How’s Your Therapy Going?
- Thread starter dandelions
- Start date
Friday's group therapy:
so f ing intense. it stabbed me so deeply that I wonder if it was a good thing at all. I've been dissociating over this issue all my life. I talked about it but now several hours later, I feel so safely dissociated again. and I wonder if I can ever heal. it is something that may or may not have happened to the very essence of me. now atm I can't even go o about it bc there is no way now to be soothed. I'm so tired of only feeling bad
so f ing intense. it stabbed me so deeply that I wonder if it was a good thing at all. I've been dissociating over this issue all my life. I talked about it but now several hours later, I feel so safely dissociated again. and I wonder if I can ever heal. it is something that may or may not have happened to the very essence of me. now atm I can't even go o about it bc there is no way now to be soothed. I'm so tired of only feeling bad
the intensive program i am in has individual, group dbt and another. i find the group therapy to be the most beneficial but as i mentioned above it was quite torturous yesterday and once done for the day what is there to do with the lingering pain. i don’t know if i’ll ever remember events when i was little that caused my self harm etc but i sure get a lot of pain that would nice to have go away. and dbt is so strange for me. like in many respects it doesn’t even apply because i feel i’m at a pre dbt state. then i also think i’m using those “skill” (where applicable) effectively already. so am i being helped by therapy or hurt. i’m not sure.
It took me quite a few times to find it helpful, I dropped out so much I was court ordered to complete the module once, I did completed it twice which was recommended. It really wasn't until the end of the first time that I started to grasp it and be able to use it so effectively that I can choose not to self harm and it did help in me in better asserting myself. I've unfortunately recalled the hell I went through as a child, I'd like to go back to forgetting, I know it's not adequate but I'm so sorry you too are going through this, I dont know if anything makes the pain go completely away, at least I haven't found it yet. Wishing you all the best
I’ve been doing EMDR to process trauma for better emotional regulation. She’s first been teaching me grounding techniques before anything else, so I can at least understand what calm is while being under pressure into moving new environment for me. Its good and bad same time, the calm is nice, Its just a shocking phase cause I am not used to being calm. The grounding techniques just has been slowing down my thoughts.
I sometimes go into a more dissociative state during a very emotional session as well. It can be really overwhelming to confront the really hard stuff. But it's not forever, if you keep at it, you can heal and it can get easier. It seems like you've got a safe place to do that which is great.
its just so agonizing. especially yesterday! and i just can’t believe my own feared history - was that stuff really my experience? no way to verify and that doubles the fear. it would be so good to just turn off completely than to have this stuff swirling in my brain until the next session. yeah, the group is safe but the areas outside the group are not so certain. makes me feel so disabled. so, i manage... or try...
today i’m gunna report on my therapy again. reminder, it is an intensive program in a hospital on an out patient basis (its a zoom in fact). there’s group with about 9 or so other people plus the therapist/psychologist who runs the group who happens to be my individual therapist as well. then i also see a psychiatrist once every couple weeks for i guess status updates and would also be for meds but i am not on any medication (by my own preference).
once a week there is a DBT group and once a week there is another group that deals with how an individual relates to other people and covers a wide variety of situations in present day life a well as developmental starting at birth. It is all very interesting and at times very helpful and educational. i do apply what i’ve learned to some every day situations but i am also frequently upset by the simple fact that these ”classes” are done with “relationships” in mind that the patients have with real life people. and they all present with much experience with relationships (particularly romantic) in their lives.
in my life i’ve had only one long term relationship. that is with my wife and it’s been over 30 years. maybe people might be inclined to congratulate us for this (and congratulate me) but it also does show how i actually have very little experience with relationships. i will not get into more detail about this but the fact is that i have very little experience with romantic relationships (and other types of relationships as well) and that distresses me.
in the past year i’ve made some very important discoveries about myself and have thusly experimented with these discoveries on other sites to see how people who never knew me at all might experience me. that worked out disastrously because i was not ever able to get sufficiently conversational with anyone.
i think i’ve hinted at my discoveries here but have not yet been clear. that clarity will be coming eventually and that will be coordinated with my intensive therapy. i also recently attended a program for survivors of childhood sexual abuse (which includes people who are somehow connected to those survivors). i still don’t know if i am a survivor or just someone connected.
i know my sister was abused and that the likelyhood of me having been abused is there, but the dreams and memories and other possible evidence do indicate the possibility of abuse but my recent discoveries does throw a different angle to it all which might be something else or still somehow connected. i do not want to rush jumping to conclusions and then realize i’m in error. so i have to stick with the intensive therapy. i also intend to stick with the survivor of sexual abuse program too.
thing is now there are times i want to hang out in the Café and see a tag alert and just feel so overwhelmed that i don’t know how to participate. then other times i’m fine. i have a mystery switch inside that goes on and off. and that seems so strange to me.
i still have hijacker to contend with but along with my discoveries hijacker has changed somewhat, like hijacker knows who i really am and that once i can be more in accord with who i am, hijacker will fade away. it seems to me that there are actually 3 main parts of me inside. old me, hijacker and new me.
this has been striking me as being very DID-like, but without any of the other two taking over. i mention it in my Ego State Disorder thread that is linked in my signature below. it is something similar to DID (multiple personalities or Dissociative Identity Disorder).
