T hunt (in more than one way)

For deli (and anyone else): but we are not totally alone. There are other people, even if we read about them in books, or on Psych Central, that help us on our paths.

That is because she would, if she detected a thought of leaving her, react in such a threatening manner that I would give up the idea altogether, so that she would not detect my thought and kill me. Or so it seemed.

Which means she might have qualified for the diagnosis of borderline: leaving her was such a terrible threat to her. And I assume that everyone is the same way. I mean, I have emotionally thought that for a long time.

Did you mean to say "scared", or "sacred"?

thanks for the concern SAWE . i guess what i'm talking about (not very clearly, i'm afraid) is that even when i'm using others to help me, it's only myself that i need to rely on. that for me is rather empowering, and it centers me in a way that giving control over to someone else destabilises me.
i have many people in my life who i can draw on for help, but i refuse to be "healed" by anyone, because the healing is mine alone to achieve. i find the idea of someone wanting to swoop in and "heal" me distasteful and paternalistic, tbh. but i also don't believe in there being a "right" road or a "wrong" road... just many different paths i can explore until i choose to embark upon another.
e.g., right now there is someone in my life who i am drawing a lot of strength from. he certainly isnt trying to heal me (i'm not sure he is aware that there is healing to be done? and certainly i doubt that he would want to, if he did know) but i'm able to heal myself by being open to our interactions and reflecting on them myself.
i do believe we need people, but i don't believe that the power of healing rests in their hands. that's all . (and this is simply true for me. it doesn't need to be true for anyone else. it's just my truth; what works for me).

edit: i see pachy responded much more concisely than i did! which is what i was getting at, in my own ambling way .

I haven't noticed anything particularly spiritual about IFS either. All I know is that I love it because it works for me. I don't have to worry about the parts of me that are so ashamed and critical of the needy parts. T says to "throw those parts" over on the couch! No judging! I close my eyes and she asks how the part feels, what it needs, etc. It's freeing for me, maybe it wouldn't be for you.

EMDR is also powerful, even more so. It gets past the thinking to the feeling.

But the real cure is the relationship between the T and the client--the fit. All my Ts have said this. I've had 5, and this last one is by far the one I fit with best.

Your definition of what is/is not "safe" and what "rely upon" means. You may not want to be relied upon but others may or may not rely upon you; their choice, their definition, and outcome to deal with. I would not feel unsafe relying upon you; I would not try to engage in a conversation with you if I did, would not be willing to reveal my thoughts and feelings to you if I did. Your desire for vulnerability is not in question, nor are your reasons for hiding your light under a bushel basket Yes, that you are hidden in such a way indicates, to me, that you feel vulnerable BUT, in my world, the sky is not falling anymore.

No. Authors - and internet forums - will not suffice.
"trauma cannot be healed alone" meaning it can't be healed by the one person, without another human being to participate in the healing. Deli I don't say that someone can lay hands on a person and heal them; the healing has to come from inside; but there MUST be another person, if it's trauma.

The healing happens in the relationship - because the trauma person (I hate the word victim) has a shattered trust, and trust has to do with OTHERS and trust can't be rebuilt by one's own determination. You can't stand on a rope and pull yourself up. The traumal client/patient tests and tests and tests the therapeutic relationship, and there is rupture after rupture after rupture, and each rupture must be repaired so the work can go on; and it is in the repairing itself that the healing occurs; the trauma client/patient learns that not every rupture is catastrophic, that relationships CAN be repaired, and that trust can be given (not unwisely, not indiscrimantely of course, but that was so before the trauma too).

If you have been reading Treehouse's posts these past two years you will see that this is all true. sorry, can't do it with a book, or with cyberfriends , however much these can comfort and enlighten.

I agree that for healing there has to be interaction. But that is possible in different ways.

What I was trying to say is that the fact that I feel I have to hide things indicates anxiety on my part, and I think others can pick up on that anxiety without realizing it fully consciously, and can be made anxious themselves as a result -- if they are not completely "separate" from me, still feel a need for me to be not anxious.

Of course, I understand this (I think) because I observe myself doing the same thing.

(((pachy)))

Just wanted to stop by and add my support. You absolutely deserve to find whatever it is that you need to heal.

The one idea that seems to come up repeatedly, is that you really need someone who is self-aware. It is a relatively rare occurrence, but not impossible to find.

