Hi rep97, it doesn't sound like your meeting with the pdoc really gave you answers, but instead just more questions.

I understand how an antidepressant can produce side effects that challenge a person when it comes to the sexual side effects. Some have no desires at all, yet others get very aroused and have no way of relieving it which is very uncomfortable.

What this pdoc said about therapy can be true, it can retraumatize if not done carefully. An antidepressant does not stop the challenge with intrusive memories either. However, what I have read is that antidepressants can help with the cell repair in the hypocampus.

When I think back on my own experience thus far, the therapy did help me, however, the therapy I had was mostly my therapist listening and helping me slowly gain not only the validation I needed but to also make an effort to calm down and work through whatever was coming forward in the PTSD cycles I was experiencing.

In all my time here listening to others who have been challenged, never once did anyone come forward saying that an antidepressant stopped the intrusive memories. I had tried an antidepressant and it did not help me. I thought about going on Zoloft however, I did not want to experience the very uncomfortable sexual side effects as years ago when I was on it, I was often aroused and frustrated because I could not do anything to ease it. I would not have minded if there was no arousal, but how it affected me was simply constantly very uncomfortable.

My therapist never told me how to feel either. My therapy was more of my gaining trust to feel safe with opening up and talking about my challenges and traumas and seeing what emotions came up, often sit with these emotions, acknowledge them with my T and then work through whatever I had faced in the trauma that was unresolved in me.

What I have noticed about working with a T is how individuals tend to "fear feeling", well, it is important to get past that and just see what emotions surface instead without a feeling of being judged somehow or being ashamed. That is how one can be retraumatized IMHO. Shame, guilt about one's self for whatever is challenging them emotionally needs to slowly take a back seat to where the individual just works through these confusing trapped emotions instead.

Most of the individuals I have met in my time here had experienced some kind of trauma and they all discribe a history of not having a presence there for them they could not only confide in but instead expressed dysfunctional behavior patterns around them which usually led them to feel "unworthy" and how they needed to accept these often negative messages.

When it comes to childhood traumas it is better "not" to ask the patient to try to attach their adult emotions to it right away. People are often "afraid" to remember, and that is more about being concerned about how it will affect them emotionally. Well, when it comes to children it is best to work on things that happened and talk about the topic in general. A person does better if they do what a child "always" does, "ask questions about why and what it means and how this does happen to many people not just the patient".

Most patients are really afraid to talk about childhood traumas because of being "judged" and also worrying about how a T will be confused about what ways they ended up thriving in spite of whatever took place. Most patients feel "damaged" because of what happened to them, so they tend to "hide it".

The important part of "healing" is not about whatever a patient might have done that was somehow wrong, it is understanding how the patient only reacted based on whatever they knew how to react at the time.

Whatever one's self beliefs are is what needs to finally be "healed" and that can take a while depending on what kind of history an individual has.

OE