Leaning heavily on my peer support network helps me through times when I feel like I need more help than professional detachment will allow. My on-line network is reaching viability, but it is still not a replacement for my live network. Physical presence makes a huge diff in my personal therapy.

Be patient with the process, Gee. It's all too easy to feel like we are falling backward when it is *just* a bump in the road. Steadying support while you ride ^it^ out.

I don't have any answers for you but just want to say I see you or "hear" you. I liked what you wrote on someone's post about the spiritual aspect of therapy. Being human is really hard and I think most people are really bad at it, including me. I feel we are owed an explanation but none is forthcoming from any source I believe in. Oh well. Indeed, you're not alone.

Hang in there, sending you lots of encouragement and support

thank you. it is nice to hear. just being able to tell and have people respond is so good. I came here just now because I wanted to add to what i said above. that is that i've never been diagnosed with ptsd. my therapist suggests that my condition is a result of trauma early in life and i agree, but two diagnoses were anti social and i think borderline. i get called psychotic and delusional plenty. i think that is because the health care professional is so full of preconceived notions and not patient enough to stop, listen, think and evaluate. i think i could provide so much insight to the field and i wish someone would discover me and use me that way.

Here is a very interesting thing that happened yesterday in therapy. as i mentioned above i became so distressed that i was ready to quit therapy there and then. just walk out. throughout my life, i have always been very tense. so tense that when for any reason someone would ask me to relax, i would end up frustrating them because i couldn't. during dr exams with the hammer on the knee, my leg would hardly jump. but yesterday, once my therapist was able to calm me and get me to sit down again, we did what i've requested we do on a regular basis which is to have a period of doing something happy. i really need happiness. so we did the cup song (you're gonna miss me when I'm gone) and tried to do the cup percussion part as best as i could. it may be silly but puts a smile on my face so it is good. but she learned a way to do it without cups by clapping and tapping hands on thighs. i know i was still quite charged inside from the earlier incident and when my hands came down on my thighs, both legs reflexed way more than the way they should with the hammer on knee. to me this is an extreme show of ptsd and how the event got my circuitry up here really super charged and finally responded for once. I have become so aware of processes going on in my brain. I can feel them. i feel sparks. i wish professionals in the field would ask me for my insight.

I am 52 and started therapy when I was 49, well serious therapy. I think the first few years of therapy where spent testing out therapists to find the right one.

I understand that panic feeling of needing to talk to someone right now because you feel like you are losing it and need support of someone who knows you and your challenges.

It can be challenging to separate therapy from friendship. After all therapist listen to us, when other did not, they befriend us to get us to open up and treat us with dignity and respect others have not. They seem more like friends sometimes than therapists, comforting us in times of trouble and helping us to feel better about ourselves. No wonder it can be confusing and boundaries can be crossed on both sides.

When my therapist told me I was well enough to go out on my own and our therapy was over, it was pure panic. It was like losing my best friend. It was like she suddenly stopped caring for me or about me. It was like being abandoned. I can imagine you feel this way about your emails and phone calls not being accepted anymore? I can imagine it is hard breaking and makes you feel bad when you are trying to read about how you feel and being shut down?

It is important to try and separate therapy from friendship which can be so confusing when you are not well or at least it was for me. I don't and never have had a lot of friends either, so it did not help the situation for me. I really would have loved to have kept in touch with my therapist but we are not friends. I am a client, I pay her to see me and help me understand my mental health issues and how to overcome them. I think it is important to say to yourself every now and then, she is NOT my friend, she is my therapist. I don't pay for friendship, I pay for help. This is a professional relationship.

From a therapist point of view, she is legal obligated not to become involved with her clients in either a personal or sexual relationship. They hold power in these relationships due to the vulnerable client information and situation. She legally has to set boundaries which protect you and her. It is not that she does not like you, it is a professional thing she most do or risk losing her job. She cannot allow you to become dependent on her advise. She is there to guide you to your own solutions and help you develop skills in order to find your own answers to your own problems in the future. She is not there to tell you what to do. In fact if she feels you are dependent on her, she is obligated under the law to move you to another therapist. Don't be surprised if that happens.

Now that being said, do you feel you depend on her? Are you in a high anxiety mode when you email or call her for additional help? How often are you doing this? Do you take medication for anxiety, depression etc?

I think a good therapy question to talk about be, "how do I self sooth when I am upset and feel I need to reach out for help or I am anxious?". She should have some tips for you, such as breathing, journaling, music, mediation, etc.

I think it is good you are keeping note on how you are feeling and what is going on in your life. This is important, but perhaps a long review of the past week is not effective therapy if it take up most of the session. Perhaps you can review the notes you have and find one or 2 items you really need help with your can ask her how to cope with? This will facilitate conversation, skill building and solutions you find the answers too.

Therapy is not easy. There is so much more than just going to talk to someone. The rules and boundaries are blurry and it is so difficult at times to not think of the therapist as a friend. That is why you have to constantly remind yourself what therapy is and what it is not.

This group is really good for those days you really need support and your therapist is not available. I hope you continue to post and work towards solutions that work for you.

