Struggling with what to do. It seems I'm getting no where with C. Time and again she has triggered us even tho I have told her about triggers. It seems she doesn't listen to the pain and doesn't meet who ever is out where they are at. She often looks bored and inattentive. Sometimes things click and I think that maybe the other times were just flukes. But lately the times things click are the flukes.

Last session set one of my insiders back to square one. Back to feeling like "nothing" and back to c*tting. C triggered her with the same things that she told C were triggers.

Is it time to change, quit therapy all together and try to do it ourselves or what??
W_I

[Perna]

I think it is hard with triggers. I don't believe triggers are for avoiding but for disarming. And, you can't disarm them if you don't handle them. Has anyone asked your T "why" she does things that trigger? I would assess her genuine attitude if I could, see if she's "trying" to help. It's very hard working with another person because one is not that person and all you have is "words" to work with them. I would try to have everyone discuss triggers with T and how to work with triggers and what one can do when triggered, etc. and see what everyone thinks after everyone is on the "same page" about the subject and understands what the therapist thinks. I don't know that it can get better with another therapist though if everyone isn't understanding where any therapist stands, haven't talked to the therapist and had real "conversations" back and forth, and knows the therapist is trying to help versus doesn't care.

[Junerain]

For white_iris,

It is said communication is 99% non-verbal....I'm hearing that your T is communicating IN THIS WAY that she doesn't genuinely care, or only care when it's convenient for her. For me, I know my T genuinely cares about me, and I wish this in the deepest way for you, for all people here at PC. You may have to start at square one and explain yourself all over again but square one will only last a short while. Talk to therapists on the phone and ask questions like, What kind of therapy do you do? Do you deal with issues of cutting or other issues you have? Get a feel for what their answers are- again, you will probably sense non-verbally where their heart is. Write us again and let us know how you are, not only about your T but how you are doing...

[withit]

I'm all for going with your gut instincts.
When I first started out with my t and she became aware of my triggers she apologized on those occasions when she inadvertantly triggered me. There were times when she'd trigger me and I'd yell, "STOP!!!!!" and she'd say, in her very caring and compassionate and warm way, "I think you're not yet ready to hear this." A few years into treatment, when I still reacted to certain words (such as 'abuse') she would say, again in her warm gentle way, "I think you need to hear this. Can you tolerate it just this time? Take a deep breath and relax.... " And she'd listen to me talk about what the word triggered.
It's now years later and I don't get so easily triggered by stuff she says. I'm stronger now, so I could contain it better.

I wanna share an incident. I took my 9-yr old daughter to a therapist. (School said she's acting out and referred my daughter to an 'excellent therapist').
My daughter has never met this woman and she held onto me, clinging, at least for the first 20-30 minutes of the session. She was too scared to stay with the therapist in the room and needed me in there. I'm ok with that, I understand it takes her time to develop trust in this therapist. I figured I'll stay in the room with her for the first session or two and gently wean her off it.
So therapist sees my daughter clinging to me and she says, "You're not a baby, you don't need to hold onto mommy like that!" A few short minutes later, "You're a big girl, you can let go of mommy, you're not a baby!"
I called her the next day and asked her if it's ok that I ask her about things I notice in session. She said by all means I should ask, so I went ahead and asked, "I noticed you were telling my daughter she is not a baby. You mentioned it more than once, and I'm wondering how that is helpful to her." Honestly, I expected an apology from her. I expected her to say she erred and would be more careful in the future. But to my utter astonishment she said, "She WAS acting immature, wasn't she?" I said, "I think she was acting her age as an anxious child" Her response to that was, "She was not acting her age and I talk to children according to the way I want them to act." Huh? By telling my daughter she's not a baby my daughter will stop 'being a baby'?????? Never mind that she wasn't acting like a baby to begin with, she was acting appropriately as a 9-yr-old anxious kid!
Anyway, I told her I would no longer bring my daughter to her. I wasn't gonna let her psychologically hurt my daughter again. A good therapist would recognize that my daughter's clinginess was due to anxiety and would probably reassure my daughter that it's ok to be anxious the first time.
We really have to trust our gut instincts when it comes to deciding whether a therapist is helpful or not.

There are some good thoughts here, thank you. I do understand the need to move on and begin to work on triggers. I guess my concern right now is that C came at things very backward. She began with telling Naomi aren't you glad that it is all over with, that it's all past and your life is good now---then as Naomi told her that it was true thing were good now, but she was hurting and remembering some bad things that happened and had a new painful memory.....then C told her that she wasn't maimed or crippled or in some way permanently damaged and there were no scars etc....then told her of a client who was blinded in one eye by scalding water thrown by a parent. and said to her "this person will have to live with this the rest of her life as a reminder....you haven't been maimed or scared."

Ok, that was a big trigger as mother always said "you have nothing to be sad or upset about, there is always someone worse off...." and "thank God you aren't crippled or hurt or something...." "be grateful i didn't k*ll you"

then came the speel on breathing and watching funny movies or reading a book to get out of the moment. Yes, grounding is important, but LISTENING and helping Naomi walk thru the pain and the memories first and then help her to ground.....

C has done this several times. Not listened, not met us where we are at and helped us thru a memory.

It's not just the triggers, tho we have told her about how she says so many things mother has said to us....it's that she doesn't seem to hear the pain....and if she starts to work with anyone on a plan of coping, she doesn't continue that course of therapy. Seems to us she is just tired of us or that we are too high maintanance for her.