DID for a long time has not been taken completely seriously in the mental healthcare world but fortunately it seems to be gaining acceptance and is as well, considered in my intensive program too. i’m happy about that but have not yet deeply discussed this with my therapist.
it is very common for me to have some kind of intensity in therapy that needs immediate attention and then the other things i want to discuss seem to get set aside. well today is monday and i’d have individual and group today but being memorial day, they are closed. i will have group again on wednesday. maybe DID and ESD are subjects i will be able to talk about soon.
hey, this post is long and wordy in classic extraterrestrialone fashion. thanks for reading.
once a week there is a DBT group and once a week there is another group that deals with how an individual relates to other people and covers a wide variety of situations in present day life a well as developmental starting at birth. It is all very interesting and at times very helpful and educational. i do apply what i’ve learned to some every day situations but i am also frequently upset by the simple fact that these ”classes” are done with “relationships” in mind that the patients have with real life people. and they all present with much experience with relationships (particularly romantic) in their lives.
in my life i’ve had only one long term relationship. that is with my wife and it’s been over 30 years. maybe people might be inclined to congratulate us for this (and congratulate me) but it also does show how i actually have very little experience with relationships. i will not get into more detail about this but the fact is that i have very little experience with romantic relationships (and other types of relationships as well) and that distresses me.
in the past year i’ve made some very important discoveries about myself and have thusly experimented with these discoveries on other sites to see how people who never knew me at all might experience me. that worked out disastrously because i was not ever able to get sufficiently conversational with anyone.
i think i’ve hinted at my discoveries here but have not yet been clear. that clarity will be coming eventually and that will be coordinated with my intensive therapy. i also recently attended a program for survivors of childhood sexual abuse (which includes people who are somehow connected to those survivors). i still don’t know if i am a survivor or just someone connected.
i know my sister was abused and that the likelyhood of me having been abused is there, but the dreams and memories and other possible evidence do indicate the possibility of abuse but my recent discoveries does throw a different angle to it all which might be something else or still somehow connected. i do not want to rush jumping to conclusions and then realize i’m in error. so i have to stick with the intensive therapy. i also intend to stick with the survivor of sexual abuse program too.
thing is now there are times i want to hang out in the Café and see a tag alert and just feel so overwhelmed that i don’t know how to participate. then other times i’m fine. i have a mystery switch inside that goes on and off. and that seems so strange to me.
i still have hijacker to contend with but along with my discoveries hijacker has changed somewhat, like hijacker knows who i really am and that once i can be more in accord with who i am, hijacker will fade away. it seems to me that there are actually 3 main parts of me inside. old me, hijacker and new me.
this has been striking me as being very DID-like, but without any of the other two taking over. i mention it in my Ego State Disorder thread that is linked in my signature below. it is something similar to DID (multiple personalities or Dissociative Identity Disorder).
DID for a long time has not been taken completely seriously in the mental healthcare world but fortunately it seems to be gaining acceptance and is as well, considered in my intensive program too. i’m happy about that but have not yet deeply discussed this with my therapist.
it is very common for me to have some kind of intensity in therapy that needs immediate attention and then the other things i want to discuss seem to get set aside. well today is monday and i’d have individual and group today but being memorial day, they are closed. i will have group again on wednesday. maybe DID and ESD are subjects i will be able to talk about soon.
hey, this post is long and wordy in classic extraterrestrialone fashion. thanks for reading.
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well, at any rate i do believe i am moving ahead. i closed those accounts. they just frustrated me. i am striving for not feeling “not of this earth” anymore. maybe soon i will be able to get there (here) and when you do, you’ll know it!! i certainly hope i can someday soon be real. its tricky but it must be possible...
I haven't looked at all the responses, but I loved group therapy. I was in a group for people who'd lost a parent, and it was really comforting. I stayed friend with two people in the group as well. Success probably depends on a lot of factors, but I found that being in a niche grief group was 1000% positive. I'd like to try group again at some point. The being understood thing helped me immensely.