(((hugs)))

Hey, Gee, I'm 58, and I was in therapy for 12 years before a really good therapist with a PTSD specialty finally cracked me open like a walnut and got me to talk about childhood combat trauma as a missionary kid. Ouch. I'd been hiding that from therapists for years thinking they'd never believe a kid had seen what I'd seen for years in a war zone, and combat PTSD therapy was only for soldiers anyway.

That was in 2008, fortunately, so I've had some good years of growth since then. It sounds like it's taking for you a lot more quickly than it did for me. I guess I was a hard case because that helped me survive back when. Give yourself lots of credit, and be gentle with yourself. It sounds like you're doing better than I was, that's for sure. Welcome, and feel free to vent and process here. It's a healing place.

TW: i hope that is what i'm supposed to say in cases like this. better still what i'm going to say willnot be a trigger, but my intent is not coming from wanting ot be bad, but out of real fright and pain of great magnitude. reading mujicaptsd's and spiral's comments have unfortunately given me the feeling I am going to have to relive my attack and i don't know that i ever even was attacked. I understand the purpose of what you were trying to tell me. but i can never go to another therapist. i can't reveal again what i've revealed to my present therapist. i can't go through that process. to me, that is the rape. that is whatever the assault on me was a long time ago. it is the worst kind of betrayal and here, i've spent 3 years in therapy simiply to be attacked again. that is not a good thing. that is why it is being proven over and over that noting helps me. that is why medications have made me hurt lots more than being with out. i don't feel i am being helped in any way and i am being forced over and over into a worse and more lonely place. i am sorry to be saying this now. i know the intent was good. it is just that what i always see, is that when i take steps to get close to people, they take steps to move further away. it is not just my therapist though it now seems like she merely made efforts to get closer than anyone ever had before so when the time comes, it will hurt me more than ever before. i'm sorry that i don't know how to see it another way. and i keep trying to think of something nice to write instead. but i need to share my fright and pain because i still have to hope that i'm not right and there is something better. but i really do see the 'better' always moving just a bit further from my reach.

Speaking my fears and pains is always a HUGE step for me in coming to terms with them as they are and allowing them to evolve to a peaceful resolution. Ditto for "Better." When I am repressing and/or denying my emotions, good or bad, they have the opportunity to grow and distort in ways I am refusing to look at. In my own strictly personals, "Better" is typically synonymous with, "Control" when I am suppressing my emotions. My personal "Better" usually means getting somebody else to follow the very same script which made me sick in the first place, closing myself off from a world full of healing potentials in the process.

But that is me. . .

Keep sorting, Gee. Your own answers are in there. Gentle support while you sort.

To reassure you some, I don't think your therapist will try to move you to someone else because you've become dependent. I've had therapists let me be as dependent as I needed to be - and I DID need to be dependent as part of my healing. Letting myself depend on another human being was crucial to my healing.

It is also far from certain that you will remember or relive what happened to you. My therapist keeps telling me I don't have to remember, though I actually want to.

same i guess. it is so strange and uncomfortable that in a day or two things have gone from bad to good to as horrible as ever. it doies reassure me to be able to think that depending on her might be allowable. because i was losing that feelingg and it was being replaced by feelings of hopelessness. more than anything i don't want to be me with the damage anymore and i can't help feeling that what i need to make that change are tools that are natural in a brain but ruthlessly stolen from me - slowly, carefully and blatently at that time long ago and all during my life and most of all now, displaying to me that yes, my tools for healing are all gone. so i wonder, why would a self do that to itself? one would think i just love loss and suffering yet it has never felt good and it feels worse now. this is so confusing.

You might be interested in the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model of healing, which has been extremely helpful to me. It suggests that we all have different parts (which you seem well aware of) and that they all do what they do out of a desire to protect us, however hard that may be to believe at times.

But IFS also suggests that besides all these various parts, we all have a wise, compassionate, larger Self that remains untouched by any traumas. It remains untouched and unharmed because the different parts come forward to protect it. If you can find that Self within you it helps a lot. When you are connected to your Self you can also relate to your other Parts with compassion and understanding. You can teach them and comfort them. You don't have to be at their mercy, but you should treat them all with compassion and respect, because they are all doing their best to protect you, however misguided their efforts might seem.

Are there providers, clinics, or sites that I could go to, to find out more about this? this sounds really important and great and i need to know more. i'm just very suspicious of sites i come across on my own. Thanks for this information. And BTW, a part of my problem right now - lately - is that i had been weening myself off prozac 20mg with a plan my doctor gave me, but with a week+ to go i couldn't stand using the stuff any more and just stopped. i suppose the amount in my body is alredy low, but i've had a steady headache for a few weeks and these really bad moods. i just want that stuff out of me. anyway, thanks again dw (which are coincidentally my real initials!) tyvm, dan

https://selfleadership.org/

Therapists don't know everything. Sometimes, many times, they don't have the answer, though they act like they do. If it's not working for you, look for something else.

Yes, in that 12 year period between when I started therapy and when healing really happened in therapy for me, support group work was what sustained me. Therapists don't know everything, and what made a difference was I found a PTSD specialist at the right time for me. That specialty made a difference for me. Until then, other therapists weren't bad for me, they were just kind of middling and I didn't get that feeling I was really getting better in therapy like I felt in support group. It was a great surprise when after 12 years therapy did make me feel better, a real bonus in life.