Hello SD, I’m sorry you’re having such problems with work your T is wanting you to do .

From what I understand of mindfulness, it’s just paying attention to the here and now. For some of us (notably ME!) the here and now is actually a painful place to be so the idea of deliberately focusing on it terrifies the hell out of me. I gave up on the whole meditation/mindfulness stuff because all that came up for me was fear fear and more fear. Which is not to say that being in the moment is something to be avoided, just that it might take a lot of time and practice and especially feeling safe to approach it without fear. For me, recognizing how big a role fear plays in my inability to live in the moment, is helping me understand better what’s going on in me (instead of leaving the moment and jumping back into my normal defensive mode.)

However what you’re describing sounds like a lot more than just mindfulness – you’re talking about visualising and imagery which strikes me as involving conscious thought, thinking ABOUT, which my understanding of being mindful precludes. And it sounds like having to visualize and do imagery exercises is really pushing some buttons for you. Does your T understand how you feel about all this? I think I’d be very uncomfortable if my T continued to suggest a form of therapy that for the moment at least, seems counterproductive.

As for the inner child stuff. Hmmmm. With no intention to offend or upset anyone who believes in and finds the concept of the inner child useful, I have to say that I’ve never been able to get my head around it. As far as I’m concerned, there is no separate entity within me of any sort, there is just me, right now, in this and every given moment. If how I am happens to stem from some arrested developmental stage as a child, tough. I don’t recognize it as ‘not me’ or as some separate aspect that I can split off and talk to or have compassion for. It’s all ME. Having said that, I don’t remember who I was as a child, I remember neither what I thought nor what I felt (and in fact remember not actually HAVING thoughts or feelings – which is probably why I can’t envisage myself as I used to be.) I do think the concept of inner child can be useful, but it’s just that, a concept (I’m not talking here about DID of course.)

The fact that you are feeling forced to relate to some child you that exists at the moment only in a photograph suggests to me that inner child work is not right for you at the moment. To have compassion for that ‘inner child’ is really just another way of saying have compassion for yourself. Maybe you need a different image or sense or concept that will achieve the same end that your T is trying to get to with asking you to focus on your inner child? I know I would not be able to take it seriously, it’s just not a concept that works for me, but there are a zillion other options to achieve the same end.

Just because it’s a common idea in therapy (and beyond) doesn’t mean that inner child work is valid for everyone. Though I’m pretty sure that this is not what you are asking , I get the sense that you are feeling there is something wrong with you for having such problems with the imagery and visualization stuff your T is asking you to do? But I wanted to put my piece in just in case you’re feeling pressured by what works for others but may not be what you need at this point in your therapy.

Anyway, hope that what I’ve said doesn’t come across too negatively, it’s just a different perspective .

LL

Thanks Lampie. No is isn't negative - I am relieved that you wrote it actually. Relieved.

I can sense different parts to me and I can identify a couple of them (not DID, but ego states/parts) and there is a child - but that is different to the inner child.

Yeah maybe T needs to change tact. I do feel that something is wrong with me because I can't get it and I really don't need another struggle. I feel like a failure because I don't get it.

I also don't remember myself as a child, I don't remember any thoughts or emotions - don't remember examples of anything. I have to make believe and create something from a photo. Seems all to wishy washy to me.

Thanks Lampie.

quote:

Whenever we have to do imagery, grounding, mindfulness - I get triggered. I can't always explain it.

Hi SD -

I had this exact experience with visualizing with my Ts. How much do you daydream or create vivid landscapes in your head, do you learn visually? For me I 'see' everything in my minds eye (when people speak, I see the word spelled - when I hear music I see the music/colors) so when I visualize it is extremely powerful and I get overwhelmed especially if I'm in a vulnerable place - like with my T before I could trust her, or in times I can't trust myself.

quote:

I have no concept of finding or identifying my inner child.

I can relate with this too. I have a few visuals of other 'parts' of me and there are a couple different versions of my inner child. I hate all of them and most of them hate me also. So I understand maybe not the same difficulty but difficulty none-the less. Does your T try to relate your inner child to an actual child in real life (either imagining siblings as younger, or referring to kids in your life or in movies?) my T does this and it helps even though it's triggering. We don't stay on the topic long before I freak out. That's sort of why we do art stuff - you may want to try that... by yourself or with T. Maybe do things you liked as a kid.

Almost every time my T suggests doing a grounding skill I roll my eyes. And the books on it are frustrating because they make it sound like "dude if you just would breath and look around a bit your whole life would be miraculously fine! It's easy!"

