[ultramar]

Over the years I've weaved in and out of talking about trauma from my past -some childhood past, some long-ago-but-adult past. It's felt good being heard, and getting some stuff out there, but beyond that, I don't feel like it's been a huge help. It is, nonetheless, very painful, and on one occasion really destabilized me (we quickly pulled back).

I feel like there needs to be a purpose to the pain.

The thing is, my feeling is that I don't want to dig into this stuff unless I feel like it will help me in some way in the here and now. When I do (at least try) to talk about it, it is with the goal in mind of that it may improve relationships with men (in the case of one thing) and help me with my anxiety (in the case of another issue). So far not so good, but who knows what the future will bring. Though, I actually feel that my relationship with my therapist itself is what has most helped me with relationships in general, not the content of what I've talked about.

My question is this: it's hard for me to believe that talking about trauma in therapy will improve my life in the here and now, unless I'm doing it in the context of trying to improve something specific in the here and now (or at least with this in the back of my mind). Am I alone in this? Has anyone else approached it this way? Have you gained some benefit -current relationships, mood, etc.- in the here and now? Do you believe that no matter the tangible benefit or lack thereof (in the present or future) it's useful/necessary to talk about trauma? If so, why?

Has anyone had their life change for the better after working through difficult issues from the past? Is part of your motivation for wading through the muck to improve current issues? Are there other motivators? Has your therapist talked about goals in regards to talking about trauma?

As usual, I have a lot of questions. I'm very unsure about this stuff. Thanks.

[tinyrabbit]

I've not been in therapy that long and haven't done any deep trauma work, but I've definitely seen some improvements. I stopped picking arguments with my husband, stopped catastrophising and stresscalating - all ways of redirecting or displacing my feelings. Weirdly, I've also stopped being ill. I used to get coughs, colds and infections all the time, but I haven't been ill once since starting therapy. My T says I go there to be sick in a different way.

The way I see it, the trauma that's 'in there' can only be hurting me and getting rid of it is bound to have positive effects on things like my self-image. I believe trauma hangs around until you work through it, and getting it out can only be a good thing. And it may be affecting you in ways you don't directly attribute to it.

My T's approach to trauma is that going through the details can be incredibly retraumatizing, so if we are going to go there, it is only if it serves to help me in the here and now. It is an approach I have found very respectful of my own boundaries.

We've had to rehash some difficult memories, but we go into knowing ahead of time why we are going there, stay only as long as absolutely needed, and process what we discover always in the context of what it has to do with my life today. In this manner, we don't have to go back and back and back and flog me continuously with ancient history just for the sake of rehashing it. Therefore, when future discussions relate to that particular trauma, we can simply reference that memory as opposed to completely rehashing it each and every time.

For me, this approach has worked well. My trauma history has been able to be delegated to its rightful place in my life--history--and I have been much more able to stay grounded in the present where my memories no longer run my life.

[lemon80s]

Since I am thinking about this a lot too, being at the beginning of therapy and knowing what's ahead in talk-therapy and ptsd stuff, I am googling myself silly. Thought I'd share this, it's a guide for therapists and how they are to explain to clients why it's good to talk about such things.

http://davidtrickey.com/wp-content/u...alk-070312.pdf

[Leah123]

Trauma work is the very hardest kind for me. It's incredibly draining and painful. I undertake it because the trauma I haven't worked through unconsciously hurts my current relationships and diminishes my own power and wholeness.

I want to work through all the trauma deliberately in order to relegate it to memories- I don't want it to affect me as much as it does today. I have post traumatic stress disorder as a result of it, so for me, it's necessary work. My therapist encourages us to work slowly and gently through it, and I think she's right in this approach. We balance our work between current and past topics.

I have found some relief, indirectly, doing this work. The primary issue I wanted to address: eliminating angry outbursts at my daughter- I've had some success with. I didn't realize what was triggering the outbursts and other negative reactions, so.. .it's been a hard learning process, but I can now manage them somewhat, which is significant progress.

[unaluna]

Originally Posted by lemon80s

Since I am thinking about this a lot too, being at the beginning of therapy and knowing what's ahead in talk-therapy and ptsd stuff, I am googling myself silly. Thought I'd share this, it's a guide for therapists and how they are to explain to clients why it's good to talk about such things.

http://davidtrickey.com/wp-content/u...alk-070312.pdf

I love the chocolate factory example! Turned out I had left over, unwrapped product from each year sitting on the shelves and ended up reworking it into the batches... something like that!

