject it...then tell your therapist it's just not helpful to you), keep doing other things.

I have PTSD. I have been through horrible things. I have real symptoms and real problems. I also am a person outside of that.

Yeah. This is difficult. I do feel like I'm partly working on the stuff of "self." I feel unreal sometimes. Trauma and my "self" go hand-in-hand, and yet healing seems to involve realizing the "self" that was always there, that is not my trauma, that is just me and can't be taken away. It's like a little speck of dirt or a slug right now, but I think there's something there... :happy::wacky:

I feel like I'm at war with myself on this, maybe a good battle to be in? I don't know...

What is the war about...you being separate from your trauma? Imagining anything else? The sort of external images of your life (like..."if only....I'd be a neurosurgeon right now...") ...or is it more along the lines of not being able to imagine anything? Like without my suffering, I sometimes fear I will find out the ugly truth that I really am empty, void, and not even real and never existed. :ninja:

 

[Neverthesame]

@Junebug It's entirely likely that this kind of miracle question may be perceived differently by someone who's trauma began in the developmental years. As opposed to someone like me who was an adult. I knew what my skill set was, before I knew what crippling anxiety was.

I know there was a time when following a weekly work schedule wasn't a daunting task. Or struggling to find the energy to shave once a week wasn't a challenge. (Which reminds me, I need to get a haircut.)

Maybe the "what ifs", can be easier to come up with, when some are interchangeable with "I remember when I"?

 

[Tinyflame]

Oh yes totally agree @Neverthesame . Plus including other factors, grieving, resources, pain, personality, interpersonal factors, oh so many things.

(FWIW, my traumas began as a small child, apart from neglect. The ptsd for me began at 14. )

 

[Tinyflame]

I came back to say, and surely I don't know much as just a day go I didn't know this existed, but without knowing more I suppose I wonder if the intent of such an exercise is not only to feel & identify these (mostly atrocious) emotions and to grieve (as part of the process), but also, in the moment of 'forgetting', of feeling good as it were (not thinking of losses or fears or limitations), hoping to retain that in the present & bring that moment forward to the future?

I guess mainly in terms of feelings, for example if I imagine how good it feels to imagine reduced fear, to somehow find (eventually) ways to actually reduce fear (despite ptsd, or whatever conditions they use this therapy for, apparently several)? @Justmehere is the one who knows & is beginning this, not I.

All I know is, similar came to me, mostly because there seem to be no solutions, I wanted to define (to myself) what even I'm hoping by the term 'healing', and lastly, if I can feel that much improvement in the moment (despite no difference in the ptsd), wouldn't it be wonderful to feel that again, or often? (Because there I was feeling differently, yet nothing of the other realities had changed. Not fooling myself, just focusing on different kinds of thoughts, in a different way. That's I guess what is different for me in the way of thoughts becoming somewhat 'un-stuck'.) JMHThoughts.

 

[Friday]

hate to admit this, but I've noticed that when something my T asks really pisses me off, it actually MEANS something

<rueful> In this case I think it just means 'Don't drop an edgy combat vet -with rage & self control issues- for whom the best parts of their lives are part & parcel with their trauma... In with rape victims for whom their trauma & fallout was the worst parts of their lives. Just because they're all female & have PTSD. Different approaches are sometimes needed. Sigh. I made the counselor cry. And at least half the group. Although that part was probably because I had leapt up and was shouting/being aggressive as hell. The more the therapist cried and cowered the more I raged, until I just got disgusted & stormed out. Not one of my finer moments.

I have a helluva lot more self control now, than I did then. Still, I need someone to go toe to toe with me & tell me to back my shit down, or just laugh their ass off at me, when I'm being ridiculous. Helloooooo hypothetical question does not need a 0-90 Boom! response. :facepalm:

 

[Kintsugi]

@FridayJones That's why my T specializes in C-PTSD with the VA. *shadow boxes* :sneaky:

 

[Jane.l]

The first question is a really good way to use the miracle question, the idea of the miracle question is to create a 'doing picture' and then break it into small steps to create a 'solution' or at least a small step towards improvement. To me the second question is less helpful and would piss me off, a lot!

 

[Ronin]

I like this thread.

Been doing a version of miracle question therapy with some close to me for a... two years, now? Usually helps me out of situations I perceive as above my ability to cope / solve. It's good to bounce off brainstorming about solutions, for sure.

* * *

Edited to add: But using the miracle question to basically play a dreamland & depending how one takes it, twist reality, is not something I see as a proper use of it. Or therapeutic. Let alone all the 'let's pretend trauma never happened' can be very triggering for derealization and multitude other severe dissociative issues, so it's rather irresponsible to use it on a population that, hello, struggles with dissociating already.

* * *
Personal answers to that would be 'If trauma never happened, I wouldn't need to spend time with underqualified therapists, and I also wouldn't pay for that waste of time, so goodbye, catching up on the miracles.' Long personal history of therapists & helping professionals pretending trauma didn't happen / isn't currently happening, despite having hard evidence to the contrary, so I'm biased.

* * *

So, yep. Don't believe it's designed to play around with the past. The way I was taught to think of it is face reality and stay inovative with future possibilities, not denying the past or how it effects the present, but taking responsibility for own choices and doing the wiser ones.

 

[The Albatross]

Neither question would bother me all that much. It is, only, a question after all. But I would like to do that exercise I think, as just on reading through the thread, the traumas gone, there still would have been a boatload of dysfunctional crap and near misses that would have caused it's own cascades of thoughts/feelings/reactivity and maybe maladaptive behaviors. Not as bad? Perhaps... but my initial impression of the endeavor was more curious than anger or anxiety making.

I wonder what Anthony would think about this "Miracle Question"... I bet his take and any article on it would be very solid. Too bad we don't have an "Ask Anthony" section anymore.

 

[Tinyflame]

I'm willing to try it.

 

[Lionheart]

Trauma made up the greater part of my childhood and young adult life, so I have not a clue as to what my life would have been like if the trauma had not happened. I don't know if I can answer the miracle question, but I can say that I am happy that I have survived and thrived in spite of it all!

 

[The Albatross]

I think I'm game to try answering the miracle questions as a personal growth/assessment exercise. Not on the forum though probably. I don't want to over think it but I keep coming back to the questions. Anybody else game? Anybody?