[toffeellen]

I feel embarrassed becasue I think my tdoc thinks i am trying to make him think that I have PTSD after my experiences in hospital.
And I feel embarrassed because I think it must seem like a pretty obvious ploy to avoid acknowledging that its just my own developmental problems. Also I htink maybe he sees it as a way of being a 'victim' and trying to punish them by exaggerating how bad it was eg so making out 'look what you did to me i have PTSD'.

on hte other hand I might be projecting my own suspicions about myself or I might just be being really paranoid.

I read something the other day about what therapists should do in the face of 'do you believe me?'

The guy was saying that the therapists job is to abstain from belief or disbelief (to remain neutral, basically) and to ask the client to tell them more about their take and their experiences.

Therapists who do couples therapy get the take of one partner... Then they get the take of the other partner... And their job is not to take sides (to figure out who is right and who is wrong, who they believe and who they don't believe) the therapists job is to try and see what each person is saying about their experience and to work with it as precisely that.

So... You feel traumatised by your experiences in hospital. People often feel fairly traumatised by their experiences in hospital. Sometimes it can be about thinking that one will feel better while one is in there and since that doesn't seem to be happening one can end up feeling worse (loss of hope that things will improve). Frustration...

I feel traumatised by my experiences with the public service back home. I talk to my current therapist a bit about that at times. It is amazing how much anger and sadness and fear can come up when I start talking about my experiences with clinicians in the public service back home...

My therapist listens to what I have to say... When I say something like 'that %#@&#!... when he did x that hurt me so much' my therapist asks 'do you feel like other people have done similar things to you in your life?' often i can say 'yeah, that was kinda like when my mother did x'. and then the thing is that... i really was powerless back then. i'm not a victim now but i was a victim then. those feelings of victimisation originate (understandably) from earlier experiences... and the reason why i found my experiences in the public service to be traumatic was because they triggered older memories...

i know that hospital environments can be pretty hard core. that being said they are one hell of a lot better than they used to be... i think that the hardest thing for me was that initially i really hoped and believed that the clinicians would help me feel better and that i'd end up feeling better. but i just kind of deteriorated and then felt frustrated and mad at them... and they felt frustrated and mad right back at me because i guess they didn't know what to do in order to help me. they didn't know how to help me get better :-(

but... there is hope. i think that what it can be about... is finding a clinician to talk to... and... to talk about how you FEEL rather than focusing on what people have done to you. you probably were victimised at some point in the past... so your feelings of victimisation are legitimate (of course they are. you have them). whether people did or didn't do this or that... whether people intended to hurt you or not... well... it isn't a therapists job to take sides on that. to believe you or to disbelieve you. it is a fact that you feel victimised... and really at the end of the day nobody can change what happened in the past. what can be done, however, is to work with the feelings that arise for you (and are painful) in the present.