Therapy sessions....who should drive it? (triggers)

Therapy sessions....who should drive it? (triggers)
E

EGL

Registrant
In the 2 months I've been in therapy, my therapist has basically been asking all the questions, with me basically responding back to that. He probably does 80% or more of the talking. For the majority of the 2 months we've focused primarily on my father (physical abuse), and haven't really even touched on the sexual abuse or the other torments in my life. I'm wondering if he's got a plan with all this? Granted, my father is probably the major source of most of my problems, but my mind is going on overload dealing with that aspect right now. Some questions.

1. Would it be right to ask to go on to something else for a "break" from my father?
2. Should I be more in control of the sessions or follow my T? Basically, I'm a shy person and I'm sure he senses this, thus he leads the conversation.

I'm wondering if I should be telling him about day to day madness I'm going through or let him dig his defined path through all this? Example, the other night I had a dream that I went into my backyard and killed myself by stabbing myself in the heart with a kitchen knife. (My neighbor killed himself last week (gunshot) so apparently that was weighing on my mind). Any input appreciated.
 
Eddie:
The therapist may have a game plan but it should be driven by your issues. If this person is relatively inexperienced or uncomfortable with sexual abuse issues, he may tend to steer the sessions to areas he more familiar with, such as father/son relations.

You could remind him that you came there to deal with the sexual abuse and you would like to focus on that. Or you could deal with the day to day issues such as the dream.

Therapy should be a partnership in healing. If you don't express what it is that you need, he will have to guess.

Ken
 
Originally posted by Ken Singer, LCSW:
Eddie:
The therapist may have a game plan but it should be driven by your issues. If this person is relatively inexperienced or uncomfortable with sexual abuse issues, he may tend to steer the sessions to areas he more familiar with, such as father/son relations.

You could remind him that you came there to deal with the sexual abuse and you would like to focus on that. Or you could deal with the day to day issues such as the dream.

Therapy should be a partnership in healing. If you don't express what it is that you need, he will have to guess.

Ken
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Thanks, Ken. The therapist I'm seeing came highly recommended for dealing with sexual abuse, and I can tell he seems to know what he's doing. At the start of each session he asks how I'm doing in a general way, which I've taken to be just social pleasantries to open the session. I guess I need to tell him what's going on during the week at that point and if he sees it as significant, he ask further about it.

He did remark one time that he remembered that during the first session, the subject I opened with was about the sexual abuse, although he has made clear that he believes my father (physical abuser) is the greater problem than my brother (sexual abuser). Maybe so, but my father's abuse I dealt with much longer in my life, so I kind of think I built up a way of coping with it. My brother's sexual abuse both when I was child and later in life (affair with my first wife), I've never coped with. I think I'll talk my T about this tomorrow, to at least let him know which subjects I think are going to be problematic.
 
Eddie

I think I'll talk my T about this tomorrow, to at least let him know which subjects I think are going to be problematic.
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Absolutely!
When I started my therapy the process was just a mystery to me, and I often wondered what the hell he was doing!
And I would ask him "why is this important?" and he'd explain.
I now know that he is a very skilled therapist, he's hugely respected within the proffesion, so the mysterious paths he sometimes led me down did have some purpose.

Since then I have started to train as a counsellor, and now I understand the mysteries a bit better.
Even though we present our abuse as the main problem, everthing surrounding it has an impact on the way we dealt / deal with that abuse.
For myself, I wasn't abused by any family member, and one of the mysteries in therapy was "why does he want to me to talk about my family, even before the abuse?"
But, as he explained, my family life shaped me and moulded the way I think, and therefore the way I was dealing with the effects of my abuse. In the end it made sense.

But if you feel mystified by his tactics then you should ask. I firmly believe that understanding the process the therapist uses makes it easier for us as clients to gain the full benefit.

Dave
 
Eddie,

I had wondered about looking at the ancient past when I started therapy. My wife always clained that my family was abusive based on stories she heard, but it just seemed like "it was what it was" to me.

Sometime around my second session with this T, she told me, "You think you came here because of what that man did to you when you were 16. But your problems began long before that, at home with your family."

And she's right.

I mention things now that I think need attention. When she asks, "How are you?" or "How was your week?" I don't take it as merely formal pleasantries. I take it as an invitation to bring up the subjects I want. There is no place else to discuss (face to face) most of them, so I try not to let the opportunity slip past me.

Thanks,

Joe
 
I'm no expert as I have only been in therapy for a month, but I basically talk about what I want to talk about and he has guided me by narrowing in on certain things, and asking questions and making occasional comments about them. By using this method he has reveled some very helpful truths about myself and my past which I was overlookingor lying to myself about.

We talk about my family and my place in it a lot, and why my big trigger, and the stuff I am going through now is related to it.

Before seeing him for the first time I learned that his area of work is a perfect fit with my issues.
 