What I would offer you, as someone who has always been sensitive to other people's feelings, is that you are not responsible for how someone else feels. EVER. You are only responsible for how you feel. If you feel anxious, and X person has a problem with you feeling anxious, then it is literally X person's problem.

I can almost hear you now saying 'but if that X person is a T or an authority figure....' It makes no difference. Anyone trying to make you take responsibility for how THEY feel is simply wrong.

A self-aware person might feel some anxiety if they see you being anxious, but they will not 'blame' you for it. Instead they might ask 'why is this bringing up these feelings inside of me...thank you pachy for giving me this opportunity to explore these feelings. Without you bringing them up, I would not have been aware they were there.'

If you can, please remember that. We are each responsible for our own feelings. Period. End of story. Anyone who tells you otherwise, should be approached with caution.

HTH in some small way. You're in my thoughts, pachy.

SAWE, i understand that this is the truth for you but i'll respectfully ask that you leave open for me to decide whether it is similarly a truth for me. i'm not arguing against your experience, or tree's, or claiming that the experts you mentioned are wrong. i'm just going on my (equally valid) experience, and also my not inconsiderable acquaintance with the literature (given that i now too have a degree in psych ) which teaches me that experts are a dime a dozen and there are many paths to 'healing', if indeed healing is what is sought.

besides, i AM someone who can stand on a rope and pull herself up .

Dear Deli,
I do have to disagree with most of what you said - truth is truth; there is not "truth for me" and "truth for you", that means there is no such thing as truth...
but sorry, I can't buy the rope thing.

wish you the best. Bye now, y'all carry on... I am out of this discussion.

HA! I was reading along feeling all because that describes my therapy so exactly...

I don't want to derail your thread, pachy, but I do want to say that I absolutely don't expect T (or anyone else) to "heal" me. I know that the path lies within myself. T is always drawing my attention to my "internal wisdom" to help me see that *I* am the one who is healing myself. The healing is in the relationship (for me), so I need T there.

Back to your regularly scheduled thread

You always add wisdom to a thread, tree.

Everyone is different, what works for one may not work for another. There is not a path that says that you must do it this way only.

Hugs

It's not therapists who called it that so I don't think they have that motive. I think another name for it is "Non-judgmental listening." It is used in a number of contexts, including reconciliation between warring factions. It shares some elements with Non-violent Communication, which has appealed to me greatly since I first heard about it several years ago.

"Compassionate Listening was originated by Gene Knudsen Hoffman... Gene wrote, “Some time ago I recognized that terrorists were people who had grievances, who thought their grievances would never be heard, and certainly never addressed. Later I saw that all parties to every conflict were wounded, and at the heart of every act of violence is an unhealed wound.” In her role as a counselor, Gene recognized that non-judgmental listening was a great healing process in itself.

As Gene originally conceived it, Compassionate Listening requires questions which are non-adversarial and listening which is non-judgmental. Listeners seek the truth of the person questioned, seeing through ‘masks of hostility and fear to the sacredness of the individual.’ Listeners seek to humanize the ‘other’. Listeners accept what others say as their perceptions, and validate the right to their own perceptions. Compassionate Listening can cut through barriers of defense and mistrust, enabling both those listened to and those listening to hear what they think, to change their opinions, and to make more informed decisions. Through this process, fear can be reduced, and participants will be better equipped to discern how to proceed with effective action." --from http://www.compassionatelistening.org/about

Although Compassionate Listening per se is not a type of therapy, some therapists are trained in compassionate listening. Some therapists are also trained in Non-violent communication, which also has a strong "non-judgmental listening" component.

Compassionate Listening Project:
http://www.compassionatelistening.org/
Non-violent Communication
http://www.cnvc.org/
http://www.amazon.com/Nonviolent-Com...0626316&sr=8-1

I think this sounds really good and if you think it would be helpful, maybe there is a way to try to find someone who does this. Do you know what it helped people with (the people who said they were cured)? Was it anxiety, depression, other things? Perhaps you can contact the place it was used (a hospital?) and see if they can tell you a name for this therapy or recommend a way to find a practitioner.

