[Fuzzybear]

I’m wondering if anyone here has had good experiences with therapists

I’ve always tended to bottle things up... (anxiety, depression, anger, even joy )

I don’t like “secrets” (Or lies, who does ) but I’m naturally a “private” person. This has “deep roots” in dysfunction and abuse in the FOO (family of origin)

I trust very few people.

Another question is, what does healing mean to you?

[Trace14]

Originally Posted by Fuzzybear

I’m wondering if anyone here has had good experiences with therapists

I’ve always tended to bottle things up... (anxiety, depression, anger, even joy )

I don’t like “secrets” (Or lies, who does ) but I’m naturally a “private” person. This has “deep roots” in dysfunction and abuse in the FOO (family of origin)

I trust very few people.

Another question is, what does healing mean to you?

What healing means to me? Good question. My old answer was to get my life back to where it was before dad's suicide. But now with all the other traumas surfacing I'm not sure that the person I was then was who I really was. So I really wouldn't know what healing would look like. I guess I will know if it ever comes, maybe it's to feel good, enjoy life....I don't know.

[Skeezyks]

No... unfortunately I can't say as I've had any good experiences with therapists. The few I have seen for brief periods over the years ranged from mediocre to dreadful! I haven't seen one for several years now. And I doubt I ever will again.

It is true that I also am a very private person. So perhaps that is part of the reason I never hit it off with therapists. I grew up in a family where you just didn't wash your dirty laundry in public, as it was often put. But also, for me, some of the stuff I'd have to talk about, were I to ever really open up, would be beyond humiliating. I can't imagine under what circumstances I could ever feel comfortable doing it. Anyway... I'm old now. So what would be the point? From my perspective, mental health services are for young people. Past the age of fifty (maybe earlier?) one simply becomes excess baggage on the mental health railroad, so to speak.

I don't know what healing means to me. I suppose this is at least in part due to the fact that I don't have a clue how I went off the rails to begin with. I suppose healing would have something to do with feeling comfortable with who I am. Unfortunately, at this late stage of my life, that will simply never happen... too much water under the bridge, so to speak.

[Trace14]

Originally Posted by Fuzzybear

I’m wondering if anyone here has had good experiences with therapists

I’ve always tended to bottle things up... (anxiety, depression, anger, even joy )

I don’t like “secrets” (Or lies, who does ) but I’m naturally a “private” person. This has “deep roots” in dysfunction and abuse in the FOO (family of origin)

I trust very few people.

Another question is, what does healing mean to you?

I've heard that some people have good experiences with T's. I guess it's all about finding the right one, having that "right fit" connection with them. But what would that look like? I'm naturally suspicious of people being overly nice, and it takes a while to be around that person for me to feel comfortable with them. I'm much more comfortable alone than with people.

We all have secrets and have lied at some point. I doubt anything we would tell a T would surprise them, probably bother us in some way, but not the T. Maybe the embarrassment may keep us from taking about it. I don't like being lied to though. Would rather someone just say they don't want to discuss something than lie to me about it.

[crystal blue]

Hii Fuzzybear, I have the same symptoms. It does come from CEN, I have been reading about it just recently. II also bottle things up and in fact I isolate most of the time. I get triggered by people's reactions to me. It brings me back to my FOO and their abuses. Healing to me would mean being able to go out and be in the world without being triggered. If I could say I don't care how they act toward me and just enjoy myself. But, my reactions are so ingrained in me, I don't know. I had a therapist in the neighborhood where I use to live who was trying to draw out emotions in me. She even tried to make me angry on purpose. It didn't work though. I realized it and said are you trying to make me angry, she said yes. I didn't feel angry or anything, just knew what she was doing. My point is, if I were more healed, I would have felt my feelings naturally instead of stuffing them. I am looking for "penpals" so if you like to, write me back and we can "talk" about it.

[crystal blue]

I am also over 50 and I see it exactly as you do. We become just a sideline in the mental health game. I also believe it is more for the young with their lives ahead of them. BUT, I do think that we can become more comforted with people who understand us and are in our age group. I am 58, and I am looking for penpals to talk with. if you feel comfortable with that, please feel free to talk to me. I am understanding just what you are saying.

[Purple,Violet,Blue]

Some good, some bad.

My first, when I was about twenty, nearly pushed me over the edge with her utter lack of understanding.

I wasn't able to tell her anything about my past. But it must have been obvious. It is down to them, I think, to draw it out of us. But I had to keep going to see her. I was desperate.

One day, I forget what caused it, but at the end of the session, I could not leave her office. I just couldn't. I was shaking and crying and icy cold.

I knew that, if I went home, that would be it for me.

She didn't help me. They made me leave the medical centre. I can still remember that terrible walk home, along a busy road, and how close I came to stepping under a lorry.

It was the humiliation, really. Of begging for help and being treated like rubbish.

Other therapists might still have insisted I leave, but there's a way of doing it.

