Still in conflict about therapist

Submitted by Pheepho on Mon, 02/14/2011 - 6:57pm

Paula I think that if he is

Submitted by kaliope on Mon, 02/14/2011 - 8:40pm.

Paula

I think that if he is causing this much confusion for you the best thing to do is get out. Waiting till after hours so you can leave a well thought out message is the best way to go about it. But will he still make a recommendation to your GP for you if you do this? I guess I just got lucky with my therapists. We have never dwelled much on my past traumas. I have always gone in with the attitude that I will talk about anything just to get better and not care who I was talking to, but I have had two good PhD's in a row here. I dont have memories of my traumas though. Dont remember much before the age of 12. My therapy has been focused on stabilizing me, looking at my behaviors, crediting those behaviors to the trauma (without really knowing exactly what the trauma was), and moving on from there knowing that I am safe now, I no longer have to respond that way. I went from a life of frequent dissociation and panic attacks and bouts of psychosis to being free of those things. Its taken three years. I dont know if it was the therapy, the medication or what, but I do know that I did not have to go digging through all that past history trauma to get better. I did, and it was on my own, write a long painful letter to my father regarding the abuse of my childhood. It triggered a psychotic break and I ended up hospitalized against my will. This was early on and this letter has been used to help me get in touch with and let go of my anger. but having a therapist you can trust to talk to is paramount to your healing. You need to have a therapist that lets you decide what takes place in a session because only you knows whats important to you on that day. You need to leave that session feeling good, feeling like a burden has been lifted and if he is the one deciding what is important you cant possibly have that. How can you possibly get your needs met if he is directing the show each time you go? Does your health plan allow you to see anybody else?But definately, if seeing this man is causing you this much distress, you definately need to seek help elsewhere.

Kaliope, thanks for your

Submitted by Pheepho on Tue, 02/15/2011 - 9:06am.

Kaliope, thanks for your reply. Everything you said was really helpful, to hear how it can be. I have a shift at my new job this aft/evening, but I think I will make the call when I get home from that. I will plan out a little speach and keep it short and to the point. I don't see a rational reason he could refuse to make recommendations to my GP, but I do kind of fear retaliation when I don't really comply. I think this is not reasonable. If there is a problem then I will have a discussion with my GP and go from there. At any rate there is no point putting myself through this just so I get the meds I need.

Hearing how therapy has been for you is helpful. I think this has been an okay experience as in a learning experience for me. It is just an exercise of having to decide what is right for me over what is being strongly recommended by a professional. It's also caused me to look at some of the attitudes I have around therapy and the attitudes that actually exist within the system, and then what I choose to believe. I don't believe I need psychotherapy right now. Or ever? I think there are other ways I can improve my life (spiritual/creative/behavioural?)...I am rarely in crisis these days. I am trying to go off my meds and withdrawal is something that I deal with and I don't know how much my emotions may even out once that is over. At any rate, all this is to say, it may be hard to find someone else who is covered, they are few and far between, but that is okay as long as someone is willing to continue to write me scripts.

I live in Ontario so the situation here is public health care covers a visit with any medical doctor including a psychiatrist. So there are a few psychiatrists who do psychotherapy and this is covered. but a psychologist, or other mental health professional isn't covered. Unless you have a really good private plan which I don't. Prior to seeing this guy I felt that I was doing really well. I just wanted someone hopefully who I liked better than my last pdoc to deal with my meds, and if I could get some help with some interpersonal issues, that would be an added bonus. In the end, seeing him has made me feel more messed up than I felt before. Ugh. I hate that. I hate that I have played into that, but I'm done with him.

Anyway, I am glad you have had such a good experience with your therapists, and it really helps to hear that you got better without dredging up the past...it is helpful to hear other experiences so I don't have to listen to the one point of view.

Hi Paula, I feel for you

Submitted by Awen on Tue, 02/15/2011 - 11:34am.

Hi Paula, I feel for you with the Ontario thing - I had the same problem in Toronto. I would try to do the $5 therapy sessions at Catholic Charities and although their MSWs were helpful and kind (and not Catholic), they didn't have the training and I didn't have the choices I wanted. In the US though with private insurance I find the same thing.

