[Hope4me2]

since I have been in counseling for almost 4 years now...I am close enough and trusting my T enough that he wants to put a pretend person in a chair and have me talk or scream or yell or do what I want to them....for starts he wants me to talk to my brother and tell him how it felt to have him do what he did to me and yell and scream at him and tell him what I have always wanted to tell him as a child.....but was afraid too.............now I am still afraid....do not know if I can do it or not.....any advice

been asked to do this many times. I always refused. for thats what I call textbook shrinky garbage. Every therapist psychiatrist and psychologist has been taught during college psych 101for years well before 1983 when I first entered therapy and was asked to do that. And everyone that I know that has been in therapy has been asked to do this to express anger of any kind over any situation. It could be a childhood problem or the fight a person had the night before with their husband. my present therapist and I were talking about something but I don't remember what it was just that her sentence started with "have you ever.." and I finished with laughing and telling her dont go there cause I won't do it, the shrink world really needs to find another expression tool instead of the uniform here hit the chair with a bat, or put the person here in this chair routines. For me there would be me there would be no benefit of doing that activity except humiliating myself with the idea of what I would look like standing there yelling at a chair. For me I have other ways of expressing myself - poetry, wring, drawing, singing along with music, throwing a ball in a basket., squishing and shaping clay and playdough, painting, biking, talking into a tape recorder, going into prisons and telling/yelling at those convicted rapists just what they are doing to those they hurt. and so on. I figure if Im going to yell at someone its going to be worth it by yelling at the real person showing them that I am not afraid of them anymore and never will be.

Some people that I know that have done this say it worked for them, others say they got nothing out of it other than pleasing their therapist by doing it.

[Lexicon78]

I've done this in roleplay therapy. I guess it's supposed to let you be able to get it all out. Good luck.

[ickydog2006]

Been there.....done that. I have done a very similar thing...but I got a pillow to yell and hit with a rubber bat. I guess it did let me get some feelings out but for every hit on it I took I thought about how I should be hitting me. How I was the one that deserved it. I didn't tell that T how I felt. She had me do it on my second visit. Thinking back on it ....I can't believe she asked me to. I quit going to her

[Hope4me2]

I do not know what to do........I know I have a great Therapist and I want to trust him..... I want to trust him and I need to get these feelings out I really do and I am trusting him enough to try it.....but if all therapist asks this.....should I even try it? I am nervous about what he will think when and if I do it....he says he will only see a severely wounded person....now with all this talk I wonder if it is worth the try...

[Hope4me2]

[dalila]

<font color="green"> I did this once. I didn't get to yelling or hitting or any such but it helped some. I got a lot further by writing letters to the people who had abused me; reading and then talking over with therapist and finally destroying the letters. I am another one who finds her voice in the written or typed word. Hmmm what do we call this? It is not typed as it was in the past but we used a keyboard much the same.

Sorry, I got a bit off track there. I guess I saw some benefit from talking to the chair, if my current therapist wanted me to try it I would but so far she doesn't seem to want to go that way. My dd did yell at her birthparents in therapy and got a lot of hostility out that way. I guess it just depends on the person and their therapist. </font>

everyone is different and usally gets something different out of the therapy activities. basically what it boils down to is why is he asking you to do this? He thinks you have a problem expressing your anger or you think you have a problem with expressing your anger and his suggestion/request is an option for you to try . either way it depends on what you need. when faced with new activities in therapy I weigh the pros and cons based on what I need and if I am the least bit uncomfortable then the odds of it working to begin with are shot to h--l. So I sit down and first figure out what I want to accomplish if I go through with the activity. leaving out completely why the therapist wants me to do it. then if I am uncomfortable with the activity I look at whether or not I have other coping tools for reaching what I want to accomplish. if I have no other resources and ways to accomplish my goal then I try to push my fear of new things asside and say ok I've never done this before. and when I did check it out with others there were conflicting views so now do I decide from the bad reviews or the good. Ok forget the reviews. this is new I have a 50 -50 chance of it working or not. what do I have to lose if it doesn't work and do I need more answers and information from my therapist before I decide? Then based on the new details I give it a go or not. most times I go in favor of the new activity simply because I have nothing to lose. sometimes the activity doesnt work and I say ok what now? other times it works and I say what a surprise. the choice is yours and your therapist is not going to be made if you decide not to do this. take care.

