Just wondered if anyone with PTSD/Complex PTSD fancied a chat?

[pepsiandshirley]

I've accepted I'min this for the longish haul, have a great therapist, get out and do plenty of exercise, spend time in green spaces, stay positive etc etc.

But I'd just love to speak to someone/anyone else who understands what a bitch trauma is (any kind, whatever the cause - trauma is trauma!)

Notadutchie I don't go straight home after therapy. I now have a happy few hours where I transition between "therapy space" and "everyday life". I make sure I do this after both therapy sessions otherwise I am guaranteed to go to pot before the next one.

It's helped me. May be worth trialling if you haven't done it?

I go home and decompress a little. Have a couple of hours before collecting kids (need to be "normal" then) and then DH arrives. I think ideally I'd either have three days away (hahahaha) or someone who would want to give me a hug and listen, or tell me they're proud of me (also hahahaha).

I'm sorry you feel unsupported notadutchie :(

This is partly where I am interested in the difference between EMDR and traditional trauma pyschotherapy..my DH has autistic traits and for me I really appreciate the solidity and certainty of knowing I am going home to a safe space after therapy that doesn't require me to be emotional about anything...

I have never had EMDR so I don't know how it differs in terms of relationship building in standard psychotherapy...I feel as though for me I tell my therapist the very worst of the details so that I can come home and just feel happy to be with DH....but I have considered EMDR in the past for dealing with hypervigilance etc but I don't know if I'd miss out on that therapeutic relationship/talking shit about any old thing I get with my therapist..

Probably not making sense here, but I guess I'm asking you notadutchie and any other EMDR clients how much of a therapeutic relationship there is in EMDR? As I guess I've always wondered..

I think it depends on the therapist. To start off with I had a good click with her, but technically EMDR doesn't need the therapeutic alliance. You can even hate the therapist and it'll work. It's also been done with people who can't communicate because of poor language skills and no translator available and proven successful. However, I reckon that with CPTSD it is important because you're going to be there for more than 3 sessions.

In my sessions we do a mixture of EMDR and talking. I have done a LOT of talking therapy before though and for me the average EMDR session is about 6-8 talking sessions. That goes for progress and for intensity too. And it's really amazing when the result comes too.

I also have a second psychologist who I only talk with. Usually not about the trauma stuff directly, but it's handy if I can't wait a week to talk to the trauma one. And my trauma one also allows me to call her if I need to between sessions (never brought myself to) or email (which I've done when things have been really bad).

What's absolutely crucial though is that the EMDR therapist has Level 2 EMDR training. Most practitioners only have Level 1 and it's not suitable for CPTSD. They're often the ones who will tell you that CPTSD can't be treated with EMDR. It's certainly longer and harder than single incident PTSD (which I've also worked on), but for me it's been effective.

So I'd say, for CPTSD, most important is the level of training, then the alliance and the person themselves.

Thanks notadutchie, that's helpful.

I 100% can't fault my therapist and consider myself very lucky to have him. He's an integrative/humanistic talk therapist, with a specialism in trauma and for me I can't imagine anyone else...but occasionally when the physical symptoms are bad in the same way as I fantasise about taking a pill I sometimes wonder if I should just try EMDR.

But I don't think I can separate the trauma out from all of the rest of the stuff...I love the idea of a magic bullet for trauma, but it is so complicated with other issues to do with my upbringing I just wonder how I could l treat 'just' the trauma in isolation.

By god it is tempting though!

" but technically EMDR doesn't need the therapeutic alliance. You can even hate the therapist and it'll work"

I think I essentially read this in 'the body keeps the score'.. the author talks about how he practised his EMDR training on another therapist who absolutely hated him and his approach, but still recovered.

I guess for me, that approach just doesn't feel holistic enough....it needs to feel personal...and yet, a magic bullet would be so bloody lovely!!

