AIBU to feel worse after therapy for past trauma?

[NotSureThisIsWorking]

Hi wise mumsnetters, name changed for this,

I am 35years old and I’m new to therapy.
I’ve recently (last 6 months) had a strange sort of resurgence of traumatic memories and very negative thought patterns. It’s not like I have just ‘remembered’ being these traumatic events relating to teen sexual abuse but I’ve somehow managed to just not think about them for years until now.

I know that an event where I didn’t feel safe at all about a year ago has brought this on.

I started feeling anxiety a lot of the day , racing thoughts especially at night, night mares and waking up to panic attacks, low mood, feeling shit about myself and like there is something wrong with me and an increase in disordered eating and wanting to control food. I feel like I’m falling apart basically.

For my own, and my kids sake, I decided to do weekly therapy before considering the medication route . I like my therapist and I feel safe with her. I find it very hard to talk about some of the trauma but I’m opening up slowly. I never cry in therapy, is that normal? She’s says it can be. I feel close to tears sometimes and I feel sick and anxious but I never actually get upset. I don’t know why. I’ve been going about 8 weeks.

My issue is that I feel AWFUL after. I cry a lot and just lay in bed, or I punish myself by going for a long run until I’m almost throwing up to try and block the thoughts out, I slept terribly that night and usually have a panic attack from the intrusive thoughts about the trauma.

I would like to know if this is normal ?? Or if I should stop …

Thanks for your input. The lady I see has suggested I also seek gp advice and he has prescribed me sertraline. I just haven’t started taking it yet, a bit worried it might make things worse.

The past trauma was a 6 month long ‘relationship’ which I was 14/15 in which I was intentionally physically hurt during sexual activity. And also told to do things in front of other male ‘friends’. At the time I only remember feeling confusion, not trauma or fear. But I’ve blocked it out for many years and it’s been recently triggered. Plus maybe having my own daughters approaching pre teen has brought it into sharp focus for me. The night times are the worst for flashbacks, panic attacks and bad dreams .

She says it’s normal for traumatic memories to continue to come up especially in quiet moments. She is trying to help me address my low self esteem and tendencies to neglect myself and pour everything into everyone else. Because deep down I probably feel like I don’t matter. It’s leaking out into my relationship now as well.

But I still wanted opinions from others as to what is normal because my husband commented the other day that I seem to be worse since starting therapy not better

What was the recent trauma that triggered the memories of the index trauma? How long ago was that recent trauma? What diagnosis has she given you? Can you talk to your GP about your reservations about the Setraline.

I had very similar experience to you. A workplace attempted sexual assault and ongoing violence triggered PTSD, which was worsened because I had PTSD as a teen from a sexual assault at 15 yo. I also intially went to a psychologist and it made me worse not better. I then started seeing a psychiatrist who provided the diagnosis, got the medications right and within two weeks I was feeling much better on Lexapro (Escitalopram), Prazosin (for nightmares) and Melatonin. I think if the therapy was going to work it would have started to work by now. I really recommend seeing a psychiatrist for this.

Hi OP I had a specific trauma therapist - I’d previously been to see a NHS psychologist who left me feeling a million times worse as she wanted to talk about things I wasn’t ready to talk about, she wanted to quickly get to the ‘crux’ of it and didn’t bring ‘me back’ to the session safely. She also let me know at the beginning of the session that’s she’d have to give any info to the police if she felt it was necessary for the protection of other people - which scared me to death. The trust went then.

I stopped after 3 sessions as it was awful.

Went to see a brilliant trauma therapist who specialised in child trauma.

She specifically said we don’t ever have to talk about any details but we’re going to work on getting past them.

We actually started on my family tree and we literally mapped out who everyone was in my family - eg mum, dad, grandparents, siblings aunts uncles and my own kids. Then we started talking about my parents life - if I knew - from even before I was born. She was getting a time line of my entire family history.