Therapy as far as I know should be making your life better. The days where digging up stuff and making you go crazy ended in the Courage to Heal workbook craze. This is why I think everyone tells me that it isn't really what type of therapy you do, or the gender of the therapist, or whatever, it's all about if you are building the safe relationship you didn't have with other people. Really, therapy is supposed to be a place where you feel respected and safe. If you feel your therapist's ego cannot handle criticism or is too arrogent to let you direct the therapy, then they suck, at least for you. They have tomeet you where you are.

As someone who jokingly says my family's religion was the cult of psychotherapy, I find therapy in itself to be triggering and feel inherintly unsafe. If a therapist does not have an understanding that psychotherapy can damage people, they are useless for me. If they don't understan about cults, actually, they are useless for me. If they cannot her that people saying the "helpful" thing they are saying are the same people who harmed me, they cannot help me. They can argue they aren't those people or the words were used wrong against me and they don't mean it that way, but I don't care. It's a lot like going to the Catholic church to heal from Priest sexual abuse, you know? If they cannot understand the bravery of you for going, screw them.

I really LOVE the guy I have been working with for 3 months and one reason is that if something doesn't work for me, we don't do it. He knows that I have had enough experiences with being powerless and trapped and forced to do stuff I don't want to do. Why retraumatize me with that again in therapy? I even call him sometimes and scream I hate him and don't trust him and that he's trying to hurt me, and he handles it so well, it's amazing. Maybe the tough love, confrontational style works for patients who are in denial about their drug abuse or something, but it does not work for me AT ALL. The first rule about PTSD therapy is control is in the hands of the client, and the skills for being safe and stable are taught. Trust yourself.

And Sarcha - That PTSD group sounded awful, I am sorry you had to go through that, YUCK.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Mary O

Yes, your words make a lot

Submitted by Pheepho on Tue, 02/15/2011 - 1:07pm.

Yes, your words make a lot of sense. Thanks for the support. When I brought up issues I had with therapy, generally, he made the statement that he thinks I got that idea from my past, not from the "real" world...then he just carried on like the issue was dealt with and didn't check back in with me whether that addressed my concern. This ridiculous idea that if he makes these ingenious links between my past and the present day then the issue is solved. I guess the worst is, he doesn't check back in with me. I feel like I'm defending a thesis when i assert something. If I don't have clear, prepared evidence based on present day experiences, then it is about my past. Why not just say, I am a product of my past, and thereby address all my attitudes in one go, and then I will be cured...instead of picking me apart slowly. You mentioned the word ego, and that touches on it. Kind of him disassembling my ego and building up his by being "insightful"? And when I am highly triggered by him, it is kind of used as evidence that I need his help. I think the hardest part of coming out of a cult background is that, in fact, many aspects of cult dynamics are actually a part of general society. That is the hardest part. Because you try to tell yourself, that's all behind me and things will be okay from now on, but no. You encounter these sort of things every day. Anywhere there is a power dynamic, it's there. Anyway, I could write a book here but I am pretty clear he is not for me, so it's just really a learning experience and a valuable one, that I find certain situations hard to extricate myself from. So that is the biggest lesson, perhaps not what he thinks he is showing me. That I am so susceptible to certain people, how they just kind of cancel out my thought processes. Scary. Food for thought, but not with him.

It's so great to have you all to talk to about this. It helps what you said about how therapy has changed generally. Makes him seem pretty old fashioned. I guess that is the style of therapy most triggering for me, and probably I'd be a complete mess in a few months if I didn't realize it wasn't for me. Thanks again.

"I give thanks every day that I've been able to take my craziness and make it work for me."

-Fritz Scholder

Very wise

Submitted by freakshow on Tue, 02/15/2011 - 2:26pm.

Paula you are very wise to have so much understanding about your situation with the therapist even while still in the situation. I remember you said once that you thought you were a "delayed processor" of experiences which I related to greatly (tell me if I got that wrong), but I hope you now give yourself a pat on the back for understanding the situation in the present - what's wrong and what you need - and not having such a delay. I can tell how much progress you've made with everything and I am so impressed and happy for your achievements as well.

Kaliope and Heather, It really helps me to hear your experiences with therapy as well. I am fascinated by this whole thread. In fact, I just started to talk all about my questions about whether to try therapy again soon in my new location, so I will start a different thread to talk about that instead.

