How/when does therapy/counselling help? Feels horrible, not sure if I can persevere with it.

[CompassionFatigue]

I am having counselling to help with my drink problem. I drink to avoid horrible feelings that to be honest have stayed with me since a difficult childhood. I am a depressive and take lots of meds but still need to self medicate with booze.

So, a couple of months in and the latest session has left me feeling dreadful. How is this meant to help? I understand intellectually the idea that by bringing things up in a safe place you reduce its power...but it just doesnt feel like that. The stuff I talked about has stayed with me and I can't shake it off. I can't be doing this every week if this is how it leaves me, I have a job and children and can't go into a crisis each week. Is this a normal reaction to counselling? I don't want to give up, but this is horrible. Any advice would be really appreciated.

I have my doubts about whether rehashing all the bad stuff that happened to you is really useful. Sometimes it can lead to insight, which helps, but sometimes it just leaves you feeling horrible. You need to discuss this with your therapist. Maybe this style of therapy is not what is best for you.

I really understand how you feel. I self medicate with food but also on medication. I'm working through my traumatic childhood and feel worse than when I started. I read somewhere that you have to feel the pain to recover from it. I have found a book on childhood trauma that explains that some people feel worse before they feel better but they will feel better. Along side the counselling try cognitive behaviour therapy. Don't stop your recovery, even though at the moment it feels like you aren't getting anywhere, you are. Reaching out for help shows that you want to recover. You need to learn to trust yourself. Try some of the inner child recovery books to regain that trust.

It is very important to tell your counsellor that the sessions are leaving you feeling worse. If they are not open to hearing your concerns about it, then they are not doing their job well. It might not be the best type of therapy for you, or it make just take more time. It's hard to say. Maybe you could ask your counsellor about a safe place imagery exercise. This is a good way to cope in between sessions f you have been dealing with difficult stuff from the past, and need to induce a sense of calm. something like this but even better if a therapist can work on it with you.

A couple of months is still very early days (8 or so sessions?). And most people do find they initially feel worse.

Are you reducing your drinking alongside the counselling? Just wondering as you say you've used drinking to cope with the painful things from your past. It sounds like you are now more in touch with those painful feelings rather than trying to avoid them. And that is bound to be very difficult to begin with.

Do talk to your therapist about how you are feeling. Hopefully you can think together about what is happening.

Thanks for all your comments. To answer some questions, yes I am cutting down on the booze, or trying to, alongside the counselling. Still drinking, though it is less than it was.I do see now that drinking isn't helping. Yet can't see how else to deal with how I feel, hopefully that's the next step? I have had lots of counselling before, feel disappointed that here I am again, still things unresolved.

I will definitely talk to my counsellor- in many ways I am very open about my issues. But some of it it's like hitting a huge black brick wall, and I just can't make sense of it and don't know how to talk about it without falling into it again.

I just hope this time is different and I can get somewhere with it.

I do think that therapy sometimes isn't meant to feel nice. Its a bit like pulling teeth - horrible at the time but afterwards you know you've done good and got the rotten things out.

I had therapy and had a fair few painful weeks in the beginning when I had to admit that I had played a role in the events in my life and face the painful truth of the baggage I had been carrying round.

Its fair to say I felt awful, sad, emotional for a few weeks. But we worked through it and now I have recovered from my MH condition and am in a much better place.

Sometimes it's no pain no gain.

I also think that you need to be really ready to change, you can think you are but that's not always the same thing. I had counselling in my past and it did nothing for me because I had not hit rock bottom yet where I was ready to cast off my old skin. I had a nervous breakdown, then had therapy and this time I was ready to go deep and undo a lot of old damage.

I am finally happy in my own skin now which feels great and means I am living not just existing.

Hang on in there, feeling dreadful is just bringing it all up to be dealt with, like washing a dirty pot where all the muck comes to the surface at first, but the pot is left clean and shiny afterwards (sorry for crap analogy!)

Another analogy: it's like when you pull a hair out of the plug hole and loads of crap comes up with it.

I avoided my bad feelings in other ways but basically spent years avoiding them. Therapy was agony at first. But in the long run actually starting to feel my feelings instead of avoiding them has actually helped and I'm coming out the other side.

Maybe talk to your counsellor about working on coping skills for outside of / after sessions?

When l started counselling first and had to go out to face the world in a mess my counsellor encouraged me to sort of put all that stuff in my inside pocket only to be brought out again next time l met her when l knew l was in a safe place. She would sort of work through that with me as session ended so l could somehow function knowing there would be another session soon. This enabled me to continue my usual life..shaken but not in total bits. Gradually it wasn't as necessary for me to do that anymore

There's a specific type of therapy for PTSD following childhood trauma - EMDR therapy (you need to google) I've seen many people on here speak very highly of it. Apparently you don't need to go through all the trauma as this often just makes things worse, though I know many people are helped by more conventional therapy. But YES tell the therapist how you are feeling and remember the agenda is yours, you don't have to talk about anything you don't want to, or at any given time - just when you feel safe enough.