Is therapy like you thought it would be?

I guess I'm just old and expected to go in lay on the couch and get help to work through all this. I didn't realize that I had to bring an issue to the table without help to work on, not knowing if it's the right one or not.
I've been through several therapy programs DBT, PE and now CBT as well as private f2f therapy, and online counseling. I guess collectively I have gained some ground but I can't say for sure that therapy was was therapy that got me here. To me therapy is like putting a band aide on an abscessed wound, yes it looks pretty and covers the ugly, and the right thing to do but that festering wound is going to cause a loss or severely damage the area.
I just started therapy about 4 years ago, but I thought it would be quicker and more in depth. This could last forever if the core issues are not addressed.

Anyone else disappointed on how therapy works?

Also, what therapy has worked best for CPTSD? I thought PE therapy was effective though
I don't think it's for everyone. You really have to be committed and ready to face the pain and do the homework. I would do it again.

I don't know... I guess i really didn't know what to expect? I want to get the trauma out of me, talk about it, whatever, but my T takes it more slowly "keeps me within the window of tolerance" of affect. As much as she can I suppose. I haven't been in therapy for a real long time only half a year or so but i can see this is going to take a really really long time. I like having someone who meets me wherever i am at whatever me I am.
My T is leaving soon so I am meeting with my new one, she is very different, I don't know how this will go.

I hope it goes well with the new T. I hate bringing in a new T it's like starting all over. But hopefully the old T will pass on information to the new T and keep you from starting over. Stick with it unless it's just not a right fit and you will know that relatively soon. I've been in so long 'm questioning if it will ever get better. Unlike you I thought this would be resolved quicker. Seems like therapy is backwards though, I don't know.

Therapy has been quite a positive experience for me I guess. But I also started therapy for support in handling the crisis situation with my daughter and for that purpose, it has worked real well. We haven't really dug into the trauma from CPTSD. I'm not sure how that is going to go, if and when I ever get to the point that I can work on that.

I've been in therapy for 7 years, and was only truly honest about 2 years ago. The rest of the time we worked on my other issues, like emotion regulation and social anxiety though those both came from the CPTSD I'd later find out. So needless to say I never made much improvement, except for being put on so many medications that I was practically a zombie unable to feel anything for several years.
The only real dents I've made in my CPTSD in the two years that my therapist has known about my trauma are recovering specific memories I'd blocked out from my childhood. My therapist said it was good that I remembered those specific events because "without remembering there's no recovering," but I'm still waiting for the recovering part to start. It feels like I'm actually going backwards, and right now the memories are driving me crazy and my therapist hasn't been able to help.

So to put it in short, no, therapy was not all it had been hyped up to be. Granted I wasn't honest about the real problem for about 5 of the 7 years, which is probably why I've been unable to make much progress. But you'd think for the 2 years I've been doing DBT and CBT I'd be able to see at least some.

CPTSD is hard to treat from research that I've done. You are not alone in that respect. Don't give up on it. A big part of the recovery process, from what I understand, is building coping mechanisms and changing thought processes (negative to positive) before digging to deep into the trauma. I haven't really even gotten started yet.

I had no idea what to expect when I started nearly 4 years ago. I did wonder if I just popped along & had a bit of a chat & maybe a coffee!!!! (How naive was I eh?) I got very frustrated with my T as I felt that he was the one with the 'rule' book & wasn't letting me in on the rules. I didn't expect it to be such hard work & didn't know that I ever even had any emotions, let alone talk about them. Each week my T would ask me how I was feeling & week after week I told him I was fine, until one week he told me I was no longer allowed to use the word fine. I also didn't know what emotional tiredness was either. I didn't realise that I had all these different parts of me who worked quite independently & impacted on my every day life. I thought, again naively, that my troubled & abusive past was well behind me & I had moved on with my life pretty well & was 'fine' WOW, what a shock I had coming my way eh? What a journey I am on though & it's the best thing that I've ever done for myself. It feels like a very cruel process from time to time & still is frustrating at times, but I am very lucky to have such a wonderful T who supports me, puts up with me, won't fight with me & is always so kind & gentle. I love him to bits.

You know you have to make time for that, make time for you! But I'm glad the other part of therapy has worked out for you. Hope your daughter is doing well now.

Hey there and welcome back. What I have found is that it's hard to see progress in the thick of things. Like right now it's hard to see the benefit. But looking back on what I've tried and done I can see some benefit from the work collectively. Healing is slow mo, for sure. But then again all the damage has been done over a period of years, so it's fair to say it will take longer to work through some issues.Keep at it though

I so get this. Your word was "fine" mine is "okay". It's kind of hard to explain how you feel without the "go to" word for protection, eh? Sounds like you have a very insightful T. It is hard work to go through this. It was never that hard for people on tv Emotional pain is so much harder, hard to find a way to calm and soothe it away. Thanks for responding.

To me, the biggest disappointment with therapy is how much it costs even with insurance and how long it generally takes to see results.

I've read stories about many people who endure significant trauma in their life spending years or even decades seeing therapists before they start to get better.

Let's do the math: let's say that you are responsible for a $100 copay and you see a therapist for one hour every week. If you see that same therapist for 10 years, than that is roughly $48,000 dollars and 480 hours of your life that you will never get back. Come now, do they really expect me to spend that amount of time and money on a therapist that isn't guaranteed to help me? That is like going to the casino every weekend hoping to win that big million dollar jackpot.

