[Suratji]

So, we hear that we should tap into our emotions and that we should bring forth painful experiences from the past in order to acknowledge them, learn from them and then move past them.

But, where is the point in which spewing and venting and talking about the past become more detrimental than helpful? Is there not a danger that those grooves in the brain which hold the pain will solidify and be made deeper and therefore the odds of moving past the painful experiences become slimmer and slimmer?

To become aware is good. To dwell is not. How much 'processing' is necessary? Anyways, what is processing?

[maggyjo]

I am watching this for answers because I am wondering this too. I have been over this many times. I have had some T's respect that I don't want to sit and rehash the past and I had some say this necessary to process it to fully heal.

All I want is to feel and do better. Not much luck yet.

Maggy jo

[Suratji]

Originally Posted by maggyjo

I am watching this for answers because I am wondering this too. I have been over this many times. I have had some T's respect that I don't want to sit and rehash the past and I had some say this necessary to process it to fully heal.

All I want is to feel and do better. Not much luck yet.

Maggy jo

Yes, I'm also eagerly hoping for people's opinions about this. It's probably very personal - some people have repressed so much that they need to dig into the past in order to get beyond it. My question is, 'when is enough enough?"

[Perna]

I think a lot of our understanding is perception, yes, very personal! But perceptions can change with more knowledge/understanding. What we perceived as children, we can think of many examples of how the perception wasn't correct because we had not developed enough to understand well. My first memory, from when I was two, is of being lost and my father rescuing me. However, I got lost in the first place because I was too young to understand about corners and things out of my view; the bridge over the creek was on the stretch of the creek that had taken a 90 degree turn so I could not see it. Reminds one a little of babies who think when they cover their eyes and can't see you, that you can't see them; that is their perception of the moment. So, childhood is very fraught with situations where our perception isn't, even can't be, right.

A friendly pat on the shoulder by a larger kid can be perceived as bullying; look at the gangster movies and how many scenes there are with the bad guy coming up behind someone and tapping them on the shoulder? We can understand what is happening as adults, are often better able to tell the good guys from the bad but if, as a child, there was a bully, then all future taps on the shoulder are going to be mini-triggers/post traumatic stress and time passes and you forget the first instance and what do you have? Fear of people behind you and/or friendly pats on the shoulder!

As adults we work jobs, raise families, etc. and life can be stressful if one doesn't have enough time or money or relationships are sour, etc. and one can take it out on another. If it is another adult snapping at us we think, "what the heck is wrong with her?" but if you are a child and your parent snaps at you, you may end up angry, frustrated and afraid because a child is kind of stuck in a family, has no money, car, experience or outlet other than family and maybe school. If one doesn't want angry parents, they take the frustration out at school, pretty much their only other outlet. The big kids who tap the little kids on the shoulder unpleasantly rarely have nice, safe, comfortable home lives?

It's extremely complicated and we can't untangle all the triggers and problems we had as kids and figure out which ones we perceived wrong and which ones we perceived correctly but were powerless to do anything about and what the ramifications of that were to us but the whole therapy talk about some of the situations gets us understanding that we are adults now and do have choices, that things have changed, just by our getting older and having more experiences. A six year old's first summer after starting school is a long period of time because they only consciously remember a couple of summers before but my summers, at age 60 fly by because I have had so many more. It's 3 months out of 700+ rather than 3 out of 36 or so. The perspective has changed and now we're able to adjust our thinking too.

Remember when you went back to visit an elementary school classroom as an adult and how tiny the seats seemed but they didn't seem that small when you were in them as a child? But your "memory" is actually as them as a child, because that is when they were your seats. Because it's a physical thing, not too emotionally attached, you can adjust your thinking so you "know" they are small but when you feel things and have emotional experiences and interactions with others, adults and other children as a child, being an adult without that other person literally there and similar situation makes it harder to adjust your thinking; that's why there's therapy and the therapist "standing in" for your perception of the other and how you have to work out the transference, going back and forth between what the child you remembers versus what the happening now, adult you can see and understand. Eventually, you learn the "knack"/tools for seeing better and travelling between the two worlds so you don't need the therapist anymore.