Now I'm older, I tend to expect less - in fact, hardly anything - from them.

[Fuzzybear]

I’m sorry about how that therapist treated you, how horrible. . I agree, there are other ways than humiliating someone and treating them like rubbish

I’ve had very bad experiences too.

I agree, now I’m older, I expect very little from them

I have heard there are some good therapists (even in the uk)

Originally Posted by Purple,Violet,Blue

Some good, some bad.

My first, when I was about twenty, nearly pushed me over the edge with her utter lack of understanding.

I wasn't able to tell her anything about my past. But it must have been obvious. It is down to them, I think, to draw it out of us. But I had to keep going to see her. I was desperate.

One day, I forget what caused it, but at the end of the session, I could not leave her office. I just couldn't. I was shaking and crying and icy cold.

I knew that, if I went home, that would be it for me.

She didn't help me. They made me leave the medical centre. I can still remember that terrible walk home, along a busy road, and how close I came to stepping under a lorry.

It was the humiliation, really. Of begging for help and being treated like rubbish.

Other therapists might still have insisted I leave, but there's a way of doing it.

Now I'm older, I tend to expect less - in fact, hardly anything - from them.

[HD7970GHZ]

Hello Fuzzy, you wrote:

I’m wondering if anyone here has had good experiences with therapists... ...Another question is, what does healing mean to you?

I have had extremely positive experiences with therapists and extremely negative experiences with therapists; ultimately, they are human beings - so they are fallible. Expecting perfection is my mistake, not theirs. But just because they are fallible human beings doesn't mean ALL therapists cannot be trusted. Generalizing about all therapists after having traumatic experiences and being re-traumatized in a therapeutic setting is certainly a normal response (and it is becoming more common), however, there are MANY great people who TRULY want to help. I have learned this personally. It took everything in me to go back to therapy after being hurt, (only to be hurt again after that) but eventually you will find someone who can prove you wrong. There ARE really good people in the profession, some of them just like you or I who have been through personal experiences.

The ideal definition of healing and being healed is something I have had to jostle around in my mind and change more than once. (Just like the definition of justice against my abusers) Initially I thought I could be, "cured." But trauma and PTSD is not about being cured, it is about accepting the past and learning to live with it so that the past does not dictate the future.

Crystal Blue wrote:

...Healing to me would mean being able to go out and be in the world without being triggered...

This is certainly a reasonable goal! We can't completely rule out our triggers but we CAN desensitize ourselves to them so that they hold less control over our future. Trauma is a physical injury, it never fully goes away. Expecting anything different only leads to further secondary emotions and frustrations. We need to accept that we have been hurt, that we did not deserve it, that our reaction to the trauma was normal given the abnormal circumstances that we lived through, and that we have survived it. It is our responsibility to harness our baggage (even though it was dropped on us by our abusers) and learn to live with it. Healing is a life-long journey and requires utmost priority and self-awareness; we CAN have a life worth living. We deserve it!

Thanks,
HD7970ghz

[Trace14]

Originally Posted by Purple,Violet,Blue

Some good, some bad.

My first, when I was about twenty, nearly pushed me over the edge with her utter lack of understanding.

I wasn't able to tell her anything about my past. But it must have been obvious. It is down to them, I think, to draw it out of us. But I had to keep going to see her. I was desperate.

One day, I forget what caused it, but at the end of the session, I could not leave her office. I just couldn't. I was shaking and crying and icy cold.

I knew that, if I went home, that would be it for me.

She didn't help me. They made me leave the medical centre. I can still remember that terrible walk home, along a busy road, and how close I came to stepping under a lorry.

It was the humiliation, really. Of begging for help and being treated like rubbish.

Other therapists might still have insisted I leave, but there's a way of doing it.

Now I'm older, I tend to expect less - in fact, hardly anything - from them.

Totally understand this. I had something similar happen at a T's office. We had talked about a lot of stuff and I said that to her. As soon as it came out of my mouth I went into a fog, now I know it was a dissociative state. She saw it but had another client waiting in the lobby. She was quickly asking me to find five blue things in the office and I got frustrated because they were not that easy to focus on then she opened the door for me to leave. I shouldn't have left and got into a car to drive. Made me lose faith in that T from there out about my safety with her. She apologized at the next session.

But I still think there are some good ones out there. But who has the time, money, and endurance to find them?

Expecting less is a safe way to go, lessens the disappointment.

[Lexiealea]

I'm also a very private person who isn't trusting and bottles things up. I've had many therapists in the past but have had a parent who always was required to be there or learned everything I said when I was honest in a private session I was also a minor then so it was different. I think if you find a good one it can really be helpful, make sure you really explain things otherwise they can get confused which is what happened to me some of the time. After bottling things up for so long I didn't know how to explain my feelings thoughts memories etc. A friend or someone who has been through similar experiences or had the same diagnoses can be really helpful too. Even a stranger sometimes.