Not sure what to do, just need to vent.

Submitted by Pheepho on Sun, 01/09/2011 - 10:40pm

I saw the new pdoc on thursday, and we discussed events in my childhood that I felt pretty uncomfortable discussing. I told him I found it difficult, but at the same time I understood he was trying to take a history. It is pretty difficult to discuss anything about my childhood without discussing things relating to the source of the trauma, so it's pretty useless having a discussion that just skirts around it. So how to handle this? I guess I should mention this is a pdoc who does psychotherapy and is doing an assessment of me.

So I said I found it hard to talk about my childhood, so he said is it better if I ask questions, and I said okay. But then it became useless so I just dived into some really central issues to my trauma. He asked a question about it, and I said, I don't want to answer that, and he couldn't understand why not and then made a correct guess at the answer. Then we had a long discussion of the issues which was uncomfortable but on some level a relief, because I live with a lot of secrecy.

Well, I have been a basketcase since. I have thought of things that I haven't thought of in years, like possibly 20 years. I was somebody today that i'd kind of forgotten about. I'd honestly kind of forgotten what depression means, but that word doesn't even seem like the right word. Just everything I look at is yelling shit at me.

The thing is i'm pretty confused. because I'm also reducing my antidepressants, very slowly and I have been since march. I made a reduction on the 26th, and I was really happy that I had had no withdrawal symptoms to speak of with this reduction. So that was day 12 after the reduction that I had the appointment.

I felt up to the appointment that I was doing really well, kind of sitting on the fence as to whether I even want/need therapy. So what is going through my head is, was I kidding myself that I was happy? Am I correct in my own self-assessment that I was doing well? This is just spinning in my mind.

I have to be honest with myself (you all): there is a big part of me that wants to talk about all the trauma with someone, and kind of likes the interest and attention this man has shown. But then, when i see what I've written just there, I think, isn't that the trauma all over again, what I endured because I felt alone and liked the attention? Funny that way. So I'm thinking he doesn't have enough sensitivity around trauma to do anything for me that hasn't already been tried. I have discussed the trauma before. It has never been comfortable. i think it was harder this time because I had been feeling really good, whereas in the past I was already feeling like crap when I discussed it, hard to remember as it has been a while. I do know I have not thought about self-harm in a long time and other thoughts that surfaced today. I honestly do not believe this is about my medication. I guess what it comes down to is, I'm vulnerable because I'm painfully lonely, in some way, and that makes me vulnerable to the possibility of opening up to the wrong person. As in, he's probably not a bad guy, but I'm not sure he has anything new to offer me.

I guess there is the idea out there that it is normal for therapy to be a painful process. That you don't get better without pain. That once you've truly healed, you can easily discuss painful events as if they were just a day at the office. The fact that our discussion made me go off the deep end means I have a lot of work to do, etc. etc. I think these are ideas i've absorbed from childhood and other sources that maybe aren't very helpful. I think I shouldn't feel that I need this man to fix me. I feel confused by being moved in some way by his interest in me. I know that sounds lame, but it's the truth. I see myself from the outside but also from within. So I see that my loneliness makes me vulnerable and needy, but also I feel the overwhelming need.

I think maybe he pushed too hard, and I am attached to him in some way like I was to my abuser. I know how messed up that sounds, hard to believe this is me talking.

This idea makes it hard to decide what is acceptable. I can't believe I'm even stuck on this, this doesn't sound like me, does it? Well, any thoughts on this are welcome, but anyway I guess I needed to write about it somewhere more private than the blog. Sarsha, I replied to your post but the spam filter wouldn't let me through. I don't think I said anything priceless, though, just that I kind of get your feelings.

You don't need that man to

Submitted by Awen on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 1:42pm.

You don't need that man to fix you. No doctor is going to fix you. You probably need a coach and support person as you heal yourself. Yeah, I think the goal is to have the trauma not run our lives, so that if we talk about it or are triggered it doesn't mean we change our lives to avoid those things, but know how to handle them so we can live lives we want. I know the PTSD makes me avoid a lot of things I need, like friends and driving. Some therapy sessions are going to trigger us - I accept that now. Sometimes my therapoist whom I like does stuff that triggers me and I freak for days. Now I can call him and say I am triggered and we discuss it til I am back in "real time" and know he's not harming me. It is hard when PTSD gets triggered to know, "is this person harming me? is this a PTSD trigger and they are helpful and the feelings I am having are not about them?" i created a life where any time i was triggered i avoided the source of the trigger, which led to a limited as possible life, and it is sad. my therapist says he wants me to have a large life. for me to have a life i want, i cannot allow the PTSD to take over, i have to be able to tell myself it's just PTSD and stay undetoured by its words and feelings and images that are not about today. that takes skills and time. honestly, this is where mindfulness saved my butt.