[wotchermuggle]

I just wanted to share that by talking about the parts of trauma and understanding about how/why they happened and things that happened because of the trauma, I get a better sense of why I do the things I do or why I react to other people the way I do. Knowing that type of stuff lets me be more mindful and understanding of current situations and helps me to make positive changes.

Does that make sense or is it too abstract?

[ultramar]

Originally Posted by wotchermuggle

I just wanted to share that by talking about the parts of trauma and understanding about how/why they happened and things that happened because of the trauma, I get a better sense of why I do the things I do or why I react to other people the way I do. Knowing that type of stuff lets me be more mindful and understanding of current situations and helps me to make positive changes.

Does that make sense or is it too abstract?

This makes a lot of sense -thanks!

[Favorite Jeans]

I love the idea of knowing why before starting. It sounds very focused and organized. In my experience though the "why" only starts to become clear in retrospect. I think trauma work is important because if trauma is part of our life story, it is very hard to make sense of that story while omitting that key part.

[Moodswing]

Exposure Therapy sucked and I could not handle it but it did take the "charge" out of the memories and stopped some flashbacks that were linked to those memories.

[Favorite Jeans]

So, as for the "here and now" part... I started therapy becuse I felt like I was getting jerked around all the time by feelings I wasn't even conscious of. For example every time I had to return to my hometown I felt panic stricken and pukey and even started feeling like it would be better to die than just make a day trip to celebrate someone's birthday. I knew this wasn't reasonable but I kept feeling it anyway.
As I've started to unpack that a lot of different things have come up, a lot of disparate threads and memories of some traumatic things. And I never went in meaning to tackle one specific traumatic time, event or relationship. Just that one thing led to another and some of it has been very unpleasant. I think I've started to trust that things will unfold as they need to and that when I find that--oh my god-- the next part of this narrative is about something deeply upsetting, I need to stay with it and ride it out. My process apparently has its own agenda which will not be ignored! The best I can do is slow it down here and there or take a break from a topic and spend a session or two on something lighter. And I can't say what happens at the end because I'm not there, but I can say that I now usually have a pretty good idea why I feel anxious and freaked out about going to my hometown. So it's not gone, but at least it's not puzzling anymore!

[stopdog]

In my situation, the therapist sees trauma where I don't. It is not particularly upsetting for me to tell the therapist about it, but I also don't see what the point of it is.

[unaluna]

Originally Posted by stopdog

In my situation, the therapist sees trauma where I don't. It is not particularly upsetting for me to tell the therapist about it, but I also don't see what the point of it is.

You know I would say the same about me - a lot of things werent that bad, but it was the dailiness of it, and then lack of support for the pivotal moments of life, and mostly I just know things were bad because my life is like a black hole - you only know its there because of how objects act around it? So you only know my life is crap because of all the crap flying around it.

If youre asking what the point is? The point for me is like for a comedian - sometimes you really do have a dead audience, sometimes you do the same act and you kill. A t is a guarantee kill audience, to rebuild your ego from growing up with the dead audience. Same act, over and over, til the ego change takes effect.

[stopdog]

I do not agree that a t is a guarantee kill audience.
But the main point for me was that even if there was childhood trauma, which I don't particularly see in the first place, I don't think it always has bearing on adult life.

[growlycat]

My T says that you need to be in a good place to even start trauma work--meaning, you are eating right, exercising, getting enough sleep, have a stable enough life. He compared it to running a marathon, you have to be in condition.

Generally, once I went through processing stuff once, it seemed to be for T's benefit to understand me better. Now that he knows me, he just uses it to help me in my day to day life. Very "now" focused for me.

[feralkittymom]

Though, I actually feel that my relationship with my therapist itself is what has most helped me with relationships in general, not the content of what I've talked about.

I totally get this, and I believe it was my experience as well.

I didn't go into therapy for trauma work. I went because a life-long depression had escalated and was interferring with my life. I had experienced several deaths including my mother's, in a short period of time, and I felt like I was drowning.

