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Originally Posted by peaches100
I want to add dmy 2 cents, but realize this is strictly my opinion. . .
Trying to set up a rigid schedule of X many weeks to do trauma work would never work for me. The reason is because some traumas hae affected me much more, and are much more deeply rooted, while others have had less impact. . .for example, a 1-time car accident versus SA versus years of emotional neglect. Also, I can't always go into my session and "do trauma work." Sometimes, I just can't relax enough to let my guard down, or I can't access the younger hurt parts of myself. I can't always "will" it to happen. Also, i need breaks between sessions of doing heavy trauma work. Otherwise, i get overloaded. My t and I generally have to intersperse the more intensive trauma work with relaxation and DBT skills building in between, to allow me to process things without it becoming "too much" and me crashing. It has taken us a long time to figure out that this is what i need, and it is the only way i can do trauma work.
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I'm just going to say this one last time. Peaches you are misunderstanding what "trauma work" in DBT means. It is 10 weeks of exposure therapy, talking about the facts of a traumatic event over and over. It's exposure. It's very specific and time limited. THAT doesn't mean working on the effects of trauma is all over with!!! It doesn't mean ALL FIXED and nothing left to talk about. I did my trauma work years ago, and I still do therapy and work on my issues, including the effects of trauma on my life currently, which is WHY I'm still in therapy. The result has been that I can talk about it, work through the issues around it without flashbacks, dissociation, body memories, denial, and all the other defense mechanisms getting in the way of living. I can leave the incident in the past instead of reliving it as if it was going on every day of my life. Zoo's T says 12 weeks probably because of what the definition of this kind of trauma work is in DBT. It's just one part of therapy. Some people do EMDR, for instance, to work on trauma. It's a similar concept. It's a tool to use. I think people are misunderstanding and thinking of "trauma work" in a very general way. Everything in my life has been affected by the trauma i suffered as a child. I can cope now, for the most part (i have other dx's that complicate things. The point in DBT is that regular therapy doesn't work for certain individuals who are chronically suicidal and self harming and those behaviors have to be focused on first before any processing begins. The first goal of DBT is to get those behaviors under control first. Otherwise, you can't really work on anything because you are constantly being triggered. If your trauma was more general, like neglect instead of rape, you wouldn't probably do the DBT "trauma work" It's for a specific traumatic incident.