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Yes, I see what you are saying. I probably need to spend a lot of time dealing with that as well.
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T's Small Group-- Am I Just Being Paranoid? Long Post
- Post starter LawPhotos
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Yes, I see what you are saying. I probably need to spend a lot of time dealing with that as well.
I'm not sure what to add only that does one always have to be in a group? I mean especially a group that you don't feel connected with. Does your T think you need group therapy?
I don't have any personal experience, but my husband with PTSD was in a group he couldn't relate to at all. It actually did him more harm, because he would come home feeling he didn't belong and that's not a good thing. He didn't get much out of the experience at all.
I think his T didn't think at all about it. They just wanted to form a group and it's hard to get people to show up for groups, so they asked him.
Personally, I kind of identify with what you are saying, in that I think I would be uncomfortable also. You've just had so much trauma that you don't really fit in with anxiety issues.
It's like one time I had to give an experience in front of a crowd about how I had gone through something difficult. Right before me this other lady gave her experience. Well hers was so tragic and horrific that after hers I felt pretty awkward and silly expressing mine. This is an opposite experience to yours--but it shows that two extremes really people don't feel comfortable. It made me minimize my feelings which was okay, but embarrassing in front of a group.
What about asking your T what she really wanted? Just be really honest with her.
Another option is to stay in the group for a few weeks to see if there is any meshing. If you still don't feel comfortable then at least you can say you tried for a while. It might depend on how other people respond to you over time.
I think it is very nice of you to be concerned about the other people in the group. If you do stay a while, you might be able to take someone aside in the group and ask them what they think about your presense in a more private setting.
I don't have any personal experience, but my husband with PTSD was in a group he couldn't relate to at all. It actually did him more harm, because he would come home feeling he didn't belong and that's not a good thing. He didn't get much out of the experience at all.
I think his T didn't think at all about it. They just wanted to form a group and it's hard to get people to show up for groups, so they asked him.
Personally, I kind of identify with what you are saying, in that I think I would be uncomfortable also. You've just had so much trauma that you don't really fit in with anxiety issues.
It's like one time I had to give an experience in front of a crowd about how I had gone through something difficult. Right before me this other lady gave her experience. Well hers was so tragic and horrific that after hers I felt pretty awkward and silly expressing mine. This is an opposite experience to yours--but it shows that two extremes really people don't feel comfortable. It made me minimize my feelings which was okay, but embarrassing in front of a group.
What about asking your T what she really wanted? Just be really honest with her.
Another option is to stay in the group for a few weeks to see if there is any meshing. If you still don't feel comfortable then at least you can say you tried for a while. It might depend on how other people respond to you over time.
I think it is very nice of you to be concerned about the other people in the group. If you do stay a while, you might be able to take someone aside in the group and ask them what they think about your presense in a more private setting.
BloomInWinter
VIP Member
I feel better when I try to be kinder in how I speak about myself....so if this was me, I could choose to restate this as 'I can choose to tell myself I deserve support...comfort...friendship.'
When we tell ourselves that only people with our level of pain are able to give us these things....well, it's not like there's tons of people out there wearing signs on their heads to help us identify them. ...or advertising for commiseration. People are capable of being caring, helpful, supportive, no matter what their lives have been.
....and it's the healthy ones out there who have a way of showing us how to have a life worth living through watching them. Seeing them laugh...play games...just be out there without the fears I struggle with helps me see what those behaviors look like. I can't learn that stuff from people who respond to the world like I do.
BloomInWinter
VIP Member
Hmmm...I wouldn't care to have summated the totality of my life based upon group therapy. I've been in DBT for over a year with some of them and don't feel I have nearly enough information on any of them to characterize them this way or not. That's a mental defense, 'all or nothing' response in play when I'm doing that to people. I had to deal with the world that way growing up....but now, it deprives me of even getting to know someone at all.
I am someone who saw people as all good or all bad....and you know, I'm so glad you shared this because it has helped me see that though I'm far from happy with where I am, I'm now able to give people a chance before I just put them in the 'bad' or 'not worthy' column in the spreadsheet in my head.
Sometimes, it's ok to take a 'wait and see' approach and give it a chance to see if you can find something useful. ...you can always just quit, too, if you want to.
Our T.s are just people too, doing the best they can. Though it was hard, I did try hard to find one thing good to take away and practice each time.
...and though you have all these feelings, you ARE successfully "putting words on"...using your "pros versus cons"...and using your "wise mind" to not act on your bad feelings but comfort yourself.
You might try on the 'taking a non-judgmental stance' and 'radical acceptance..." just for the sheer practice of it as a skill, and see if that helps your feelings.