[Suratji]

Perna, thank you so much for your detailed and informative response.

So, if I understand you correctly, you're saying that we can take these memories and try to 'reframe' their meanings. So, spewing and venting isn't necessary but acknowledging the memory and learning from it, will be useful.

Maybe it's a question of zeroing in, focusing on an event or an experience and then the process of change can begin. To just randomly experience and re-experience pain would not achieve the same result. Indeed, that would harden the old grooves in the brain.

Perna, is that what you think?

[sunrise]

Originally Posted by Suratji

How much 'processing' is necessary? Anyways, what is processing?

My T describes it, at least as related to memories and experiences that are "stuck" for us (keep coming up again and again, we can't get past them), as there being two containers in the brain. Memories go into one container and then get processed and pass to the other (longer term storage, perhaps). Some memories get stuck in the first container and never get out--they remain in a more accessible part of our brain and keep coming up. So a therapist helps the client process those and get them to move on to the other container. If what the therapist is doing is not helping the client process the memories, then the T should try a different approach. Trying the same thing 8 times with little success is not very encouraging for the client, and is painful. That is one reason my T really likes the faster therapies for the very stuck memories, such as EMDR. Maybe it's a bit like bringing in the bigger guns for the really recalcitrant problems. He thinks EMDR (and some of the other faster techniques) helps things pass between containers more quickly. I have had some good success with EMDR, but also feel that regular talk therapy can help me with these things too. I guess part of what technique we use depends on my energy level, how awful the thing is, and my degree of feeling, "I just want to be done with this--HELP!"

[Perna]

I think we have to look at what's there, face it (and that might cause genuine pain and/or disappointment) and also look to see if what we saw is the same as what we see now. If they are the same; we are now, as adults, in a position to "do" something about whatever was holding us stuck before. We can get therapy, help, support and learn to identify friends "now" rather than based on old experiences or feelings.

Let's say you are a fat child and don't fit in your chair in second grade (in second grade, I went to the bathroom in my pants, despite our own private bathroom in our classroom; I wasn't able to raise my hand and ask to "go". My teacher literally "sniffed" me out), the whole chair-the-size-of-the-child, for a child, not an adult, thing will have a different meaning to you when you are an adult than for another adult looking at the small chairs and desks and having to adjust their thoughts and feelings and do the "I remember these!" thing. You may now, as an adult, be the right size (I no longer go to the bathroom in my pants :-) but you still have that horrible memory of not fitting the chair/desk they gave you (I'm left handed and 90% of people are right-handed so most of those one piece school chairs/desks are right-handed, it was daunting in college to find one that was left-handed, same principle). But the fear of not fitting and all the children making fun of you and maybe teachers too, doesn't belong to now but if you don't remember and work with the original thoughts, feelings, fears, what you "took away" from the experience, you can't ever get to "now" because your now is based on then instead of on the literal now. Talk about mud-colored glasses!

One doesn't even have to reframe the meanings; the children were/are cruel and called you names; the 7th grade teacher who called me a liar when I was wearing my full girl scout uniform and humiliated me in front of the class should not have been teaching my age group; all these horrible things DID HAPPEN to us, as we experienced them at the time! They hurt and thinking of them now can still hurt and confuse us. However, we need to look at how they affect us now in our present world, because they are no longer happening. When we have an intellectual understanding of something but our emotions tell us something else, that's a problem! Thinking and/or feeling "I'm fat" when one is not, is a problem. As far as I'm able I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night; there's no one to notice, no one to yell at me, my stepmother won't fill the bathtub with three inches of water and three large shovelfuls of dirt - grass, worms, sticks, rocks and all - fresh from the backyard and make me "bathe" in it because I'm a bad/dirty child, undeserving of compassion and understanding for going to the bathroom in my pants; I've been working on that for 10+ years now as it is a problem when doctors need me to pee on demand