Anyway Paula I am looking forward to hearing how it goes and I can't imagine that you won't end up getting the prescriptions you need - that power dynamic where you have to get picked apart just to get the prescriptions is seriously fucked.

Ok, I have done the deed.

Submitted by Pheepho on Tue, 02/15/2011 - 11:23pm.

Ok, I have done the deed. I actually called about 1pm. I intended to call outside of office hours but I couldn't wait. It was preying on my mind, and I felt if i waited perhaps I would lose my resolve. He didn't answer the phone anyway, so i left a message, just to the point that I decided it wasn't for me and to contact me if there was any problem with passing on recommendations to my GP. I think i needed to get it out of the way. I worked my first shift at my new job today, and I was feeling a ton of anxiety and this being up in the air just added to it.

I got home just now and listened to my messages. He left a reasonable message saying he respected my decision and that he would be willing to see me again regarding medication or any other issue if I changed my mind. Well, that is a relief. I had imagined possibly him making things difficult for me. Wow. Yes, you remember exactly, Mary, i did say I was a delayed processor. So I now am trying to process this, and how incredibly triggered I was by the situation. My head is all over the place. This guy is reasonable and nice, but some of the stuff he says is so intolerable. I am really still questioning myself, a lot. I cannot believe how this process, what, maybe 5 sessions with this guy feels like trauma. He has got me so confused. And then when I felt like this, i thought, well, maybe this was something I needed to go through to get better, you know the "no pain, no gain" idea...And it's not like he did anything really wrong by basic standards of psychotherapy, that I can see. So it is kind of scary that the wrong kind of therapy can affect someone so badly.

I think this also kind of highlights the problem with a therapist also being a prescriber. I mean, i felt very coerced and frightened. I still do. I think being a psych patient is so frightening, especially when you start to see how flawed the system is. I trust nobody to make medication decisions for me, now, I feel I have been so burnt. I feel like I'm just trying to find ways to use the system to get the scripts I need until I can go off my meds. I find it too threatening. He said some things about the withdrawal process which were so counter to what I've learned and experienced, and then when I told him what it was like for me, he just talked over me.

This is going to take me so long to process, I am so confused right now. Like how could someone be so reasonable and nice and yet make me so upset and angry and confused. That was the danger, like he could seem so reasonable, but everything he did just felt dangerous and wrong, and then he morphed from being a monster to this nice reasonable kind of stupid guy. I don't know how much was his gender and age. i mean I saw a male therapist before for CBT but he was in his late 20's and he was just super-sweet and just nothing like my abuser, but this guy was middle aged and I guess more triggering in his characteristics. I mean, as well, my CBT therapist was very, very respectful. He asked me constantly if I had any issues I wanted to raise about stuff that might have bothered me in the therapy sessions, etc. Like always checking in.

The crazy thing is, this guy kind of new my past better than the Cbt guy, who knew nothing. So this current doctor knew about the cult because it was a local thing here that only someone in toronto at that time would know of. I hadn't meant to tell him any details, but he kind of guessed from what I was saying. So he knew enough, and at the beginning he said, "well therapy must be difficult for you if that is your background," and I said, " yeah, very difficult". But in spite of that knowledge, he never checked in. Never asked it there was anything that had bothered me, never asked how the previous session had been, not once. When I read the information in the link that heather posted, it mentions that the therapist should be checking in like that, and reading that helped me to make up my mind.

Thanks Mary for what you said, but seriously, I was very unsure of myself. I mean, the reason I came here for support was because I felt threatened by the situation but I wasn't entirely sure I would have the resolve to follow through, without someone telling me I was on the right track. Or atleast, it would have been a whole lot harder. So I feel like sending each of you a great big bunch of flowers for being there. You guys are awesome.

FS, if you are thinking about therapy again, check out the link heather posted, if you haven't already. I think it's under the thread titled " finding a therapist." Well, I will come back and re-post it here. i am just feeling overwhelmed so I will come back later to re-post it.

"I give thanks every day that I've been able to take my craziness and make it work for me."

-Fritz Scholder

It sounds like you are

Submitted by Sarsha on Wed, 02/16/2011 - 1:35pm.