here's the thing i would ask myself. Am I living the life I would dream of living? If not, is it PTSD avoidance that keeps me from making changes to have that life? If PTSD keeps us from good lives we dream of, then the abusers win. The way I am understanding it is that the PTSD doesn't "go away" or get "fixed" but what happens is our relationship with the effects changes. A trigger might happen, but we relate to the words, feelings, images differently. They have found that PTSD gets much worse the more avoidance people do and that's why exposure therapy is all that seems to work - but it doesn't mean exposure to the memories necessarily and it will be done at a slow speed so you don't flip out. I tend to go too fast with exposure and that's self damaging. But exposure therapy can be my therapist saying to me an opinion that i hate and am triggered by and us discussing it and how it is just words and in reality i am sitting on a chair and no one is harming me. all the feelings i am having are just feelings, they are not reality. it's like chosing what to respond with - PTSD or taking care of myself. becauase a lot of the PTSD was taking care of me and now it is NOT. So he will say some awful Tea Party thing that makes me freak out and then we practice me knowing that it isn't harming me, being aware that the feelings and words in my head are not based on anything external, stuff like that. We don't work on changing the internal feelings and thoughts because you cannot control that. If I say "Don't think about PTSD. Really, don't. Are you thinking about PTSD? I said not to," you are going to think about PTSD.

Maybe see this doctor again. He hasn't done anything really bad to you, right? He's made no sweeping diagnosis or wanted to lock you up or suggested 10000mgs of Thorazine? Do you have a goal for therapy? It is a lot easier to do therapy I think when we have a goal - not a vague one like "no more PTSD" but something like "beating myself up less" or "better able to handle other people's anger with me" or "handle panic attacks" or "be more comfoortable around people". Any of those goals will heal the PTSD, because the skills you learn for handling your inner self will apply to all of your life.

Ask the doctor what is goal is, what techniques he finds work, what his appproach is about. Sometimes when I have more information then I feel safer, it's not all new and scary.

Of course you have resisted doing stories about the trauma - they retraumatized you because it was done so very wrong by other people you trusted. But you don't have to focus on the trauma, you can focus on the effects. If you now get freaked out by yellow Jello, then work on exposure with Yellow Jello slowly? Or talk about how it affected your realtionships, or what you think will happen if you do things you avoid. There are a lot of ways to heal trauma without talking about it.

One big reason they do want people to get comfortable about discussing the trauma is to stop the shame. the Shame from trauma is the biggest killer. Once you can say what happened and not feel like you're the bad person in the story, you've recovered your innocence and self love. It hit me a few days ago, "Bean raped me because he's a rapist, Jude hit me because he hits people, my Dad ignored me because my Dad is like that", none of it has anything to do with me. It is too easy for me to internalize why they did their abuse. But it is a huge step for me to take myself out of the equation. Abusers abuse because they are abusers. Period. I have read a lot of books about how important it is to make sure sexual abuse and rape survivors understand that no matter what they did, they would have been sexually abused or raped, and that it's about the abuser, not us. Even if we had an orgasmism, it's rape, etc. And if we liked the attention - well think about if you met a little girl who was having what you had done to you to her and she felt the feelings you had felt, would you tell her she is bad? Honestly, think about what you'd say to someone else, it might shock you, and then ask why you cannot say that to yourself?

I dunno, I am sorry if I was preachy, I just don't want you to get paralyzed with fear. Remember to breathe and that you are safe and that it's all normal and you'll feel better eventually since you did before. Love Heather

"It's the end," said the caterpillar. "It's the beginning," said the butterfly.

I discussed this very exact

Submitted by Sarsha on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 1:21pm.

I discussed this very exact same dilemma with my therapist and she had answers that might make sense... I haven't decided if they make sense actually, but would love to know your thoughts on them. She said that it makes sense that I don't want to talk about my trauma- it is re-traumatizing. But I do want to talk about my trauma- because it asn't been fully processed yet. When it is, it won't have such a hold on me. So she advised to develop the skills of emotional self-awareness, so that I can process that trauma in bite size pieces. She said there are many different ways to process trauma/anything and talking about it is only one of those ways, but its important to find a way to do that.

