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Trauma t, art (accelerated resolution therapy), and me

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hodge

MyPTSD Pro
So I saw my T yesterday. I was all set to resume Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART). I was going to go gung ho on my first trauma. No more dallying around. A couple hours before my appt. I thought about that and thought about how I would rewrite that assault, then I got really nauseous and dizzy. So I started drinking a selzer water and laid down. My appt. rolled around and I still felt like shit, but I took my selzer water and went.

Of course she asked me how I was and I told her. She said if I wasn't ready to do it today, it was okay. So we ended up talking more about the process of ART and what I might expect to experience. Bottom line, she told me everything she knew, but with the caveat that there's really no way to prepare yourself totally for it. It just happens. It's a technique that intervenes with your central nervous system and, well, there you go.

My T also has PTSD, though you would never know it if she didn't tell you. When she went to her training for this, the inventor of this technique did it on her and she has since had it done on her at least once more. And she raves about it. She says that now she can talk about her trauma without all the old awful emotions. As we were talking about the process, she let me in on her trauma, and omg, it is harrowing. Luckily for her, she had a pretty normal healthy upbringing. But she had a client with BPD and NPD for three years who ended up stalking her, seducing her husband, getting some of her colleagues at her former clinic against her (they all broke ethical guidelines by going out and partying with this client, God only knows why), making wild accusations against her -- it sounded like Fatal Attraction times 100, only no dead bunny, thankfully. But this client, through her affair with T's then-husband, stole a bunch of money from her inheritance. (N.B. Small town -- everyone there knew that my T. inherited a ton of money from the family farm when her mother passed away, so T. is convinced this client had planned all this once that happened, and I don't think that's unreasonable.) Then my T had to spend a ton of money on a lawyer defending herself to keep her licenses to practice after the client made wild accusations about her. I don't believe my T intended to tell me this much, but we had a two-hour block of time, I had decided against ART for today, and I was so horribly fascinated by her story, I kind of egged her on, and at least now I know why in her ART sessions her rewrite involved bulldozing some people over, like, literally with a bulldozer. There is more she told me, and more she didn't tell me and only hinted at, but, you can't make this stuff up. We agreed her story could take up at least 2 two-hour episodes of "48 Hours."

Cripes. She said the whole thing went on for about a year and a half, beginning when this client first started mimicking her. My T got her nose pierced. The next week the client came in with her nose pierced. Then the client came in with the same haircut as my T. Then my T noticed this client stalking her. Just unbelievable. And my T said when she tried to start a lawsuit against that clinic she used to work for, they retaliated. I didn't ask her for details. I really don't want to know any more than I already do. My gut feeling is still that I need to try this technique, I like her, I trust that she knows what she is doing professionally, and she is learning a lot from her practice since we last talked about this. She is convinced this will help not only my PTSD but my fibro. So, what do I have to lose?
 
Thanks, Fade.

Yeah, hers was really harrowing. I've had multiple traumas over my first three decades of life, but she had to deal with assaults on virtually ALL aspects of her life over a period of about a year and a half. Not that there's any comparing, but hers really affected me. I was crying for her.
 
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So, I did it yesterday. I was achy from fibro, hadn't slept at all the night before, and very nervous.

I started feeling panicky and really nauseous in the morning and took 0.25 mg Ativan. Finally, by about 1 p.m. I was able to eat a sandwich. My appt. was 3-5 p.m. And it took 2.25 hours. It was intense, but I feel it was more productive than any simple talk therapy I'd ever done in more than 10 years of therapy for PTSD. I can't explain it, but there was something about the process of going through these steps, guided by my T and watching her hands that in the end left me feeling quite a bit like my old self. Well, the old self that felt more or less satisfied with herself. The pre-PTSD self only better.

My T cautioned me that because of the intensity of my feelings it is possible I could have related nightmares or other symptoms in the next few days and urged me to call her on her cell if I do. She said they can be processed in 15-20 minutes usually and that she would work me in if anything like that came up.

So, bottom line, this is just my best immediate aftermath report on the treatment. We didn't even set up a next appt. yet. Maybe she's thinking I might have an episode and will see her again that way? I don't know. For now, I'm still kind of walking on cloud nine 10 hours later.

I was touched that she told me she was honored to have guided me through this treatment, that she could see how intense the trauma event was and how brave I was to tackle it the way I did.
 
Thank you, dear Fade! Me, too! Though I am trying to just be cautiously optimistic over the next days just to make sure nothing weird happens in my brain, lol. That's why I called this an immediate aftermath report. I am hopeful that this therapy will help me, given how much better I have felt since it was over. I'll post updates as warranted. If I don't write anything for awhile, you can take that as meaning: so far, so good :-).
 
So, nothing weird happened, except that three days later I had a recurring sensation of feeling as if there were a hair on the left side of my face, which at one point seemed like a kind of slight vibration. But it was gone the next day. So, calling tomorrow for another session. I decided I'm going to go in order of my traumas. The next one was worse. But at least now I feel assured of what the process is like and how helpful it was.
 
