With Exposure therapy you have homework. Doing this in small doses and not too often to push yourself. My homework for this week; listen to the recording made in the therapy session ( a rotten memory from childhood ). If you can every day and make notes about stress level.
So I have to listen to this same recording and hopefully the level of anxiety, anger will be lower each time. This is the second recording I'm doing. Did I think it would be "easier" than the first one? yes, but it isn't it's worse. There are now different emotions, more anger and the like. I'm fed up with the whole thing feeling. I wonder if it actually will change anything, or is it all for a short period that things go better, a few years maybe, when I finish therapy?
The traumas I fully processed over 20 years ago?
When my PTSD got symptomatic again, (combo of new trauma, stress & stressors, & loss of coping mechanisms = drop kicked into the stratosphere)
- ALL of my unprocessed trauma came flooding back
- The triggers & stressors I’d eliminated, that were tied to my unprocessed trauma, also came back, & had to be re-eliminated.
- My processed trauma did NOT come back.
- The triggers and stressors that were tied my processed trauma, also didn’t. (Nor did any other symptom; nightmares, flashbacks, etc.).
My processed trauma had/has about as much hold over me as a sandwich, shoelaces, or bird in a tree on the other side of the world. Zip. Zero. Nada. Zilch. My UNprocessed trauma, on the other hand, had/has its claws in me deep. That’s the whole point of processing trauma. Processed Trauma = Zero hold, zero symptoms. Remembered, not relived. Past & present completely separate from each other. UNprocessed trauma, the past still has claws in the present.
For a better understanding of why ^that^ is the totally normal / yawn / “expected” thing (not to me! Not at the time! But now it’s a water is wet kind of thing… Processed trauma does not return, unprocessed trauma does). Check out this article >>>
Guidance for using a trauma diary for exposure therapy (cbt) <<< Whilst focusing on the writing side of exposure therapy? It’s not limited to writing (Dares : The Art of a Successful Recovery, section in the article, is something I’ve been doing since day 1, and is totally in vivo)… and also does a really good job of explaining both the process aaaaaaaand “expected” results. >.< (I had to go and reinvent the darn wheel, because I didn’t do therapy my first go ‘round. I just kept doing the things that worked, and tetrising rubixing the things that didn’t work until I found more that did. Until??? I was virtually asymptomatic for a decade).
Processing Trauma Should NOT Be Retraumatizing. If it is? You’re doing it wrong.