It sounds like you are really figuring things out Paula, as far as what works for you and what doesn't.I am triggered by people not respecting my abiliy to tell my own story too. You know whats right and wrong for you, what your mind and body need-anyone who doesn't honor that knowledge is out the door as far as I am concerned. I've been lucky to find good ones so far but golly if they aren't damned expensive. I am so so broke.

I agree with Mary, it is so helpful to hear what others are learning about in regards to therapy. Has anyone ever done emdr? My therapist says thiswould be a good thing to do as far as processing old memories but it is triggering so I should be in a solid space.My computer is acting funny so i am cutting this short...

Sarsha i worked in a mental

Submitted by kaliope on Wed, 02/16/2011 - 7:02pm.

Sarsha

i worked in a mental health office with a provider who was trained in EMDR. it did wonderful things for people. i screened people and set them up with the different therapists in the office and whenever there was trauma involved i always set them up with the provider that did EMDR. It worked for all sorts of things. even a little boy how set fires. one session and he lost the urge to set fires. he couldnt explain it but he stopped setting them. in my own therapy my phd was trained and i was never in a place to do it. i dissociated to easily, but the main problem was creating a safe place. you have to create a safe place to work from and i just could never do that. it would cause a panic attack and dissociation. now i feel i could do it but now i am doing well enough that i do not need it. but it is amazing stuff. i highly recommend it.

lisa

Amazing to hear, Lisa! I

Submitted by freakshow on Thu, 02/17/2011 - 4:28pm.

Amazing to hear, Lisa! I have never tried it (I asked one therapist about it a couple years ago but she flat-out refused to consider seeing me because of the intensity I was experiencing with trauma issues) but maybe if I continue to experience increased stability I will look into it again.

Sarsha, did you see the thread on EMDR?

Submitted by Pheepho on Fri, 02/25/2011 - 10:29pm.

(in case you're still curious about it)

https://site.icarusprojectarchive.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12297

Paula

"I give thanks every day that I've been able to take my craziness and make it work for me."

-Fritz Scholder

Thank you!

Submitted by Sarsha on Sat, 02/26/2011 - 12:32pm.

I will let yall know how it goes. And i wanted to throw out there that if anyone feels like taking over manager ship they are welcome too.

{aula, I am delayed reactor

Submitted by Awen on Wed, 02/16/2011 - 2:55pm.

{aula, I am delayed reactor too, I think it might be a PTSD thing, I think maybe I dissociate or something, because it was the pattern when abued - I mean I never could then ever feel the things I felt and had to pretend it was all ok, so trying to understand the signals of what I feel can be confusing for me. To SURVIVE I shut them off, so it takes some time to get them back. Younger therapists all ask me how I am feling with them, some even have me do a written check in form at the end about what they said that I didn't like, so they can make sure I feel safe. These newer therapists seem to be being taught to be "client-focused" while the older ones are still hung up on the theories they learned in the 70s. I call it books vs people. They don't need to tell me my story - I can tell them my story. That's what got me so fucked up to begin with! People superimposing their reality based on a book they read onto me.

Sarcha- Yeah I did EMDR. It didn't help - But I was in a bad place. I have heard amazing stats on it though. The deal is, you have to find someone with intensive training, I mean INTENSIVE, not someone who just took some weekend workshops about moving their hands before your face. A well trained EMDR person will be work at first for stabilizatoion with inner safety and things like that using EMDR, a poorly trained person will just dive into the traumatic events. So check out their training and if that offends them, screw them. There is an international EMDR website group thing that had referals I think of trained people. The main thing again is that you feel safe with the person.

If a therapist's accent or blue sneakers or office makes you stressed even, don't see them. It's hard enough fighting the fear and grief and anger to make ourselves do so much in life, even if it feels unrealistic or you are avoiding therapy, if your body/mind/feelings are not into the person, you cannot make it happen. So much of our lives we had choices taken away. We had to grin and bear it, dissociate, internalize hatred and angry towards ourselves that is from the abusers, etc to deal with being in a world we couldn't control. Don't let therapy be the same thing. It's one thing to be freaked out in therapy because some heavy work is being done, it's another thing when you feel they don't understand you. You wouldn't marry just anyone, why tell your deepest self to just anyone?

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Mary O

Yes, I saw Heather's

Submitted by freakshow on Wed, 02/16/2011 - 4:13pm.

