Therapy and "reliving" trauma
So, I have a therapist who is really good with me but I feel like sometimes if I start talking about something that happened to me a while ago that I start seeing it again and experiencing it like I am there and it is happening NOW to me instead of in the past. It retraumatizes me I think and basically no amount of "therapeutic holding or intervention" helps that. LIke it just never seems to "hold". Has anyone else experienced this? I have heard that this happens a lot to people with schizophrenia too. Should I try to avoid talking about these kinds of things because of how it retraumatizes me and sets me back? Most therapists I have had seem to think that reexperiencing trauma helps you heal from it but that doesn't seem to be the case with me. I am not sure if it is best to back off from therapy or to just avoid talking about things that will make it harder for me to function when I go home. I wonder if different techniques need to be used on people with autism to prevent this from happening and whether or not there has been any research done on this. I welcome any thoughts on this matter. Thanks!
Squirrel
First of all, when you say "therapeutic holding", you don't mean that form of torture they do on autistic and RAD kids where they pin you down and scream at you, do you? Because that'll mess up anyone.
My doc uses EMDR, and the last time, when I freaked out and started having flashbacks, he backed off. He never makes me tell him anything specific. He says he doesn't need to know to help me with the trauma. I've had docs who wanted all the gory details and I just felt re-victimized by telling them, in addition to having flashbacks and nightmares. Therapy is supposed to help. Sometimes it takes slogging through some difficult stuff, which can only be done with someone you trust, but if after a while it seems like you're not improving or you're getting worse, I'd reevaluate your decision to work with that therapist on trauma. Maybe he/she can help you with some things, but not everything. I don't think it's unreasonable for you to tell your therapist if you don't want to talk about something. Relationships are supposed to have healthy boundaries. After all, we don't share everything with every person in our lives outside of therapy.
The doctor I have now is awesome. He specializes in treating people with brains like mine, and he's so kind I wish he were my brother so that I could still hang out with him once I'm better. Still, I've pretty much given up on the idea that any one therapist can take me all the way. I'm just trying to get the most I can out of any relationship, and hoping that what I need will appear to me when I'm ready for it.
Maybe I'm jaded. I've had to protect myself when no one else would. It sounds to me like you're almost asking if it's OK to protect yourself. It is. There is a temptation to bail on therapy when it gets hard; and it often gets hard right before you make a breakthrough. As long as you know that, maybe you can feel whether you're being scared or sensible in this case.
Jacoby's allusion to attachment therapy took me on a wild ride! My son's and our experience was relevant, I think ... a sort of cautionary tale about respecting boundaries.
My son's first diagnosis was RAD, because he's adopted and appeared to have a "loose" attachment to us when observed clinically. Home visits by a clinician contributed to overturning this diagnosis. However, this took some time and didn't occur until after we'd pursued a recommended course of treatment (holding, in other words). My son was not diagnosed with autism until age 7, which is flatly comical when I think back. And I think his being adopted, from Russia (oooh, shudder!), contributed to confusion about his symptoms.
I now believe that holding therapies are harmful, not only for autistic kids but for just about every child who very much needs to know that his or her boundaries will be respected. It upsets and disappoints me that I overrode my own instincts with respect to RAD; I told the first evaluator it was laughable, and she suggested I was the equivalent of the refrigerator mom that Bettelheim warned about and guilted/terrified me into trying. Our foray into attachment therapy was never whole-hearted. We followed a very conservative method of seeking and obtaining our son's consent for holding or it didn't happen.
Bettelheim was a mid-twentieth-century Freudian who informed most psychologists' opinions about autism until around 1975 or perhaps even later. Bettelheimians still exist, especially in the field of attachment therapy and curiously also in the treatment known as RDI, relationship development intervention, promulgated by Dr. Gutstein. Dr. Gutstein, however, does not advocate holding. Gutstein gets much of his inspiration from a therapy known as Floortime, also Freudian in origin and oriented toward teaching parents how to connect with their kids through shared play activities.
Freud was revolutionary in his day as he saw the parent-child relationship as sacrosanct, so much so that if it is disrupted or perverted in any way, children are damaged as a result and can only recover through invasive regression therapies in which dreams and memories are meticulously analyzed with the help of the more perfect parent-surrogate, the Freudian analyst. We have much to thank Freud for, but the rigorous attachment therapy devised by some of his followers is not one of those things. The play therapies seem far less egregious, although one can legitimately take issue with the concept that parents must play with their kids to "draw them out of and away from their autism."