EMDR isn't really a magic bullet for CPTSD. It's really not that simple. In my situation I work on trigger after trigger. It can take months depending on what it is. But in doing that it can bring other things up. It's very tough. When I work on incidents from one-off adult traumas they can be done in under 8 sessions and are intense, but for me, not like the childhood stuff. The childhood stuff can bring up back to back flashbacks. It's much much harder than the talking therapy, but it's also worth it. However, it's important to have the talking and therapeutic alliance too for CPTSD.

I think this is because CPTSD is almost always an ongoing interpersonal trauma alongside any specific traumatic incidents carried out by the abuser(s). So, it is not like a car crash or a stranger rape (and I'm not saying those are less bad, only they impact different parts of the brain) where they're random and otherwise life and relationships may be good. In dealing with CPTSD we need to heal our trust of people and a strong therapeutic alliance can be part of that. Certainly without it we can feel very insecure in a therapeutic relationship and that is like swimming upstream!

I am also training as a therapist (slowly) and knowing how EMDR can help has made me question whether it would be ethical for me to not offer it to clients with trauma.

It was Bessel van der Kolk who talks about EMDR working when he hated the guy doing it with him. He was working on a single incident though, not something complex. There are some people online who say they do it to themselves. I absolutely wouldn't do that!!!! It's crazy! The training isn't so much how to do it (that's relatively straightforward) it's how to track the patient/client and help them deal with what comes up for them, which can be overwhelming and very raw - as well as helping them stay comfortable.

Sorry I didn't mean to imply that I thought EMDR was a magic bullet, was just saying that I wish there was a magic bullet for this stuff.

Me too!

I was referred to EMDR and long-term psychotherapy. I have to do my long-term psychotherapy first (I am doing it now, it's tough). A lot of it does work around trust, building up a relationship and more trust. I am about a year in and still in the initial phase. The therapist moved the files around in her room and we ended back at square one.

Oh, and she managed to let a pot plant die as well.

Does anyone here lie on the bed in therapy? I am still very much rooted to my spot on the floor for now. That bed looks evil.

Thats really interesting about EMDR. I had Eye movement integration (also known as IEMT ) and for me that was a magic bullet where as talking about the trauma left me feeling much much worse. The more I learn about EMDR though the more differences I see between that and IEMT. The IEMT required very little talking at all, infact beyond a brief description of the issue I wanted to work on, no other talking about the trauma. The therapist I saw explained that translating the experience into words can be traumatising in itself. I would agree that the intensity was much more that a standard talking therapy as was the exhaustion afterwards, which I suppose was to be expected as we worked back through 30+ years in just 1 session. It definately worked fast, the relief was instantaneous and my (simple one trauma) PTSD resolved in 1 session. Interestingly less than half the session focussed on the trauma itself with most of the issues that came up being childhood ones that were impacting on the PTSD despite having a pretty normal happy childhood. This really surprised me and I wonder how this type of therapy would be for CPTSD.

The therapist said that inorder to tackle difficult emotional responses you need to tackle the first time that you ever experienced that emotion, because everytime you feel that emotion your mind/body relives every time you have ever felt the emotion in that instant. So if you tackle the root of that emotional response you don't need to tackle every incident that has left you feeling that way to resolve them all. He also said that theres often many layers of subtley different emotions tied up together, so for me it was like working through different layers of emotion. So one layer was pannic, the next was anxiety, then tight chest, then nausea etc, so we worked on the root cause of each of these feelings rather than working on each traumatic event per se. Not sure if that makes any sense? I was working with a very experienced therapist too which I'm sure helped. From what I've read IEMT is gentler than EMDR and works faster, but it does seem to be less mainstream.

dream my IEMT was done standing up with short rests in sitting. The psychologist I saw we sat in rather uncomfortable chairs, but he made me feel worse anyway. His take on things was that we had to rip the wound open and clean it out to heal, the IEMT therapist said that was not necessary, for me IEMT was the eqivilant of key hole surgery.

Really interesting to hear of everyone's experiences.

I'd need therapy regardless of the trauma because I'm still trying to untangle the bits of my childhood that weren't traumatic per se but contributed to everything else that went on.

