What is good trauma therapy like?

I've been in trauma therapy for about 1.5 years with 2 therapists and am beginning to wonder if they're doing their job. It just seems like me rambling away about my painful life, present and past, and sometimes the future, followed by my therapist replying. Last therapy I finally told her I don't feel like my trauma is going away, and that I bought a book called "The body keeps score, brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma." She knew about the book, and that basically she's afraid of hurting me.

I would really like to know your experience with trauma therapy, what your therapist did. My therapist is also trained in EMDR, but she won't use it on me. I'm so frustrated and tired of trauma and the endless cycles of feeling like I finally broke free of trauma followed by depression. If I need someone to chit chat with about my trauma then maybe I could just find a friend who'd like to do the same. Why do I need a therapist for that? I just can't believe this is the best modern science has to offer.

Do you know which approach your therapist trained in? A lot depends on that. It also depends on how your trauma affects you.

As you say, talking about it over and over isn't necessarily going to help unless it's giving you a different experience in the process which is ultimately healing. My T believes that the experience of being listened to and empathised with in a caring relationship where emotions can be felt and expressed can be reparative and that is proving to be the case for me. It's also been about feeling accepted for who I am and how I feel. I've had therapists in the past but I didn't experience the same relational depth so while I talked a lot about the past, I didn't experience healing in terms of finding closure.

It's so individual that it's hard to say what will work for you. Clearly talking over and over with this T isn't so good for you for reading a book on it and getting a new perspective. Trauma and emotions are stored in the body so maybe you haven't released the emotions enough yet? Sometimes working creatively can shift trauma in a way that talking can't. If you're experiencing depression, could this be because you need to work on who you are and want to be beyond the trauma? Find an identity?

It sounds like you feel stuck and want to find a new approach. I'm curious about why your therapist won't use EMDR as a lot of people find that useful. Do you know why? I understand her fear of hurting you but sometimes risk taking is necessary.

Maybe a conversation with her about how stuck you are and what you want to try, whether that proves to be with her or without her, might be useful?

Also, writing letters (to perps, family members, to and from the truamatised part of myself) has been helpful for my therapy. Not necessarily to send but for closure. Letters can be burnt, thrown in the sea, etc.

Concepts like acceptance and forgiveness and/or finding some meaning in your trauma and/or life can be useful topics for discussion for some people and have been for me.

@Lonelyinmyheart Thanks for the help! I’m not sure what my therapist is trained, but she does CBT & DBT. She talks a lot about mindfulness. Beyond that I’m not sure. But you make a good point about taking a risk sometimes. I’ll definitely mention that to her.

Sounds like you have a wonderful therapist. If you’re making good progress then your T is doing something right. I’ve made progress in some areas, but I don’t feel like my trauma has healed much. I still have the trauma. For example, I wake up throughout the night panicking as if someone’s choking me and feeling like I can’t breathe.

You know, I absolutely love your idea about writing a letter to my abusers, or at least the main one, and then when I feel ready, just burn it. It sounds like it could be very emotional, but yet very healing! That reminds me, a friend once told me that she used to scream as loud as she could in her pillow, then hit it. I’ll ask my therapist about that. Writing the letter is something I want to do. I’m already getting choked up just thinking about it.

Many thanks! <3

I have had one therapist who knew my emotional limits and I suspect had maternal counter transference. She pushed me a little when it came to trauma. She had experience with trauma but I suspect it was not with cliebts with such complicated PTSD. At one point she recommended seeing somebody who specialized in trauma. A few year later I started seeing a therapist who specialized in trauma and EMDR.

The Emdr therapist and I still take baby steps but she sees quite a bit of progress...I don't always see it but trust that she sees things i do not.

I once read that you can't heal from trauma by thoughts alone. You need to feel the feelings that would have been associated with it, and it definitely suggested things like screaming into a pillow and hitting it. Just a random thought when I read that bit.

I'm sorry I don't have much more to add right now... I am running on empty I hope that yo7 get some good info here and have a fruitful conversation with your therapist.

Trauma is so damaging and it takes a great deal of effort to heal from, it seems.

I don't know exactly what trauma therapy looks like. I'm not even sure about L's qualifications on trauma therapy. However, we do work on ttaumas a lot. A lot of it is talking/processing, some of it is art/creativity, and the rest is experiencing/feeling.