Can you find some self-comfort things to do to lower your distress?
It may not feel like it....but your DOING GREAT WORK here, you know? You're working hard!
I hope you can give yourself a well-deserved 'ATTA GIRL'....
This has been a most interesting and introspectively challenging thread for me. Rather surreal really - as though I have watched my instinctual and my rational self batting back and forth against each other in the dialogue that LawPhotos and Bloom have had here.
And I'm not meaning to imply that you are being irrational LawPhotos, but only to say that on reading your initial post, I was all ready to leap in and say that I agreed wholeheartedly with you, that you had every right to feel "exposed", if you'll pardon the pun, and abused and just very much like the proverbial deer in the headlights. My empathic over-relating self kicked in and left me with a "woo, I'd have felt revolting if that was me..." reaction as well.
But then I read Blooms' very careful and pragmatic devil's advocat, and found myself feeling humble, and backtracking, and asking myself those questions too...
I think that all this proves is that this is a complex, challenging issue and I have every empathy for your immediate reaction and your subsequent attempts to rationalise this out to a satisfactory outcome.
I just wanted to add, out of a desire to say something useful on top of all of this random jibber, that as a person with a physical disability, I am well aware that I am enormously preoccupied with the reactions of pity, fascination and social awkwardness that I do experience from people very very frequently, but also very very much exaggerate and inflate in my own head. I can become obsessed in a matter of moments with the fact that *everyone* is staring at me, talking about me, prodding their neighbour to whisper about me, exchanging both sympathetic and slightly repulsed comments... suddenly the pounding in my head that tells me I am a beacon of revolting public attention can become almost overwhelming.
It's very, very difficult, but very important, to find a way to step back from that and reality check. Why on earth would *everyone* be staring at me? People are here for their own issues, why would mine suddenly be so important? Even if people are relating or comparing or noticing in some way, surely this is going to be only one of many emotional and psychological experiences and impacts they are absorbing from the encounter?
Yes, possibly some were humbled and felt a little awkward to discover your stark relationship to the fear being discussed. This likely caused as much, though different, awkwardness for some others as it did for you, though likely only fleetingly. Some may feel comforted to know that you are among them, proving that life can and does go on in the face of this unspeakable situation, albeit with much difficulty. Just as it is likely that the disclosures of someone else in the group may suddenly and perhaps unexpectedly strike a chord with you some time, you may have been that struck chord for this person and perhaps others.
That said, therapy is about healing, and working productively on our problems. If this group isn't that for you, then it's not necessary for you to stay. You have the power and the right to make that decision and to choose which aspects of therapy are helpful for you and which are not. If you feel it would help to frankly talk to your T about her view of the situation then that would be useful. But don't make it a painful obligation or a resulting additional mountain of confrontation you have to climb. I sincerely doubt she meant you any harm and in fact was likely exercising a little of the healthy manipulation that is sometimes necessary for Ts to push us towards more constructive ways of thinking. Sometimes therapy involves tough love, and this shouldn't be excused with insensitive or inappropriate practice by all means, but there is a balance to be struck there, and the thing about comfort zones is that it's uncomfortable when we're pushed out of them. It's why therapy can be so important - it pushes us to places we couldn't and wouldn't go on our own.
Hell, sometimes my T says things to me that hurt and unsettle me. He tells me outright that he's not in the business of saying and doing what I want to hear and do. It's a style that I relate to and which works for me, which is why we are a good match. He pushes me to talk about things I don't want to talk about, to confront the things I find humiliating and to endure his dialogue about me, usually in acknowledgement of my strengths and positive qualities, that i find almost intolerable to listen to. But he does this knowingly, and with my best interests in mind, and I feel secure enough in our relationship to trust his judgment, yet also to know that it's ok for me to say when it's really too much and I'm becoming overwhelmed, and to know that he will recognize and address this and make sure I'm ok before we part.
I really hope you know LawPhotos that all of this feedback really is designed to be constructive, and perhaps it's only possible for us to reality test you so much because we can relate so vividly. Please let us know what you decide and what happens next, and thank you for your honesty and openness here... I for one feel greatly enriched by it.
Maddog
And I'm not meaning to imply that you are being irrational LawPhotos, but only to say that on reading your initial post, I was all ready to leap in and say that I agreed wholeheartedly with you, that you had every right to feel "exposed", if you'll pardon the pun, and abused and just very much like the proverbial deer in the headlights. My empathic over-relating self kicked in and left me with a "woo, I'd have felt revolting if that was me..." reaction as well.
