Can anyone explain very simply to me how therapy is supposed to help heal childhood trauma?

[bewilderberrie]

I'm going to a kind therapist I feel comfortable with. She is very experienced in one of the issues (relinquishment trauma) I'm seeing her for and I have generally a good impression.

However, I feel like I just talk about stuff and then feel even worse when I go home again?

What am I supposed to be doing that heals myself via the therapy process? I'm not sure I'm doing it correctly. I don't get it.

I've asked her if generally it is supposed to start hurting less at some point and she said yes, the act of airing the traumatic stuff and talking about it typically does make it hurt less at some time. Also that sometimes when trauma is pre verbal it can be very tightly locked in and hard to get at - so what am I supposed to do in that case?

I found that as an adult I was able to recognise that events were not 'my fault', that the therapist recognised the pain was a real 'thing' that I could put feelings into words, I was able to recognise more how some situations were related to those memories and I found I could detatch more, not let things overwhelm me as I knew why I reacted how I did.

It must be so hard to talk about. Rather than talk about the trauma tonight you could go tonight and just tell her what you said here? And that you're finding it hard and that you're questioning whether it will work?

She will have been through this process with a lot of people and will understand and hopefully answer your questions and put you at ease. Or if you are finding too hard discuss options.

Attached is such a good example of effective trauma therapy. Stephanie Foo wrote a book about her recovery from cPTSD and her work with Dr Jacob Ham.

Digging straight into your past without creating stability and coping mechanisms first can be very unhelpful.

If your therapist is good she should be able to answer your questions and explain her approach and the way forward in way that reassures and satisfied you.

Do be honest with her, nothing is about you (it IS, but what happened was not because of YOU) here it's about the attachment to your mother and that key relationship which makes you feel your own worthiness and 'right' Ness, that's a very key thing, you do deserve care, love and attention. It's very hard to feel that when a parent was not 'there' for a child it's not the child!

I'd say so. As another poster said, thinking you are niw in control of your life, living the way you want to and not dwelling on the past can be just as effective. 7 years + of therapy sounds like my idea of hell. Each to their own I guess.

@Kingoftheroad

Different therapies work for different people. Digging into the past didn’t work for me. The thing I’ve found mot beneficial is finding a good psychotherapist who practices CBT properly. Deals with the here and now, teaches coping strategies and dealing with negative thoughts and emotions as they arise
THIS

I'd had 3 x therapy over the years.
And op felt worse or the same.

CBT actually made a huge difference.

It was slow but I remember thinking 10 months - I'm still improving.

I think because you have tools to deal with situations, that other people already had.

It's 6 years ago and I've never looked back.

Ended up cancelling. I felt so physically unwell at the idea of even making eye contact with this person I have already told some of my worst shit, I couldn't do it. It feels actively damaging.

My body is starting to calm down now and I will make a cup of tea. Ridiculous reaction I know but something in my body didn't feel safe and cannot deal with the whole thing at all.

It's no reflection on the therapist, they seem good, it's just not something I can do.

DP is really worried now I didn't go. I don't know what to do I just need to fix things myself I think.

Op you made the right decision.
Well done.

And to add I felt exactly the same.
And you know focusing on a problem just makes it Bigger.

Can you be honest with the therapist about how you felt and work with that?

It's also important not to feel you have to dive into anything too intense straight away.

7 years + of therapy sounds like my idea of hell. Each to their own I guess. To this poster - therapy isn't for fun, it's for healing. Living with PTSD and a dissociative disorder was certainly hell for me before I started getting therapy and was able to start working and forming relationships. I don't know if this comment was in reference to mine, but attitudes like this are why getting help for trauma can be so difficult.

Digging straight into your past without creating stability and coping mechanisms first can be very unhelpful.

I don't really understand this - I'm stable already? I'm not doing anything unstable, behaviour wise.

What are coping mechanisms? I'd cringe myself inside out doing some deep breathing exercises with a therapist to calm down for example.

And I say this as somebody who loves yoga and meditation and happily embraces everything in yoga class.

i found EMDR the most successful. Person centred therapy helped me initially when I was younger to understand how I felt but after reaching clarity, I found anymore after that not helpful at all. When I fell off a mental health cliff after lockdown, my GP sign lost me to NHS counselling. I asked for trauma focused CBT but the therapist I spoke to said I was so cognitively aware of what was going on that any type of cognitive therapy would be more likely to re-traumatise me than help me. She suggested EMDR and that has worked well. I will always be triggered and have cPTSD but I find joy in life again. A couple of good books are “the body keeps the score” and “recovery of your inner child”.

This is a really good summary of what I guess I was hoping would happen.

I am very glad it worked for you.

I've had complex PTSD for 45 years and just wanted to tell someone what happened to me. I needed to tell someone. That's all I needed. The rest I did myself. Read everything I could and cut off the abusers. I need medication but I'm doing OK now.

Oh OP. You poor thing.

