i want to understand my T,i want her to fix it

I'm trying to just get this all straight in my head this week. my T has been sharing this book with me.reading and working out of this work book. it is a lot about brain science. last session she tried to explain some about how the brain works when a child is traumatized over and over again. kind of like how my brain is fixed to respond in particular ways when i hear,see,feel,or am in a particular situation.something like this is how my mind is programed to respond. it made me feel so hopeless like there is nothing i can do to make things any better. i swear i heard her say that that will always be that way. that we have no control over our thoughts. that cant be true . she said something about working to let things go. i do that already. if i feel the need to smash my hands through one of her windows i choose not to do so. i choose not to respond to that urge. i SIT WITH IT.know it will go away.i have not always done this .i have chosen to put my hands through the window. as the only way to deal with the thoughts ,feelings ,and fear.the only way i had to show the T what was going on. to stop the craziness. anyway she said that is exactly what she was talking about .i told her i am not that person anymore.(sometimes i am)but just because i am not putting my hands through her window does not mean that the thoughts, feelings, fear,and overwhelming anger is not still there and so,so hard to deal with. that is what i want to stop.

one moment she seems to get it and then next not so much. with that she started to talk about trauma again. it is so hard for me to sit and listen to those words. i don't want to. she says things like the mother was so horribly manipulative and neglectful. she didn't say abusive so i know now i have not told her about the physical abuse. i don't want to i can't . she starts talking like that i freak in my head and i swear i cant remember much of what she says because my mead goes on overload in trying to keep things simple and far away. no one can know that part of me and i panic and get overwhelmed with fear and thoughts. i spend forever trying to rap my brain around just one word she will say and miss everything else. i try to tell her this but when i talked my words just made no sense .i just could not get out what i wanted to say.

she never told me how to let go of stuff . she was talking some about doing that but it made no sense because i have kind of but if i cant control my thoughts how can i let them go .i know this cant be true. i am confused and i hate talking about this stuff. i don't know why .it hurts but it does .grrrrrrrrrr i want to understand what she is saying but something keeps me from that .she says it is the huge part of me that was so traumatized by the mother . i don't know it can't be that bad .i don't even hardly talk about her

Honey, the only way to rid yourself is to let it all out so T can help you sort through it and fix what you can, pitch what you don't need and add new thoughts to replace some of the bad ones. T is there to help, i know it sucks Granite, but we are all with you cheering you on.

i know what you are saying lola .it sux and i hate it .but one moment she says that things wont change and then she says that i need to let go .and in the end it is all crap.

((Granite))

Sometimes I think I don't know how therapy works.
Sometimes I think I do know, and I don't like it!
But painful as it is, it does work.

I think she was saying that things won't change unless you address it granite.

Getting use to hearing words that describe our parents or the treatment we received as children, when they are negative, is very hard for us to hear. My way of hearing this stuff would be to not respond to what T was saying. I'd look away or sometimes even at her (very unusual as I hardly even look at her when we talk about anything). SO she would repeat what she was saying until I responded in some way... anyway.... a blink, a sigh, a slight movement in my chair. I hated it when she would use the word neglected, or abused to describe my childhood. T just wanted me to hear the words and accept that this was the way I was being treated as a child. I know there were times when I didn't hear words she was saying because I couldn't admit to myself that what she was saying related to me. But the truth is that what T says to me is only said to help me accept and move on to the truth. She wants me to accept it, acknowledge it and move through it so we can get to healing it. As hard as it is to hear negative terms for our parents (unless, of course, it is coming from our mouths) it is necessary that we hear and acknowledge what our parents did on that kind of outwardly verbal, coming from another witness, level.

The time it takes to slog through is horrible. But the time will pass, whether we slog through or not, so why not do it and come out on the other side?

Everything I've read about trauma and neurology (another interest because of my mother's many strokes) suggests that reparative experiences do, in fact, create new synapses in the brain. New neural pathways are created. It is not hopeless.

The way my T explains it is like this...and please don't think I'm being simplistic or harsh, I'm trying to think this out with you.

Abuse happened to us. We are hurt and permanently scarred by that abuse. We have to accept what happened to us. We have to grieve what happened to us and what we lost. We have to deal with the feelings surrounding the abuse (I am still not quite certain as to how). Then we start to let it go.

I remember some of those concepts related to change in brain structure from school that your T was talking about. Those physical changes cannot heal. Usually we develop bad coping strategies to deal with all the feelings. My T says that certain urges I have will never go away. I have to learn to choose not to give into them. I asked her if it was really so simple as a choice. She said the choice would be hard at first, then become easier as we make the right choices more often. They become habit. We have to choose them over and over again. Then sometimes, our life might get stressful and some of our old habits resurface because we are stressed and make unhealthy choices. Then we might return to a T, or get a loved one to help us get back on track.

I don't know if this makes any sense at all. I'll re-read this in the morning (well, later in the morning as it's 2:30 am), but your post and desire to understand really resonated with me and I want to help, Granite.

I've heard this also, by one psychiatrist, in regard to one of my clients. He was convinced with a low dose of an anti-psychotic and positive experience, this client would break free from her autism.

Do you believe this might be true for someone developmentally disabled? Do you think there is hope for all people to heal?

