• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

What form of therapy did you find most useful?

Status
Not open for further replies.

LittleBigFoot

Policy Enforcement
Obviously everyone is different and responds differently to things. But there are sooo many different methods therapists use that are out there. What do you feel has helped you most personally?


For me- I’ve done the SFBT (solution focused brief) and I hated it. It felt invalidating and rushed. I did I believe it was person centered CBT? It was, better than the the other. But I felt completely directionless and just a mess and like I’m never going to get anywhere. A therapist attempted EMDR. It, umm lol, didn’t go too well. However, I liked it in the sense that I felt like something was actually happening and that maybe I’d get somewhere and have a direction.

The therapist I’ll be starting soon mentioned possibly doing EMDR but long into the future and that before that we would focus on building tools and getting nice and stable with IFS (internal family systems). She laid out stages we would move through, so I know going in I have a direction to work towards. Which I really really like.

What worked (or didn’t) for you?
 
EMDR has been a literal lifesaver for me.

As far as talk therapy modalities, my current therapist and I basically practice client-centered feminist therapy. Lots of dialogue and mutual disclosure (up to a point - I don't know if my therapist is a survivor, though I feel certain that she is). It works very well for me.

Time-limited cognitive processing therapy gave me some basic CBT skills that I was able to use afterwards, but did zero to treat my actual trauma.

I also did Internal Family Systems therapy for awhile but found that to be a dead end. Lots of finding and naming aspects of my personality, but not much figuring out what to do about them.
 
I started with talk therapy and it was helpful to a certain point. After a while I needed more, and I hated talking about my traumas. I've been doing EMDR and it has helped me tremendously. I know it's not for everyone, but it works for me. I don't know why, I'm just glad it does.
 
I did talking therapy for two years, I believe it was schematic/systemic but I’m unsure. It didn’t go very far.

When I got very symptomatic I went straight to psychiatric emergency and their first response were medication. One pdoc tried to make me talk about my traumas and it just didn’t work out at all. The current one monitored symptoms while being generally supportive and she’s got a blend of systemic, psychoanalysis but also neurology-based work. Overall I’m happy with it and it’s been very helpful but I’m finding its limitations. However I don’t feel that everything can be solved in therapy in general.

I also do CBT/DBT by myself and I find DBT way subtler than CBT. Normally it’s practised in groups but it virtually doesn’t exist in my country.
 
I’ve used a few forms of therapy. It depends on the person and where they are at in their recovery. I started out with a wonderful psychodynamic type of talk therapist when I was an older teen but she knew I needed a lot of stabilization so I went the cbt/dbt route. That helped me see the world differently and manage all of the overwhelming emotions. I still had flashbacks and nightmares they just didn’t derail my life.

Now I’m doing talk therapy with a psychologist. She doesn’t advertise as specializing in trauma. However, she’s honestly the best with trauma of any medical professional I’ve work with personally or professionally. I know things like EMDR and exposure therapy work really well for a lot of people. At this point in my life I can’t imagine it. This slow and steady pace of addressing trauma and handling the stress of being in healthcare has been a life saver for me.
 
I love EMDR, but still have trouble grounding so its not used very often. I do best with attachment-based, jungian, IFS, and somatic experience work. Anything involving animals is also a good therapy. My T also does clinical hypnosis, but I tend to resist that. We've found I do AMAZING with shamanic meditations for grounding and neurological resets. The one thing that I absolutely cannot stand is CBT or anything "solution-focused". I need to feel a connection with another human being, not feel like I'm back in the cult I grew up in, where EVERYONE kept me at clinical distance. I HATE that.
 
I've only been with this T, and she mainly does a relational transactional analysis, but has so E other modalities as well. But that's her go to.
Took me a while to get into the language of transactional analysis, but it makes sense now. Mostly.
.seems to be helping?
 
i'm currently doing narrateve exposure therepy. and some work sheets and books and what not that are more basic. which is essenteally. you build a chronological biography of your life. and all the tramatic events that have happened to you.

and then it is more or less cbt as far as i know. that you identify all the different ways of which your thoughts have been shaped by it. and the core believes and things. it basically starts with what happened and then moves onto what happened before. after.

and then moves onto how you feel about it. why you think it happened. and on and on.

i've found this really difficult because of it requiring a linearity that i simply don't have. in a lot of ways being here. and working with the my trauma diary has been really benefecial for that reason it is a good companion.

but i've found a lot of benefit from the logical reconstruction of things. in terms of what i had found the most helpful for the course of my life it's dbt hands down. it saved my life. and my marriage. and prevented my kid from having an even crappier life than she already has had.

it set me up to even start to do any of this work at all.
 
Exposure Therapy, hands down. It just fawking works.

And it’s freaking perfectly tuned for someone with my control issues.

Didn’t know it was called that, way back when. It was just what we did, as soon as someone started having panic attacks: walk them through the process of no longer having panic attacks. Then was up to them to manage their own shit, as needed.

It was 15 years, before I learned what we did as a matter of course actually had a name. Or that it has 2 basic versions; fast & dirty (what we did, high risk with high reward), and sane & sensible (what a person can do on their own, and what any reasonable trauma therapist teaches someone to do for themselves).
 
I should add that somehow I also do art therapy. I’m (mostly) a professional artist. And I feel very lucky I am because I really can put meaning in things and give time to it. I guess I often minimize the impact it has on maintaining me afloat.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top