[Hope4me2]

thanks again for your replies....it does help to talk about it and get others views on this....
it is comforting to know other have tried it and that it worked for them....I have done the letter writing and reading it to my T and then rewriting it so it came more personally from me...example " I felt this way or that" using the word I and not you ...made a big difference....
YES I do have a hard time expressing my anger properly....I have beaten my kids and screamed at them when they were younger and beat and hit on my hubby and called him names and even through a knife at him once....UGH I know please dont hate me.....but since all this came out about our family and then my abuse I have clammed up and not let my feelings out....he knows they are stored up and bottling up inside of me.....I can tell sometimes I am ready to blow but I take it out on myseld because I am afraid of hurting others.....I have seen the look of fear in my daughters eyes when I went into therapy with her one time to meet her therapist and to hear her talk about her SI and it was D*M HARD to see that fear in her eyes again when I walked into the room.....UGH hate myself so much for that.....now I have let myself after a lifetime of not trusting I am now trusting my T and feeling safe with him H*ll feeling safe for the first time in my life....I just do not want to see the shock and fear in his eyes....that would kill me for sure....I want to work through what happened to me and I know this is part of the process to healing but it is scarey to show someone who you have come to trust and love and feel safe with your true inner hatred and anger and pain....**sniff**sniff**
it is so hard....so very hard....to deal with the past... I just want it to go away.........................................

[shadowdancer]

hope i think that if your T were going to be afraid of your response then he wouldn't have suggested that you do it. he has to know what is going to come esp since he knows that you're bottling your emotions. he -wants- you to release all of that. the fury, rage, hate, pain...he wants you to get it out and i don't think he'd suggest you get it out without realistically knowing how volatile it could get. after all, that's the point. to get the violence out and place it where it belongs instead of in cuts. ((((hope)))) i think it is a good idea when you are ready for it. i don't think that your T is afraid of you...otherwise your relationship wouldn't work very well. lean a bit on the trust you're slowly cultivating...and take the chance. it could do you a world of good. just make sure that you do it as you feel ready to. don't push yourself into responses you don't feel yet just because your T asks about them. your responses will come in their own time when you're ready for them.

take care and stay safe.

-shadow

[Gracey]

I'm not sure about the "empty chair" tool. I personally feel like an utter and complete FOOL when I have tried to do this in the past. I always "tried" but it felt so ridiculous, and I ended up feeling very self concious during all of this. And then, I started to question my therapist b/c of how I felt. So, just be sure this is what YOU want.

[Samanthaq]

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
Hope4me2 said:
since I have been in counseling for almost 4 years now...I am close enough and trusting my T enough that he wants to put a pretend person in a chair and have me talk or scream or yell or do what I want to them....for starts he wants me to talk to my brother and tell him how it felt to have him do what he did to me and yell and scream at him and tell him what I have always wanted to tell him as a child.....but was afraid too.............now I am still afraid....do not know if I can do it or not.....any advice

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

What's interesting is my sister, who's more than smart enough, and learned enough tried to get me to do that and it didn't work so well for similar reasons, then she dove head first into some amazginly painful roleplaying that had me ready and about to end my pain. When all was said and done, and I had finally after four hours of her screaming at me keeping me penned and in pain told her that NO, I wasn't going to do what she said if she was going to keep hruting me that way. I calmly got out of the chair, and started heading toward the kitchen for one of the big sharp bread slicers to end my pain and she said; "Before you go off to end your pain once and for all can we talk a minute?"

I waited and she started crying which utterly floored me. She said that was the hardest thing she'd ever done for anyone. She was hurting me on purpose even though she didn't want to, she was inflicting as much pain, on purpose, as she could because I needed to reach a point when I'd finally say ENOUGH I cannot do this anymore.

She in effect compressed the nine years of shear hell I lived through with my husband and his parents into four hours to help me reach the point where for the first time ever I'd stand up for myself and say NO, you are NOT ALLOWED to abuse me.

She said she'd never seen me in that much pain and it was killing her to have to do it to me, but that I needed that more than I needed meds in some respects. I'd never learned to do that with my father, never learned to do that with my husband, and had to or I'd never heal and be free from abuse. Was the hardest thing she's ever had to do because she knew she was hurting me, and badly, I thought I'd lost her, that she was never going to speak to me again, and I couldn't handle that.

So, I'd didn't kill myself, she didn't kill herself (for hurting me so badly that I'd take my own life) and we held each other and cried for a while as we both worked on healing and recovering some.

Rolepalying can be VERY, VERY hard to deal with, a level of pain I wouldn't wish on anyone and requires someone have really detailed knowledge of you and wht you've been through. My sister was the perfect choice, the ultimate weapon to use against me. The roleplaying was an amazing sucess, but I didn't even know that was wht we were doing until it was over.

Getting angry is still something I just cannot do, and all the scream therapy and so on is something I still have a problem with, but I understand the thinking behind it. I'd say give it a try and that way you can at least say you tried it. . .?

[tracylee]

Nope, I havent done that, but I have written letters to people and vented that way, I didnt necessarily pass the letters on to the people concerned, except for my Mum, I gave her her letter, which was quite scary initially, but we talked about issues that I couldnt talk about before!! Not only that, if you're not a very outgoing person it might be kind of hard to have a good moan at 'the person in the chair'. I found that the letter writing thing was good, it took time to do and actually they answered some questions when i re read them - does that make sense??