Posted by DaisyM on February 10, 2004, at 23:25:24
In reply to Re: Open Thoughts Forum » Elle2021, posted by Karen_kay on February 10, 2004, at 22:41:43
Karen,
You know what I'm going through and dealing with. You also know how much I am struggling with all it. It is soooo overwhelming and painful. And you have read Antigua's posts. You MUST go slow and not flood the memories. Without a lot of support, it can be dangerous.You know my Therapist has tons of experience with this - I've told you over 20 years. When I told him I wanted to push it, he said in no uncertain terms to NOT do that. And he is "making" me come at least 2x a week and sometimes 3 if we go over something really hard. Part of therapy for abuse victims is giving them back the control - not forcing them because they were forced before. Not to mention the controversy around false memories.
What we do often is take some spot in time and explore it. Like, I moved a lot as a kid. So he had me describe each of the houses I have lived in, we "walked through them" together. This allowed me to tell good memories...and some bad. The more we talked about it, the more I could see it again, the more I remembered. It is a painful process but he was with me the whole time. You need that. You deserve that.
In between sessions, I try to put it away now. I can't often, especially at night, but forcing you to think about it goes against all the accepted methods for working with this type of trauma.
He shouldn't have threatened to terminate either, because one of the biggest reasons "we" never told as kids is because we were afraid that our dads would leave us. Using this as leverage is wrong.
Sometimes we will go weeks without talking about it. I've got a lot of other things going on and so do you. So relationship problems, etc. are also things you need him for. Your current life is at least as important as your past.
One more thing. I told you we started using a writing workbook. There is a main book: "The courage to heal". My Therapist doesn't use the main book all that much (he likes the workbook), he said, because it assumes that you should do too much of it on your own. He doesn't feel that is safe and in his experience people who attempt it on their own end up in therapy a mess and suicidal. BUT, I've looked at the book and it has a lot of thoughtful "rules" about processing this stuff, including lost memories. You might want to look at it, or take it to your Therapist.
Just my 2 cents. But since I'm in the middle of it, I think you should listen to me. I'm worried about you.
Daisy
poster:DaisyM
thread:310600
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20040209/msgs/311909.html