Psychotherapy - did it help you

[Samsond]

I'm 4 sessions into therapy to help with anxiety and depression. My therapist keeps talking about "complex PTSD" so I guess I do need help. But I don't get how therapy does that. I was hoping she was going to give me advice but she just listens. I don't get how that helps? I go to a session and I don't know what to talk about or where to start. Ive always struggled with opening up and talking about myself anyway (have worked out I have attachment issues and apparently don't trust people!) and honestly how does remembering traumatic events even help people anyway? I'm thinking about stopping because it feels like a pointless waste of time but maybe a eureka moment is coming?

A good therapist doesn’t just sit and listen they have insightful perspectives on your experience.

no it never helped me

I didn't find it particularly helpful but I wasn't in the most receptive frame of mind.

From my perspective (as a pluralistic counsellor) its definitely not about getting you to re-live traumatic events if you don't want to because that might re-traumatise you, but if you do want to talk about them then it is about helping you to gain some insights or new perspectives into what's happening for you.

Talking didn't help. I was diagnosed with ptsd, anxiety and depression all linked to trauma (both in childhood and adulthood). However I'm about 10 months into emdr and I can say I was very sceptical (but did it as last resort) and it is really helping. I'd definitely explore it. I'm glad I persevered, it has made me feel worse at times but I then come out the other side and can think of the events without having Painful flashbacks. I'm nearing the end and although I'm not cured (and won't be) I'm lots better.

I mean she does offer perspectives I guess. Along the lines of "but that wasn't your fault" or "you're not responsible for other people's actions" but these are things that I objectively know. I might have trouble feeling these things I guess but I'm not stupid. I just don't understand how it's meant to work

Does EMDR work for complex PTSD? I thought it was really for PTSD resulting from an event?

Find a trauma-informed therapist. You shouldn't be having to talk about traumatic events at this stage, especially if you have C-PTSD.

Therapy (with a specialist in trauma) reduced my acute symptoms of PTSD to something manageable. It got me back to work, I was able to leave the house, sleep at night without being plagued by nightmares and flashbacks. I am eternally grateful. I actually still have therapy weekly but it's for other issues. It has saved my life on several occasions (once quite literally). But I have a brilliant psychiatrist/therapist who really understands me and goes above and beyond to support me. It's like having my own personal cheerleader.

I think I would perhaps would have worded it, 'do you know it wasn't your fault?' because if you're having trouble 'feeling it' wasn't your fault (and i hope I've understood that correctly) then I'd be looking for an 'aha' moment where you totally get and truly believe and feel it wasn't your fault.

I can't comment on EMDR but there has been research done that say's the quality of the therapeutic relationship with the counsellor is more important than the modality of counselling.

I have tried it a few times, usually free though Uni, I think it could be helpful but I was usually limited to just a handful of sessions and I don't think that helped to much. I have a friend who did proper Freudian psychoanalysis twice a week for seven years and he feels that was very helpful but at £70 a session its a very expensive undertaking!

PTSD (and other traumas) arise from your mind trying to deal with/reconcile something that happened to you. It really doesn't matter if the event(s) could be categorised as serious or trivial - what matters is how your mind interprets it.

Your subconscious becomes usefully active at about 18m of age - watching, absorbing, learning, copying, listening. Your conscious, logical mind doesn't even start to develop until you are 7-9 years of age so in that intervening period you learn at a ferocious pace but can't rationalise what it takes in. That's a recipe for misunderstandings, misconceptions and not realising that things happen that have nothing to do with us (children are hugely egocentric and can't imagine events that don't involve them).

So shit happens when we are too young to realise it's not our fault. We decide, or believe, it's our fault and internalise guilt/shame/low self esteem which goes on to inform and affect everything we do. The subconscious develops coping strategies to avoid those situations that make us sad or uncomfortable but they are still there in the background - lingering because we didn't have the capacity to deal with them at the time they happened.

You can resolve this - anything the mind can learn it can unlearn; you just need to learn how.

You can resolve this - anything the mind can learn it can unlearn; you just need to learn how.

This does make sense but then who is teaching me how? Therapists don't really advise do they? I think that's the bit I don't really get. I almost feel like I could just go talk into the mirror and get the same result.

