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 don't mean unstable or risky behaviours, but establishing some stability in your relationship with your therapist.

When you get very upset by what your are discussing with your therapist, you need some ways of calming down and grounding yourself back in the hear and now.

It's not a matter of "fixing yourself", but of gradually edging forward until you find someone and an approach you can make progress with.

And ending one form of therapy is absolutely fine. It's often advised to try until you find a 'good fit. It's actually very wise of you not to proceed with therapy if it doesn't feel right or safe.

Have you read much about healing childhood trauma? That might help to start with.

Do you really think that’s helpful to say that in this context? Children are never reposnibke for their trauma. Neither to that end are adults. Trauma is something that happens to you as a result of something dreadful happening to or around you - no one actively goes out seeking to be traumatised. As adults, to an extent it becomes our responsibility to ourself, and potentially those around us, to - where possible - work through it, but trauma is never another’s fault.

I'm not sure to be honest. I guess desensitisation is probably what happens. You just...talk about it until talking about it doesn't hurt anymore.

I think a big part of it for me was seeing my therapists reactions to what I said. He's got a good poker face but his eyes give him away.

When you've always been told it's no big deal, seeing him react to it brings it home that actually it was that bad. I guess it validates your feelings.

After starting counselling for different issues over the years, I’ve usually come away from the first few sessions feeling completely wrung out because some deep emotions have been brought to the surface.

During one set of sessions, I was having a breast abscess treated and was talking to a friend about the similarities of the processes: The abscess was caused by some form of injury, that starts off looking like the surface of the skin is normal, but underneath, everything is churning. Once the abscess erupts, ie you have the first session, you have to dig deep to bring up all the damage to get back to clean, undamaged tissue, and this may hurt more than the abscess did to start with. If you don’t unpack the wound to clear out the damage, it will fester.

However, counselling is a painful process and our brains will often tell us to avoid things that are painful. You are trusting someone else with all of your internalised and repressed feelings of shame and guilt and that makes you feel extremely vulnerable - but it is worth persevering, especially if you have found someone you have a good bond with.

One thing that I found useful in my second and subsequent tranches of counselling was to draw a mind map of the issues I was facing and the emotions that I felt, and I used that to help me in some of the sessions, either to decide on a topic I wanted to focus on, or to make a note of things that I thought of during or after each session. I also have a place that I go when things are bad where I write down what I’m feeling as a stream of consciousness. I’d be absolutely mortified if anyone were to read what I’ve written but it has helped me uncover things that I know I need to look at.

I do hope you manage to work things out

Some therapists think that just talking about the issue will lead you to your own breakthrough.

Other therapists will give you practical tools and skills to help you better cope with your situation.

I personally would ditch any therapist who just wanted me to talk and talk about what is upsetting me. It doesn’t help. I want someone who can give me the practical tools to help me move forward.

Yeh talking did lead me to a helpful breakthrough. I talked and talked until I realised I was so bored of it all. It had lost some of its power to hurt.

I tried psychotherapy a decade ago and quit after a few sessions because it made me too depressed to eat.

I've been going to person-centred therapy for almost two years and it works better for me. I just talk about what I feel like that session (relationship or general life progress) and get feedback.

The former therapy was NHS whereas the new one is private (but fairly cheap - £35). I only go when I need it, so every 5 weeks or so now, but every week or two if depressed in winter.

Echoing other posters that say there are different therapies to suit different people.
I work in mental health/therapy and have also had therapy myself for childhood issues.

I’m not someone who got along well with therapy that goes back over things in the past, but I recognise that for some it can be useful. I found solution-focused therapy and CBT (although this was the least useful of the two) was better - you can’t change what happened in the past but you can focus on recognising your own strengths and focus on how you want things in the future to be.
It’s obvious to me that my DM was a textbook narcissist and my childhood was far from ideal - I don’t need to understand more than I already knew, in that she was probably screwed up by her own childhood and didn’t have enough self-awareness to make her own changes.
As a person in my own right, I recognise none of this was my making and would prefer to focus on making sure I apply self care and my own solutions in the future.
Any therapy that went back there just reopened wounds and trauma.

I haven't had therapy but a friend said it's like picking at a scab and then allowing the wound to re- heal. It's uncomfortable. I guess different styles suit different needs.