Yes, just going round and round with the actual experience from the past would just make it harder to jump the groove and work on whatever problems the experience caused, now in the present. In the present, I need to go to the bathroom sometimes for doctors. I can work on being able to do that. In 2003 I was hospitalized for a week and had a heck of a time (and got criticized by medical personnel!) but, I was criticized because I, as an adult, refused them. I made decisions for myself and they had to deal with that the best they could. Yes, they could not help me as much as they would have liked, and I had to deal with that as an adult. It was all in the "now". I did the best I could and they did the best they could and we were honest with one another. That's the whole point of therapy, to help one be one's best self, "Now".

[Suratji]

Originally Posted by sunrise

My T describes it, at least as related to memories and experiences that are "stuck" for us (keep coming up again and again, we can't get past them),(meaning we react in the present as if we're experiencing what was trauma in the past???) as there being two containers in the brain. Memories go into one container and then get processed (processed?- meaning that they no longer have a negative influence on our current behaviour??) and pass to the other (longer term storage, perhaps). Some memories get stuck in the first container and never get out--they remain in a more accessible part of our brain and keep coming up.(Again - when they 'come up', they affect us negatively in the present?) So a therapist helps the client process those and get them to move on to the other container. If what the therapist is doing is not helping the client process the memories, then the T should try a different approach. Trying the same thing 8 times with little success is not very encouraging for the client, and is painful. That is one reason my T really likes the faster therapies for the very stuck memories, such as EMDR. Maybe it's a bit like bringing in the bigger guns for the really recalcitrant problems. He thinks EMDR (and some of the other faster techniques) helps things pass between containers more quickly. I have had some good success with EMDR, but also feel that regular talk therapy can help me with these things too. I guess part of what technique we use depends on my energy level, how awful the thing is, and my degree of feeling, "I just want to be done with this--HELP!"

So, we can look at the memories and analyze them? Is that processing them? We see how what was true is not true now? But analyzing is using the rational part of the brain - which has little influence over the emotional part of the brain. So how does that work exactly? How do we not allow old emotional patterns to influence the present? Just by being aware of them?

[Suratji]

Originally Posted by Perna

I think we have to look at what's there, face it (and that might cause genuine pain and/or disappointment) and also look to see if what we saw is the same as what we see now. If they are the same; we are now, as adults, in a position to "do" something about whatever was holding us stuck before. We can get therapy, help, support and learn to identify friends "now" rather than based on old experiences or feelings. My issues can't be tied to childhood memories because I have no childhood memories. So, I am identifying with traumatic events from 15 years ago. I probably reacted to them based on my childhood experiences but I can only look at how I responded and acted in my recent history.

Let's say you are a fat child and don't fit in your chair in second grade (in second grade, I went to the bathroom in my pants, despite our own private bathroom in our classroom; I wasn't able to raise my hand and ask to "go". My teacher literally "sniffed" me out), the whole chair-the-size-of-the-child, for a child, not an adult, thing will have a different meaning to you when you are an adult than for another adult looking at the small chairs and desks and having to adjust their thoughts and feelings and do the "I remember these!" thing. You may now, as an adult, be the right size (I no longer go to the bathroom in my pants :-) but you still have that horrible memory of not fitting the chair/desk they gave you (I'm left handed and 90% of people are right-handed so most of those one piece school chairs/desks are right-handed, it was daunting in college to find one that was left-handed, same principle). But the fear of not fitting and all the children making fun of you and maybe teachers too, doesn't belong to now but if you don't remember and work with the original thoughts, feelings, fears, what you "took away" from the experience, you can't ever get to "now" because your now is based on then instead of on the literal now. Talk about mud-colored glasses!