Yes, I saw Heather's excellent post awhile back about finding a therapist, and again, it is helping me to read about these considerations.

I am really fascinated by the fact that people have such different needs regarding whether and how much to get into memories of trauma or abuse. I have personally over the past several months done a lot of deep trauma processing work with only the help of icarus - which was a risky thing and almost killed me, but at this point I'm glad I did it, because it felt like the only option left to move forward (and I'm in a better place all of a sudden, both in my own mind and body as well as with the move). I FULLY SUPPORT people's right to decide for themselves when, whether and how much to get into traumatic memories. What I'm hearing is, that BEING FORCED is a main part of what's harmful, one way or the other.

Sadly, the reason I had only icarus to help me through the triggers and episodes that accompanied writing about the traumatic memories on my blog (my husband wanted to help but unfortunately he himself was a massive trigger through no fault of his own and I had to distance myself most of the time) was because the therapist I was seeing used sneaky and manipulative tactics to indirectly discourage me from talking about the abuse. When I talked about my mother's behavior, she cut in before I had said very much and said, "no, that's actually not abuse. I can see from your symptoms that you do have ptsd, but it's probably just because you're so sensitive." She took on this tone of voice that felt distant and bored. I felt so angry and invalidated, and it took me another few weeks of stubbornly sitting there in the sessions and saying that I felt invalidated and unsafe with her before she would admit directly that she thought she had the right TO MAKE THE DECISION FOR ME not to talk about traumatic memories. And it was hard to get any real information from her about her reasoning, because her answer to every question I asked was "I've been doing DBT for twenty years." She basically said, I'm the expert, it's no use questioning me. When I said, "what do you think the DBT 'party line' is about processing trauma," she said, "no, it's not what I think, let me tell you how it IS." Like she was God or something.

So I quit therapy and stayed home and wrote about things like my dad convincing me that he was going to kill my goldfish when I was thirteen, got to a state of constant derealization where I could no longer tolerate the isolation of my environment, checked myself in to the psych ward twice but stuck to my guns the whole time about not taking meds BECAUSE I KNOW IT'S THE RIGHT CHOICE FOR ME (apparently they couldn't force me under any circumstances because I had checked myself in), and then my husband convinced me to let him help me financially so I could move back to my beloved Blacksburg, Virginia (we're getting divorced - hell yeah). And now I am showering normally and have not had any sign of my lifelong compulsion to be late to things. Last night I was washing dishes at my friend's apartment where I am staying, and when it was time to go meet another friend at a time we'd agreed on, I STOPPED WHAT I WAS DOING and left! I was on time and had no anxiety or guilt, and that is a first. Even in the time of relative stability when I lived in Blacksburg before, anxiety had ruled and I was always feeling guilty and being late and not quite honoring commitments as well as I wanted to due to the blinding nature of the anxiety. And now that seems to be gone.

I conclude that doing the processing work I did was instrumental in achieving these milestones. But I also whole-heartedly hear and respect others here saying that REFRAINING from doing that kind of processing has been instrumental to their own recovery. I hope my respect and support comes across, and that by telling this part of my own story I don't sound like I'm pressuring anyone to make the choices I made. The similarity I see among all of us is that BEING COERCED BY PROFESSIONALS, whether it's to talk about trauma or to refrain from talking about it, is harmful, dangerous and alienating. And in that sense I SO relate, Paula, to your experience and the confusion that goes with it. It all goes with what Heather said about books vs. people. We all have to do it our own way, and if the therapist doesn't get that, run don't walk out the door.

It does fascinate me how and why people have such different needs concerning memories and trauma recovery. I think it is just as interesting and complex and controversial an issue as how and why some people are profoundly helped by meds and others aren't. (Which is another issue that I fully support everyone's decisions about! I don't take meds and support others who make the same decision, but at the same time I believe people 100% who say that meds help them and are instrumental in their recovery.) I hope this issue continues to be studied by the professionals who purport to serve us, so that they may one day all know not to just use one party line or another on us.

Yes, it's really not about

Submitted by Pheepho on Thu, 02/17/2011 - 9:58am.

Yes, it's really not about whether you talk about the trauma or not, as I see it. It's about who's in charge. I'm realizing, now that a few days have passed, that me talking about being "confused" a lot, means i've lost my sense of self. It's not a reaction to anything but: I no longer exist because someone else is in control here. I'm an adult and yet I have no autonomy.

