[MrsDuckL]

The thread on getting worse in psychotherapy got me thinking...
(My apologizes if this is more of a thread for the trauma group, but I find that board triggering for me personally.)

For those of you with trauma and abuse background, has anyone experienced things getting worse before they get better? I’ve shared on here before—I’m six months into weekly therapy, and as an adult in my 30s, I’m processing for the first time in my life the verbal and physical abuse I experienced by my mom growing up, in addition to the sexually inappropriate ways my dad would behave around me. I’m an only child, and I’m only in contact with my dad and he denies anything bad every happened.

I feel lucky to have finally found a really wonderful therapist. He is kind, empathetic, gentle, and let me move at my own pace/ set the topic of our discussions. (His style is pretty close to Rogerian therapy.) I journal and meditate, which both help me clarify and organize my thoughts.

However, I’ve never been on such an emotional rollercoaster since starting therapy! (This is my first time doing therapy.) For the first time in my life, I’m experiencing regular paralyzing panic attacks, and a times of dark, inconsoable depression. Prior to starting therapy, I was a calm, level headed person, although everything was always muted and I felt like I never really experienced a full rage of emotions. I always bring up in session when I have a panic attack, and my therapist and I both agree this is part of the mourning journey. My therapist does worry about my panic attacks and them linked to us moving too quickly, so we move slowly, which is fine for me and my very slow ability to trust.

Anyhow—just curious if people with a similar background have experienced this period of getting worse before it gets better? End of this month will be 6 months/ approx 22 sessions and I’ve never felt worse in a lot of ways! I plan on bringing this up in my next session (“dear T, we just hit the 6 month mark and I feel worse! ), but curious to hear from others if anyone would like to share. Thanks in advance!

[Out There]

Yes, I experienced things getting worse before they got better. I liken it to having a pus filled infection - it sort of heals over and seems OK on the surface but there's a deep wound. And we don't really want to touch it understandably because it hurts and cleaning it out is painful but we feel better when we do. It's hard work though and I've tried to duck out of therapy when it's got difficult. Talking to your T is a good idea. My T says you can never go too slow with trauma work but you can go too fast. To be where you are after 6 months seems quite good - it took me a lot longer !

[zoiecat]

Yes I've experienced this situation to be totally normal I am coming up on one year and I see my therapist twice a week. I have experienced ups and downs and some really really Lowe's so yes things do tend to get worse before they get better. The problem is my therapist has explained it is that when I started therapy I was numb I felt no emotions at all now I'm starting to feel emotions and that hurts that's painful. But he said the only way to get better is to work through being able to tolerate your emotions he said that even when I was numb the emotions were still there and they were still affecting me which is why I would stuff them down with food but now I'm feeling them more and so it feels worse.

Also as therapy has progressed I have learned that I have DID and as I've started to communicate with my parts I'm regaining a lot of memories from childhood. These are not good memories although I never really had any good memories before either.

The good thing is it sounds like you have a really good therapist who specializes in trauma. I am lucky in that respect as well. It is a long slow process and it is not linear it's not just going to go up it's a rollercoaster. I've been journaling for most of the past year and sometimes when I feel that things are the worst it's good to look back at some of my old journals to see how far I have come. While experiencing emotions sucks I have seen improvements in other ways but I know it will take a very long time to work through all of my issues. Try your best to stick with it things will get better eventually.

When I first went into therapy, it was because I had become extremely depressed and anxious but didn't really understand what was happening to me. I was young and had just left a sexually abusive situation, so I was sort of living in a fog. So, I was already headed downward when I entered therapy -- I can't really say therapy caused me to get worse. It was more a matter of already heading in that direction and that condition combined with the focus on what was going on with me internally led to my condition continuing to decline.

Now that I think about it, that was the case each time I entered into therapy. I went into therapy knowing I was heading into a situation where I needed that additional support.

Yes, my symptoms increased in therapy. I don't think that is particularly unusual when you start facing your demons head on instead of masking them, suppressing them, avoiding them, staying dissociated from them.

What I do know is that if I had not had the support to get through those dark times, I would have taken my own life. I would not have made it. But I did get through and actually got beyond my past. It took many years of therapy to get there, but I am very mentally well now. It took a willingness on my part to walk through that darkness to get there though. It would have been very tempting to run from the work and the pain, but I know the only place I would have run to would have been my own demise.

[kecanoe]

For me, things definitely got worse, for a long time. I hope that your time of "worse" is far less than mine.

[Amyjay]

There really isn't an easy ride when dealing with old trauma unfortunately. Growing up, without support to deal with traumas, you just kind of stuff them down and figure out the best way to get on with things. Which works sometimes and sometimes doesn't. To actually deal with the traumas and their effects you have to take them out and really look at them and that means feeling painful stuff and thinking about painful stuff you have tried to avoid for most of your life.
It definitely hurts more than not looking at it, but it can lead to processing it effectively and truly integrating so that you don't have to spend the rest of your life avoiding stuffing pretending suppressing or dealing with it bursting through and smacking you in the face whenever it gets triggered up.
It is hard but if done right it will be worth it.

[Carmina]

tbh I think I would expect things to get worse while you are working through stuff, and that is part of the process. I often feel terrible and very raw after a session and yet at the same time know it is helping me in the long run.

[seeker33]

Yes, I was in a similar situation at the beginning and from time to time still am.
It is very important to learn grounding and mindfulness. Also, just accepting it and not being afraid of your emotions. They need to come out, you must clean your soul from all the dirt.

[here today]

For me, things got worse and, ultimately, have not gotten a lot better. I'm guessing that it was that the early therapists I saw did NOT understand trauma as they do now, and thus messed things up, in addition to adding their own trauma because I was seeking "help", in the ways authorized by our society, and got hurt instead.

I did eventually get to the core of a lot of stuff with my last therapist, a specialist in trauma and dissociation, but she had her own stuff, too, which eventually led to a rupture without repair.

It sounds like you are moving forward well with a therapist who understands trauma. For me looking backward, I ignored and didn't know what to do about a number of "red flags" and intuitions about the therapists -- because of emotions and parts of myself that had been dissociated due to my early childhood trauma!

Not that you asked, but from my perspective something that might be good at the end of the trauma road is help getting back into society, or into it really for the first time. In my experience, individual therapy is not enough for that, and my long history of "being worse" eliminated a lot of my involvement with other people, either because I turned them off or, later, because I isolated myself.

[nottrustin]

Unfortunately what you are experiencing is pretty normal. T has told me many times that in therapy things often get worse before they get better.

[stopdog]

For me, therapy made things worse and they never got better. Some others have reported better luck with therapy than I had. I found a different use for it for which it was not damaging because it simply could not be. There was no way for the woman to **** up what I ended up using therapy for.

[ttomgirl]

If I may,, I have had the same issue when I was forced into therapy. It brought up so many horrible memories and I got even more depressed than I ever thought could be possible. What I found to help me deal with my past, and it got me out of my funk. And I found out how to find my inner me and learned to forgive myself, love myself and just be a better overall person. I went to Preside meditation by Artie Wu. Changed my life.

[Lemoncake]

To be honest it's only around now (almost a year in) that I can actually see for myself how I've changed in the small ways from when I first started. I've cried solidly through most of it and can count on two hands the number of sessions I haven't cried. I used to think that I felt so awful because all we were doing was talking about painful things and bringing up the past.

It is painful but it will be worth it.