While I have (some, wary) respect for Gutstein's work, which is gaining some recognition in clinical trials and I believe shows a modicum of respect for the child and his or her boundaries, I consider most of the attachment psychologists dangerous quacks.
One named Dr. Frederici is particularly troubling. He has had a lot of coverage on American news specials. I forget if it was 48 Hours or 60 Minutes. Remember the Russian adoption scare of the 1990's to say about five years ago, with all the freaked out Russian kids who were violent? Frederici was called in to do something about this problem and charged monstrous fees basically "taming" the kids through forced holding, gutteral shouting (not screaming, but still), stripping rooms bare of toys and making kids earn each one, etc. He advocated a strikingly negative (and stunningly physically abusive) behavioral reinforcement model which is not dissimilar to those used in residential hospital-styled treatment programs and rehabilitation programs. I'm appalled that parents fell for it then and continue to keep this thug in business today.
Curiously, a number of the same Russian children who were clients of Frederici's (I know several personally), now have diagnoses of FAE (fetal alcohol effects), AS or HFA and/or bipolar disorder. How on earth did this escape the attention of Frederici and other examiners? I think about this, and I get angry. How does this happen, that kids are subjected to this crap and parents are mislead and flat out lied to about their children?
Here's the deal. Thousands of adoptive parents have sought out and found birth parents and now have family medical histories. We did the same thing. Big surprise. Autism and mood disorders run in my son's birth family. But instead of treating him like they would any biological child who exhibited his symptoms and gotten him early help for his autism and sensory challenges, specialists dithered around guilting me out about somehow making him this way (not being able to heal the "primal wound" of abandonment by his birth mom, puh-lease) and pressing their phony and abusive theories on us and my son.
Obviously, I bear responsibility for this. Compared to my friends, who were and still are gung-ho about this garbage, I jumped ship long ago, when my son was around five years old. Some of my friends' kids are teenagers now and are just as troubled now as they ever were. We run into them at camps and activities for adopted Russian children, where attachment specialists still give mixed-media presentations. I refuse to attend them.
Anyhow, I consider the emotional and psychological invasion just as offensive as the physical invasion of holding. Children and adults who have experienced trauma should feel safe, that their boundaries will be respected in every sense. The victim of emotional abuse myself, I know I feel best when I can discuss my challenges pragmatically, within the context of every day life. Reliving the abuse can be helpful (briefly) to have the epiphanies and recognition of what happened from a more adult perspective, but as Jacoby said, trust of one's therapist is essential, and harping on all this (returning to it time and time again) feels assaultive more than helpful in the long run. I think there is this old-fashioned thinking that inuring people to the memories will rob them of their emotional power. However, for me, the memories never really lose power. I will always remember being that kid feeling the way I felt at that time. I will always have those sense memories, those pictures.
The adult perspective is helpful but it doesn't supplant the memories. Favoring the adult perspective can mean compartmentalizing the memories, so that they are there but they no longer control our actions and responses.
I completely understand. when i realized the autistic component i was relieved and it answered so many questions. but yes... there are some similarlities with trauma and autism. i think people who care would rather believe it's only trauma cause they can treat and heal that. but that's not helpful. I'll tell you a secret.. I have two therapist. not a secret to them (no worries). I have a lot of trauma and it takes a lot of support and trust. It took me almost 3 years to connect with the first one in all these years. Now she's out of town a lot and i needed more support. I never thought i'd trust another human being, but low and behold, another appeared with even more unique skills and understanding. Yes read pretending to be normal. and also read Nobody Nowhere and Somebody somewhere by donna williams. Because she talks about trauma AND autism together. For me I needed to expand the lonely little attachment i had and try to add one more. Doing it now and yes every day i just want to scream "ARE YOU PEOPLE CRAZY". It's my believe that we have to process trauma differently, uniquely. We must each find that way that works. If you have dissociative issues it adds another dimention. Sounds like you have a good therapist who need more emails from you. ;) I'm glad the talk went well. You are welcome to email me anytime. oh just an EMDR comment. it's very contriversal. (and i can't spell, sorry) grin. However having said that i did it and had amazing results. But i can't say that is the case for everyone. Also it's imperitive that if the therapist who is trained in EMDR does it with someone with trauma or dissociation that they take the level 2 training because we process differently. I don't know why it worked so well for me. I was a total sceptic! I belive in nothing, grin. But it did work. and yes.. anything that freaks you out and makes things worse, dump. Keeping doing the things that help. They aren't always easy things but you know the difference between "this is helping but hurts" and this is NOT helping and hurts". We are our best guides on this healing journey. I'm very disappointed in the human race, grin. I believed there was no one out there that was trustworth then i found one. I was then convinced that she was an anomolie and there were no other than i found one more. go figure. Hang in there. :) Jen
For me, no matter how many times i rediscuss tramatic things, they never get better, and it just sets me back. I have a real good long term memory and my brain wont let go of the details of things that are in my past.