Then we talked about when I was born, what life was like then, through toddlers years, through teenage years, adulthood, marrage, my own kids

If anything unpleasant came up - I didn’t have to talk about it in great detail - she never pushed for that - but I could if I wanted - but we would focus on how that made me feel, what impact it had on my life at that time and the lasting impact that event had on me. We talked about the impact all the adults had in my life and how that effects how I raise my own children.

Toeards the end of the session she would gently guide the session back to happier memories/feelings which were usually my kids and we’d have a good natter about that. So I left the session feeling calm and supported. Not raw and traumatised.

She shown me how to do breath work, how fantastic and important somatic movement is, shown me my tolerance level, also assessed me for ADHD, made me journal. We did a lot of inner child work and I learned how to feel safe in my body - as by that point in my life panic attacks were waking me up in the middle of the night like a stream train running through my body. She could tell when I get stressed because I hold my breath when I talk - so she would gentle stop me and get me to breath - and then we had a look at what feelings I had in my body. It really wasn’t all about disclosure but lots learning to recognise what was happening in my body - the physical effects too

I was with her for 2 years and she shown me how to put myself back together brick by brick. It was the best money I’d ever spent in my entire life.

It’s wrong that there is an assumption you should be feeling raw and traumatised during therapy. You shouldn’t.

Your therapist might be nice but she’s not managing you or the sessions properly. You’re paying for this remember.

Find a new therapist x

Not necessarily - some specialists think that reliving trauma can actually just reinforce it all, and make life worse.

But, I’ve never gone down that road, so I guess it depends on the therapist and the client.

If it’s not working, you don’t have to continue with it.

Hi Op, Counsellor in training here. I think what you are experiencing is very understandable given the trauma that you have experienced, it takes so much courage and bravery to revisit what you have kept safely tucked away for years in order to protect yourself. Gently I would encourage you to share with your counsellor how you feel after the session, describe what you have written here. It's valuable to her/him to know this and can work with it. It may be reflective of the pattern of how you process your feelings in the real world. I.e you remain dispassionate or disconnected to the experience yet in private you can let yourself feel your emotions but that is scary and vulnerable for you. The purpose of your counsellor is to walk alongside you in your pain and difficulty, to show you that it's safe to do so and defy your pattern of going it alone. It's really, really hard to break this pattern but I promise if you can open up to her/him and allow a bit of these big emotions to be shared it will be where you will start to experience the real transformation that you hope will happen. Keep being brave OP, I know you can do it. 💫💫💫

She has not diagnosed me, she is a psychotherapist. She’s suggested I may be autistic but I can’t deal with that right now to be honest! She encouraged me to go the the gp and the gp gave me the prescription of sertraline and diagnosed generalised anxiety, I think. Granted I didn’t want to go into the whole story with her so I just talked about the anxiety and panic attacks not really the trauma.

the ‘traumatic event’ which I believed has triggered it is something which happened when I was intimate with my DH about a year ago, we were both drunk and things got a bit rough and I didn’t feel safe or in control. I think we both took things too far, I then freaked out but probably didn’t vocalise it well. Anyway it’s brought a lot of feelings flooding back and for the last 6/9 months I’ve been struggling with these symptoms . Which is why I’ll now feel close to burnout and have tried to get help. Medication seems the next logical step but I’m not sure whether to continue with the therapy or not.

It’s horrible lovely and I fully sympathise with you but it is normal. It is essentially the bad memories coming to surface now you’re in a position to process them which I know seems cruel and upsetting but this shows how far you have come that your brain feels safe enough and ready to tackle it. You’ve got this xx

You’ve buried the trauma for a long time and now it’s coming to the surface. It’s incredibly hard and can be very frightening after years of trying to just ignore it.

I agree with speaking honestly about how you feel following the sessions and also with pps who suggested that you may benefit from discussing an alternative therapy such as EMDR.
You mentioned potential neurodiversity, it’s worth noting that talking therapies aren’t always helpful for people with autism.