I knew I had a difficult childhood, and a very strained relationship with my mother, but I had repressed all conscious memory of abuse. It was only as the depression started to lift that memories started to surface. It was very painful, despite my T's gentleness, and we only dealt with what came up naturally. We didn't dig. But my emotions were out of control because of the memories surfacing, so getting it out was necessary.

But there was no great delving for meaning, though of course insight was inevitable. But the process of sharing those memories, of being heard and accepted, definitely shaped and emotionally deepened our relationship. I think the trauma work was beneficial in getting my emotions under control by dispelling the pain, but also in how it strengthened my T relationship.

[ultramar]

How did you manage to stay stable enough to function during this process? How did your therapist help you?

As I posted on this forum previously, I have a history of telling awful stories with little or no emotion. I'm quite stable emotionally, or have been for some time, and I was feeling that I would never resolve these things if I wasn't able to connect emotionally when talking about it.

So about a month ago, I asked my therapist to help me stay connected emotionally while telling him about something that happened. I had told him about this same thing previously, though I didn't fully get into the worst of it. This is a relatively concrete here and now issue as it is something that has caused a huge amount of anxiety (in general, in life) since. I had also mentioned it recently, so I wanted to start with this. I also thought it somehow made sense to try to connect emotionally with this before trying to connect emotionally with childhood and adolescent issues.

I was tortured (literally, physically) in my late 20's in another country, a very long story, of course. I had talked about the horrific things that ultimately led to this, and only touched on the worst of it, all without emotion as I say. So he helped me connect as I had asked, it helped and worked, and I thought I was okay. By 2 days later, I couldn't leave my house out of terror. I missed a few days of work. My therapist tries to help me not to get down on myself, but I felt like a total failure. I'm stable, it's been a long time, I should be able to do this. Apparently not. I wanted this to help with my anxiety -at least ultimately- but no.

Acute anxiety has historically triggered mania (I have bipolar disorder), though not always. It starts with not sleeping due to anxiety, then the not sleeping leads me to start into a hypomanic leading to manic episode. This happened in this case, though I never made it to full-blown mania, likely because I increased my medication far earlier in the process than I usually do (something my therapist has helped me to do). So this is something else I need to worry about, I need to avoid the anxiety getting to this point.

I know I need to talk to my therapist about this. I haven't yet because of the episode I went into, when I'm like that I'm not able to have a normal conversation. I will, though. But I don't know if I should/could ever circle back to this. I don't know if it will ultimately help with my anxiety, there's no guarantee, so there's no way to know if it's worth it.

I'm interested to hear others' responses, but especially ferralkitty, just because I've gotten the sense that the therapy you were in and the one I am currently in, are similar. How did your therapist help with the fallout, did you circle back to things when it got too overwhelming, etc. I think it's possible with me that it just might not be a good idea to get into this, maybe it will only hurt me and not help, I don't know. Maybe I'll be able to at some point emotionally connect when talking about other things in a way that will be helpful, but just not this. I just don't know.

[feralkittymom]

Got to go to work--I'll be back.

[feralkittymom]

I’m so sorry that happened to you, Ultramar.

I can’t speak to how the anxiety and bi-polar and trauma work interrelate, but I’m sure your T can address that. It does sound, however, like your anxiety is related to past trauma that isn’t resolved (even though it seems to be sleeping.)

My first two years of therapy were mostly shifts between depression and dissociation. My T was very frustrated because he didn’t want to push and re-traumatize me, but the dissociation kept me from allowing him a connection. It was very slow going.

I never had the issue of deadened emotions, though I guess the depression took care of that. When the depression lifted, I found my emotions were very volatile and reactive to the memories that were surfacing. I felt overwhelmed and quite fragile. My T once told me that he had often worried about my stability and whether I wouldn’t have been better served in an inpatient setting. But he said I always seemed to be able to pull back and rebalance, so he stopped being so concerned about it.

I couldn’t verbalize the memories without dissociating, so he had me write them. Although he wanted me to read them aloud, I almost never could, so he would read them silently and then, by repeating a phrase, get at the underlying feelings. It became very important to me that he physically hold those writings. It was a tangible gesture that reflected his holding of my feelings. I was deeply afraid that I couldn’t contain them, yet was equally afraid of them once they were articulated. I needed to be able to trust him to capture them and keep them away from me, keep me safe from them. Impose a limit on them as they felt limitless to me. A bit like caging wild animals. It also gave me a powerful sense of permission that it was OK to not carry the feelings with me. At the same time, leaving that piece of me with him allowed me to feel connected and cared for.

