fears of recovery?

fears of recovery?
F

fhorns

Registrant
Sounds like a stupid question, but it' mine.

I have been calling all over my area looking for group therapists. Well, today I was given the number to a woman who does therapy locally. What got me to open up to her a little on the phone was that she, unlike any other therapists I have seen or talked to, works with trauma victims. That excites me, for I know I have PTSD. Few clear memories, but distinct dissociation without flashbacks (yet).

Well, as we talked she spoke of modalities I already knew about, one being EMDR. I know it is intensive and cuts to the quick, but the other she spoke of was EFT. They are both cognitive therapies that can go straight to the memories and/or feelings. It is the aftershocks of trauma I am dealing with day to day, and I am wanting to be a little more assertive in dealing with them.

Why am I scared about seeing her? I am afraid I would have my memories cut out, and I would just be facing the world without the need for all the coping strategies I have gained over the years. I'll need new ones and have to cope with the fruitlessness of my present ones! I know I'm exxagerating, but I do have some fear here. I think what really happens in therapy is that my fears are seen with my own eyes, I face them with assistance in the office, and over time I am given tools to work through the memories that surface when I am alone.

I guess I am doubtful inside that this is for real. I have spent years in counsellors' offices coping with my problems, but we/I wasn't ready to feel and see my incest wounds. Help! Does anyone EVER get through this?? It seems that we NEVER get better! Is this true? It seems we get stuck. If I am wrong, would the healed please speak up? How can I have hope if I don't see the healed? All I read about are flashbacks, surviving, and the miserable aftershocks of some predator's acting out! Sorry, not my style to be so upfront, but I don't see the "survivors" here as much. Who are you out there? Speak up! Please, give me a little hope. Recovery's got to be more than something I read about in books!

Alfred
 
i am not so sure it is fear of 'recovery', but is maybe the fear of the unknown, which most people have. You said that you are worried of losing the coping skills you are familiar with, that you have used in past. But really, if they still helped for you, you would still be using them and not even thinking of therapy. So, I think that anything will be something positive. I hope that you are able to meet this person, and have success with it. Good luck, and please let us know what you decide, how it goes.

leosha
 
Fear of recovery is something I can relate to definately. For me, it feels like this intense fear of having to relinquish survival methods that have worked for me in the past, giving up secrets that I feel are the only things I have left to hold onto after the abuse, and having to give up self-destructive or obsessive behaviors (ie cutting, silence, sexual fantasy in order to orgasm) without knowing if, on the other side of the therapy, these methods will be able to replaced with new ones that are as effective or as satisfying.

I start therapy again next week. I am with you brother in this fear.

-Sean
 
alfred,
i have faced the question of "healing" as well. it seems next to impossible to really imagine what it would be like to live a life without the spectre of the abuse. in one way, i found a certain degree of comfort in knowing that no matter the extent of my recovery the scars will be with me always. how would this be comforting? while i am still learning who i am as a man and as a person, i am proud of what i have become and accept that all of my past contributed to the current person i am. i did not want it, and sure as hell don't suggest it as a means to become human, but it is my history and it all served to make me who i am. we will recover, but the scars will be there the rest of our lives like physical scars, and all of it goes into defining who we are at any given moment. i would not be who i am were it not for everything that happened to me as it did when it did. the healing happens, what we do with it is our choice.
 
Alfred

I think what really happens in therapy is that my fears are seen with my own eyes, I face them with assistance in the office, and over time I am given tools to work through the memories that surface when I am alone.
Click to expand...
This is what works for me.

As for finding someone who's "healed" to the point of living a "normal" life ? Well, I've met some "normal" people that I don't want to be anything like !

It's going to stay with us for ever, I'm sure of that. But I'm also sure that it hasn't got to control us for ever.

Dave
 
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