I don't think you're doing anything wrong - it's just a slow process. I think a lot of it involves trust in your T and also confidence in yourself that you can handle the here and now and you are willing on all levels to 'go there'. If there is hesitation or tentativeness it just means there may be other stuff to do until you get there. It's taken a while but I've seen improvement with myself in this area and I hope you can find that over time too. I think if you keep listening you will pick up the language... and keep risking too try to stay with the overwhelm and just BE overwhelmed and try to feel what that is like if you can for as long as you can. You're already doing it by being able to describe your experience now... it means at the time you were actually noticing on some level.

I hope it gets easier but please be patient with yourself.

Hi Somedays,

So, I'm not sure I'm the best person to chime in, as I'm big into the mindfulness stuff and I'm going a ton of work with the wounded child stuff (re-parenting stuff). I'm big into both because even though they make me *feel* worse, I have an increasing feeling that they are helping me heal.

I should say that my T has never said the word "imagery" even though I know some of what we are doing is exactly that.

But I will say that mindfulness taps directly into my crap, and I can get totally triggered by it.

Let's see. It kinda goes like this.

I start breathing (either in Therapy or at home). I start focusing on my breath.

I (sometimes) feel a sudden and terrible panic. I'm scared. (Sometimes what I am feeling is actual fear, sometimes I am feeling "feelings" and that scares me.)

I try to recognize that I am scared.
I try to feel where in my body the fear is. The higher in my body it is, the worse it is. So, bubbles in my belly is pretty low on the scale, sometimes it's all the way up in my face.

I keep breathing, keep noticing my feelings.

Eventually (sometimes with writing, sometimes with yelling at people (ha)) I get through the scared.

For me, 95% of the time, scared is actually very very sad. And if I can breathe long enough, I get to the overwhelming sad. And I can panic when I hit that, too, because it seems so big. But experience is showing me that it's not. If I can let it wash over me, instead of trying to run from it, it passes. It always comes again, but it passes.

But sometimes I can't do it. Sometimes I can't "get a lock" on my feelings - they move so fast I can't track them.

I guess I want to say that I'm not sure your strong resistance (anxious, scared, angry) to that kind of work really means it's not for you. It might mean it's not for you, right now. But I think it might sound like there is something there, waiting, that you can feel when you focus on it, and it's totally scary and overwhelming. That is completely true to my experience.

I can talk to you more about the wounded child stuff, and how I connect there, but this post is super long.

Anyway - I hear your frustration. I feel it so often, too. Hang in there - you are so, so not alone.

If you go down to the second video on this page (Stress and Trauma 101), it explains why relaxation, mindfulness, or just "doing nothing" without distracting yourself could cause states of fear, panic, anger etc. to arise in people who have unresolved stress and trauma: http://www.loveandtrauma.com/books-and-videos

It's a bit long, but basically it's explaining how in order to resolve the trauma, the nervous system needs to move from numbness or dissociation through panic again (or from stress through worse stress) to get back to relaxation. I found it really interesting, and I'm just wondering whether it could be part of what is going on for you.

Thanks guys. I will look at that link BLT when my hubby isn't in the room

I spoke to T about this again and the book we have been using has triggered me terribly. For the wrong reasons. I am triggered by the mindfulness, the silences, the actual work, the inner child stuff and now the author has sent me over the edge. Through his book he writes about his son with autism and the process he went through - I have a son with autism and it triggers me. The author also writes utter crap about it at the end of the book and reading that alone - got me so agitated (and my hubby angry, so it wasn't just me) - I couldn't calm. After I told T all this we realised that I have to stop the book.

I explained to her that my extreme inability to hold her in mind, keep a connection to her for more than minutes after leaving her, if i don't see her - she doesn't exist, the actual mindfulness causes me to dissociate, silences in therapy cause me to shut down and dissociate etc etc - we have stopped it all. She made me an imagery CD of special things for me and I look at my actual photos and listen to her voice of what I am looking at - we are trying to use that to calm me and ground me. A really customised approach using words and images that are special for me.

It just seems that every time my T has tried something with me i freak out. We are littered with stuff that never works......It really feels like 1 step forward and 3 back. And believe me she is going so slowly.

Lampie, your post was so timely as I had your words in my mind when i saw T and it gave me permission to think that just because t wants me to use this technique - doesn't mean it will work or it is for me. My T has figured this out now. But I wanted to give it a go. I wanted to get beyond my fear of it and the *stupidity* of it - I have it a good go and i am worse for it as it has triggered all sorts of things. My T said we are backing right off it now. For a few weeks there I have been unable to speak very much in session but this past week I found some words to describe what is happening.