One doesn't even have to reframe the meanings; the children were/are cruel and called you names; the 7th grade teacher who called me a liar when I was wearing my full girl scout uniform and humiliated me in front of the class should not have been teaching my age group; all these horrible things DID HAPPEN to us, as we experienced them at the time! They hurt and thinking of them now can still hurt and confuse us. However, we need to look at how they affect us now in our present world, because they are no longer happening. When we have an intellectual understanding of something but our emotions tell us something else, that's a problem! Thinking and/or feeling "I'm fat" when one is not, is a problem. As far as I'm able I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night; there's no one to notice, no one to yell at me, my stepmother won't fill the bathtub with three inches of water and three large shovelfuls of dirt - grass, worms, sticks, rocks and all - fresh from the backyard and make me "bathe" in it because I'm a bad/dirty child, undeserving of compassion and understanding for going to the bathroom in my pants; I've been working on that for 10+ years now as it is a problem when doctors need me to pee on demand

Yes, just going round and round with the actual experience from the past would just make it harder to jump the groove and work on whatever problems the experience caused, now in the present.So I probably shouldn't try to 'feel' the pain from my trauma which I had built up an emotional wall to protect myself. I should look at the situation rationally and try to identify what emotions were in play, why, and how I should respond now since my situation now is different. Right?In the present, I need to go to the bathroom sometimes for doctors. I can work on being able to do that. In 2003 I was hospitalized for a week and had a heck of a time (and got criticized by medical personnel!) but, I was criticized because I, as an adult, refused them. I made decisions for myself and they had to deal with that the best they could. Yes, they could not help me as much as they would have liked, and I had to deal with that as an adult. It was all in the "now". I did the best I could and they did the best they could and we were honest with one another. That's the whole point of therapy, to help one be one's best self, "Now".

Perna, Thank you for sharing your story. It seems like you had a horrible childhood. That anyone could survive such abuse is incredible. My heart goes out to you. It looks like you're strong though and you worked hard to overcome your very difficult beginning.

[lastyearisblank]

Thank you for sharing that Perna. You must be very strong to have overcome that. It's illuminating as usual to read how you understand it.

Processing... hmm maybe it goes back to the whole feelings/thoughts thing. Ultimately to borrow Perna's school example, nobody is going to award us an A for understanding it right. I think there's even some frustration when our T's say, "yes, very good, a breakthrough!" Because we know it when we see it, don't we.

I think part of it is just being able to be real and present in that room with all the feelings, for T, for people in our lives, for the past. Hope that process is going good for you Suratji!

[Suratji]

Originally Posted by lastyearisblank

Thank you for sharing that Perna. You must be very strong to have overcome that. It's illuminating as usual to read how you understand it.

Processing... hmm maybe it goes back to the whole feelings/thoughts thing. Ultimately to borrow Perna's school example, nobody is going to award us an A for understanding it right.Do you mean that if we understand but don't perform correctly according to our new-found knowledge? I think there's even some frustration when our T's say, "yes, very good, a breakthrough!" Because we know it when we see it, don't we. You mean a breakthrough in understanding? Or a breakthrough in changing our patterns of behavior based on our understanding?

I think part of it is just being able to be real and present Now that's the challenge - what is real? And present? in that room with all the feelings, for T, for people in our lives, for the past. Hope that process is going good for you Suratji!

I think what my T is trying to teach me is to be conscious and aware of my feelings and that is partly accomplished by paying attention to the sensations in my body. She correctly observes that I live in my head mostly. (You hadn't noticed, right? ) And once aware that I actually have feelings, then I can explore what they are, where they come from and learn how to respond appropriately and not by unconscious old patterns and habits that were developed in the past. But, man, that is so hard to achieve. Living mindlessly is much easier.

[PTSDlovemycats]

Yes, it is true that the grooves do get deeper and deeper, but you still have the abiltiy to create new grooves and deepen those ones as well. That is what I am working on with my T right now...

Originally Posted by Suratji

But, where is the point in which spewing and venting and talking about the past become more detrimental than helpful? Is there not a danger that those grooves in the brain which hold the pain will solidify and be made deeper and therefore the odds of moving past the painful experiences become slimmer and slimmer?