I would rather take that money and read self help books, join meditation and yoga classes, up the quality of my diet and add a bunch of supplements to treat my own issues while saving money and time than deal with a therapist.

I only see a therapist now because one is provided by my school for free. The moment that I have to start paying money for sessions is the moment that I stop going. Of course this could change if this free student therapist proves beneficial but I don't see that happening significantly enough for therapy to be worth the cost to me.

I agree. But that's kind of the same with medical doctors. But it seems different with them, they are treating something we can feel or notice if we are feeling better. If what you are doing works that's great, keep doing it.
Some of us need that guidance though. So as long as it's affordable I will go. Once it comes between paying bills and therapy the therapy will be cut.

Yeah I'm treating this school therapist as a "trial mode" for therapy to see if it's for me. I can keep seeing her for free so long as I remain a student which means I can see her for at least another two years. Two years is a long time so I figure that if therapy is all that it's cracked up to be than I should notice some kind of change by then. If not, then I am going to try to treat my problems on my own and save money, time, and headache in the process.

Hopefully one day, a better method to treat trauma survivors or other cases of mental illness is discovered because I think that for many people, the amount of time and money it takes to see a therapist for the amount of time it takes to begin to see results is a significant barrier to getting help. I think that this reason is also the biggest factor as to why we have so many mentally ill people drinking and doing drugs, considering suicide, or even becoming abusers themselves. After all, who could blame them?

At least this was the reason why I took so long to start trying to get help.

You're right, it's hard to get help. Though there are other options, maybe looking to churches for counseling, or maybe some other organizations. But with trauma being so different with each person it would be hard to put a limit on when you will start feeling better and that depends a lot on the person also. Some people resist feeling better. There has to be a commitment from people to work to feel better, a therapist can't do it all their own and they are not suppose to from what I understand. They help us find tools and ways to modify our behavior but if we don't use the tools or try to do what they say.....well ...that falls back on the client. Maybe inpatient would be better for those people. Because I feel that some are committed to feeling better but they are not mentally in a place to do so from outpatient treatments.

i really don't know what "improvements" I can expect from therapy, my understanding so far is that my brain developed differently to people who didn't have early childhood trauma so the physical structure of my brain is just different. Which means different responses and a different "normal"?? I don't have a pre-trauma self to "get back to". I am this bundle of trauma responses and the way I relate to people is different because of the different experiences I had. That's my understanding of what my T has explained to me.
The goals we set in therapy are about learning to regulate emotions, developing communication between the alters and later working with the traumas. So maybe my expectations are that I will be better off than I am now but not that I will be "normal".

Sessions with R are more intense than I thought they would be. I know I need to talk about the specifics of the experiences, but I expected myself to be able to actually speak when it came down to it. I get close, very close...and then I can't.

i had no idea what to expect from therapy but the only therapy that's ever worked for me is art therapy, i'm too scared to verbalize things beyond just the bare basics. i know a lot of folks who poo-poo art therapy but it totally works for me, it's a lot of hard work though and just as scary as talk therapy to me. esp when the therapist takes one look at a piece of art work and says "oh dear". cheers.

for all

I expected to go in for 6 sessions, learn some strategies and be fixed. 7 years later, I'm still there.

I didn't realise that the trigger to the events that took me there in the first place, was not 1 trigger, but layers of things over the years, that I thought I had dealt with, but had actually just stuffed away.

Maybe I would have been ok with the 6 sessions and coped with life. But despite the expense, I have found it useful to learn about myself more deeply and I hope I can live a more meaningful life, rather than just getting through life.

That was me too!

I also went in for something which I didn't realise had triggered me!!! I'm now 4 years in & it's been the making of me. xXx

I agree, go in get some tools and be out in a month or two.But then I thought it was only Dad's suicide that was the issue. It goes much deeper

I would poo poo art therapy only because I s___ at drawing Coloring drives me nuts, not enough stimulation and not enough space. But if it works for you that's awesome. Yes, that would be concerning hearing oh dear, but you probably knew why, right? I've seen some beautiful artwork from people using art for therapy. You can tell there's a much deeper meaning to it than just a picture, it's sad, scary, happy, fearful, dark and light, not symmetrical. It's interesting and really tells more than a verbal conversation. welcome back!

I can really relate to this. My thoughts on this are, how do you know who you would been, what you would be like, what you would like, how you would react, even what your career would be when you are abused from a young age and never have the opportunity to develop in a nurturing and safe environment? I know that I am totally different that what I would have been like if I had not been subjected to and witnessed horrible abuse from my earliest memories, but I don't know exactly what that is. I think I would tend to be more extroverted than introverted, more outgoing, more adventuresome, more trusting than the hyper-vigilant, wary, self-isolating person that I've become. Understanding, coping mechanisms and management of reactions to situations. Does it really boil down to that, at least for some people? I do think that some people are better able to bounce back than others so every persons results will be different. But for me, I don't see much more than that.

Good points, no wonder this is all so confusing to clients. When asked about your goals it's hard to say what a goal is. How can you say to be happy and live my life when you don't recall what that felt like? How would you know when you were there?