Cat: I can sense a child part - but I don't know if it is me. T assumes it is me - but I don't feel it. So I am always trying to force the issue with this child and try to relate to it - when it is a fuzzy image. My inner 'protector' person is more vivid - this is the one that talks all the time and tells me not to trust, not to talk and my feeling is that when he is angry, activated or whatever I dissociate. The child has an adult standing with them- like a grandmother figure - but they don't speak. I also have 2 others - the baddies - one is the SH one and the other SU person. I can actually feel the SU person take over - feels like a Harry Potter Deatheater.

We have tried to silence the baddies or to weaken them and to make the child and helper louder and stronger - but that didn't work that well. Er, meaning dissociation. If I can't actually relate to the parts and FEEL them then all the things we are doing is just acting and I feel nothing.

Cat: I don't know what I liked doing as a kid, I don't remember. I think at times I do see things in my minds eye - but generally only words or I see things as photos. If things get too scary for me - I just go white and empty and blank.

I have 6 photos of me as a child. I can look at the photos and know it is me because I have seen the photos before, but I don't feel anything. One of them makes me sad - so that is a start I guess. When T says to write to that child, or be an adult and talk to that child - I think it is a effing stupid thing to be talking to a photo. Especially when I feel no feeling for it. I told T i have to feel it and i want to feel it.

** Remember I have a severe case of when T is out of my sight - she feels dead to me. When I leave her now, I walk straight out the main doors so i dont see any other people and T waits for me to leave totally before she closes her door - her closing the door felt like her death to me. I think this is all related.

Mantra - I actually feel I NEED to do the inner child work - I want to go right back to the newborn baby and fix myself. I *think* I feel wounded from way back then - actually in the womb. SO I want to do this one day. But talking to the inner child - whoever and whatever and wherever that is - is just a stupid concept to me right now. I might as well ask the tooth fairy.

I really appreciate you writing what you feel with it, I found that so helpful. I try to catch these emotions myself all the time. I usually get to the bit where I feel the fear and I immediately jump back to life as a fright and flight response and then I am up at an agitation level of a 7 and I am then too far gone to get calm again. I go from a normal 4 level to a 7 or 8 in session just by doing mindfulness or there being big silences in session and I dissociate.

T says that in session my optimal level should be 4 to 6 - she reckons I am always a 4 anyway. If I hit a 7 or 8 - I am too distressed to function therapeutically. Not sure what a 10 means to her - but i hit a 9 today with all the stuff going on. It might be good for me to talk in these numbers to her so we can both know where I am about something. T says she has trouble reading me and my distress because I hide it so well (and I really do, i am an expert) so we need a system where I can communicate to her before i get too bad.

Sorry for writing so much - but I am processing and learning as I type.
Somedays.

SOMEDAYS

Interesting thread and thoughts.

quote:

her closing the door felt like her death to me.

Know that feeling. That's a hard one to deal with. The only time I felt alive and/or good about myself for a long time was when I was actually with my T. It was death for me after I walked out his door.

xoxo

Liese

Yeah Liese - I realise that. When I am with T - I feel safe and all my troubles go. I have trouble remembering what I did or thought or felt - because everything is ok.

Maybe I spend my life in flight and fight and I am never connected? but when I am with her I am calm. It is very weird.

The main thing is that I was able to tell T - eventually after about 8 months that her shutting the door felt like death and I had tears in my eyes every time. My T now NEVER takes her next person in, I never have to see the next person AND T never shuts her door. I don't pay my bill at the time either. She has made all these accommodations to help me feel safer.

The door closing thing is also the out of sight out of mind thing - which is what ? a 2 year old concept or the developmental age of a baby? I am stuck at that stage.

It took me a very long time to even realise what her shutting her door meant to me. Then I went thru pain trying to get the courage to tell her. Such a long process.

SD

I know, SD, it is such a long process, isn't it? For me too. I didn't even realize until recently just how sad I got when I leave him at the end of a session. I knew how important it was for me to get there and that I was happiest right before a session. But I just told him that I experience loss everytime I leave him. He told me it's because he is really the only one I'm connected to and that's why it hurts so much. I thought it had to do with facing the reality of our relationship every time I leave.

