How does your T deal with this? (Trigger)

InnerPeace111 · Feb 03, 2020, 11:57 PM

My apologies...I did not mean to imply that LT would tell her spouse about this. Not at all. In fact, that never even crossed my mind.

Quietmind 2 · Feb 04, 2020, 03:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by susannahsays

Sorry, EM, didn't mean to make you worry about what your therapist is doing. I'm sure she's not texting in your session! I've only heard of a couple therapists getting caught playing on their phones during sessions (one was not EMDR, it was psychoanalysis where the client was on a couch facing away from the therapist). Of course, it seems like there are a bunch who think it's appropriate to interact with their phone in a blatant manner during regular therapy, but that's a whole different issue.

That happened to me with my very first therapist, who referred me after 4 sessions. He was fiddling on his phone when I peeked during a guided (with CD) meditation. I was pissed.

Quietmind 2 · Feb 04, 2020, 03:07 AM

LT, my T is neutral about SH, but we work on the underlying trauma fuelling the distress, as well as self soothing.

Blueberry21 · Feb 12, 2020, 08:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ElectricManatee

I get annoyed with EMDR because I feel like the whole time I am sitting there with my eyes closed doing all the work while my EMDR T just occasionally says, "Deep breath... What are you feeling now?... Okay, go with that."

Like, seriously? This is how we are spending this hour? But it seems to help, so I keep doing it, kicking and screaming the whole time.

Hahahaha this made me laugh.

I actually hate how my T says “deeeeeeeeep breath” during EMDR, in a kind of deliberately-low voice that sounds very forced to me. I assume that’s how he was trained, but like, I know what a deep breath is, you don’t have to model it for me.

Also, @ElectricManatee - do you have your eyes closed and use buzzers that pulse, or something?

I have my eyes open and follow T’s fingers as he moves them side to side. Sometimes I think he looks like a conductor. Or like someone from Harry Potter. I wish I got buzzers, I’d probably like that better.

ElectricManatee · Feb 12, 2020, 10:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blueberry21

Also, @ElectricManatee - do you have your eyes closed and use buzzers that pulse, or something?

I have my eyes open and follow T’s fingers as he moves them side to side. Sometimes I think he looks like a conductor. Or like someone from Harry Potter. I wish I got buzzers, I’d probably like that better.

I hold a little buzzer in each hand. She also has a light bar that the buzzers are connected to, but I feel more comfortable with my eyes closed. It's easier to focus that way, and it helps me kind of ignore the fact that she's in the room staring at me. She uses a faster back and forth speed when I'm using the buzzers because she says that your brain can move faster than your eyes. I don't know what the speed really does/means, though.

Kk222 · Feb 13, 2020, 02:12 AM

Hi, I dont post here often but I do read lots. I also didnt get what I needed from my mother, so although out stories arent the same, they are maybe similar. What I see from your posts is not you trying to get your T to respond in a certain way but you reacting to his sometimes lack of compassion. Just something to consider, but for me, the way your T conducts therapy at times would be highly triggering and I wonder if that's some of what's happening for you too.

junkDNA · Feb 21, 2020, 04:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LonesomeTonight

Curious as to how other people's T's deal with this. I suppose most of this will need to be under a trigger warning.

Possible trigger:

I recently had a discussion with my T about SH. It's not something that I do often, and it's, according to him, not a dangerous, i.e., life-threatening, form of it. However, I do have the urges at times, with the most recent being 2 Saturdays ago after a fight with my H. I told Dr. T in session how I'd had those thoughts (but didn't act on them), and he just seemed rather dismissive. In the past, the most he's generally said if I have SHed is, "I'm sorry."

So I decided to type up, in detail, what it feels like when I have those thoughts/urges in my head. How even if I don't act on them, the feelings suck. That I don't want to have them. I went into detail for a few paragraphs. (If anyone wants to see what I wrote, let me know, and I can PM it. Just afraid will be too triggering here.) But I handed that to him close to the end of the next session to let him read it. He didn't say much about it.

So next session, I brought it up. I said that part of me wanted to know how he felt when he read it, but then I was afraid it would sound like I'd given it to him for the purpose of getting a reaction from him. When I just wanted him to "get it," what that felt like for me, how even if I don't act on it, the feelings can suck. He said how we'd never really talked about how I wanted him to respond to that topic.

And we did. I said, echoing something he'd asked from the previous session, how maybe part of me did want some compassion from him around the topic. Like, I wouldn't want him to start sobbing uncontrollably in session about it. But that it might help if he said something like, "It makes me feel sad that you felt that way." How he'll share other ways I make him feel, like frustrated, annoyed, etc. So it could be helpful to hear that.

Dr. T said that his general stance, with all clients, is to try to remain fairly neutral on SH. To not react too much one way or the other. I said it can be difficult in getting lots of empathy from him on stuff with my D, but then with the SH, I don't get that. How I understand that maybe it's a case of, as a parent, it's easier to empathize about stuff with a child, because he could think of it happening with his own son. Me: "But, and I of course have no idea of your mental health background and am not asking, but if you've never had those feelings before, it might be more difficult to understand someone's feelings of wanting to harm their own body." I don't think he said anything to that.

I said how I understand how maybe some clients would SH (or talk about it) to get attention, but that I hoped he realized I'm not like that. How I'm ultimately a people pleaser and that it can take a lot for me to actually share those thoughts and feelings with him. He said that people can have subconscious motivations that they aren't even aware of. So he feels it's safer to just stay neutral.