It was also very important that my T made himself available to me as needed. I remember once a very painful Saturday morning session (my usual time at that stage) that left me very agitated. He told me to call him that night or the next morning if I needed him. I said, “You work Sundays, too????” He said he didn’t usually, but that he could choose to meet with me if I needed him. Knowing that I always had that option if I felt too overwhelmed was important. It enhanced the trust and gave me the confidence to continue.

My T was also careful to manage pretty tightly any regression. He never let me forget that I was an adult with strengths and skills that I didn’t have as a child. He never let me get too lost in the past.

I relied on all of this to let the memories come (the alternative was depression/dissociation), yet keep largely stable in my life.

So he helped me connect as I had asked, it helped and worked, and I thought I was okay. By 2 days later, I couldn't leave my house out of terror. I missed a few days of work. My therapist tries to help me not to get down on myself, but I felt like a total failure. I'm stable, it's been a long time, I should be able to do this. Apparently not. I wanted this to help with my anxiety -at least ultimately- but no.

I don’t think this sort of reaction is unusual, and it certainly doesn’t represent failure. Trauma doesn’t respect boundaries of time and space psychologically. You can only meet it when and where it appears. Also, connecting the felt emotion with the event is, I think, a beginning or a means to an end, not the goal in itself. I think there’s a lot of cognitive work that also needs to surround and integrate the newly felt experience with the rest of your life. This might also help to ground you during the work.

I know the literature views all traumas as sharing similar responses, but intuitively I don’t know if that’s true. I know that in terms of my abuse, it was a much easier task to accept and comfort the toddler than the teen. Issues of power, control, responsibility, and yes, desire and pleasure, made coming to terms with my abuse as a teen much, much more difficult.

In the same way, I don’t know if torture doesn’t have aspects that are unique as a trauma that require different techniques. I know some Ts specialize in torture recovery. Is it possible that emotional recovery in other areas can carry over to the torture experience? Maybe, I don’t know.

I do know that my T saw no need or purpose to digging for every instance of trauma in my life to process. His belief was that the lessons learned, the emotional healing of some traumas would apply to others in the future. And he was right: over the years, I have spontaneously remembered more, and it hasn’t destabilized me. And a more recent trauma, while it shook me momentarily and brought back a lot of old feelings from childhood, didn’t stay with me and destabilize me: the feelings moved through me, and the incident just took its place beside others of the farther past.

I don’t know how much of this helps at all; I hope it helps some. Have you read much in the torture recovery literature? Does it help, or is it too uncomfortable for you?

[Victoria'smom]

we only deal with that when it comes. my suggestion would be to find the counselor that deals with torture trama. I would keep my normal t so that they can help me remain stable while working with the trauma t. your local va may have a list of therapist that deal with Torture trama.

[mixedup_emotions]

Ultramar, I can relate to a lot of your concerns. When I was first struck with flashbacks after witnessing a traumatic event that triggered a lot of my past abuse, I was emotionally detached and was able to speak to T about it without becoming emotionally invested.

Shortly afterwards, I spiraled out of control. I was unable to sleep, eat, function. My mind was constantly racing. I was irritable, restless, panic-stricken. It was horrible, and it lasted for quite some time.

In therapy, we steered clear of it because I needed to become more stable in my life. Each time we addressed it since then, I've dissociated - until a couple sessions ago when I was able to once again emotionally detach from it so I could share some information with T.

One of the things that T stressed to me was that I needed to be in a stable place in life in order to be able to do this work...and that almost everyone that he works with who delves into trauma work reports similar things - anxiety, irritability, fear of losing control, inability to function, etc. He told me that it's important to have a plan in place to help support that process - having people IRL to go to for emotional support, to have an action plan to help release the surge of emotions (whether it's exercise, going for a long walk, smacking a tree with a stick - something physical, usually), having a plan for my daughter so that I don't feel like a failure of a parent when I'm unable to function, etc. Laying the groundwork for as much of that as possible is valuable, so that strategies are in place to combat what may come.