It was subtle enough as it was happening. Obviously, I did see/feel it happening enough to finally take action and end it, but it took a while. Clearly the meds issue was a complicating factor. On Monday I got a script off him, before I left. I did that right at the start of the session. I did on some level know what I was doing. At one point last week, in a panic, I wrote a note to myself, saying "it is urgent that you stop seeing Dr. E." and taped it to the door of my apartment. I haven't even taken it down yet. The problem was at different times I would feel differently. So I wrote that note to remind myself about how I felt at one time.

I felt manipulated by him. I know (because I have experienced before) mental health profs use silence, but I personally find it manipulative. During the history taking, his conversational style was fairly normal, but in the first session after the hx taking I arrived and he just sat in silence looking at me. So uncomfortable. He didn't ask how I was or anything. And I thought, shit, if I were in crisis this sure wouldn't help. So at that point I thought, this is not what I want. It was really awkward. In the last session he did the same thing. So I started talking about work and said: I really want to talk about my work and the ways I am really emotionally reactive at work and it is troubling" and he said nothing. I rambled on for a bit, and then kind of trailed off because he said nothing. So finally I said : "I'm questioning whether this process is going to be helpful." to which he responded by saying: "you are very (tense/uncomfortable) and that is difficult." So he didn't ask how I felt, he told me. And anyway, I think anyone who is not made uncomfortable having some dude staring at them in silence is maybe not paying attention.

So I think (I wanted to ask him but didn't) he would rationalize this technique as letting me direct the topic. But in reality it is an indirect way of him directing the topic, because he would only respond to what I was saying if it was something that interested him, etc. So many things I volunteered he never asked about. I talked about my artwork a few times, which is hugely important to me, and he never asked about it. You'd think he'd show an interest in things his patient has done on her own in order to heal.

So I really don't regret having gone through this. I really learned a lot. So I know the sense of confusion has to do with no control and therefore losing self. I know I can take control by ending a relationship. In some situations there might be reasons not to lose a relationship, and perhaps other ways to gain more control. I'm not so good at the grey areas. I know distance helps me, though. If I can find a way of getting distance from a situation ( for instance the session before last I called in sick to give myself time to think about it), it helps.

So i think there might possibly be a situation where I would discuss the past, and it is in my mind a lot. but regardless of the topic, I need to feel a sense of control, and I will know there is something wrong when my predominant emotion is : confusion, which is not even an emotion. I know we are all different in our needs, but I also notice that in your case, Mary, because you were doing your work on your own (or only with Icarus), that you did have more control. It seems that we all have to just muddle through and find kind by trial and error what is going to help us, and we can share what helped us with others but it is never going to be exactly the same. So I guess that's where a therapist who really thinks they have the key for everyone can be hurtful.

I may come back to this again, I am just trying to process this experience.

"I give thanks every day that I've been able to take my craziness and make it work for me."

-Fritz Scholder

reading all this really

Submitted by kaliope on Thu, 02/17/2011 - 6:52pm.

reading all this really makes me thankful for my therapist. i have been destabilized by stress, hanging in there but hypersensitive. this has resulted in some perceptual distortions which have really freaked me out. i still function each day burying the stress by smoking more and holding on to the belief that when i get to see my doc he will make sense of it all. when he had to cancel my appt last week i just fell apart and then just did what i needed to to get by for another week. i thought for sure i was going to have to get back on my antianxiety meds. i saw him yesterday and he normalized it all. he explained that i have a sensitive sensory system. working more has overloaded that system. that is what has caused the perceptual distortions. i dont need meds or hospitalization and nothing is "wrong" with me, im just sensitive because of the ptsd has me wired differently. now when these things happen i dont have to freak out about them, i just have to remember that this is "normal for me", its not mental illness taking over. but i cant ever think of a time where he has run the show.he will ask me questions about different areas of my life and how they are going and then we talk about those. he points out the distortions in my thinking for me and we work on those areas. he will tie those distortions as to having been created by my past but we dont dwell on my past, we just work to fix the distortions. he doesnt treat me like a mental patient either. he does not like making diagnosis. when i come in saying i am experiencing bipolar symptoms he will normalize them as part of regular life, not necesarily a sign that a cycle is starting. he discourages me from seeing myslef as someone with mental illness. he only encourages meds for stablization but feels the goal should be learning to cope without them. so i guess i am really lucky to have got the phd that i do. i am in the state system so it was the luck of the draw. well i better get back to work now. nice talking to you all....lisa

Sounds like an awesome

Submitted by Pheepho on Thu, 02/17/2011 - 7:06pm.

