Coping with increased symptoms starting therapy

[idontwanttoremember]

I’ve been doing trauma stabilisation for about six months, that was really helpful, MH nurse that was doing it was very lighthearted, informal and I got a cup of tea during most appointments.

It was always an agreement that her sessions would be short term to prepare me to do more in depth psychology. It’s the first time the NHS have been able to offer this to me; they’re saying it works and it should stop the cycle I’ve been in since age 16 of massive highs and lows. I’ve been in therapy on and off since that age and noone’s ever asked me to discuss childhood in detail. Always been told it’s better to try and ignore it/‘put it in a box’.

I met the psychologist this week, she’s nice enough but I don’t really know her yet I guess. She said she wants to talk to me about things that happened to me when I was much younger, and she wants me to feel the emotions attached to those events. She said that won’t be comfortable, but apparently it isn’t meant to be.

I almost don’t want to do it and feel like backing out. She’s talking about things that happened to me pre age 5, I’m now 33, I don’t want to remember those things in detail as much as I do have nightmares/triggers and a lot of anxiety problems. I don’t understand how bringing myself into a panic attack each fortnight is going to help.

I don't have any experience of this, but I'm assuming by going back and remembering what happened, you may now view things differently, or learn new skills to deal with what you went through.

That’s kind of what the psychologist said, that reprocessing things would help me to make links between how I feel and behave now and the things that happened to me a long time ago.

I don’t want to ‘re-feel’ the feelings I buried back then; the thought of that is absolutely petrifying because it feels like it’s happening all over again to me. I’m scared I’ll lose control of myself. Even this week’s introductory type appointment I was struggling to not start hyperventilating and getting weird flashbacks (that have carried on since, suddenly remembering stuff that has no connection to what I’m doing in the present).

Everything you are feeling is due to the trauma you suffered being 'locked' into your subconscious mind. There's a part of your SC which doesn't realise that you're no longer a child and that no one can hurt you anymore, as far as it's concerned there's still a danger. That's why you're getting the flashbacks.

I think it would be really useful to ask the psychologist why you need to re-feel those feelings - they are the feelings of a child, not of the adult you are now. Yes, you need to understand that whatever happened was nothing to do with you (they are everything to do with the other people/the circumstances) but you can do that without revisiting the situation.

Yes, I think you need to ask the psychologist more about the treatment and why you need to feel those childhood feelings. And tell her how anxious you are about the prospect of doing so. It might be either that there is another way of doing it (eg, as I understand it EMDR doesn’t necessarily involve reliving the traumatic experience), or that she can do a lot of grounding and relaxing work with you before and/or during the treatment so that you feel safer in doing it.

I’ll talk to her when I see her yes, it’s so hard because I don’t want to complain but it’s overwhelmingly difficult.

She said I need to feel the emotion because at present I don’t and I didn’t as a child (it was pushed away, I wasn’t allowed to feel fear, I got told off); so when I talked about my childhood to people before the last few months I could do it quite detached and like a narrative/story that happened to someone else. Now when I start trying to talk I panic, dissociate and feel faint or like I want to run away, feel much much younger than I am.

In CBT/stabilisation the nurse said she was actively encouraged not to persuade me talk to about the past, because she said it had to be done in a controlled manner - so I suppose this is ‘controlled manner’ but I can’t cope with feeling this distressed after each fortnight.

They can’t do EMDR supposedly, that’s only in very specific circumstances they said and don’t think anyone in my CMHT is trained in it. I will ask her about relaxation methods and stuff. I’ve got a good safety/crisis sheet it’s just remembering to use it and not slipping back into dissociating.

A long time ago something upsetting happened to me. It has featured on my radar relatively little over the last 20 years or so. Most of the friends I have made as an adult don't even know it happened (predominantly just because it has never come up).

Fairly recently I met up with a friend for coffee and we started talking about something relevant but not the event itself. I became more aware of the the event but didn't have any alarm bells going off in my head that I should move the conversation on. Suddenly I felt really panicky and was struggling to get the words out.

A bit later I felt much better and have just been carrying on but I'm thinking more about of what happened to me and wonder if it would be good to talk it through with someone. I'd like to put it back in it's box but I now also feel quite anxious it might come out again without me being able to control it. It was not the end of the world that it happened with my friend who really understanding and who I can know I can rely on but I'd hate it to happen in a work setting or at a big gathering or similar.

Sorry, not much help at all but just empathy as I am playing over a similar problem in my head.

@idontwanttoremember

Have a look at these videos - they'll go a long way to explaining why you feel the way you do.

Remember; you have a voice now and you have every right to question the process you are undertaking. It's not complaining.

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Sending you love and solidarity - sitting with and then processing trauma is very hard and you're being brave and brilliant.

The theory is that there are some parts of you that think this is still happening, that you're not safe, it may not seem obvious but sometimes these parts of you have been impacting on all sorts of other things in your life - the highs and lows you've experienced.

The therapy is supposed to reconnect those feelings, that are currently floating around and impacting you day to day back to the original trauma. So by talking about it and bringing up those feelings you're actually processing what happened and then you'll be able to file it away properly and it will stop hurting you. You've had all these years of it impacting you and now with the right therapy you might be able to process it and be a lot more stable and free from it.

But while you're doing it it's possibly going to feel worse in the short term. You're being really brave and it might be a good idea to bring this up with your therapist to get a more technical explanation than my lay person's understanding.

Sending you strength for this journey. You will not feel like this forever x

Reprocessing in therapy does work. It's hard though, it's really fucking hard. But having come out the other side, it's worth it. If you are being offered this on the NHS I would bite their hand off because you're one of very very few.

Saying that, it does make it more difficult if you have limited sessions. I took 4 years. The first 2 and a half of which were just building trust with my therapist. You need a rock solid foundation and a strong relationship to withstand trauma reprocessing. It's brutal. Some sessions probably just as hard on him as me.

The first couple of sessions are deceptively easy. Its once I got a few months in we had to take a couple of sessions break for me to re-stabilise but picked it back up again. Honestly it was really rough but we're out of the woods now. Not done but through the worst and truly I would do it again if I had to. I have a much better and fulfilling life now.