The other week, L and I decided to make our session a double session so I could just cry. It really really helped. I was able to tell a part of my story that most people don't want to hear. I got validation, empathy, and understanding. It was like reliving it, but this time I wasn't alone.

Good question! I have wondered the same. For me, trauma therapy was talking about it, doing sand tray (that was most helpful), and all the CBT/mindfulness stuff. I am all for mindfulness and meditation as a spiritual practice; I don't really understand what it has to do with trauma.

After all is said and done, I don't feel any different about childhood trauma than I did when I started therapy. It's kinda pathetic, frankly. I mean, I can identify and be accepting of my triggers now. So that's definitely a good thing. Maybe that's a success; I don't know.

I am hoping one day I will find out....

I am working with a T I have been with almost three years and just recently an art T too. Before that I worked with a lot of T’s that were useless or even harmful. Current T did a genogram with me early on and we started doing a timeline but never finished. He is trained in lots of things and we tried EMDR but stopped because I couldn’t figure out a safe place and hold onto it. T has always said that it doesn’t matter what we do, they are just tools to get to know myself… the real healing is in the relationship between T and I. Which is starting to make sense. He knows maybe 50% of my trauma if that much and not in detail but most of that isn’t what is important to me in therapy right now. A few months ago I had a big shift and started relaxing more with him… then slowly started feeling a kind of safe I have never felt before… then I get stressed after session because it feels scary to feel safe. Right now we are just getting comfortable with feeling safe. I see him tomorrow and have asked him to have my stuffed animal out (comfort object). I will go in, maybe have the courage to ask him to sit with me on the couch. I usually start out sitting all curled up with my blanket or my stuffy and then slowly I uncurl and then start to relax and usually end up just laying quietly on the couch. Right now, for me that is trauma therapy.
I am also working with an art T that has significantly less experience than T but who is really good and nurturing… she also pushes me more than T does. T is her supervisor and I get the impression they talk a LOT about me which I am OK with. Art T and I do a lot of collage work and then we talk through them. She offers a lot of understanding and acceptance. In the collages I am able to show what the trauma looks like to me and how it is impacting me. My stuff is super emotionally packed but is all symbolic, no real representation of what happened (but she would be OK if there was as long as I wasn’t upsetting myself with it).

I am doing better… a lot better. It isn’t nearly as painful as working with the other Ts. Mostly it is a lot of getting used to being loved and accepted no matter where I am when I am with them. I’ve even made two new friends in the past few months which hasn’t happened in over 20 years.

I feel I’ve made fairly good progress with my T - I didn’t even realise I was traumatised before I started seeing her, I just knew I needed help. She’s done reparenting, suggested writing letters to various people but not sending them, introduced several theories and things to me (the window of tolerance for example) among other things.

My therapist wasn't specifically a trauma therapist, but his approach was the only one that truly worked for me.

I do think what works will vary from client to client.

My therapist once said that there used to be the belief that to heal from trauma, they had to get the client to talk through every bit of the trauma, often over and over again. But what they found is that this approach often left clients retraumatized. He refused to work that way.

His approach was to stay in the present as much as possible. We have to live in the present, so staying focused on how to be healthy in the present was the aim.

That didn't mean we didn't discuss the past. We did - quite a bit actually - but always and only with a very specific purpose (generally related to something, some reaction, some thought, etc., in my present that was tied to my past), and the dives were only as deep as necessary and as short as possible.

It took longer perhaps, but I do think it was less traumatizing, and in the end, I can honestly say I have worked past my traumas. I rarely am aware of any PTSD symptoms anymore - I probably don't hold that diagnosis anymore to be quite honest - at least, the issues are so rare and mild enough that they aren't a problem I can't deal with easily on my own. I am rarely depressed; if I feel depressed, it is situational, and again, very short-lived and I can work through it on my own in a matter of a few hours or days at the most - not enough to be classified as a clinical depression. My anxiety is pretty much gone.

By staying focused on figuring out how to keep my present healthy and get to a place where my past wasn't constantly intruding on my present, I guess I acquired healthy coping skills and an understanding of how to keep my past in the past. A great deal of how he approached things was cognitive which clicked with my tendency to need to intellectually understand what is going on inside. Whatever he did with me, it worked. It was a slow process, but the results have been lasting.