As a mental health professional, I can tell you that it’s completely normal to feel worse when you’ve just started therapy. You are talking about really tough stuff and if you didn’t feel worse then I’d say that was a sign it’s not the right therapy.

Emdr is really good for trauma BUT you need to learn some stabilisation strategies in order to be sure you can safely do emdr.

I would suggest talking to your therapist about how you feel about therapy at the moment. She can help you work through the difficulties.

EMDR sounds great, I have read a lot of impressive things about it but isn't it for particular traumatic memories?

I don't have any memory of the initial separation from my mother at a couple of months old?

The therapist said trauma can be pre verbal, so I don't know if that can work with EMDR if you can't actually remember the distressing moments?

If you can’t face talking to your therapist right now could you write it down for her? Not your trauma but how you can’t face looking at her in the eye and talking? It may help her with helping you to finding a way forward.

I wish you all the very best x

I hear you. I don’t have the answers but I get what you’ve written there, I’ve felt very similar and I find it very hard to accept I did nothing wrong. For 32 years it felt like my responsibility and my fault and my shame to carry around. As an adult I find it extremely hard to accept I did nothing wrong.

Some of it is very vivid, some of its it’s very sketchy. Most of it comes back randomly for no good reason and in no order. A lot of it I can’t tell you what it was exactly, it’s all smells, sounds, feelings. For example, I can’t stand the sound of supermarket checkout beeps, the smell of photography developer fluid, or a certain brand of soap.

In the past, I think they call it narrative type therapy has helped me - writing down what happened, when and how I felt. But I’ve never shared that writing with any therapist.

Someone also mentioned inner child stuff like writing a letter to a much younger me, but I’ve never done that or felt able to.

I feel the same after therapy - knackered and frustrated. I’m getting CBT and we are focusing on how to cope with panic attacks when what I really want - as stupid and ridiculous as it sounds - is to shout and scream at the top of my lungs all the things that happened around me and to me and that they were wrong, I was let down too many times, and for my CPN to say, yes they were, and I was.

to everybody who has survived a shit time, thank you so much for taking the time to post your therapy experiences and what you thought about the process of it. It's such a hard thing to quantify.

What I did pick up on was :

@bewilderberrie
But it feels at core like there is something wrong with me and no amount of me talking about it or other people listening can shift that. It feels actively shameful and dreadful to even talk about it.

Like my skin is being sandpapered off, when I talk about it and somebody listens.#

^^^^^^^^

I understand exactly what you mean.

I used to feel similar - that I was fundamentally flawed.

But I don't feel like that anymore.

CBT turned it around for me.
Hours of going over the same old ground (depressing ) wasn't changing a thing.

Yes, stuff had happened- they hadn't treated me very well, they'd died / been addicted / was emotionally unavailable - etc , etc.
it's a lot of people's story.
But you wallow in it you can start to move on.

CBT gave me tools to cope with today - (oh and being nice to people. That always helps. A smile ,a helping hand )

Remember OP you were born perfect.

All babies are perfect.

Then we are taught by outside influences that we are'flawed'

But can unlearn it.

You may know the full history, but I don't. If all her family died in a fire that she started because she was in huff, that could be deemed to be her fault.

As I don't know, I can only assume she wasn't at fault. You may know differently, but I don't.

No I don't think so.

Somewhat interestingly this post and thread in general is making me realise how uncomfortable and distressed I am at her knowing so much. It compounds the shame and distress.

It makes everything glaring technicolour and migraine-inducing, instead of dully painful sepia. I mean it's always there but the technicolour is far worse, as acute pain.

I can't tell her I can't look her in the eye because then she'll know that weird fact as well as everything else I've already told her

I went into therapy very gungho and talked about everything and felt like it somewhat unburdened some things which was great - but this particular relinquishment issue has become much worse.

EMDR for cPTSD:

www.ptsduk.org/emdr-for-complex-ptsd/

We adopted our boy when he was 3. None of what happened to him was his fault, but he was the only sibling who ended up being adopted and I have had a number of conversations with him over the years, and no matter what I say, part of him still thinks that he must have been at fault.

I can't offer any suggestions, but he has found it helpful talking about it to his counsellor. So perhaps you could explore some of the other suggestions given. Or try again with the same therapist after you have given yourself time to process everything they have said so far.

I’m so sorry OP and wish you all the best.

I’ve had psychotherapy (the therapist mentioned Freud’s theories a few times) which was mostly just talking about my traumatic upbringing. It was ok but I didn’t feel it helped very much. I had CBT for anxiety and depression. Again, this was fine and helped in some ways but it was a bit of a plaster over a deep wound that needed something more. I now have a counsellor who employs the theory of internal family systems. I’ve found this extremely beneficial as a key part of my healing has been to re-parent myself and to release the pain and anxiety which arose due to the lack of safety growing up. It sounds a bit wacky when you’re doing it but it’s incredible.

It sounds like it’s not therapy that’s the issue for you but it’s that the type of therapy may not be what your body and mind need right now.