Trust With Your Therapist - Or Not?

[BloomInWinter]

((((((Junebug)))))

 

[desiderata310]

I get that I am responsible for my own progress in many ways. I have never trusted easily. The idea of trusting my therapist is … difficult. It physically hurts to talk about some of this stuff and it's hard to just find words since much of what I am trying to tell him I've never expressed in words. That coupled with issues that we've had with the EMDR has made it very hard for me to press through and trust him. It's not that I don't want to but I am scared to do so.

I realized that I had been… testing him… without meaning to. I really was suicidal but I would have ordinarily hidden that from … everyone. I needed to know that

1. I could trust him at his word to believe me
2. I could trust him not to immediately call the police if I just FELT suicidal and not going to act on it.
3. I could trust him to actually believe what I was telling him. The things that have happened are hard for ME to believe, never mind getting someone else to believe me.
4. I could trust that he wouldn't put me in a worse place. THAT has been a problem. We are working on that one. EMDR caused problems at the beginning since we jumped in to it really quickly and pushed through when I was obviously in a really bad spot. again, working on it. He did a bit of damage to that trust.

It's all a process, right?

 

[silk123]

I've had a bit of a setback, I thought I trusted my T and have no reason not to but last night I had a dream of her being really nasty to me and telling me that everything I have told her is lies, that I haven't given enough detail for it to ring true. It was just so nasty, the facial expressions were just so awful. I don't know what to do now.

 

[Justmehere]

I know a therapist who does trauma therapy, and he said that he doesn't expect his clients to ever fully trust him. He said he still is going to try to be in the room with them, be as safe as he can be, and try to help while they walk through the pain of processing and integrating trauma and healing.

Part of healing from trauma, for some people, is about learning to have boundaries about what they are ready to do and not ready to do.

Trauma taught me it was dangerous to let go. For me, trust means letting go. My therapist told me it's ok if I don't trust her or even if I get angry at her sometimes. She believes it is a part of the process of healing, and we are constantly working on what helps me to feel ok enough to keep doing the work and stay in therapy.

There are many good reasons to tell our therapists as much as we can. For some people, the work they need to do in therapy is to disclose more and take more risks in that way.

In my case, taking responsibility for my own healing sometimes means I need to slow down my disclosure. My therapist deliberately slows me down, just so that I don't re-trigger myself by trying to tell her more than I can face telling her. This is one example of how taking responsibility and trusting a therapist sometimes can look very different than disclosing everything we can. In my case, it means actually slowing down and listening to myself on what I feel like I am ready to share and not ready to work on yet. Trusting in therapy means trying new ideas, and considering new things... including slowing down and making my own decisions about what topics I want to work on and not work on.

 

[desiderata310]

It's funny. This is something I was struck with the other day. My therapist and I have backed up a good bit. Starting over if you will, in regard to how we do things. We had jumped into EMDR pretty quickly because on the outside I seemed pretty mellow, I suppose but I was already triggered. Actually, I stayed like that at my appointments for a while.

We've been skipping EMDR for a few weeks and I came to the end of this last appointment and had disclosed something rather difficult and looked at him and said, I know we are dancing around the real issues here … and he stopped me, and said we were actually making progress in just him getting to know me and me feeling more comfortable with him and trusting him.

It's been a hard road. I took a big chance a few weeks ago in telling him I actually had the MEANS with which to kill myself (when triggered there have been a few times that I have been very suicidal) and I told him that I was actually afraid he would have me put in the hospital.

He said unless I called him up to say 'good-bye' that was not going to happen. He hasn't asked me to get rid of my method, though he admits it concerns him.

It's hard earned with me but he's making headway. I still can't look him in the eye….

 

[MissKB]

I just fired my T and got a new one. The T I had I had had for a year and a half. The T I was with before who I really liked got promoted and became a boss over different T's and transferred all her patients to a new guy.

I gave him a year and a half and I got nothing out of it. He doesn't specialize in trauma. I also have Bi Polar. But truthfully he didn't help there much either.

I'm in a small town and I'm on disability so I don't get many options. But just 2 weeks ago I made an appt. with the head of the program and specifically asked do you have any T's that specialize in trauma. (Duh? Why had I not asked this a long time ago?)

She transferred me to a new guy and after just 2 visits I can already tell this is going to be worlds better. That don't think I'm quite ready for EMDR yet and that is someone else. But I'm gonna try with this new one and switch when they want to do EMDR.

I'm supposed to go to T once a week but my copay ends up being $32.00 a visit. I can't afford that so I have to go every other week. Now my psychiatrist is the same great lady I have had for years. That's a stable relationship. I see her once a month.