In the type of therapy you described, it could go on for several hours at a time, as long as need be, instead of being articially constrained to 50 minutes. I did have an experience like that with a therapist. She was the child specialist who was working with my kids (and their parents) during the divorce--she saw all 4 of us, usually individually, but sometimes the parents together. For my individual sessions with her, we went as long as it took. The first one was 4 hours long. After that, there wasn't a need to meet much because we had dealt with so much at the first session. I think I had a follow up session which was 2 hours and maybe 1 other. It was so great to just be able to do all that needed to be done up front instead of drawing it out for 10 weeks or more, meeting only 1 hour at a time. There are some advantages to meeting weekly, but sometimes, you can lose steam, and you can waste time getting reacquainted each time, and picking up your thread from the previous week. So if you can find a T who does this, it might work well. If a person shows up on a T's doorstep and says I'll pay you $600 for 4 consecutive $150 sessions, it seems like the T could oblige, if the T and client both agree it would be therapeutic. (And if bathroom breaks are allowed. )

I thought all therapists were supposed to do that!

BTW, I think therapists should make judgements. It is condemnations (of people) they "should" not make. One more instance where choosing the right word, and thinking clearly, makes a difference.

I avoided mentioning what the disorder treated was, because I thought maybe people here would think it was not relevant! It was anorexia, and the therapy took place decades ago in the UK. I don't know that the therapist is even alive now. I did try to contact him once via another person in the UK, but could not contact him.

I really can't imagine anyone doing this these days. And would it work if I have to convince someone to try it? That means (to me) I am trying to manage my own therapy, and I want someone who knows how to act independently of me trying to tell them how to therapize.

Pachy, I'm glad you could open up more and share your past struggles. I know it is scary but I hope you can just take the plunge with some kind of therapy.

If it is any consolation, even my not-so-great therapists never made me feel condemned or judged.

but if you know what works for you, pachy, wouldn't it be good for you to take charge of your own healing? it's taken me a long time to be able to speak up about what does and doesn't work for me, but now that i'm better able to do it (6 or so therapists down the track ) it makes a HUGE difference in how fast im able to move forward.
even just simple things like i need austin-t to ask me what i want to talk about first, rather than him jumping in and wanting to follow up from the last session. and not doing a MMSE on me every time .
some therapists (like my old-t) were really averse to me telling them how i wanted things to be done, but looking back it probably just means we weren't a good fit.
austin-t still brings himself to my therapy sessions - he provides insight and encouragement and all those other therapist things i need - but within a framework that i know is more helpful to me than the one he typically uses.

Well, I guess you wouldn't want a therapist who uses non-judgmental listening techniques, then. From what you had written earlier, I had thought it might be helpful to you, but I guess not. Why did you use the "pissed off" smiley? Who do you mean is not thinking clearly? The technique is what it is and has been helpful in international reconciliation. I don't see that it is mislabeled with the "wrong" word. It is probably very accurately labeled. It just isn't a technique that would be personally useful to you in therapy.

Well, it was only about 2 years ago for me--not that long ago. So some contemporary therapists do do it. They wouldn't know you want to though unless you inquire.

I do think the client can help manage the therapy. That doesn't mean the T doesn't know what he/she is doing. It just helps make the therapy provided a better match for the client. Why would a client not want that? My T provides different things to different clients, because every client is unique. For example, we switched from 50 to 90 minute sessions when the shorter ones weren't working when we went to longer intervals between sessions. I told him the problem (unproductive sessions, difficulty reconnecting, etc.), and he came up with the solution (longer sessions). I wouldn't want a therapist who doesn't take client feedback into account. I do think there are therapists who want to take the same approach all the time and not listen to the client, and these would be therapists to avoid. Pachyderm, you have thought so much about what would be helpful to you in therapy, and that would be very valuable information for the therapist. But it takes the right T because some are more rigid than others. It probably helps if you can start with someone who is as close to what you need as you can find, and then the changes needed are smaller and easier to accomplish. Then you are back to "how can one find such a T?" I think that speaking to them in person is going be essential, when you are ready, because as you have noted, the websites do not help that much.

I remember a few years ago I saw an ad from a brand new therapist who was offering to provide therapy to people for free, just to get some experience. I wonder if a newbie like that might be open to a client walking in the door, saying he wanted to try this type of therapy he had read about, and could the T try it? Maybe the T would be willing.... (And this would help offset the negatives of being with an inexperienced practitioner.)