My personal interpertation of her words is that maybe its like a bruise. They say if you massage a bruise it helps it heal faster, promotes circulation and i don't know what else. But it hurts to rub a bruise, obviously, and you don't want to just go jamming your fingers into it because you're going to bruise yourself again.

The oven guy is here I have to go...

My trauma started disrupting

Submitted by kaliope on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 3:49pm.

My trauma started disrupting my life in 2005 after I left my controlling boyfriend of 12 years. I then started social work school and the classes triggered the hell out of me. I had a breakdown. By the time it was over I was hospitalized twice. The dissociation, the flashbacks, the triggers, the hypervigilance, functioning was difficult. The shame, the guilt. I am one of those just jump into the deep end type of people so I just let everything running through my head out - thus the first hospitalization against my will-I dont remember much of my childhood though. I trusted my phd with anything. I told him and my doctor anything because I wanted the pain to stop. I didnt care that i didnt know my doctor very well. I just wanted it all to stop. I wanted everything to get tucked back into the file cabinet it had been stored in all those years. we worked on the fact that i was angry. I never admitted I was angry. I was only able to do that recently and be ok with that. we worked on that it wasnt about me. My anxiety has been the biggest problem. I think whatever we did has worked. I am not living in fear any longer. The hypervigilance is gone. The daily dissociation is gone. I have been experiencing some in relation to my recent anxiety but I dont think that is in relation to the PTSD, and if so, I am doing a really good job handling it. I wonder if everything just got tucked successfully back into the filing cabinet, but when I have read some of the books on trauma and worked through a workbook recently I was not triggered. That was such a big deal for me. That tells me something has been healed. I had to take that risk and jump in with both feet and trust that these dr's were going to help me though. I had to live through that shame and pain in order to let it go. These have definately been the worst years of my life but to not have to live that life of hypervigilance and triggers any longer it was all well worth it. I guess I can say that now that I am past it. I still worry that it will all come back, but for now I am at peace and enjoying that. Even in my recent crisis, the anxiety was so high I dissociated, I had nightmares, I cried, but there was no hypervigilance. I remembered what my old phd taught me. I am wired differently. I respond more intensely than normal people do. Moving is stressful for anybody. So it is natural for ME to go into crisis over a move I was not ready for, a move that was not my choice. (i was renting a room from a friend. she bought a new place to move in with her boyfriend. i had limited time to find a new place) i went into crisis but when i remembered what dr joe taught me, I immediately snapped out of it. I guess what I am saying, for me anyway, is to heal, you gotta find a good dr. you can trust and youre not going to know whether you can trust them unless you share your pain. I know its hard. I always dissociated when I did it. Dr. Joe was forever "bringing me back". Peace to all.

Thanks all of you for your

Submitted by Pheepho on Tue, 01/11/2011 - 10:22am.

Thanks all of you for your thoughts on this. The weirdest thing for me was the complete surprise that I could feel that way (the way I felt on the weekend) like from 20 years ago. I am able to think differently about it, now that I am not in the very morst intense part of it: I think it is kind of good that I felt that at the beginning of this process because it gave me a clue what I was in for and what still resides in me. Now that I know that potential is there, to go back to that place, I kind of at this point feel fairy driven to master those kinds of mental states, and I see that I have this intense energy locked inside me, because of the intensity of my feelings at those times. So if someone has said this to me on the weekend it would not have gone over well, but because i felt so bad, I want to go on with the process.

No he didn't do anything wrong. He did push me slightly, only by questioning: why wouldn't you want to talk about that? Also because he is local and has been practicing in Toronto I guess all his working life, he was somewhat familiar with the circumstances of my childhood. This was kind of a surprise and triggering but also opened up a dialogue that couldn't otherwise have happened.

I realize I am very drawn to the situation in spite of the very negative feelings. This is confusing and I have been journaling about it, it is too lengthy to put here. I guess some of the issues have to do with him being a man. But I consciously thought I wanted to have a male therapist. I have never discussed this stuff with a man, and I guess because I had this desire for a male therapist, I felt I was ready to work through this in a new way. It is so flipping triggering to have a man in an intimate role: it brings up all kind of stuff which is inappropriate but I am able to think my way through it and see it is actually appropriate in the context of my history.

I realize clearly I need to discuss how I felt on the weekend with him. We both need to be aware of my potential to go into that state, that there is the potential for urges to self-harm, suicidality, the need for hospitalization, etc. I don't think either of us want to deal with that, so I guess we have to discuss where my feelings can take me. I think I am going back though. Having Icarus and you gals here really helped me be able to make this leap, it's hard to say that without sounding all sentimental, but it's true.