When Therapy Seems To Make Things Worse

[No Folded Hands]

I've been having a rough few days, since the last session. I've had PTSD for a long time, but this is the first serious, formal, whatever we want to call it, therapy I've been in...uh...I think it's been five sessions to date. It took awhile to realize that I didn't like that last session, and I didn't want to go back.

I've felt like that before --not wanting to go back-- with a couple other therapists, but it wasn't for the same reasons. With them, I got so ticked off at their ask every question in the book about my childhood and ignore my current situation and the last few years approach that I fired them.

This time, by contrast, I feel uneasy and irrititable and angry (not enraged) and suspicious. I felt BAD coming out of the session, but bad this time means...oh...unsettled. I took a sudden, abrupt, major dislike to my therapist. But here's the punch line, if we can call it that...the last session took an entirely unexpected turn when in response to some innocuous small talk type opening remark of his I started telling him of an incident from military service I'd somehow apparently forgotten. By the end of the session I was rip roaring mad even if not doing anything more than speaking in an angry tone of voice.

Now that I've gotten a few days away from it I'm wondering if the two are realted, and I just don't want to go back because of the memory and anger brought up by the memory. Could this mean therapy is actually working?

 

[Jimmy1]

Awesome subject NFH,

Yep, its the best type of therapy. Its called exposure therapy.
If you do this therapy in a controlled environment, the therapist can talk you through your feelings.
Eventually you hope to be able to talk about the event without getting worked up. It can take weeks for just one trauma, so think about some of the vets who have many multiples of traumas and have to deal with each one little by little and therefore it could take many, many months. The experts also believe you should tackle the worst of the traumas first.
I used to feel physically sick and drained after a therapy session.

Lets think of it another way. Your a newbie in the forces and its your first time in the boonies.
You have to dig holes. After the first day, your back hurts, your arms hurt, and you have blisters on your hands.
You just wish you had not joined up.

12 weeks down the track, you have calloused hands and muscles where you did not have them before. You could dig all night and still it would not worry you.

The problem us vets sometimes have is with a flashbacks. Something will remind us of something when we are at home or out and about and therefore we are not in controlled environment. And look out.

Eventually you will learn grounding techniques and be able to control your actions and emotions. Here they use what's called CBT or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

Well that all for me for now. So in other words NFH, yes it is working. You will learn to love and hate your therapist.

Jimmy

 

[willis williams]

I go twice a month and have been through twelve week group sessions. I would agree it is working the therapist may finally be breaking that hardened shell. When this happens is when you actually start to deal with it. I was the tough guy and even the shrink couldn't get in there was nothing wrong in the areas they were addressing. Then one group a nam vet was really opening up and I was looking in the mirror. See the docs and therapist didn't know how to word it to get in and he wasn't thinking of me he was helping his self. Some how he was aloud in like he had the right to be there and I locked up and started crying. The only other time this has happened was when I tried to aproach the vietnam memorial before I ever started therapy I locked up in a rage I was happy, sad, pissed, every emotion possible there is a reason they have councilors at the wall of heeling. I never made it closer than 75 yrds of the wall sad I have family on there. Now I coopperate with the Dr.s and therapists. I think this was a good thing to happened to you. Most therapist don't give two shits if you like them as long as they help you because if they cared they they would take it home and then we would have screwed up therapist think about it this way they listen to nothing but pain and missery all day. Just like a medic you may have differences at duty station but in combat all you care about is that he can do a turnicate or he remembers to us the plastic on from the bandage to stop the sucking chet wound. So hang in you may be on the breakthrough part were you really start making progress.

 

[No Folded Hands]

hopefully. But does it have to bring up every thing that's happened in the past fre years that pissed me off all over again too? Already this morning it's been a mill day. stuff that happened afterI got out of the service, I mean, but still years ago...like the time I applied for a job and nearly had it until HR found out I was a veteran. They didn't hire veterans because veterans are so used to routine work that they couldn't handle a fast paced office where things are different every day, she finally explained off the record.

So does all the stuff that made you mad start coming up too, or is that just me? :P

 

[willis williams]

Not all the time it all depends on the trigger. Thatis funny that you were told you couldn't handle fast paced and changes I don't know about all areas of the military but as a combat engineer shit moved faster than any civilian could handle and it changed every minute. But as far as therapy the issues most of us have allready have us pissed it may be only pissed because were sad. So when it is brought out sure it will cause all kinds of reactions. When it starts being reactions to your own personal issues and even if you have to scream at the top of your lungs to get it out and be heard then you are on your way. When you sit and just get pissed about some babling fool and that is all you focus on you miss the point. Remember you are there for you and any of shit that you don't like or find funny and use it for your own private intertainment. If you find yourself getting pissed at annoying people just turn it into a cartoon thats what I did because at the point you are at now I had a really bad temper that I wasn't good at controling. When your stuff starts to open up more and more and this will come with time and the trust of your therapist you have to shoot straight even if it is in little increments because it is not the therapist you are convincing it is you facing your deamons and if you hold back you are not coming to full terms with it. TEX

 

[Jimmy1]

My personal opinion is yes, the problem with PTSD is that it affects a lot of people's sleep patterns and when you sleep (REM sleep), that is the minds way of doing its filing. So when a trauma happens, it f*cks that up.

