Quote:
Originally Posted by nottrustin
EMDR T has become veey good at recognizing when I am starting to shut down. If she recognizes the signs before I disasociate, she will start asking me a bunch of questions that cant be answered with a yes or no or a head nod. She often will change the subject. She has a soft ball that she will pull out of her desk and gently toss to me. Sometimes we will toss and back and forth a bit while talking. Other times I will hold and squeeze it. Once in a while she will ask me to look around the office and describe something I see. Once it was a painting and I mentioned that it aeemed interwsting. So we discuussed where it came feom, what it represented. Once I told here that I needed to change the topic because I was feeling like I was shutting down because it was to intense. When I couldnt think of another topic, she jokingly said how about we talk about chocolaye cake. We had a descuasion on why I don't like cake and not a big fan of chocolate.
I think, for me, the grounding technique she uses has a to be a surprise. It wouldn't work if she say tossed a ball at me each time becauae I would expect it.
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This is pretty much how my therapist worked. It varied, which was important because part of grounding was getting me in a new head space. What he did depended on how far dissociated I was at the time; it was sort of on a spectrum for me from mildly "not there" to extremely distressed and detached from the present. The more he worked with me, the more he was able to see it happening before it became severe (most of the time), and the more I experienced the ability to stay grounded, the less frequent were the episodes of dissociation. One of the greatest positives of my therapy was getting to a place where the PTSD symptoms weren't running the show, much due to the effective work with grounding techniques.