Sounds like an awesome therapist, and I'm really happy that you lucked out with him. Earlier in the thread when you said how you left your therapy sessions feeling lighter, that helped me because I knew something was wrong in my situation. I'm glad some of us have positive therapy experiences because then we all know what it can and should be like. (In terms of making me feel ill, when I mentioned all the trouble I had had with meds, he stated that I had been "very ill" at one point. Well I guess he meant years ago when I had my psychotic break, while under the care of my previous pdoc and while medicated and fully compliant...I don't really know what to do with all my anger about this man. God I am glad I am done with it though) I don't know what to do with the anger...possibly put it into artwork? Anyway, your situation gives me something to shoot for.

I am feeling pretty sensitive these days, too, because of starting my new job. Yeah, that's pretty normal.

"I give thanks every day that I've been able to take my craziness and make it work for me."

-Fritz Scholder

wow, yeah there is a real

Submitted by Awen on Fri, 02/18/2011 - 1:49pm.

wow, yeah there is a real difference of philosophy with docs depending on their training. i find that the younger psychiatrists tend to have more info on the uselessness of the DSM 4, aren't into diagnosis, or chronic medications, or staring at people. that staring thing you had paula - i know that they are taugt to deserve us for abnormal behavior, but my psychiatrist whom i adore says "who acts normal and sane when stared at in silence?" i am reading tons of neurosceince and about the neurolgy and endrocrine system and am fascinated by how normal all of us are, actually; we are acting and feeling and thinking like very sane healthy people who had trauma. and since we now know the brain is very plastic, it can be rewired with meditation and visualization. you can train the other hormones to kick in, and "neurons tha fire together, wire together." so if you gave therapy that scares you, it's reinforcing the PTSD neurons stuff! but when you learn the skills for feeling safe inside, self soothing skills, you start to wire the peaceful brain as the new default. i am also reading a lot about evolution and why we are how we are in groups and how everything now doesn't connect to our biological way of living, so it's not realy our fault that we're all so crazy feeling and do such terrible things to ourselves and each other. science is just making the world sensible finally.

i never understood why people told me the type of therapy doesn't matter as much as the therapist - but a study showe that the type of therapy only matters 8% - all the res is body language, the office lighting, the therapist's voice, etc - without those things connecting, well like i said, you wouldn't marry just anyone, why tell your hurts to just anyone?

EMDR doesn't work on dissociated or hypervigilant people, which is why it never helped me, so make sure they do all the work at establishing safety first, or it is worthless, your brain won't be able to do the process. but the thing is, i am seeing that it isn't what i thought it was, a battle to get rid of or destroy the PTSD - that thinking just makes me anxious! it's about having a life i care about in spite of the PTSD. i am not going to give the PTSD every waking moment and feed it with fighting.

my new psychiatrist upped my Celexa and afte a week, it kciked in and i am so much more functional, my hypervigilance totally went away. i am dressing all rock n roll again and writing intense articles that are helping people heal from new age abuse, and my pychologist thinks t would be a very good self help book to help people break free from the fear-shame tactics used by those people. he told me today that all his patients into new age thinking have OCD or another anxiety disorder, it preys on fear like other cults like calvinist christians. i have gotten enough emaisl this week from people trying to get out of that scene but being so terrified to, i have been researching for a possible book, but NOTHING has been written aside from crazy christians saying it isthe work of the devil. i don't think i have training in cult deprogramming and i still cannot find answers to a lot of questions that drive me nuts (who decided that thousands of years of hinduism was wrong about the colors of the chakras and changed them to the new age ones every yoga teacher babbles on about?), but i feel like i might be able to figure out where these ideas that harmed me so much come from, expose the history, and how nothing bad will happen when you stop obsessing about white light.....