But then I read Blooms' very careful and pragmatic devil's advocat, and found myself feeling humble, and backtracking, and asking myself those questions too...
I think that all this proves is that this is a complex, challenging issue and I have every empathy for your immediate reaction and your subsequent attempts to rationalise this out to a satisfactory outcome.
I just wanted to add, out of a desire to say something useful on top of all of this random jibber, that as a person with a physical disability, I am well aware that I am enormously preoccupied with the reactions of pity, fascination and social awkwardness that I do experience from people very very frequently, but also very very much exaggerate and inflate in my own head. I can become obsessed in a matter of moments with the fact that *everyone* is staring at me, talking about me, prodding their neighbour to whisper about me, exchanging both sympathetic and slightly repulsed comments... suddenly the pounding in my head that tells me I am a beacon of revolting public attention can become almost overwhelming.
It's very, very difficult, but very important, to find a way to step back from that and reality check. Why on earth would *everyone* be staring at me? People are here for their own issues, why would mine suddenly be so important? Even if people are relating or comparing or noticing in some way, surely this is going to be only one of many emotional and psychological experiences and impacts they are absorbing from the encounter?
Yes, possibly some were humbled and felt a little awkward to discover your stark relationship to the fear being discussed. This likely caused as much, though different, awkwardness for some others as it did for you, though likely only fleetingly. Some may feel comforted to know that you are among them, proving that life can and does go on in the face of this unspeakable situation, albeit with much difficulty. Just as it is likely that the disclosures of someone else in the group may suddenly and perhaps unexpectedly strike a chord with you some time, you may have been that struck chord for this person and perhaps others.
That said, therapy is about healing, and working productively on our problems. If this group isn't that for you, then it's not necessary for you to stay. You have the power and the right to make that decision and to choose which aspects of therapy are helpful for you and which are not. If you feel it would help to frankly talk to your T about her view of the situation then that would be useful. But don't make it a painful obligation or a resulting additional mountain of confrontation you have to climb. I sincerely doubt she meant you any harm and in fact was likely exercising a little of the healthy manipulation that is sometimes necessary for Ts to push us towards more constructive ways of thinking. Sometimes therapy involves tough love, and this shouldn't be excused with insensitive or inappropriate practice by all means, but there is a balance to be struck there, and the thing about comfort zones is that it's uncomfortable when we're pushed out of them. It's why therapy can be so important - it pushes us to places we couldn't and wouldn't go on our own.
Hell, sometimes my T says things to me that hurt and unsettle me. He tells me outright that he's not in the business of saying and doing what I want to hear and do. It's a style that I relate to and which works for me, which is why we are a good match. He pushes me to talk about things I don't want to talk about, to confront the things I find humiliating and to endure his dialogue about me, usually in acknowledgement of my strengths and positive qualities, that i find almost intolerable to listen to. But he does this knowingly, and with my best interests in mind, and I feel secure enough in our relationship to trust his judgment, yet also to know that it's ok for me to say when it's really too much and I'm becoming overwhelmed, and to know that he will recognize and address this and make sure I'm ok before we part.
I really hope you know LawPhotos that all of this feedback really is designed to be constructive, and perhaps it's only possible for us to reality test you so much because we can relate so vividly. Please let us know what you decide and what happens next, and thank you for your honesty and openness here... I for one feel greatly enriched by it.
Maddog
BloomInWinter
VIP Member
My sponsor's voice keeps popping up in my head....he's 'one of us'....and his response is 'It doesn't matter what vehicle we drove to get here, we're all in the ditch now!'
One of the reasons I love this forum is the diversity of vehicles has only made our collective willingness to help pull each other out all that more miraculous.
Our experiences are different. But we can either spend our mental energy noting all the differences, which helps us push people away, or look for the similarities where we can meet others in the middle.
I'm sorry things are so hard right now. That you're feeling it instead of running is truly a great act of courage.
Please do keep sharing and especially, being gentle with yourself. All your feelings about this DO 'make sense' in the PTSD response. None of your feelings are wrong or lying to you. Our trauma just....interjects/overlays confusion about what our feelings are really trying to tell us.
Wishing you comfort and rest....
(((((Lawphotos)))))
- Post starter
- #19
Just to clarify....that characterization of having it all and being deathly afraid of losing it was their words, not mine. I don't know these people at all. I am not making any judgments about them as good or bad or any other quality, I was just repeating what they stated their issues were when asked by the T.
- Post starter
- #20
That's a hilarious analogy--I love it! I guess I just feel like on the forum we can help each other get out and work together because we are all in the same big cavernous pit in the middle of nowhere. But these guys seem to be in a totally different ditch right next to the road and I'm not sure how they are going to help me when I'm so far away.
