What Do You Talk About In Therapy?

[Hashi]

I think the most useful thing to do with the time is to look at why you aren't ready to do EMDR yet, what you need to put in place, and how to do that.

As I understand it, the initial stages of EMDR therapy are focussed on safety, grounding and coping skills. I'd suggest you and your therapist could revisit those and increase your skills.

I think it's also valuable to discuss ways of approaching the sessions that might help.

I've done other types of therapy, and only part of that involved talking about the trauma, but when it did I used the third person for some time (she, her) before I started talking about myself as "I".

I've also discussed things with my therapist like having enough time for grounding at the end of the session, and what we would do for the grounding. This would be different for everyone but in my case, counting colours type stuff is not very strong, talking about plans for the week ahead or general things is quite good, but talking about what I like about a friend or talking about art is best. So she knew to make sure we talked about a friend or art for enough time at the end.

For me, working on coping skills and how to approach trauma work is trauma work.

 

[Eva A.]

That is a really good question ... I am sort of like 40 sessions into my therapy and am feeling totally stuck, I don´t know where to sit anymore (choice of on the floor with lots of pillows, or chairs...), I have no idea what to talk about anymore, a few words and I am nowhere to be found, my thoughts just disolving in fog ... I am holding on for dear life to stay in an adult state and keep the kiddo away from there ... feels very frustrating ...

 

[Eva A.]

ooops, sorry, I guess I was suppposed to answer to the first post and not write about my own stuff here ... sorry ...

 

[duff]

@TimeToHeal I can so relate to your desire to hurry it up! However, I have also found that when I've tried to push it has not gone well for me.

It used to be that trauma came up maybe 1 time every 5-6 sessions. Then it was a noticeable shift to 1 in 3-4. And more recently it has been touched on in small ways almost ever session. It has felt like such a natural progression and I am SO grateful for my therapist letting me lead, entirely. She almost never asks about previous sessions unless I bring it up, and often after a really intense session I won't talk about it again for one or two. It feels really safe for me that way.

So what do we talk about when we aren't talking about trauma? I try to work on sharing my feelings more generally. There is always some happening in my life that I want advice about - the dynamic with my boss, my school work, my friendships, my eating, my relationship, etc. A lot of all of that is informed by my PTSD but we don't need to get into trauma details to work on coping and understanding being in the world. I honestly think just sharing mundane day to day things with her has been a huge part of our synchronicity. I have learned to connect and trust that she won't ever push me to places I can't handle. And, over time, I've deeply come to appreciate that. It seemed so strange and counter intuitive at first, but now I don't know what I would do without it.