Is Trauma Processing Helpful or Just Pain?

Wickedpissah,

I think your method sounds more suitable for me. My t is a trauma expert, meaning that her method is to use EMDR and other techniquest to process traumas. I'm just not sure this method works for me. But my t doesn't seem to want to give up that route. I actually sent her a message yesterday asking if she thought I'd come as far as i can in therapy and maybe it's not possible for me to change. She replied that some people can't process trauma, but they can still make changes. I think i could live with the idea of just learning to deal with the triggers when they happen, rather than try to fix the traumatic events that have caused them.

Unfortunately, my t said if i don't think her method of therapy is working for me anymore, i might want to consider a different type of therapy with someone else, and she recommended a colleague. I've been with my t for 10+ years. I don't want to leave her. I don't know why she couldn't just try a different route with me. She has done that in the past, using DBT and CBT stuff. But she always ends up back at trauma processing. She didn't stick with the other things long enough to really see if they would work for me. I dunno. . .I think my t has always felt like my problems were past her level of expertise.

My husband says I'm making really good progress and should just continue therapy with my current t. He says I'm just reacting to a really painful session last week by wanting to quit. It's true that every so often, I seem to reach my limit of endurance and become frustrated and tired of all the effort and just want to give up.

I'm supposed to talk to my t on my session today about what specifically i want to accomplish, so we can measure my progress. I suppose we'll also talk about my other option of going to a different t. But I'm almost positive i won't do that.

Roseleigh,

Yes, that's the problem. Just what you said, "We do a little bit, but it's too much." My t always talks about limiting how much pain i feel, even asking "How many drops of discomfort are you willing to feel?" I can say "10 drops," but that doesn't mean that when the emotions start flooding out, that i can lower them or prevent so much from coming out. I guess a few times, I've been able to kind of take a deep breath and step back away from the feelings temporarily. But that's rare. Usually, they just bombard me, and I can't ward them off.

Hi Marie,

My t says the problem is that my stored pain IS causing me problems in my life. I react to things in the present that remind me of my past pain -- usually when i think i am being rejected or viewed as worthless. Things my t and others say, i take them the wrong way, thinking they are trying to hurt me or push me away. But then i find out that i've understood things all wrong, and they were not doing that. This is a pattern for me, and my t says it's because i have this unprocessed trauma from my past. It keeps influencing my reactions today. So I'm not able to just "put it away" and not be affected by it. It leaves me in a quandry of not knowing what to do.

What do you do when your present life is negatively affected by your past traumas, yet you aren't emotionally strong enough to process those traumas?

That's the big question, and i don't know the answer.

How about talking to your T about doing therapy where the flood gates come open and everything floods out and then have a plan with what you 2 are going to do with this. Can you see her more often (2 - 3x/wk), can you take some time off from work, can your husband help you cope. You can make plans for this cold turkey approach.

Maybe you are stronger then you think you are?

Hi Twisti,

I'm sorry it didn't work well for you either. Did you find a different way to deal with your traumas then?

Zooropa,

I wonder if a large number of us here on PC are very emotionally sensitive, so that trauma processing just overwhelms our central nervous system? What do you think? I know that doing trauma work affects me very physiologically and i have to "recover" from it, not only by allowing time for my emotions to lower, but also in the form of sleeping because it exhausts me physically.

Splintered,

I don't mean to scare you. We're all different. What doesn't work for one person may be just the thing that somebody else needs. You may be able to process your traumas well. The important thing, it seems to me based on my own experience, is that the t needs to help the patient develop good ways to calm down and regulate their emotions, so that discussing the traumas does not feel emotionally overwhelming. You don't want it all to flood over you in a huge rush. And you need to be able to tell when you're feeling too upset, and let your t know that you need to step back a bit, as it's beginning to feel like "too much."

Farmergirl,

I like the way your t approached trauma processing. You did touch on it, and learned how it influences you today and what to do about it. But you did not dwell needlessly in the past. I'm guessing your t might use CBT, whereas mine is, I think, is psychodynamically based. She's not rigid though, and has at times deviated from that theoretical model. Maybe i should tell her I'd like to try a more cognitive approach. She has also told me she thinks i would benefit from Somatic Experiencing Therapy, which is more body based/physiological, rather than focusing on emotional experiences and traumas in the past. But she is not trained in it, and I can't bring myself to leave her as my t. We've been working together too long, and it has taken me forever to learn to trust her.

Elliemay,

Thanks for sharing your experience. The more I think about it, the more I believe we need to focus more on the here-and-now and less on the past. I know i still get triggered alot from what happened back then, and i have dysfunctional self beliefs and ways of coping that aren't effective anymore. I know that most of it is based on the bad things that happened to me as a kid. But maybe we could focus more on changing the beliefs and coping methods, without always digging up the original trauma from the past that causes how i am today???

My concern is that my t's theoretical orientation is geared around trauma resolution, and I don't want to change therapists. Maybe she'd be open to adding a little more cognitive work, and a little less trauma work to our sessions.