((( granite )))

I wish I was further along in the process, as I am in a similar place. Not understanding what will come out of talking about it. My T insists that by talking about it - releasing the pent up emotions - and then reworking it with his help, that I can come to a place of peace. I wish I could trust that it was true...but I won't know for sure unless I give it a try. That's the scary part.

Would you mind sharing the name of the book? I'd be interested in reading it. (( HUGS ))

(((chickie))) I just don't know. I know talking helps ease the pressure. Like when I use a pressure cooker...releasing the steam in a controlled manner thru the valve makes it safe to open the pot. Talking releases the pressure, and sooner or later we will be able to open the pot up. Hopefully. But at 1 hr per week, it takes a very long time.

Do you believe this might be true for someone developmentally disabled? Do you think there is hope for all people to heal?

I think I do. I'm not saying everyone reaches some standard level, but I do think many conditions can be improved either through direct mediation or by the development of alternate routes. I think the changes can be more dramatic the earlier the intervention. Also adults may have less plasticity in the brain, but they have developed other skills, so maybe it balances out.

I know that appropriate, competent, empathic therapy works from my own experience. In the depths of my worst depression, I was pretty agoraphobic (and I had those tendencies since childhood, inherited from my mother). Now I'm an ex-pat!

More specifically, a couple of months ago I went through a pretty traumatic experience (everything is fine now). But that experience triggered an onslaught of feelings from childhood that I hadn't experienced in more than a decade. I really felt like I was thrown back to square one. But those feelings, intense as they were, lasted one night. They didn't take hold of me. I didn't spiral. It was more like they just passed through me. I reacted differently in that I did things to take care of myself that I never knew or could do before.

What made the difference? I believe it is because those new pathways were in my brain and allowed me to react differently. Without being conscious of it, I was able to process what had happened and how I was feeling and separate the echoes of the past from the present in a felt way, not just a talking to myself way.

I couldn't have imagined that ever being possible 15 years ago.

Autism isn't some trauma we experienced. I think it has something to do with the wiring in our brain (totally overgeneralization). I don't think it is something you "catch" or a response to something that "happened." I also wonder if "breaking free" of autism is a good thing. Temple Grandin says she wouldn't change who she is. I've heard that from other Asperger types.

Asperger's generally bring incredible gifts to society/gene pool, along with their difficulties. Do we want to help Edison, Einstein, Gates, Temple Grandin "break free" of their Asperger's? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...trum_disorders

There are more severe forms of Autism - but in the severe form (actually, I think Asperger's and Kanner's autism are two different things that look like they are on a spectrum) how in the world do you do talk therapy with someone with little to no language. I'm not even sure how to do embodiment, or art therapy, or other non-verbal forms of therapy. Maybe. I also imagine it has been tried and if someone had figured out how to do it it would be published.

I don't know if everyone can be helped. I don't know if everyone can be healed. I think many people with disabilities, even mental disabilities, can be helped. I think some people without recognized disabilities aren't helped, and don't know if that's because they can't be helped, or no one has yet been successful, and I don't know if the "breakthrough" is minutes or hours or decades away. I don't know how to identify which ones might not be able to be helped, so I'd probably be willing to try with everyone.



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I hope the brain synapse thing is correct, because I don't see any value so far in the talking. Having told things or saying them aloud has not made them less horrible to me that I can see so far.

I think you and I get along much better than we did when we first started here, so I believe some learning has taken place.

Also did you see in the nytimes, the guy who invented Underdog died.

The loss of underdog guy did not go unnoticed. I read about it.

And you did understand that I hope I have learned to be less of a butt, right?

Yes, I think we have learned better how to communicate with each other and I am glad.

I don't think it's just the talking. That's a way to begin a process, but I think purely cognitive work can only effect purely cognitive change. I think the limbic system has to be engaged in the work to experience felt change in that area. Hopefully, the two work together. I never found that talking made the content less horrible; but the activation of new areas of feeling and incorporating those new experiences helped to replace the painful responses.

i wish i was so able to understand this more because this is the kind of stuff my T is talking some about .but i don't understand it and it just sounds like she is telling me that things are not going to change and i need to let go. i cant believe that.but then she says that is not what she is saying. i truly cant seem to stay engaged enough to just listen and understand . i am freaking out at the simplest things and don't know why .i do this and then loose any hope of understanding or even remembering what she is saying

Granite, it seems perfectly reasonable to me that you feel like you can't make sense of it. When I was dealing with all of this horribleness, I was in grad school. I just barely got by: it felt like my brain just wouldn't work. Unfortunately, I had to stay enrolled in order to keep getting therapy that I could afford. So it was a juggling act to get through the easiest ways I could, and I still failed a couple of classes that would have been difficult on a good day.

A friend of mine lost her college aged daughter to a drunk driver. She was writing her MA thesis at the time. For 2 years after, she couldn't write. She just couldn't put words together in a way that made any sense.

I think the stress of processing everything you're struggling with just takes up all the space and effort. It is what it is. It's ok.

But I would try to tell your T that while you feel soothed by her reading to you, you're feeling overwhelmed by the content.

For now your mind is programmed to respond a certain way but like you were molded this way, you can be molded in a different way today. Clean out how you have been molded and then you can work on a way to remold yourself.

The controlling is interfering with the letting go. You can't do both.

I think that this should be one of the first things to be dealt with.