Plus I am still in touch with my parents and that's a very fraught relationship that therapy is helping me to negotiate.

So there's no way I'd go through any of this stuff without a therapist but I do wish for something to just 'zap' the anxiety symptoms so I could get on with dealing with the rest of it.

I've made so much progress, though, I really can't complain.

Plus I am still in touch with my parents and that's a very fraught relationship that therapy is helping me to negotiate.

This for me as well. Though I am rethinking this now have read the posts on strangulation being linked to murder attempts. I find it difficult to negotiate the family contact side of things, particularly when there are substance misuse issues ongoing there and I never know if it's safe or unsafe.

It's so bloody difficult.

Nolonger Hmmm, not sure I agree with that psychologist. I have a previous "ripping wound open" experience and it didn't end well. I am very careful about who I work with now. Thankfully, my GP is careful about who I work with too.

Creating, it's really not easy to carry on with family is it?

I think I know the thread you mean re: hands around throat and I felt the same (shocked) when I read it as that was a recurring experience for me.

I still can't be touched around my neck, can't wear polo necks, get freaked out when they put the cape round my neck at the hairdressers.

I found the would ripping approach very traumatic too. Thats why I stopped seeing and saw the other therapist privately for the IEMT. The original therapist was arranged through work, but the thought of seeing him again makes me feel sick. I told him why I wasn't going to see him again too.

Pepsi Nope. I have days when I just want to walk away (again).

Yes, I am the same with neck being touched - I am pretty weird about touch in general though.

Also found it shocking, and a little worried no one has actually discussed the effects of strangulation with me. I have now started looking at other things that have happened and finding other links to long-lasting health issues. I probably shouldn't.

I've gone NC with my "D"M. It was so hard to do because I didn't want to hurt her. I told her I am in trauma therapy in part because of her, thinking it would really mean something and she'd really want to apologise. Instead she wished me a good life and went NC with me!!

Very painful but also good proof of what she's like - it's really not all in my head!!

And you can do EMDR with virtually no talking - but I can't!

I'm never ever on a bed. The idea in itself is horrific for me! Is it a reclining chair? It sounds very Freudian.

Sorry on phone and can't get back easily to tag.

It sounds very Freudian.

It is very Freudian. No, it's an actual bed with sheets, pillow and cover on it.

Creating - I didn't know anything about the long term effects of strangulation either..another thing to add to the list.

I don't think I could cope with the bed!!

Nolonger your IEMT sounds great. I'm loving that this thread is helping us all to hear of positive treatment experiences. Sad that there's no joined up approach to it on the NHS though, so much seems to be down to luck or fate..

Dutchie - that sounds very painful re your mother going Nc

Creating! OMG! I can't believe it's an actual bed! Is it s room with other seating options?

Pepsi well it was pretty shocking and I was upset, but in the long term it was really good. I mean, what sort of mother, loving mother, would do that? So it just gave me concrete proof of what so many therapists had pointed out over the years and I'd been too afraid to face. It's absolutely liberating.

Creating !! I'm as stunned as the rest about the proper bed situation!

So, there is three chairs (one is hers), the bed, and her office desk chair. One chair is at the head of the bed, and hers and the other one are on the other side of the room. Will try and take a sneaky photo next time and show you.

The bed is very much still my enemy and I have no freaking idea why I would ever want to lie on it... I would feel so vulnerable.

I did see in one of the other offices they have the same bed set up too, so it's not just my therapist that does it.

Dutchie Do you have contact with the rest of your family? I would lose all of them if I NCd with my mum. That's the only reason I am not going there again, yet.

Creating, weirdly I quite like the sound of the bed.

This Is going to sound properly weird but when my therapist moved house I bought his old sofa from his therapy room (through eBay all very arms length)

It was only afterwards that I realised how potentially weird it is that I now own my therapists couch

But it's just a sofa, no biggie.

I can TOTALLY see how being in bed could be massively triggering though..maybe for some it could help make bed a safe place again, but I don't know...