I talked to her yesterday on my session, and she understands that she needs to be more cognizant in not letting me get too emotionally flooded during our work. She said when we do trauma work, she needs to spend more time helping me bring my emotions back down and contain the distress. She knows this, as my getting overwhelmed has happened a number of times in our work together. But i think she forgets how sensitive I am, and how easily I go into "overdrive," which is emotionally and physically damaging to me. In fact, if my distress goes past a certain point, I just get stuck in the pain and it never moves through me to resolution.

What complicates the matter is that I'm often not aware that i am too overstimulated, and so I don't tell her we need to stop. I don't realize things have become too emotionally overwhelming until it is too late and I'm past the ability to cope. As we go along, i will think i am coping OK and can handle it. But then all of a sudden, i realize i can't. By then, I'm way too ramped up and hurting more than i can handle, and i can't seem to bring myself out of it.

Hi SarahMichelle,

I don't have DID but i definitely have dissociative tendencies and different ego states/parts. It's possible that i would qualify for a DDNOS diagnosis.

When we do trauma work, it really feels like i start out as my normal adult self who can handle talking about it. But at some point, something switches inside me and i feel like i am in that child self where the emotions are terrifying and intense, and i feel like i need someone to protect me. My t tries to get me to keep my adult awareness while this is happening to me -- and try not to let that child self merge with me, so that i can keep my head and calm my emotions back down. But it is very hard to do when i feel i am being pulled into that other state of being. It's like once i cross my limit, my logical reasoning and sense of current-day presence is gone and i'm in some kind of swirling world of pain that feels way beyond my ability to manage.

I'm not sure if my t knows that EMDR can be difficult for people who are dissociative or not. I know that she knows that it's important to help me learn coping skills and have internal resources i can draw up to help me. But the problem is -- even if i've learned those coping skills -- once the pain gets bad enough that i feel like a child being traumatized, the coping skills don't come to my mind. All i can notice is the pain.

He definitely works from more of a CBT perspective, although his is probably fairly eclectic. But when it comes to trauma, he prefers to deal with it in the here and now rather than get bogged down in replaying memories which only serves to further wound (IMO). We don't ignore the past, not at all, but we look at what it means to me now and how it affects me now rather than just looking at what happened back then without in current frame of reference. I don't want to be stuck in the past. I prefer to move forward, and his approach has allowed me to do that.

Hi Elliemay,

I'm glad your therapist's approach works for you. I definitely think i need to tell my t that we need *more* focus on the positive aspects of my life and *more* focus on relaxation and coping techniques. . .and *less* time on discussing traumatic incidents. I just get so freaked out by my own psyche. . .delving into the pain freaks me out too much and makes me unstable. It's like I'm *too* affected by what's going on in my subconscious or unconscious -- sometimes my mind and body freak out about things without me having any kind of clear memory at all. . .i will just suddenly feel terribly afraid or anxious and not know why. My blood pressure also shoots up when i get too stressed. I normally have low blood pressure: 115/74. But when i get too worked up, it easily goes to 160/95.

I hate to admit it. . .I'm a spaz.

Peaches, when I was reading this last post of you describing yourself and how you react it made me think of your other post and how you described how your parents wouldn't help you with your distress. This then reminded me of my attachment and emotional regulation thread and then I thought about you getting all worked up and your parents wouldn't help you with it and therefore bring down your level of distress (and help you regulate it). I'm wondering now if you feel you can't deal with your distress because it reminds you too much of being distressed when you were young and they wouldn't help you with it?

Sannah,

YES, YES EXACTLY!!

When i get into too much pain in therapy, i feel like i need someone to rescue me, and feeling dissociated and small when it happens, desire my t to comfort me. But she wants me to learn to comfort myself. And when i am not sufficiently able to do that, then i feel like i am back in my childhood going through things i can't tolerate and no one to come to my rescue or help.

It really scares me because it's like reliving those situations over again where my emotions are out of control and terrifying and i can't stop them.

That's why i hate trauma processing. I can't calm myself down when i get overwhelmed and it feels like the emotions are menacing and have the power to kill me.

If i get too overwhelmed and sort of "lose it," then afterward i feel like i've come through a war.

Then i think i end up feeling mad at my t for (the way the child part of me interprets it) for wanting me to talk about the traumas -- and making me feel all that pain all over again -- and not rescuing me or taking it away but just letting me suffer . .like my parents did.

I know that is not what my t intends. She wants me to talk "through" the trauma and be able to accept my pain and soothe myself, thereby coming to some sort of acceptance about it so i don't carry it around all my life and keep reacting to triggers in the present. But i can't do it! I get stuck at the point where the pain/emotions become too strong to bear. I get stuck in the pain and then feel retraumatized, exhausted, angry, and then want to quit.

Was wondering if any of this below resonates with you.....

does this seem familiar?

or this?

though I think the "for no discernible reason" is bunk-- there is a reason, it may be subconscious and not apparent to others but the reason does exist in some plane.....

I don't think the way you feel and think is a mystery-- I think there are a lot of people similar to you.
and I understand, it can sure suck.

fins

I think that when we are triggered like this it is best to focus in that moment on what is going on. In that moment tell yourself that this is why you are having such difficulty because you are triggering up that little girl who wasn't being supported and who wasn't getting her needs met.

And then tell yourself that you are an adult and that what is being triggered up isn't happening right now - but it is only the feelings from long ago which are coming out.

The only way out is through............