I used that smiley, without caring what its name was, because it seemed to express my feelings towards professionals not being careful in words they use to describe things. I need that precision. Or needed it more in the past when I was less sure of my own ideas. I am not familiar with the term non-judgemental listening as a therapy technique. Actually, I am quite tired of all the different "techniques" that are supposed to mean something but I can't see what that something is that makes it succeed while all others don't. To me, judging can mean making an assessment, or making an assessment which is loaded with an emotional tinge which is alleged to belong to the one assessed, rather than recognized as an emotion in the assessor.

For instance: jerk. That implies that the person to whom that is applied "is" a jerk, a bad person. As opposed to the person making the judgement feeling something that he doesn't like about the "jerk" but not recognizing where the feeling comes from, and that the feeling is in him, not the "jerk". Would you want a therapist who thought you were a "jerk". Without realizing that he was having some problems of his own? Would you want a political leader with similar tendencies? Are there consequences to these things?

Well, obviously this kind of thing is a problem I have; maybe others don't have it. I reacted very badly to my mother's continuous assessment of me (and my brothers) as rotten people.

sunny, I guess it is related to your being put off balance by a "counselor" remarking about "needy" "sucking" people.

The words can't protect you. If I judge you, I can go either way and/or mean to go either way but how you perceive is what's gonna happen. If I say how thoughtful and intelligent I think you are, I can see your skepticism through the screen! You ain't falling for it, doesn't matter what I say, how I say it, what words I use, etc.

I left home because my stepmother called me "Stupid" one time too many. I knew I wasn't stupid but I had made a mistake (mixed the Good Seasons salad dressing contents in the wrong order, for shame! LOL http://brands.kraftfoods.com/goodseasons/) but I couldn't laugh yet then so my feelings were hurt. Were it to happen the same way now, I'd laugh and be extremely surprised at being called "Stupid" by anyone. The entire incident could only happen at that time, in that fashion, between my stepmother and myself. Now that I have stepped out of that period of time, have interacted therapeutically with others and looked around me at where I am now, it all surprises instead of hurts. Yes I wish my stepmother and I could have understood one another better, could have given and gotten what we needed from one another or understood why that wasn't possible or necessarily a good idea, etc. but I can talk to others now and give and receive. . .

My insight of the moment is that the words reflect how well a person distinguishes what is inside (feelings) from what is outside (things, other people). So it means a lot more than "just" words.

really? (edit: lol, not questioning that this is your insight of the moment. more how much you think this stands up as 'truth').

i had a funny session with my thesis supervisor a few months back where we both knew what i was referring to but i was too tired and couldn't find the right words for what i wanted to express. i spoke to her for an hour calling the referrent a "thingy-bingy" .

similarly, when i call someone a jerk (or think of that person as a jerk) a large part of me recognises that i'm only labelling them as such because it's a self protection mechanism, it makes me feel better. i do it anyway because with people i label "jerks" i'm usually not too fussed to think about them in depth either, so it's a useful heuristic to help me move on to more interesting things to pay attention to. but, in truth, there are very few people i actually do think are jerks (i.e., the other person really is an objective jerk, or a bad person etc). i'd be hard pressed to even name one person, in fact.

i really empathise with the need for words therapists use to be precise, pach. i know i've certainly driven a lot of my past-Ts (and lecturers, supervisors, managers etc) crazy because i demand a higher level of precision than they typically communicate with. at the same time, though, i think i'm a bit of an outlier with respect to wanting this level of precision, so instead of getting upset and withdrawing i try to clarify instead. it still drives the other person nuts, but at least i get a better understanding of what it is they really had in mind. humans aren't perfect communicators (alas!) and it's a lot less important to other people than it is to me. i wonder if you're hindering yourself from getting otherwise good help by being hung up on this? but maybe the difference between us is that i'm not afraid to ask questions, many many questions... whereas from what you've posted earlier in this thread it sounds like that would be confronting for you? i'm just guessing here, let me know if i'm way off base.

Between what you posted about writing down who you are before bed and feeling like a non entity, I cannot describe the sadness (NOT sympathy...you're too strong for that) and empathy i feel for you. I can relate.

I need, or have needed especially in the past, for people to be careful with the words they use. This is because I have been easily able to be misled by what people say, by what people say about me. Their statements seem to be able to get inside my head and contradict my own thoughts, resulting in a thought-battle which I always lose. Or, lost, moreso in the past than now.