It can be adapted for cPTSD. Rather than thinking about a specific traumatic event, I focused on a small event that had happened in the last week or so that had triggered more emotions than it warranted. I used the EMDR processes starting with that memory and the emotions it triggered. So I didn’t need to remember the individual moments of childhood trauma. My therapist kind of grouped my triggers into broad themes that we tackled one at a time, with some overlapping.

Your experience this evening sounds very painful, @bewilderberrie. I'm sorry.

Strong shame is absolutely awful, and often overlooked.

💙

EMDR worked really well for me in dealing with my traumatic experience. I would recommend it to anyone. A good therapist will take you through it.

It's often the therapeutic relationship itself where the healing happens. Often that involves recreating some of the past patterns and hurt but the therapist will not react like the people in your past. Instead, they'll help you process and can contain the difficult feelings. It's a process and not a quick fix, though, and it's not unusual to feel worse at points too.

I cancelled all my sessions. I just don't think it's helping. But now I feel like I have done the wrong thing, even though I don't want to go back either.

I need this pain to quit. It is relentless and I can't make it stop.

It really is.

It's like sitting there with a bucket of cold vomit poured over me, and I know the other person is sitting feeling disgust but trying not to show it.

It doesn't matter how kind or compassionate they are - at the end of the day, I'm still covered in (invisible) vomit. And they're just pitying me. They know it isn't my fault but does it even matter, when you are covered in vomit.

Then when I walk out of there I can feel the vomit on me for the rest of the day, and it affects how I interact with fucking everyone.

I would like to know this too. I have a ridiculous amount of childhood trauma and I have never had therapy of any kind. I cannot see how it could possibly help with any of it. But I am assured it can, but it seems I am assured this by people who want me to pay them to find out. And I don’t see how that is right or fair.

I love to have concrete information on exactly what and how it could help.

I don't mind the paying, that actually makes me feel better and 'safer', for want of a better word? Because I don't feel I owe them anything that way?

I'm acutely aware though that that is a very privileged position to be in.

So many people are really in a lot of pain with mental health issues, and cannot stretch to pay privately with the cost of living situation.

They say you have to feel it to heal it so I think the type of therapy you’re having is about creating a safe space to process feelings and memories with a professional who can assist you. By the sounds of it you may be putting the trauma in a tightly locked box and not allowing it to come out. With that in mind therapy is likely to be challenging and to initially make you feel crap, but in theory it should be beneficial in the long run.

I feel all the pain quite regularly though? I cry privately by myself whenever I need to. I retreat to bed for comfort and try to take really good care of myself, and sometimes sleep is the only escape from feeling pain.

That's why I went to therapy to begin with because I thought if I could talk about it with somebody trained and kind, then it would start to lose power and dissipate.

Instead it made it more forceful, compared to just feeling it on my own.

I don't understand. What is wrong with me that it became worse.

OP, Google matrix Birth reimprinting.. I highly recommend it

Also EFT and EMDR

I was like you, and it took me 18 months of talking therapy to 'get it'. It was hell. Its a process, and at the end the traumatic thing still happened - they can't change that - but you will feel differently about the people who did it. Their actions will belong to them. That will make you feel differently about what they did to you. I hope someone can give you a better explanation than this because I'm not explaining it very well.

This all sounds very painful for you. It's so important to talk to your therapist about how you feel shamed by sharing your memories with her.
Trauma and shame go hand in hand.
An experienced therapist will know how to guide you, at your own pace, towards processing this.
What is the therapists modality? It's good to ask about their approach to trauma work.
There are many different approaches.
I have found Caroline Springs insight very clear and helpful and have used this in my work.

www.carolynspring.com

The therapist is psychodynamic, uses a feminist framework which is the reason I felt I'd be comfortable talking about anything and everything with her.

And I was/ am about most things including all the stupid stuff I've done over a lifetime. Didn't feel judged or awful, she cheerfully just kind of rolled with it.

But talking about the shame of relinquishment feels like it is actually killing me.

And because I talked about it a bit - now she knows, so I can't 'rewind' and have it as my secret again. So now it's all ruined and I can't go back.

Well not that I can go back anyway because I emailed and cancelled all my sessions so that's that. I'm sure there is somebody on the waiting list who will be grateful for the opportunity and make a better fist out of therapy and ethically it is better if her time goes to somebody like that.