A lot of us who grew up in the post-hippie fall out grew up around or in cults, Paula, by the way. You really are not my first friend with this. I know two girls that have been best friends since the mid-80s when their parents snuck out of their Christian compound in the middle of the night with dogs chasing them and had to get over razor wire fenes to escape. The children of spiritual and psychological seekers in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, we all seem to have some serious PTSD stuff. I cannot even read anything by a Baby Boomer, it's too triggering. Those cults all manipulated spirituality and psychology in some way, and it makes it very triggering for a lot of us. I mean who do you think beat the New Age terror of karma and shit into me - my first therapist. It's going to be very important any therapist you chose to work with gives you total control. I mean if you need to leave therapy ten minutes into it, they need to support that, because how can you feel safe when you are being triggered? The relationship has to be proven to be safe before talking about anything scary. Did anyone ever set up anything for the kids from that cult? Is there ay cult survivor support group - I know there isn't, but damn, if the Baby Boomers could get finally be ADULTS and own up to making mistakes tha tragically harmed their kids, life sure would be better. My Mom says that her generation is the most defensive one, because they grew up fighting "The Man" and cannot stop justifying everything.

But trust me Paula, there are so many gen x kids who grew up in similar hostage situations with brainwashing and fear and crazy making. I know from trying to break free of people sayng I made a contract wih my rapists to be raped in this life, there is a part of me that feels lost about who to trust, not trowing babies out with bathwater, and that.

I had a huge realization that when i think I am being paranoid and overly sensitive and PTSD, actually it appeas that it is my common sense and intuition saying "Don't go there, stay away from there!" and can keep me happier and safer. I am not an avoider, I am brave, and my instincts know what is safe for me an I need to trust them/me. Due to so much brainwashing for decades, I have a hard time trusting me.

Mary - You left your husband? You're going back to where you liked to live? Good for you! I ish you lots of success. Divorce cn be pretty crappy feeling, I think my hardest part as the losing the future we had planned, but you realy do get through it. I didn't think I could but I did.

Love you guys Heather

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Mary O

I have been looking for a

Submitted by Pheepho on Sun, 02/20/2011 - 10:42am.

I have been looking for a bit for books online that might help me get me. Because focusing on the sexual abuse aspect always feels somehow insufficient. I always feel like it is so hard to talk about my experiences in a way that fits. Myself or others are always trying to fit them into frameworks that don't fit. So I have leads on a couple books that I want to look at, one about a reform school experience that i randomly found out about on tv, saw the woman talking about it and it kind of felt like a familiar experience, particularly when the woman talked about the adjustment or lack of adjustment she went through getting out. I have actually never met anyone with a set of experiences like mine, except the handful of kids that were there and I have lost touch with them (sort of on purpose). Although I find it so hard to discuss, that I guess possibly others are hiding from similar experiences? I don't know. I am the only person I've noticed who is evasive discussing anything about her life before age 19, and so forth. i am getting better with discussing it privately, I think. Like before the words just wouldn't come, I would say something about it and then kind of feel, oh, that's not really true, I'm making that up, etc. Like I couldn't even own anything about the experience, sort of mental denial that kind of went back on even the most basic thoughts about my experiences.

I guess it is a mistake to expect to open a book and go, " oh wow, there's me!" In the same way that we've talked about how everyone's response to psych drugs or therapy is different. I do respond to a lot of the Judith Herman book but I only got a short way in. I am only getting to the point of being able to talk here about it and in my head and that is a first step. I mean to talk about it and mean it and have it really exist, not talk about it in an office and have them check of the box for sexual abuse or whatever, or know that people are trying to fit my experiences into some type of a framework based on what's in the media, sensational cults, etc. Even the word cult doesn't really describe it adequately because it was just a tiny subcult around one person who gained power because of the cult. Anyway, may start a separate thread if I track down any books that help, in case others might relate or just to be able to share what i'm exploring.

Yeah, re the therapist thing, yeah, it's funny, when I was there in that guys office he had a carpet on the floor that was really similar to the one my last pdoc had, and I thought, I don't want to go through another however many years staring at such a similar carpet, I want to move on. So maybe i need to just select by carpets. About as reasonable as anything. But really, I think I am okay without therapy, I mean I'm not really looking. There's so much I can do in other ways. For now anyway.

Love back at you, Heather.

"I give thanks every day that I've been able to take my craziness and make it work for me."

-Fritz Scholder