This has not been my experience at all. I've been through a lot of painful stuff from the past with T, and the difference is, this time there is a different outcome. Someone is seeing me and hearing me. Someone believes me. Someone isn't shaming me. Someone loves me. Someone isn't blaming me. Someone is seeing all of me and accepting every single bit of it.

For me, it's been very very powerful. It feels like sometimes one session can undo years of previous programming. And other things take years of sessions...

Watching T be gentle with me has taught me to be gentle with myself. I didn't know I deserved gentleness, truly. I never ever would have considered being anything but harsh and punishing with myself, because that's what I learned as a child.

I think therapy can be an amazing gift we give ourselves...a chance to say to someone else "here I am, here are my experiences, here is my shame" and to find out that we can still be loved, that we are actually okay.

[sunrise]

Originally Posted by sunrise

My T describes it, at least as related to memories and experiences that are "stuck" for us (keep coming up again and again, we can't get past them),

What I meant could include that. There are many manifestations of trauma, including re-experiencing.

Originally Posted by sunrise

as there being two containers in the brain. Memories go into one container and then get processed

What I mean by processed is that the memories become unstuck and pass from one container to the next. Think of it as a different way that traumatic (or stuck) memories are stored compared to non-traumatic memories. Once processed, the events the memories are of are no longer traumatic. Yes, that could include saying that they no longer have the same hold on us to influence our behavior

Originally Posted by Suratji

So, we can look at the memories and analyze them? Is that processing them?

No. EMDR does not work like that. One does not analyze the memories in EMDR. EMDR is more feelings-based, and has a somatic component too. The processing occurs with the help of EMDR's left-right alternate stimulation that frees up the memories and allows them to pass from one "container" to the other. (Or so the theory of how EMDR works goes.)

Originally Posted by Suratji

But analyzing is using the rational part of the brain - which has little influence over the emotional part of the brain.

What you describe is not part of EMDR or some of these other faster therapies that can help with processing. To me, it doesn't seem like analysis and using the rational part of the brain would help with trauma, but YMMV. Suratji, are you doing trauma work in therapy?

Originally Posted by Suratji

How do we not allow old emotional patterns to influence the present? Just by being aware of them?

For me, awareness is often not enough, but perhaps for some, it is? It is a start, at least! My T has said that sometimes we will keep repeating dysfunctional patterns in an unconscious, continuing search to break the pattern and do things differently--to change history and have things come out "right." The repetition is a manifestation of the self's will to heal. Keep doing it, keep doing it, keep doing it, until things turn out differently. Unfortunately, sometimes we can't learn to do things differently without professional help. I try not to berate myself for continuing to repeat old patterns, but smile on my self for its will to heal and break out of the pattern, because that's what the repetition is. All that repetition means we haven't given up yet! A way to break the chain is to do things differently. This can be a very powerful experience. You do things differently, new tracks are laid down in the brain, and things can change in an instant. (They may need reinforcing to stick.) Sometimes the T can help you do things differently right there in the therapy room. (One example is of the T providing a "corrective experience" in therapy.) Other times, you do things differently out in the world, either with your T's support or on your own.

[Suratji]

Sunrise, and everyone else, I so appreciate your thoughtful commentaries. Great food for thought - oh wait a minute, I supposed to move past thought. uh oh

[Sannah]

I think that when a person keeps going over and over something with their T that they aren't releasing the emotions but are only talking about it intellectually. The emotions really need to be released.

I also think that we have to uncover the messages that we learned from our past in order to be released from it. If you were abused and therefore, learned the lesson that you are worthless, you have to consciously realize that this is the message that you learned and you have to work through this and acquire a healthier message about yourself. Other messages that are derived from less than ideal upbringings are "I can't meet my needs, only the needs of others", "I need to be perfect", "I need to be hypervigilant", "I can't show my feelings", "I can't stand up for myself", "I am unlovable", "I need to keep everyone at a distance for safety", etc.

I also value working backwards by starting with today. What are you doing today that isn't working for you?