We are starting this work now.

A good book to read it Healing Tasks which describes the steps and process in a way that my T recommends.

[ultramar]

Originally Posted by feralkittymom

I’m so sorry that happened to you, Ultramar.

I can’t speak to how the anxiety and bi-polar and trauma work interrelate, but I’m sure your T can address that. It does sound, however, like your anxiety is related to past trauma that isn’t resolved (even though it seems to be sleeping.)

My first two years of therapy were mostly shifts between depression and dissociation. My T was very frustrated because he didn’t want to push and re-traumatize me, but the dissociation kept me from allowing him a connection. It was very slow going.

I never had the issue of deadened emotions, though I guess the depression took care of that. When the depression lifted, I found my emotions were very volatile and reactive to the memories that were surfacing. I felt overwhelmed and quite fragile. My T once told me that he had often worried about my stability and whether I wouldn’t have been better served in an inpatient setting. But he said I always seemed to be able to pull back and rebalance, so he stopped being so concerned about it.

I couldn’t verbalize the memories without dissociating, so he had me write them. Although he wanted me to read them aloud, I almost never could, so he would read them silently and then, by repeating a phrase, get at the underlying feelings. It became very important to me that he physically hold those writings. It was a tangible gesture that reflected his holding of my feelings. I was deeply afraid that I couldn’t contain them, yet was equally afraid of them once they were articulated. I needed to be able to trust him to capture them and keep them away from me, keep me safe from them. Impose a limit on them as they felt limitless to me. A bit like caging wild animals. It also gave me a powerful sense of permission that it was OK to not carry the feelings with me. At the same time, leaving that piece of me with him allowed me to feel connected and cared for.

It was also very important that my T made himself available to me as needed. I remember once a very painful Saturday morning session (my usual time at that stage) that left me very agitated. He told me to call him that night or the next morning if I needed him. I said, “You work Sundays, too????” He said he didn’t usually, but that he could choose to meet with me if I needed him. Knowing that I always had that option if I felt too overwhelmed was important. It enhanced the trust and gave me the confidence to continue.

My T was also careful to manage pretty tightly any regression. He never let me forget that I was an adult with strengths and skills that I didn’t have as a child. He never let me get too lost in the past.

I relied on all of this to let the memories come (the alternative was depression/dissociation), yet keep largely stable in my life.

So he helped me connect as I had asked, it helped and worked, and I thought I was okay. By 2 days later, I couldn't leave my house out of terror. I missed a few days of work. My therapist tries to help me not to get down on myself, but I felt like a total failure. I'm stable, it's been a long time, I should be able to do this. Apparently not. I wanted this to help with my anxiety -at least ultimately- but no.

I don’t think this sort of reaction is unusual, and it certainly doesn’t represent failure. Trauma doesn’t respect boundaries of time and space psychologically. You can only meet it when and where it appears. Also, connecting the felt emotion with the event is, I think, a beginning or a means to an end, not the goal in itself. I think there’s a lot of cognitive work that also needs to surround and integrate the newly felt experience with the rest of your life. This might also help to ground you during the work.

I know the literature views all traumas as sharing similar responses, but intuitively I don’t know if that’s true. I know that in terms of my abuse, it was a much easier task to accept and comfort the toddler than the teen. Issues of power, control, responsibility, and yes, desire and pleasure, made coming to terms with my abuse as a teen much, much more difficult.

In the same way, I don’t know if torture doesn’t have aspects that are unique as a trauma that require different techniques. I know some Ts specialize in torture recovery. Is it possible that emotional recovery in other areas can carry over to the torture experience? Maybe, I don’t know.

I do know that my T saw no need or purpose to digging for every instance of trauma in my life to process. His belief was that the lessons learned, the emotional healing of some traumas would apply to others in the future. And he was right: over the years, I have spontaneously remembered more, and it hasn’t destabilized me. And a more recent trauma, while it shook me momentarily and brought back a lot of old feelings from childhood, didn’t stay with me and destabilize me: the feelings moved through me, and the incident just took its place beside others of the farther past.

I don’t know how much of this helps at all; I hope it helps some. Have you read much in the torture recovery literature? Does it help, or is it too uncomfortable for you?

Thanks so much, ferralkitty -this is very very helpful and means a lot to me.