I'm debating whether to discuss this more with him in our next session. It's not something that comes up too often for me, but when it does, they're moments when I'm in really intense pain. Like back in the email exchange that led to the rupture in late August. (Though I now understand, from what he said in session, why he didn't show much empathy or caring at that time.)

So, if anyone got this far, how does your T handle these topics? Is it worth bringing up with him more? I feel in a way like this is sort of a reenactment of my parents not giving me the support I wanted/needed for mental health issues. (Like, I started sobbing partway through this most recent session, saying, "My parents didn't give me the compassion I needed.") Do I just try to use the feelings it's dredging up now to explore that stuff? Do I ask my T if he's at all willing to try a different approach with me on this topic, then if it seems to become an issue (like I seem to keep looking for attention), he can shift? Because at this point, I don't even see what the point of telling him about SH thoughts or even actions is. If he's basically going to be like, "Sorry. Well, OK, moving on..."

Thanks!

My T also has taken a very neutral stance at least externally. I'm sure it bothers him, or used to (I dont self harm anymore), but T explained that he felt his immediate reactions of concern and compassion was detrimental for me as it reinforced my behavior.... self harm = immediate care from T. He was right as much as I didnt want to admit that ugly truth

LabRat27 · Feb 22, 2020, 05:26 AM

Long rambling answer because I have a lot of feelings about self harm and it's one of my main issues

I told my T very early on that I needed him to be neutral on SH because I knew I'd want to do it for a reaction or to communicate that I was hurt, and also that I'd feel guilty for discussing it at all of it upset him. He kept the neutrality up for a while, and I told myself that I genuinely didn't know if it bothered him. I think on some level I always kinda knew that it did, but plausible deniability.

He's not as neutral on it anymore, and I've moved more towards discussing the urges instead of acting on them. I took cutting off the table again a few months ago, but not other SH. Cutting was the only one that really created medical issues, but I know he doesn't like the idea of me self harming, regardless of the method.
I like that it makes him sad when I hurt myself and I hate that I like that it makes him sad, so then I want to hurt myself and not tell him that I hurt myself as punishment for wanting him to be sad that I hurt myself. My brain is fun.

I try to be somewhat careful about the extent to which my scars are visible when I go to session and about the level of detail I provide about my SH, past or present, because I'm aware of the urge to use both of those things to look for a reaction.
He recently disclosed that there have been times he has had to control his reaction and hold back from crying thinking about how much emotional pain I must have been in to do those things to myself for all those years.
That was hard to hear and I had a lot of complicated feelings about it.

I've said before that I don't really have much of an emotional reaction to my scars or see them as "that bad" even though they're objectively pretty extreme and extensive. He's said that he thinks that someday I will feel something when I look at them, that I'll be able to feel sad about it. He compared it to desecration of art, and I took a bit of offense at that because I don't think my body is ruined just because it's scarred.
I did ask him if he felt anything when he saw my scars, if he thought it was sad that I did this to myself, and he said yes.
He also at one point said that hearing me say cruel things about myself was like having to sit there and watch me cut myself and I said "so I take it you'd find that upsetting then?" and he sounded somewhat horrified and emotional when he confirmed that yes, that would be upsetting for him.

I think at this point I do need him to not be neutral. I'm trying to move away from intellectualizing and allow myself to actually feel things, and him caring about me makes it feel a little easier for me to care about myself, kinda like I have permission.
When he's neutral and just focuses on avoiding the behavior in the future, like straight up manualized CBT, I feel guilty and ashamed for wanting him to care.

I usually tell him what I want to tell him, but also the kind of meta level thoughts about that and let him make his own decisions. I tell him when I'm feeling conflicted about my own motives for disclosing something or about how I feel about his reaction to things.

There are times I get annoyed at his focus on self harm though, and we've had to have talks about that. Like there was a week I was legitimately distressed about something that had happened completely unrelated to self harm, but I'd also cut over something stupid, and he wanted to spend all the time and energy focusing on the stupid thing that had led to me cutting rather than the thing that was actually really upsetting for me. At times it has contributed to me feeling like I had to SH over things to legitimize them as worth caring about, like if I don't hurt myself then the thing that was upsetting me doesn't matter.

LonesomeTonight · Feb 22, 2020, 02:33 PM

Thanks for the additional comments. And good to see you again, JunkDNA and LabRat! SH isn't something that's come up recently in session. But it really helped to hear everyone's impressions of how their T deals with it. I think I have a greater understanding now of why Dr. T handles it as he does (and why many other T's handle it similarly). I think what I really needed was what he gave me in the followup session when we talked about it--to know he understands why I'd want him to react differently, to show more compassion/sadness about it. I think I also needed to know he was reacting the way he did for a reason, not just because he was like, "Eh, whatever" and minimizing it. I also think it helped me to show him what I wrote about what it feels like. Because I've never really explained it in that detail to someone before. And he was able to handle my graphic descriptions about what I'm feeling/desiring to do vs. what I actually do (if anything). To know he won't freak out (like ex-T did). So it makes me feel safer in sharing future thoughts, even knowing I might not get the response I'd want. (If that all makes any sense.)

Honestly, I think some of it also came down to my fearing that he thinks my mental health issues are more minor because I do still manage to function in my day to day life, for the most part. (Not functioning to anywhere near the potential I could be, but still managing.) And I think it helped to know that he doesn't think that, how he gets how many things can be a struggle for me.

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How does your T deal with this? (Trigger)

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