So a week from today I am going to tackle my second big trauma, which was a rape and an unbelievable betrayal from someone I thought was a friend who was not the rapist, but the accomplice to setting up the rape). I feel like this one is going to be tougher than the first, but at least now I am comfortable with the process, so that takes a lot of the nervousness and stress out of the equation.
 
I did my second ART session yesterday. It was kind of more grueling than the first one. I think that was maybe partly because the second one happened when I was 14, when I was a little older and was the first outright rape. And yet I found myself saying so often during the session that I couldn't articulate my feelings at the time of the experience, beyond shock, numbness, confusion that someone would do this to me when I had done nothing to him. During the course of this, I realized that this was because I was never taught or encouraged to express my feelings; to the contrary, by this time, my mother was totally abusing me if I ever tried to express my feelings. So, no wonder I couldn't express my feelings.

And the thing about this ART I realized today is that it's a form of self- and therapist-induced flashback at will. I mean, I was totally back there, by my own will, and I remember saying several times, I just have to push through this, this is the only way I know how to proceed. I still cannot remember every detail, though I tried. What bothers me a lot now is that I still cannot remember how I felt after I finally escaped and got back to our house, back to my room. It kind of makes me wonder whether I thoroughly processed this event if I can't even remember how I felt or what I did afterward? My T said that I had an abreaction this time. I looked that up and read about it but still don't really know how to say anything about it. I am just glad that now I've been through it and survived it and am no longer scared of having an abreaction. Anyway, my T said that oftentimes she has found that people's second ART sessions are more difficult than their first ones. I was too overwhelmed at the time to ask her more about that. But she said I did a lot of hard work and that I did really well.

Nice thing is that I again felt better than I have in years after this session, just like after my first session. I felt a kind of "normal" euphoria, just like the kind of normal good feeling I used to have. I still have it. When I got home, I was starving, as the only thing I'd had to eat before the session was a cup of yogurt. And instead of being triggered about making dinner, I just laid down on the couch for a bit to ease my back and neck pain, then got up and started it. And kind of enjoyed doing it all, which I haven't felt in years. And my only homework, per T, is to rest, take it easy and drink lots of fluids. I joked, "wine?", and she laughed and said she'd like a glass of wine after this, too. Lol, but I'm sticking to Powerade.

It still really bothers me that I can't remember what I did or felt after this event. I wondering if I should go on to the third trauma before getting this second one all resolved? Well, we're not planning on another appointment till two weeks from now, so I'm thinking maybe our next appt. should be to discuss this and our strategy moving forward. I also still have blanks about my first trauma and have questions about that as well even though I felt that ART session went really well.

Blah, this is all still so new, and I'm a guinea pig. I know one productive thing I can do is to talk to my T about how I perceived this as a purposeful flashback, though I've not read anything about this technique that describes it as such. But I totally experienced it that way, and the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that that is a crucial part of all this, and I think therapists who are trained in and use this technique should inform their clients about this.
 
From my experience with ART so far, I really urge anyone considering this therapy to know that it is a way of purposefully inducing flashbacks just by virtue of its modis operendi. You've got to replay your experience in your mind, and I think to best effect, re-experience it while following your T's. hand movements. There are numerous interruptions into this which attend to your sensations, feelings, thoughts . . . it takes a long while. Finally, you rewrite your traumatic event. The T tells you to envision a rewrite of the event that renders you all powerful and overcoming the perpetrator. I know it sounds difficult and maybe a bit weird, but it has been working for me, so far. In my rewrite of my first trauma, I envisioned myself as Wonder Woman who held the perpetrator off with a shield and didn't allow him to assault me. I had to envision that over and over while following her hand movements with my eyes. I think it has helped. It certainly doesn't seem to have hurt. It's a way of trying to reduce the traumatic feelings.

This time, my rewrite was me having a gun and escaping by that means. But that didn't do the trick. So we did another round. What did it for me with this session was to have a light saber pointed at him, and then escaping. But everyone is different, and everyone's experience has different details and every person comes up with their own imaginative way of rewriting. I think the rewriting is key.
 
This sounds so powerful @hodge, and I admire your courage. I love that you envisioned yourself as Wonder Woman. In my emdr sessions, it's Buffy the Vampire Slayer for me! Thank you for sharing your experiences with this type of therapy. I'm definitely going to explore further and maybe bring it up with my T, though I must admit that purposefully inducing flashbacks sounds daunting!
 
Thanks, ShikibuZ. It is daunting, but my gut feeling was that I need to go through these things again to try to make them right, which is what ART seems to be about. I've tried everything else, so I'm like, what do I have to lose? I have always been wary of EMDR, but this is different.

If your T can get training on this with the originator of the technique, that would be awesome. I think she travels around to teach others how to do this.

I think that purposefully inducing flashbacks to the trauma is the only way to go. The ART technique stops you at many points and the T asks you to focus on your sensations and report about them. And then you are guided to try to process them through eye movements while you focus on them. I find this really difficult to do, but I do my best. And, as I have said, once it's over, I feel so much better.

But I'm still kind of skeptical, as the feeling better doesn't last for very long. I will keep doing this and keep reporting on it.
 
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