You're absolutely right! Nothing feels stronger right now that the huge urge to run like mad and never share another thing again. Funny how that can go all the way to the core of our being. Today I was outside and as I rounded the corner of my house and saw the mailman close by coming up the sidewalk (he didn't startle me). I stopped in my tracks and my instant thought was "turn around and run". Right now, as I am typing this I can't remember whether I did or not, so evidently I dissociated as well.
Maybe I just haven't dealt with many feelings about my son. Believe it or not there has always seemed to be something more pressing at the forefront. By the time I got into therapy 4 years ago, I had another son in rehab, my father had just been diagnosed with Alzheimers, my sister's alcoholism had just become apparent, and it was the first time I had admitted to myself that my husband was deep, deep into a (non-substance) addiction and it was only in family therapy at my son's rehab facility that I ever mentioned to anyone any of the things that had happened to me.
I suppose that all of my feelings are being made even more intense because my father died a year ago tomorrow.
BloomInWinter
VIP Member
Thanks for letting me know that....I'm sorry for my misnderstanding. It also freaked me out to think the people in my group might be thinking that about me. If that's all they feel safe confronting or sharing, that's their journey...I'm jealous I can't have my denial back.
That seems to be all too common with those if us who are still in denial. I remember it well...'I had a happy childhood'...ugh. Wish I didn't lose decades because I forced myself to keep up that mantra.
....sheesh, amazing how easy it is to get triggered...
Not to say I don't do that to people still, or that it's not done to me. But I'm workng on it.
I wish this C-PTSD wasn't such an ongoing triggering existance...
BloomInWinter
VIP Member
Ugh. An anniversay on top of it all?!
I'm so sorry.
Wow. Your red cape remains intact! But...hoping you give yourself the ok to 'not be ok', too...as long as you need to.
Am thinking....maybe your T. wanted you to see how well you're doing with how much you've got in your plate!
LOL....we may be in the ditch, but we KNOW we're in the ditch, you know? That's gotta be worth at least mid-level superhero status!
I'm so sorry.
Wow. Your red cape remains intact! But...hoping you give yourself the ok to 'not be ok', too...as long as you need to.
Am thinking....maybe your T. wanted you to see how well you're doing with how much you've got in your plate!
LOL....we may be in the ditch, but we KNOW we're in the ditch, you know? That's gotta be worth at least mid-level superhero status!
- Post starter
- #23
Wow, Bloom, I really see this now. I run from anything that has the potential to make me feel better. If I don't push them away by finding differences then I might feel support AND there's always that chance that they'll hurt me. For me good things always feel bad and if they don't, and I feel good, then I have to instigate something that will make me feel bad right away. My T has been digging in that spot for awhile now.
For instance if I do one of the comforting or self-soothing things she asks and I feel positively then I feel overwhelming guilt/shame and pressure to somehow be punished or make "restitution" as if I've done something wrong. Usually I try to people please one of the many people I have placed in my life that will never be pleased but will make me feel bad about myself. Just last week T made me do self-comfort right before our session, in theory so I would have to "sit with it". She pointed out that I was trying to people please her and ingratiate myself to her the entire session but it wasn't making me feel bad because she wasn't abusing me in response but was supporting. It was incredibly distressing and what I didn't tell her was that right before I walked in I felt so guilty about having done something nice for myself that I called an abuser who I knew would tear me down. Before I left the building after the session I called them again. AArrrggghhh!
Thanks a million for helping me to put it together.
BloomInWinter
VIP Member
Ugh....roger all that!
Legacy of abuse that keeps on being the abuser's weapon even when they're not around. I wonder if I'll ever be free of those introjects of shame, guilt....ick!
Whose voice spoke to you before you made that call to the abusive person? I hope you're able to evict that person outta your head soon and get some relief. I don't hear them all the time now, and it was very scary. Felt like their absence was abandonment, which was less painful than self-harming through mentally abusing myself.
Thanks so much for sharing....this has been really thought-provoking.
May we all have peace...
Legacy of abuse that keeps on being the abuser's weapon even when they're not around. I wonder if I'll ever be free of those introjects of shame, guilt....ick!
Whose voice spoke to you before you made that call to the abusive person? I hope you're able to evict that person outta your head soon and get some relief. I don't hear them all the time now, and it was very scary. Felt like their absence was abandonment, which was less painful than self-harming through mentally abusing myself.
Thanks so much for sharing....this has been really thought-provoking.
May we all have peace...
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