[objectclient]

I had to visit group therapy Ts to discuss why I left the group and felt that it wasn't helping me so they could discharge me and refer me elsewhere.

Going back to the building made me feel ill, physically and mentally. I felt sick and was anxious. The familiarity of the place such as the smell and the sight as well as the memories triggered of group therapy and the group members made me start to dissociate. I wondered who the hell I was when I went there and then it brought me to question who I am now. I also started to space out after about half an hour talking to the Ts but luckily they didn't notice.

Anyway, is all of the above a sign that I was traumatized by my experience of group therapy? I have felt progressively worse since - sick, anxious, dizzy and I'm struggling with unwanted, obsessive and intrusive thoughts and memories about my time there in therapy.

P.s. this is not about my therapy with the ex T I have been posting about previously. This therapy was afterwards.

[unaluna]

I think you are right. I started having flashbacks of my own dbt group just from reading your description. They werent necessarily that bad, but i was very vulnerable at the time, having just left my mothers home.

[here today]

I think I know that feeling, objectclient, at least something like it.

I was traumatized, demeaned by the therapist in a group therapy IOP aftercare about 7 years ago. I didn't exactly know what that kind of trauma was before then (guess I may have felt it as a child but that was in the long, cut-off, distant past)-- didn't even understand that being demeaned in public WAS something to feel traumatized about because I'd been a goody-two-shoes most of my late childhood and adulthood. It was awful. I felt I needed the therapy, felt I was "right" and he was in the wrong and there was nothing I could do about it. Eventually I got so mentally ill from it that I had to go back into IOP and then he didn't want to take me back into the group! I was stoic. Emotions turned off. He complained again about something I did when trying to "be myself" and express something that I usually kept turned off and was just barely aware of it at the time. I told him, OK, I could keep that part turned off and went back. Until he shamed another member of the group and I announced I was leaving.

It's really, truly awful what that kind of therapy abuse can be like.

Hope you're getting some good help now.