Just imagine a filing cabinet being opened and emptied on the floor. You have to sort through everything to get to the main problems, and sometimes, there are some files you just don't want to read.

And with some people, they just chuck it back in and hope for the best.
Well, a lot of military trained vets do anyway. suck it up, when we need to find something we will go looking.

How's that for an analogy

Jimmy

 

[BV101]

This is a really interesting thread! The whole having a chat thing with people is a bit difficult for me. I feel sick most of the time after chats. And I can never get things going in a direction. I'm really terrified that if I let go and start, then I won't be able to stop. I'm even scared to do it on here really. Last week for the first time in a long time I woke myself up in the night with some kind of dream or whatever.
Sometimes I am really scared to go to sleep. I think making that breakthrough and trusting people is the big step. The mentallist trainer has been trained (at least I f*cking well hope they have) to deal with this, so maybe we should just let them deal with it?
I dunno really.

 

[Jimmy1]

During therapy, which I have been going to for 4 years, I am guilty of changing the subject all the time.
At one stage I used to go stoned, just to deal with it, but I ended up going off on a totally different tangent. Go figure.

Another trick is I tell my therapist that its not a good day for it and I have too much on my mind.

However; the sooner I deal with my traumas, the sooner I can live a semi normal life without all the horrors.

So I gave my therapist permission yesterday to push the point. Now I am a bit scared to go to my next therapy session although I know it will be good for me.

Alan, its actually natural to feel sick and other emotions after therapy, but trust me, it has to get worse before it can get better.

Jimmy

 

[willis williams]

Yep Alan the pain in my back and body with metal holding me together I feel like super man like I could just rip the doors off the henges. It is my adreniline which I can't release in therapy so it builds and builds I become very nocious like after a fire fight sick. I was told by several Dr.s that that was a normal responce to the stimuly. It almost made me quit one twelve week group course but I hung in there and so far the meds really just have to many side effects but I still trying. The therapy is the only thin that seems to really helps and I atleast can see the progress or whatever it is called. Right now I just want some sleep therapy and I can't try that avinza it is supposed to make me kill myself on current meds. so I have to wean off old meds then have 14 days off to not suffer severe reaction. Sounds like the majic med combo at least I could sleep. The DR. said I don't need sleep that bad I told him for f*ck sake I'd give him two weeks on my sleep patern and I would be treating him for insanity. Yeh he didn't want to talk to me much after that maybe next visit. TEX

 

[No Folded Hands]

Tex, my mentor for my internship was a medical epidemiologist --ie hw has an MD and another degree. I told him about my sleep pattern when he asked. SeemEd to startle him quite badly. ;0

I got a nice graphic illustration of how badly I'm strung together right now earlier today when talking to the VA about an issue regarding healthcare. It was one of those bizarre moments when someone in one office tells you that another office did something that no one has yet explained to you but is in your file, but you called in about something else entirely so this new out-of-context information really throws you. Then someone told me I had not talked to the unit I had just spoken with 2 or 3 minutes previously, and asked a lot of questions trying to track down what was going on instead of paying attention to what I had already said twice. Oh man. I lost it. Screaming into the phone is NOT conducive to being heard. Whew.

Hey Alan. Let's you and I cross fingers your feeling sick and my feeling pissed at everything gets less fairly soon...

 

[willis williams]

The VA does that shit all the time. We can't find a record of this or that. I've had it actually happen while I was hospitalized they sent me with an escort to physical therapy and when I got back I went to the PTSD unit common area the shift changed and all the sudden the nurses were looking for me and accusing me of not going to physical therapy mind you this is a locked unit and the only way out is with an escort and everywhere you go is logged you are searched when you return you are in the ugliest maroon scrubs that say the ward you are from and there are armed policeman at every door but I magically managed to go out for a pizza or something. Guess what somebody forgot to do thier charting but until they figured it out I got the hot seat. It has happened on other occasions drive 90 miles and get told oh that appointment was cancelled didn't you get the notice in the mail? I can't scream into the phone or act illrational at all especially there because I am a former 3 south patient and I will be put in there and even for a day I loose all my gun rights and other freedoms I fought for. So when you get a chance rip as much ass as you can.
TEX

 

[No Folded Hands]

Yikes, tex. Unbeleivable, aren't they, sometimes.

I related my troubles since last session to my therapist and added the unanswerable question. Why can't I fix this myself? When I was much younger I had a phobia. I still have the phobia, of course. But I figured out a way to disarm most of it before I was 20. Looking back today at what I did then, I can see it was essentially desensitization. So, given that, why couldn't I take care of my own PTSD? My therapist said he didn't know for sure, but maybe it was needing to be able to tell the story and get through it, etc, in a safe place with someone safe as a partner in doing so. Interesting answer. We'll see. I rather like that when I told him I had talked myself out of not going back after last session, with some input from other vets *waves at y'all*, but I frankly didn't trust him at this point, he told me he didn't expect me to yet. :D