As of a couple of weeks ago, I have (with his blessing of course) given myself carte blanche to contact him whenever and even though I don't do that, I had to give myself permission to contact him in order to maintain that connection, that he really is there for me, that he really is available to me. Even though I know he answers his phone 24/7, in my mind I was feeling as though he really wasn't available because he's with his other clients or he's teaching or he's sleeping or he's just having a life and I didn't want to be the annoying client, the bad girl and bother him. So I was, in my mind, cutting off my connection to him. There he was saying, Liese, call me whenever you need to and I was the one making him unavailable. I had to change my thinking. Of course, I try not to go nuts in terms of calling him. But to allow myself the thoughts, the needs. To know I could. That it might take a while for him to get back to him if he's with a client and booked back to back. But he will. And to do it. I gave myself permission to test it and called him twice during my last break with him. When I saw him next, I asked him if I called too much and he said no. It was all very reassuring and helpful.

Hope you can start to hang onto the connection too soon. It took me a long time so be gentle with yourself. Well, and it's all still new so I don't think I'm out of the woods yet. I didn't realize how many ways I was defeating the connection. It wasn't a matter of that my brain wasn't taking it in. I was breaking it. Deliberately.



Liese

That's so insightful, Liese. I used to do that, too. I would convince myself that I'd already emailed too many times or wasn't going to call for some reason in my own head, and then I felt abandoned as a result With oldT it was even worse, though. The fact that she told me she wasn't set up to deal with crises made me feel abandoned every time I was in a crisis. D'oh!

quote:

I didn't realize how many ways I was defeating the connection. It wasn't a matter of that my brain wasn't taking it in. I was breaking it. Deliberately.

Liese you post was very good and insightful. My T often refers to my breaking our attachment not him. When I refuse to contact him if I'm in crisis or even just feeling scared or missing him, and when I deny myself the connection to him, then *I* am the one who is detaching and breaking our connection not him. He tells me he is always there for me but I am the one who moves away.

Then he, of course, teases me, about my own rules that I make up in my head about contact. I know how hard this all is so we all need to take it step by step to build the confidence.

Gotta run...

TN

[((BLT)))

quote:

With oldT it was even worse, though. The fact that she told me she wasn't set up to deal with crises made me feel abandoned every time I was in a crisis. D'oh!

She was abandoning you emotionally. So glad you have your NewT.

TN, it took me a long time to become aware of the voices in my head that told me I had to move away from my T. Well, we know that sometimes they were accurate. LOL! But for the most part, I broke the connection. I have found that it's been for different reasons at different times although probably always because of fear. But the reasons why I would tell myself would change depending upon where we were in our relationship, I guess.

I can hear the voice in my head when it says these things but it feels a kind of static in the background that is there but you learn to just live with. Like a semi-awareness. So I wasn't always catching it and would tend to ignore it. There are so many times I tell myself I have to become independent and I'm the one pulling away from T (although we know I had reasons in the past to pull away from him) instead of just enjoying the closeness and attachment and allowing myself to grow. And really trusting that he's going to be there for me, as he is proving himself to be.

Edited to correct HTML for quote - AG

Some amazing things to think about. I will really have to think about the connection and who is breaking it.

I am allowed to contact T as much as I need. I am allowed to send as many emails as I need and want as long as I don't expect answers via email to everything or timely answers. T has set days (that I tell her to stick to) that she answers me. On tough weeks, she answers more regularly. I am texting her more often now and sometimes it is to check in, or it is to tell her something or I am in pain and need anything from her. I notice I am doing this on weekends more. T texts me every weekend.

I now feel Ok that T will not terminate me or leave me or abandon me. I know she is there for me. But I have this problem of not being able to see her in my mind or feel any comfort when I think of her. Or if I do feel safe and comfort, it is a very temporary thing or just a glimpse.

I have to see her - it is only when I am with her that I feel OK. This has taken a very long time to even realise.

We have read a lot about Kent Hoffman and his work and I have a safety-sensitive attachment style where I don't feel safe being close to her, I fear getting too close and then I fear being alone without her - it is a perpetual cycle of angst. Just a constant state of flux.

I think I am still struggling with the basics and I have a fair way to go. On a good day with her, I can discuss all of this - and that makes me pleased as it is good progress = on a bad day, I can't look at my T and I can't talk. My T sits next to me on a couch and we lounge a round a bit and it is less-threatening and more chat-like. It breaks down barriers.

I am still that baby in a cot who has been crying for an adult to come and no one has come and by now I have given up crying and when someone says they are coming I don't believe them. WHen they come in the room I then don't trust them because they are going to be there briefly and leave again and it all starts again. I can actually feel this anxiety and i imagine I am that baby. This scenario probably happened to me for years in real life.

It takes so LONG.

SD

(((SD))))

Hope we didn't go off track there too much. Glad you feel okay that T won't terminate you. It does take a long time, doesn't it? It can get frustrating at times.

Hope you are hanging in there today.

xoxo

Liese