I don't mean to divert the thread from the original topic but I do want to start with a post to Withit...

One thing that therapists have learned is that the way children act in the presence of their parents can be quite different from how they act when their parents aren't around.

I'll give you an example with fear of school... Lets say it is the first day of school and the kid has never been to school before. What kids do is assess the situation via their parents emotional responses. If the parent is very anxious about leaving their kid then the kid can pick up on the parents anxiety (kids are amazingly smart) and because their parent is anxious the kid thinks there must be something to fear and so the kid gets upset.

Is it normal for a 9 year old to cling to her Mother?

In some circumstances, sure. But I guess I'm wondering how much of her anxiety was due to your anxiety. This is not at all to blame you. That point is really important.

I'm just thinking that what the therapist was attempting to do was see how your kid responded to her saying 'you aren't a baby you are a big girl'. What the therapist was trying to convey was 'I'm not going to treat you like a baby and tell you what to do. I trust that you are grown up enough to have your own thoughts and feelings and opinions and we can work together to figure out what is going on'. I know you say that you felt upset at the therapist saying that. I guess I'm wondering how much of your kids upset was in response to your upset rather than in response to what the therapist was saying, however.

I'm saying this because I've read some stuff about strategies that therapists can use when working with kids around your kids age. This strategy is one of them and it can work to good effect indeed. I think that it is an accepted strategy for working with kids your daughters age. Just to suss out what is happening with respect to your daughters anxiety... Whether there was some kind of rapport with what the therapist was saying or what.

If you didn't know it was a common strategy (which you did not) I surely do understand your concern that what she said didn't seem to be particularly validating.

Sometimes... Have you ever seen a little kid (toddler) fall over hard and then look around to assess the situation? What I've noticed is that if the parents go 'oh you poor thing oh sweetie oh' then the kid will ball its little eyes out. If the parent goes 'oh that was a whoopsie daisy' or something similar and swoops them up and distracts them by drawing their attention to something else 'look at this over here...' then often times the kids don't cry.

The latter strategy might seem invalidating of distress... But... In this case the validation seems to be what causes the distress.

Does this make sense?

Hey white iris :-)

I'm glad you described the situation in more detail. It helps to know what you mean by the sorts of triggering things that you find your therapist to be saying...

Is there any way you could bring yourself to print off (or copy paste into word print) your post and show your therapist?

I understand why you found what she said to be triggering. I've never had anybody tell me I should be thankful I'm not worse off but I'd feel pretty upset if someone told me that when I was telling them how distressed I felt. It is invalidating of your distress.

What your t was doing though... Was to provide you with strategies that she thought could help you to alleviate your distress. Some people find that reflecting on how things could be worse helps them to feel better about the way things actually are. If one was looking to change ones emotion then that could be helpful.

But sometimes one isn't looking to change the emotion, one is looking to actually feel the emotion and work through things. You needed her to accept that you were distressed. To tolerate your distress without trying to change it. To tell you that it was understandable that you were feeling distressed. To just sit with you in your distress so you didn't have to bear it alone. So that you could decide what to do with it. To tell her more about it... Or to indicate that you wanted to know how to make it stop.

It sounds like she misjudged things a little. But it also sounds to me like she cares about you and she was trying to help you even though she did indeed misjudge the situation.

I'm thinking that you guys should be able to work through this... Maybe it is that she really can't tell what you need. Maybe you could work out signals or some way of indicating to her what you need. I know this is hard... But they aren't mindreaders. I always find other people to be surprisingly dense when it comes to them reading my mind and figuring out what I need :-(

Sometimes it can be hard because I really really really think it is bloody obvious what I need. If they don't notice then it is because they aren't paying attention or because they don't care. One thing I learned in DBT, however, was that even though I was pretty damned sure it was bloody obvious... It really seemed to be the case that... It wasn't obvious to others. I had to learn how to communicate what I needed to my clinician. We had to talk about it and figure out some signals.

IMHO that is what is going on (breakdown in communication). You have a chance to learn better communication skills (that should generalise back to real life too as you learn to verbalise what you need)

:-)

Please don't give up sweetie.

[DavidStrong]

Meta-analysis of different therapy types (Smith & Glass, 77; 81) shows that there isn't one orientation that is better than any other (and that medication has an independent effect). The most important thing is that you have faith in the therapist and the process of therapy. I would say go with that feels right.

[JimmyClifton]

Doesn't the literature also show that some therapies are better than others for some Dx's?

After several discussions and good open talk with our T, we decided to give it another shot. She admitted she made a big mistake in "running over" our feelings and had her own agenda and tried to "fix" instead of listen and really see what our needs were.
We both agreed to work on things that will make the therapy relationship better on both sides. Which means both of us taking more responsibility for our parts.
It was a good move I think since she helped me realize that she is so NOT like our abusers that when she makes a mistake she admits it and doesn't blame me.

One foot in front of the other....
w_i

Oh that is wonderfully good news, I'm happy for you.

yes, "One foot in front of the other...."

w_i-

[(JD)]

good to hear the news... TC!

[JonB]

Great news. I always hem and haw over confronting my T about something he's saying or doing that isn't working for me or some change I'd like to see. And after all that worrying about it, it always seems to go well and result in better understanding between us and if I'm asking for something he usually gives it. Which is a constant reminder to me that if you want something, you have to ask for it. On the other hand, if you don't want something you have to give them the hand. Hope things continue to work out for you with this T.