Yes Lightcatcher, it is not unusual for therapy to be exhausting sometimes. Some people who struggle and have a history of abuse/neglect of some kind get exhausted just by opening up and trusting, as part of them is waiting to be invalidated somehow because they have been "hurt" and had many negative messages.

The feeling of finally having someone is how many PTSD sufferers feel when they find a therapist that helps them feel safe and actually "listens" and validates. PTSD sufferers do search for a "rescuer" to help them and validate them and comfort them and defend them. This drive to find a rescuer is deep within most human beings, it is really there to ensure our survival. When we are heard, understood, and find positive structure in our lives, we thrive.

Trauma stops people in their tracks and threatens them deeply. When that happens the person often gets very confused and experiences emotional surges that become more than they can handle or sort through and calm themselves. The fight and flight responses get very strong because the person is so emotionally confused.

As we develop we slowly learn about our emotions, we all do. In that process we slowly learn how to develop more control over our emotions too. All of us depend on the people in our environment to help us understand our emotions and what to do with them as well as when it is ok to express them if we need to send a strong message to others.

If we do not have a nurturer that knows how to listen to our emotional challenges as children we can grow up with different ways of trying to manage them ourselves and not even realize that some of the ways we try to manage our emotions may be unhealthy or create a self esteem problem that we often try to "protect". Whatever we learn to do in order to self protect simply gets deeply set into our subconscious minds too.

When we experience a trauma of some kind the result is to have a great need to talk about it, have someone listen, comfort us, and validate us. This is when we begin to search ourselves too so we can somehow find a balance so we can feel comfortable enough to move forward. If we do not get the correct validation and comfort that we need, it compromises us emotionally and as we try to figure out how to stabilize ourselves emotionally, we can end up experiencing some of the different ways we were compromised emotionally in our past.

When we experience a Trauma, it is very common to not know how to process it emotionally to begin with. When we experience that, we begin to "avoid" any reminders of the trauma and it is often taking place in the subconscious part of us, and the conscious mind doesn't quiet know how to monitor this challenge either.

As the brain is being studied we are learning more about how the different parts of the brain sends messages and has a conversation within itself that we all develop over time and by different experiences we have in our environment. What we have learned is how the frontal part of the brain, the conscious mind acts as a monitor and learns to shut down and allow the subconscious conversation to take place all on it's own, it's actually pretty amazing. When a trauma happens and a person develops PTSD, this process is affected and the frontal part of the brain begins to struggle with "just" shutting down like it used to while the subconscious rest of the brain interacts back and forth in different areas of the brain. The person does become more aware, and, more sensitive and as everyone who is struggling knows, it is not only confusing to understand but also hard to explain to others as well.

Yes, it takes time and patience to slowly learn what it means and work through whatever you have in this network that now challenges you. Yes, this process can be exhausting, however, as you work through it you finally get a chance to repair and understand yourself on a whole new level too. Yes, it often feels like a lot of work and it does tap into the emotions too, and that is what often presents a lot of chemicals that can be very hard to manage, however, with the right therapist who does understand this challenge, the person struggling with PTSD can finally get the help they need to slowly rebuild these challenged areas of the brain and slowly learn to rebuild a healthier network to replace whatever areas they may struggle with and need to learn how to be better understood and finally managed in healthier ways.

This effort to "repair" has nothing to do with intellect or true unworthiness either, even though many who struggle have these questions as they are working on slowly "healing" whatever they have that challenges them.

A woman named Judith Herman spent a lot of time learning about this with people who struggle and she wrote a book about it called "Trauma and Recovery" where she breaks this "healing" process down into three stages of understanding, mourning and gaining new skills that finally allow the individual to get to a level where they are ready to engage life on a new level of understanding.

OE