Using medication at the same time as having therapy is useful as it helps with the physical symptoms of anxiety while the therapy works on the psychological symptoms. I heard someone refer to meditation as the anaesthetic while the therapy is the procedure.

Medication was very helpful for me as was a formal diagnosis. Have you spoken to your husband about what happened? I am not a doctor or a psych but I don't think the therapy alone is working.

Honestly your situation seems in some ways similar to mine. Sexual abuse trauma is a very specific thing and it's common for it to surface in adulthood especially if you dissociated during it as a child/teen,

But it's a real specialty. The psych I see referred to EMDR as 'opening Pandora's box' for sexual related trauma. Therapy can absolutely be harmful and I would honestly go with your gut, don't second guess yourself.

Medication in conjunction with therapy has been crucial for me. I was still feeling awful after 10-12 weeks so you aren’t the only one.
I had CBT after the initial issue of 10 weeks. 15 years later, it resurfaced. I had more CBT before that therapist suggested EMDR. I’ve just completed 15 weeks and I feel like a weight has been lifted but I will remain on the medication under GP advice.

I don’t think there is a ‘normal’. Some people respond faster than others. Some will find that there are events that are still causing difficulties in patterns of thinking that aren’t even related to the initial trauma. Every brain processes things differently and no-one has lived your experience.

However, in all my therapy sessions, the end is always spent grounding so I hope that is happening but I agree with others that after therapy can feel dreadful. Hangover is a good description. Several times I was completely wiped out for days.

Sorry for rambling, but honestly tell the therapist and go back to the GP if you have doubts about the medication. They have prescribed it for a reason and if you feel unable to take it then they need to help you with an alternative. In my experience it has felt like a blessed relief, but I get everyone is different. If you are worried about over dependence, I have used it on four occasions over 15 years and have always been able to come off when I needed to, without crashing impacts. The GPs help you.

I really hope you start to feel more in control soon.

Yes we’ve spoken about it. He didn’t know the extent of what happened to me but I’ve told him certain things over the years. He says he didn’t realise what happened was a bit trigger for me so maybe I didn’t tell him that bit.

There’s been so many kind and helpful comments , thank you. I think for now I will continue but tell her what I’m dealing with and see what happens. And take the medication.

I like going in the sense that I feel she genuinely cares and it’s nice to feel like I’ve got someone who sees my authentic self and is in my corner. No one apart from DH knows about the abuse and he only knows bits. I’ve always been incredibly guarded about it

If anyone can share their experience of taking 50mg of sertraline I’d like to hear it? Worried about side effects especially insomnia

The only side effect I had was feeling thirsty. I resorted to taking it in the evening so that I could sleep through the worse of it. Other than that, it was extremely helpful at the time.
A lot of people are scared of side effects but most meds cite side effects and we still take things like paracetamol without ever reading the leaflet or worrying about it. So my guess is that it's general stigma around MH meds that is presenting as worry about side effects.

Ok this is really helpful actually. The internet is full of horror stories of terrible insomnia or stomach problems so it’s great to here that some people don’t get that .

thank you for sharing :)

Common selection bias. Nobody would go online to write about their lack of side-effects so the only info you get is from people who had them. Whether or not you get any, nobody will know but it is worth a shot. You can always talk to your GP about titrating from 25mg to 50 if you are worried.

I think it might be getting worse before getting better.

Personally, having tried therapy a fair few times I started to become skeptical about it and the limitations of the therapists and whether the 'advice' given was of merit or truly useful to me, because are all very different. I also did used to feel worse too!

I much prefer other methods to process trauma which are more flow state / spiritual, or distraction rather than rumination, practicing forgiveness etc etc. Sounds a bit woo but that's my way - I've lived with multiple traumas and I feel much more grounded these days.

I have had lots of talking therapy over the years and it has not helped or made things worse as I don’t connect emotionally during the sessions. Despite this or because of this I have felt overwhelmed afterward and even attempted suicide.