It's something I, and other remedial hypnotists/hypnotherapists, do. The issue is not with your rational mind, it's in your subconscious mind. The good news is that your SC mind wants you to be happy and safe and just needs to know how to fix it.

The sentence that helps me understand therapy is that 'we are hurt in relationship and we heal in relationship'. So much is going on in the therapy room, a lot at an unconscious level, and it is a way of changing our ways of relating and understanding of ourselves. I think it's worth taking your doubts to your therapist OP and discussing it and then if you are still not convinced then walk away. But try not to quit without voicing some of this stuff.

I think it takes a long time. I am into my 5th year of therapy. I started noticing changes after about 4 years but friends and colleagues were commenting on the fact that I was becoming assertive before then.
I talk about lots of things in sessions - not only my traumatic events. My therapist points out links and patterns which are obvious once she has pointed them out but which I couldn't see by myself.
I think the relationship itself is healing; having someone actually hear what you are saying without interrupting or judging. And sometimes just saying something out loud makes you understand emotionally that it wasn't your fault and that in turn lifts the crippling feelings of shame and guilt. I have no idea how this works as like you, I have known intellectually for years that as a child I wasn't responsable.

It has at times. She failed to detect I am neuro divergent though.

Is there a reason she should have?

It did help me, initially just to be able to get my thoughts out. But then over time to know that their opinion of me says nothing about me. I went through that 'arc' of feeling I wasn't getting anything from therapy precisely because my parents still viewed me in the same way they always had, and still felt like the victims of me. What I wanted was the magic formula to correct them.

I still think it's sad but now, i don't just rationally know that it's all about them, now I FEEL THE KNOWLEDGE THAT THEIR OPINION OF ME SAYS NOTHING ABOUT ME.

apologies for caps

This is it @Samsond objectively knowing it's not your fault is only chapter 1. Feeling this at a core level is near the end.

I used to feel v mildly irritated when my therapist would say '''sounds like they felt better about themselves after labelling you'' and I would think um yeh yeh, but it took a long while before I felt less traumatised by my parents' view of me.

Their perspective was presented to me my whole childhood as REALITY and my perspective was seen as aggression/sensitivity/drama/awkwardness.

I figured this dysfunction out rationally, but emotionally I was still 100% playing in to the core wound that their perspective is the real one by NEEDING them to acquiesce ground there, acknowledge the truth in my analysis.

Obviously this never happened, I just got more labels.

It's taken me nearly 4 years to finally feel like their view of me has been cut out of me. It's still there, the scar will always be there but the tumour that was their many opinions of me has been cut out. Finally finally finally I am soothed by my view of me meaning more to me than their view of me.

I'm still annoyed by their lack of emotional maturity though. But I can cope.

I'm not having therapy anymore but I've been three times now, wouldn't say I'll never go again.

It was 5 years!! I told her everything about how I obsessed, my quirks, my lack of attachment. I think to any clinical psychologist should have been fairly obvious

I have been doing therapy for 18 months or so. My therapist does not tell me what to do but she does not sit in silence either. She will gently encourage me to think through the situation myself by asking me what I think about it, or why I think I am reacting in particular ways. I do not have a diagnosis, nor do I want one, but my therapist is fully aware that I identify hugely with CPTSD and has confirmed, based on what I have told her (which is by no means everything) that my childhood was objectively abusive and that both parents are almost certainly narcissistic. That alone has helped me accept my situation was abusive. I would not have used that word and struggled to understand why I did not feel at all loved when my mother constantly maintains I am. Sometimes the difference between what my logical brain and my emotional brain are saying is a yawning gulf and my therapist helps me find ways of bringing them closer together. I could possibly do a lot of the work myself but having someone to talk to who will respond compassionately but knowledgeably is hugely helpful. It has not always felt that way and there are peaks and troughs in progress, but looking back over the last 18 months I can see I have come a long way.

I would suggest you tell your therapist you are having doubts and what those doubts are. I have told mine that on occasion and we have talked it through. She has always been very forthcoming in telling me that the decision to carry on with therapy is mine alone, and never tries to sway me if I give indications that I am wavering, but once we have talked things over I usually find that the problem is down to trust issues.