Trauma and Therapy

[grit]

@Abstract
Thank you so much for your great thoughts and comments. It is amazing how much information you guys are giving me. I really appreciate you take the time to think thorough and give me your feedback
I do not have problem with assertiveness. If anything, this is an area I sublimated from my anger issues. I am not concerned about ending things with people but I thought with therapist maybe there are things I do not know so that is why i asked these questions.

I hear you about human connection piece. and I am trying to respectively end. Also, I have integrated a lot of stuff and I am grateful meeting him. my biggest concern now is I do not feel safe uncovering without grounding techniques. This could be just in my head (obviously since my trauma is from my childhood) but still I need that assurance of you, the therapist, believes my dissociation and can recognize it and can help me ground in the case, I do not ground myself. I feel these are simple requests but not being met. Maybe I need different therapist for each phase of recovery. I just wished I met one therapist that I could do with all. I kind of envy those who said they had same therapist for like 10yrs what? great!!!! but maybe not for everybody.

"It sounds a little like you have been lost in dissociation in therapy in a way that has started interfering with it and that you aren't able to ground before you leave. I am wondering if anyone has ever helped you with grounding skills, safety skills, pacing skills etc."

you are right on 100%. I am regressing to the point of danger to get out of therapy!

"It sounds like you have had a good relationship with this t and that that has helped you in various ways. But you feel he doesnt understand derealisation, depersonalisation etc and maybe isn't that knowledgeable in PTSD."

again 100% thank you so much. Even though he advertises on his list he deals with dissociation (and it is the reason I chose him) it seems like honestly a lot of therapist do not know what that means!


What approach I would choose depends on timing for me. I need therapist twice a month. EMDR seems too long sessions and also I do not have one trauma I can focus really. My body has a lot of feelings from constant fear, threat, terror and scared of my mother. I may try CBT or DBT for the later hopefully not too many appts. I cannot afford more than twice a month so this limits my choices.


Let us say when I am alone at home and I am overcome with deep feelings or flashbacks on the body, I feel safe enough to let them come up and I usually do allow breaking down like crying and really letting it all out because I am in a safe space and I have not had suicidal ideation or feelings since I was teen so that fear is gone. I can go deep into grief and depression when I have a flashback and my husband knows this side of me so I do not need to hide. IN therapy, when there is a person watching me but not saying anything, I hold in and the times when I completely let it go, I dissociate. I think the difference is at home if I dissociate, I can take a nap. In therapy, I dissociate and then I have to take the public transit or bike and you can only imagine the feeling...I do not feel safe. and this is where therapist is failing me. we do not even talk about it. So in real life, I can ground myself or sometimes I can suppress the feeling until I am at home but in therapy, I am fighting therapy...hard to explain.

"Yes. I realise now though that I used to use this a bit to try to avoid connection, or control the relationship and feel less vulnerable. I was also avoiding my emotions and trying to contain them with logic. Not a bad thing if done in balance. I find it can be important for me to do sometimes in order to manage to trust the t. Check if they understand. Or give language to describe a phenomenon."

I only entertain this topic to gauge if others had experience where a therapist went out of their to learn how to help a client and learn something. I get your giving a description of your situation and your therapist got it. I do not see mine interested because when I talked about dissociation he laughed.


I may do the termination in one session. I only thought maybe this requires conversation but for me it does not really.


deep inside, and this could be a core issue itself, I feel if I ask too many questions when I am choosing a therapist, it may put a seed saying (difficult client) and cloud the relationship from the get go...it is interesting this feeling just jumped at me. but I also feel I rather risk being thought of difficult and get to know better than be like ostrich and pick a therapist not suitable for my situation.

Thanks again.
this is giving me a lot of confidence and support to branch out and find a suitable therapist.