******Triggers Throughout*****
Hi everyone
- I'm Jahda. I used to hang out here when I joined in 2009. 5 whole years and I am so much worse than I was I can't believe it! I had been in therapy for c-ptsd and DID (he said) for 17 years with one therapist who I thought was extremely wise and wonderful. He taught me so much (I thought). I had insights. I got worse when I saw the truth, but then I started to get better and began to work on remembering the forgotten ***TRIGGER*** r*pe, as well as the remembered one.Then In 2012 I had another trauma on top of all that RIGHT when I was also working on "Trust". My oh so wonderful therapist took advantage of me and then threw me away. He became cold and hard and mean and tortured me (I guess he was hoping I'd quit), by doing mean things too me as I melted apart on the floor of the room that I had cracked open my head in and let the contents spill forth into his mind so he could help me. I told everything. And then I found out what he said I always knew but didn't know i knew.
He abused me psychologically and used me physically. I was sooo happy and then BAMM broke apart one sunny afternoon when he told me it was over and i was out the door (he had started it, he had done this, and now he was throwing me away RIGHT when we were working on "trust" (I thought).
But that's not the theme of this post, just the background as to how I could have 17 years of therapy after a lifetime of abuse and end up with no therapist at all and a diagnosis that I told to no one save anonymous people online or therapists and my shrink.
So was without a therapist for awhile and got worse and worse and worse, depression so bad - how could he DO THAT TO ME HOW??????? over and over again i couldn't understand. what happned to compassion??? human compassion let alone what i thought was special???
So i will never see him again ever. it is the worse feeling - a death of my mother (I went to him when my real mother died - she was the one who abused me so horrifically and the one who brainwashed me into believing she was the best mother ever and that it was my father's abuse that was causing all the problems with me and in the house).
So he brought me to the truth of seeing that and I had "insight" as he said, yet during this whole time he was treating me "special" and though a small "part" of me questioned it, the other parts loved it because they finally felt cared about and loved! I started to get better except for the small part that started to get worse.
But after he dropped the bomb we continued on for close to a year of me still going 3 times a week (it had been 4), and of him sitting there like a rock saying nothing while I hysterically begged him to be compassionate and to stay my friend and could we still talk sometimes and why was he doing this to me HOW???? How could he? After all we had been through - 17 years of therapy - and then the last few years so much more (in a way).
Finally I was cast out upon the street, therapist-less and broken. I told him you didn't only break my heart you broke my life.
After months of struggling with deep depression and severe physical pain that got worse than it had been and a digestive system that was ruined for life causing even more pain on top of the excruciating back pain that I had developed during the 17 years of therapy and of him treating me the way my mother had - on again off again. Mean, Nice, Mean Nice, Mean, Really Nice, Really really nice, extremely mean totally unexpectedly, Meaner, Meaner, then suddenly neutral then the nice creeping in, then mean, then extremely nice - there was no pattern, believe me i looked for one!! These were my 17 years of sessions that started at twice a week and because I begged for more time I was able to get 4 times a week.
I stopped eating sleeping going outside, changing my clothes taking a shower thinking - or trying to. I just sat at the computer and opened window after window after window and within each window opened tab after tab after tab as I researched whatever I wanted to or where the last research had dropped me off, trying to stay away from everything that reminded me of him or I'd lose it and the crying that had been non-stop for month, come back.
I half-heartedly looked for another T, I couldn't bear to even think about it - i was numb and in shock and couldn't stop crying for the whole year of 2012 when he was treating me so meanly in order to get rid of me Then one day in my psychiatrist's office were some new business cards on the desk. I picked one up. Most of the therapists I had tried to get an appointment with weren't taking any new patients, but this one did.
After the first session I learned he was an "Art Therapist" with a specialty in Trauma. I started going once week and did two of the "treatments". It was all brand new to me. I had always done CBT or psychoanalytic psychotherapy, or or on eclectic blend of therapies all of which come under the heading of "talk therapy" (except at the last few years of my 17 yr therapy after my abusive mother died - i don't know that would fall under...)
It was called TRU - the version of Art Therapy he used for Trauma Relief.
After I did the second "treatment" the other sessions we talked, he took notes (my last T never took notes) he asked weird questions - the SAME ONES every week! How would I rate my back pain on a scale from 1 - 10 ( Thanks. I hadn't been thinking of my back pain because at the moment I didn't have it as I had taken pain meds before coming here so I could make it so it would be a false read anyway) But I hadn't been thinking about my back - all of a sudden I'm sitting there thinking about my back and trying to analyze it to get an answer and it starts throbbing - i need to NOT think about my back - not analyze it every week - doing that just makes it hurt even if it didn't originally.
***trigger***
Same thing with suicide. It's always been in the background of my mind ever since I was 4 years old. I remember very distinctly. Tried doing it a lot when I was a child and teen. My life was all suffering and being tortured and abused and brainwashed - I learned you can't trust people, my stepfather abused me, others, it just goes on and on the horrific stories that spill from my childhood. So suicide as a way of escaping is always there, but ever since I became a mother, even though my daughter is all grown up now, I could never do that to her. she would carry that with her for the rest of her life. I saw that happen when my next door neighbor [killed himself] at age 13 (I was 9). I'll skip the details though they haunt me to this day. But because I know it is no longer an option even though I think about it I don't think about it i know that's "convoluted"
So weeks can go by and I just don't think about it, and then every week he asks me if I'm feeling suicidal so I say "that's always there - it's always the same" and he writes it down. Then last time I said "its the same answer, it will always be the same answer (i didn't mention how it puts it in my head and then i can't stop thinking about it!)
Anyway, the "treatment" is you sit in front of a sketchpad with a choice of different colored markers. You and the T talk about an incident that is particularly bothering you - mine was thinking about my old therapists and how could he turn on me that way when I thought he cared? The T says things like "That's it you're doing good, just wash all that out just clean all that old stuff out. Visualize and feel, visualize and feel. And then he talk a bit about the incident or person you are "doing" and say you must have felt abandoned or alone or whatever emotions, then you move to a different block and start in.
Of course you end up crying (at least I did) and my tears dropped on on the big black scribble and smeared into it. After the second one for some reason I started to feel afraid of doing it again. It felt so raw, so primal, so vulnerable... I haven't done once since the second one because of my resistance towards them now. But I want to try. If "working" a triangle on a sketch pad with black marker is gonna heal me then I want it even if it floods me in a sea of ears. getting better would be worth more tears - I've been crying pretty much non-stop ever since it happened though I am better than I was - for that first year i literally cried constantly. I now have periods of no tears so that is an improvement.
I'd love to hear any the experiences of others who have done any form of Art Therapy or from those whose therapist used and abused her then threw her away even if there is no art therapy involved.
Thanks so much. Sorry this got so long!
Adria (Jahda is the name I used when I set this account up in '09; since that time I changed my name to Adria. I hope I can also change it here as I don't want to lose my old writings.)
Thanks again!
Adria