If anyone ever tries to hold me and prevent me from escaping, they get bit. It is my automated responce. I also have a very hard time trusting anyone.
Talk therapy had its place. However I am of the view that it is barbaric and outdated. Energy healing, especially when self-applied with an experienced practitioner, releases the past, so you can enjoy being in the now naturally.
What I find particularly objectionable is when talk therapists insist that the client must see them for life. This is a kind of enslavement for profit, and medical insurance organizations, private and government, should stop pandering to it.
Nobody should have to keep reliving pain. It is not only painful but also pointless.
There are "rules" of healing from trauma. The first rule is you must first achieve trust and attachment with the therapist. secondly you must talkabout/express/draw/tell what happened to you "memory" work. The third is then you integreate these experiencing in your life. Here is the thing.... If you don't first achieve stage one, no other stage is possible! (That is directly from the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation).
Having said this... people with autism don't "attach" "connect" "experience comfort" in typical ways. AND we think in pictures much of the time. So when we remember things, even what we did last week, we see it in video events. So when we talk about trauma we see the video and relive it. If you don't have a therapist you have not reached trust and attachment with yet, then you ARE retraumatizing yourself by reliving it with no healing and containment.
So how do you get this to happen so you can heal already? All i can say is here's what i've done and am doing: I grew a connection with my therapist via email. I began journaling everything normal people would "talk about". She responded via email so the usual verbal misunderstandings were limited and I could go back and reference my mistakes, miscommunications, remember my feelings, get them out, etc. The can also be done via journaling in a notebook and bringing it in and giving it to your therapist to read and respond or just read to her. these are some idea there are others.
Second: rather than talk all about my memories. i wrote them out like i mentioned above where i could have a little more ditachment. then when i was with her i drew pictures (since most of my memories were preverbal). It also helped to draw parts of the pictures and not everything at once. gave me a way to slow things down to digestable speed.
I think that's all i can think of but its late. Attachment is the number one issue of trauma survivors, couple that with Autism and you have a real challenge. Make sure you therapist understand your processing differences, autism, and attachment. You might have to find ways that work for you and teach her to do them. Any good therapist will do what works for you best.
They teach you in trauma work it is imperitive that you have a balance of safety and work. So if you are too safe and chillin... you need to get off your butt and work (usally not the case;) and if your flooding, having flashbacks, nightmares, acting out with harmful behaviors... then you need to back off.
Increase your support: ie: join Anonymous group AA, NA, OA ?A whatever suite you. Find a therapy group or Art group. And Learn how to do this work that works best for you and teach your therapist. You would not be the first.
And the answer is YES... I went through what your talking about for years!!!!!! Until a few things came into place. 1) i read "pretending to be normal" and learned i was "not normal". 2)I read "Nobody Nowhere/Somebody Somewhere" and learned I was not alone with how i lived with trauma and autism. 3) Then i found a therapist who "got it", had her read some books too and focused on attachment. For the record I continue to suck at Attachment and Trust, however now that i've had a taste of it while doing trauma work... for the first time in 20 years i have done work and actually felt "healing, comfort, containment, and peace".
Don't give up and thank you for posting. Your post and the chance to reply taught me something valuable, being able to help one person on this very difficult Autie/Trauma journey.... makes every heartache in Trauma Hell worth it! You are not alone, don't forget that now that you know that. ;)