Birth trauma rewind therapy?

[Fuzzyduck21]

Have had cbt for traumatic birth but it didn't help me. Maybe cos my therapist was male and felt he didn't get it? Have been recommended to try rewind therapy but only seen it private at a cost of around £450 for the course. Can't justify that kind of money at the mo particularly as I am now a sahm. Got a doc apt about something else this afternoon and thought about asking if they did it on the NHS? Has anyone had this on nhs? Has anyone had anything other that cbt on nhs for birth trauma?

Hi fuzzy

I used our hospitals 'listening' service for traumatic births. You get about 2 hours with a midwife who reads all hospital information with you beforehand. She then reviewed it in s timeline as it happened. It was like reliving it and at the same time she explained every stage from their point too. It was a very gentle and sensitive session and it did help
Me to put the demons behind me. It didn't change my labour but it helped me grieve somehow and think about my child differently. It was his birth and I'd never celebrated it, and that was how I started to think about it.

I haven't had anything on the NHS but what I've had would be available, I think. I found a number of things helped me. One was a birth debrief, as mentioned by IsFeidirLiom above. I approached my hospital via PALS for it.

The second was talking therapy: I had 12 sessions with an integrative counsellor through my employer. Not CBT, but it really helped me to process my feelings around what had happened.

The third was using breathing exercises and mindfulness techniques. There's a good website called www.getselfhelp.org, I think, which I like, and which covers the same things my counsellor suggested.

I also found a really helpful book with lots of suggestions for ways to work through your feelings. It's available on Amazon and is called "How to Heal a bad birth: making sense, making peace, moving on" by Melissa Brujin and Debby Gould. Not the cheapest but it really helped me and made me feel less alone. It also helped to have ideas about how to move forwards, as most of the online stuff I found was about symptoms and causes.

The above has taken around four months for me, but means I've gone from daily flashbacks to actually having days where I don't think about the birth. I wouldn't have thought that possible a few months ago. DC is now 14 months, I just wish I'd done something earlier.

If flashbacks are a problem for you, I've heard good things about EMDR but not sure if it's available on the NHS.

Good luck, I hope you find some help.