[ultramar]

Thanks so much everyone for your responses, ideas, support.

Yes, the (pretty pervasive, especially under certain conditions) anxiety is 100% from the torture, what led to it, etc., I'm definitely aware of that. I had my issues, but never suffered from anxiety until that happened. Emotionally connecting (although not even very much, a little) while talking about it was what put me into that place of terror. The bipolar issue complicates things in that lack of sleep over an extended period of time (for whatever reason, in this case because of my reaction to that session) tends to touch off a process towards mania, which is pretty common; I go into a state very different from anxiety, though who knows to what extent this continued as part of the whole deal in this last case. I started having these episodes long before the anxiety, but the anxiety does now affect it -it's so complicated.

I only have about a couple of episodes a year (if that, I went through about 2 and half years with none), but when it happens, it can get very very bad, losing touch with reality, etc. I'm better now at medicating the he** out of myself relatively early, my therapist has helped with that. He encourages me to accept that 'my brain operates like this sometimes' as he puts it, easier said than done.

I really like, ferralkitty, what you wrote as far as emotional connection to the event not being an end to itself, the cognitive issues, and especially, somehow, integrating this into my life, psychology, as part of the process; I have a long way to go, on this and other issues.

Now that I'm coherent and relatively calm, I'm going to have a good long conversation with my therapist about all of this. We haven't talked a lot about the 'process' and I think this is really needed at this point. The whole concept of integration sounds extremely important to me, but I understand it more intellectually than how to put it into practice.

The idea of writing things down, I like. Writing is comfortable for me, and I think I may be able to reach areas and emotions that I might not be able to otherwise, and perhaps more safely. Though I would need to integrate this into therapy itself, I know it won't work if I just write and give it to him, though reading aloud sounds awful, though may be necessary.

I do feel like such a failure sometimes, what you say ferralkitty helps. I think I need to accept that this is going to be a long road and will involve many steps, no magic, no easy way out, and a lot of work, time, etc.

Leaving those writings with him sounds like a very good idea. Lots to explore here.

I googled torture once, in the context of therapy... I found a couple of things on refugees (which I am not), but didn't get far at all in this research. I didn't see anything on specialized therapy, maybe I will look into it, to bring to therapy.

I definitely won't be seeking out another therapist to deal with this issue. I'm not military, so the VA is not a possibility. I do doubt my therapist has much if any experience with this sort of thing, but I will be talking to him (as I have before) about how to go about this -with him. I've gotten the impression on a couple of occasions that he is not comfortable somehow with me talking about this and other unfortunate things that happened at that time in my life, in that country. I've brought it up more than once. He denies it. I can't be sure if I'm projecting. It is, however, a conversation I will be having again.

A lot of food for thought, a lot to talk about in therapy, thanks everyone.

[boredporcupine]

Here is a book about trauma recovery that you might find helpful: 8 Keys to Safe Trauma Recovery: Take-Charge Strategies to Empower Your Healing (8 Keys to Mental Health): Babette Rothschild: 9780393706055: Amazon.com: Books In the book the author (a trauma therapist) talks a lot about how to decide whether or not to attempt to process the trauma in therapy or otherwise.

I would say that because of your vulnerability to setting off a manic episode, you should NOT try doing any kind of prolonged exposure therapy; those are based on simply tolerating the extreme anxiety of the trauma until it eventually goes away on its own. I think for you that would be way too much anxiety for too long.

I think it's a good idea, IF you decide to delve into this stuff, to find a trauma specialist who is versed in a few different trauma therapy methods besides exposure therapy. A couple I know of are Somatic Experiencing (which is possibly the most gentle method) and EMDR. Whatever you do, be sure to do it in tiny little doses and have lots and lots of support ready for yourself. You could even ask your T to structure your session so you do a 10-minute check in, 10 minutes only of trauma work, then spend the last half hour doing grounding and relaxation so that you can leave the session in a calm place.

[feralkittymom]

I'm at work and can't respond fully now, but perhaps this link would give you some ideas you could share with your T: Treating Survivors of War Trauma and Torture

There are many approaches to trauma processing besides variations on exposure therapy.

I'd be happy to engage with you more, if you'd like, but I'm not sure how. Feel free to send me a PM, if you'd like.