I am now having trauma therapy - EMDR. I can talk quite unemotionally about experiences but once the actual therapy starts immediately emotionally connect. This feels overwheming at first but we stick with it until it’s manageable. It never leaves me feeling worse. It is a release and cathartic. We always finish with a body scan. Maybe I would feel worse if I were not already suffering PTSD but it has not made things worse. Symptoms of PTSD have not lessened yet but being able to express emotion without being overwhelmed after the session is huge.

I am also likely ND - both my sons are autistic.

This thread is interesting to me. I’ll admit I’m a huge talking therapy sceptic, but why do so many people think that feeling absolutely awful from their sessions for weeks and even months on end is normal or positive? That sounds like something useless and potentially harmful to me. OP to me it sounds like you need medication and a different therapy. This does not sound good.

I started on 25mg then it was upped fairly quickly and I was on 100mg for a while. I initially had nausea during the day after I started so I changed to taking it at night time (which is the opposite of others who can suffer with insomnia due to it).

Unlike you I spent most of my therapy sessions bawling my eyes out. And yes the after effects of a session can leave you feeling awful. I had a session every 2 weeks, otherwise I felt like I was just getting over one then having another very soon after and none of my days felt “normal”.

I needed the meds to get through the therapy and dealing with my childhood trauma. Like you I suppressed everything for a very long time. I felt it numbed everything, which also meant numbing the good feelings too. So while I needed it at the time, I did end up coming off it by choice as I wanted to start feeling things again. That was around a year after I started therapy and things were a heck of a lot better by then.

If you have specific memories and flashbacks you might find EMDR helpful, my friend had it and it’s a way of re-filing these memories in your brain. She has spoken very highly of it (she witnessed horrific domestic abuse in her house).

It’s really good that you have found a therapist you feel comfortable with. Definitely tell her how you feel after the sessions. I used to do a little closing routine in my sessions if it was something I found particulalry difficult. I would close my eyes and imagine packaging my trauma in a box (it was pretty full!) and I would “leave it” at my therapists office. It sounds ridiculous but it really helped me to park things and not let it affect my daily life too much in between sessions. It is a long road, but you have done amazingly in seeking help already. Yes it gets harder before it gets better but honestly it will be worth it long term.

Unfortunately it is normal to feel this, it’s similar to ripping off an infected scab so you can treat the infection that’s lingering underneath. I’ve spent most of my adult life in and out of therapy due to sexual abuse as a teen and young adult and it’s HARD. But it gives you the chance to clear the infection and start to get healthy regrowth.

I was a sceptic too until I needed it myself. Honestly it makes me laugh some of the things we talked about and little tasks I did in therapy as I would have never thought I’d be one to find it helped me. It definitely opened my eyes to how our brains work and the effect of trauma on the brain. It isn’t for everyone though, well talking therapy isn’t. In general I think most people would benefit from therapy as long as they find the right fit for them (which is the hard bit!).

With regards to feeling worse etc. Imagine keeping something traumatic inside for 30+ years, never telling a soul. All that shame, sadness, anger, all the feelings you should have been helped to work through but never being able. The release is massive. It’s like opening the floodgates. That’s what I think happened to me anyway. It was really overwhelming and I had to talk about it in stages.

It all depends on the type of therapy it is, how long treatment is planned for and hopefully outcomes. And it doesn't seem as if you are too clear.
I think the anxiety and panic attacks are symptoms of your unresolved feelings. It sounds as if she is treating you for symptoms in the here and now, maybe with CBT? Unfortunately it seems to be stirring up the unresolved stuff from your past without necessarily working through those feelings. 2 months is early in a longer term treatment plan but only if it is designed to help you process the trauma

’Pulling the scab off’ is very old fashioned and can make things worse. Therapy has moved on since then and people really do not have to relive it to move on from it. So many people are having therapy and are not being looked after by the person that’s supposed to be helping them - this thread is evident of it,