Hi Edie,
Everyone's CSA story is unique. Therapists do take a long time just to custom-fit a game plan for each individual. I was sexually abused at age 7 by a substitue teacher. My father started physically and mentally abusing me at around age 4. I started therapy about Five months ago. Before I even started my therapy, I did buy into the saying that we are as sick as our secrets. I was in a mission. I wanted to empty all my secrets, ALL of them, and as fast as I can. I told my therapist just that, also mentioned to her that if she had any advice for me she had to wait until all my secrets were out. She went along with it, though somewhat half heartedly. She was very supportive of me as I was describing my CSA story.
Once all the secrets were out (there were lot more later as I kept remembering secrets that I had forgotten), she concentrated on my father and his abuses and their impact on me .... She tried very hard for about three months, but I could not from deep down be in peace with my deceased father. I went through all the motion, but I knew it just would not happen. Suddenly the thought appeared to me that my fathers abuse and CSA are very closely related to each other. My father's abuse, and my way of handling it via suppression of all related emotions such as shame, guilt, inadequacy, fear .... already set me up as a victim for human predaters of all kind. Abusers of all kind found me as their perfect victim. They all came, Sexual perps, neighborhood bullies, harrassment from coworkers ....you name it.
Anyway, I was absolutely certain, there was no way I could be in peace with my deceased father until I am in peace with at least my sexual abuses. Reason is very simple. I hold my father indirectly responsible for sexual abuses. And rightfully so. I do understand, that even without my father's abuse, I could easily have been victimized, then again I may not have been. In any case I decided not to justify other's vile acts anymore. I am not simply big enough for that, at least for now.
So I went ahead and found myself a therapist with expertise in CSA. I do have to say this, she hardly talked much in my first three sessions. But I could feel her support and compassion for me. I have no idea what will happen next.
I shared all this, thinking it might help you finding what you are looking for. Then again it may not.

good luck. We all need it.
-honest_lion
 
Originally posted by honest_lion:

Suddenly the thought appeared to me that my fathers abuse and CSA are very closely related to each other. My father's abuse, and my way of handling it via suppression of all related emotions such as shame, guilt, inadequacy, fear .... already set me up as a victim for human predaters of all kind. Abusers of all kind found me as their perfect victim. They all came, Sexual perps, neighborhood bullies, harrassment from coworkers ....you name it.
Click to expand...
honest_lion,

Man, I think you nailed it. I sat here stunned at this revelation, and realizing that this fits my pattern so very well, too. My father's abuse set me up as well to become the compliant, weak child that was easy prey for my brother and every other abusive relationship I've suffered in. My brother reacted to my father's violence by creating abuse of his own directed at me and by becoming a sexual predator. I became weak and crumbled, my brother used the abuse as a learning tool. Have a lot to discuss with my therapist tomorrow. Thanks much.
 
Originally posted by EGL:

I'm wondering if I should be telling him about day to day madness I'm going through or let him dig his defined path through all this? Example, the other night I had a dream that I went into my backyard and killed myself by stabbing myself in the heart with a kitchen knife.
Click to expand...
My therapist starts each session saying "What's on your mind?" That allows me quite a bit of manuevering room. What I've found is that 9 times out of 10, if I bring up the "day to day madness" stuff, it is directly related to the problems I have with self-criticism and self-hatred. Now I am finding out that those problems in turn are related to the CSA. So I guess I would encourage you to talk about your day-to-day frustrations and difficulties with your therapist, because they are not trivial--they are usually related to the "big" problem. All roads lead to Rome, or some such.
 
Wow. Great posts on this thread. Outis and Honest Lion - very important revelations for many of us that you summed up perfectly.

It is good to question your therapy Eddie... make sure it is giving you what you need. It sounds like you are on the right track to opening up communication with your T. It should most definately be a partnership.

Thanks for starting this thread...
 
What's come up for me after reading all the above posts,
I am 100% convinced my mother was sexually abused but she's never talked about it, keeps it a secret, and as a result of not dealing with her abused she's dumped it onto me and my sister in various ways. One way, I believe, has been to "train" us to be victims. Is this to do with her wanting someone else to be her "inner" victim she can't deal with? Someone else carrying the burden so she can delude herself nothing's wrong with her,she's always saying this.

A lot of perps are good at picking up "victimized" kids/adults, easy "preys" for them. Eventhough I don't like saying this, the first perp who abused me, when I was 9, spotted me straight away and probably knew he would most likely get away with it, which he did. I felt really angry once when it was suggested to me that some of the perps who abused me chose me because I was shy, quiet,vulnerable. My anger was really pain and hurt.

LI think family dynamics and sexual abuse go hand in hand.

Heart
 
Honest Lion
What you said makes so much sense, certainly to me.

I was never abused by any of my family, never beaten, neglected or treated cruelly in any way at all.
I have to say that they loved me and treated me well.
But, it was a cold and unemotional family. Everthing was done in a kinda 'clinical' manner. And my older brother ( no CSA ) says exactly the same thing.
The truth is they did nothing wrong, but what they did do they didn't very well.
Maybe I'm looking back with some bitterness, and with my perception tainted by abuse? If I am, I can't help that.

The result is that I don't have any close relationship with them at all, they're in their 80's and live close by, but I call by about once a week.
Why ? I think it's because I have realised that my insecurity and vulnerability that made me a victim was there within me long before the abuse started, and where did I get those traits from?
Also, although I'm 99.9% certain that they didn't know about my abuse at school, I don't KNOW how they would have reacted at the time. And it's over 30 years ago now, so their reactions now wouldn't re-assure me any.

I have a lot of un-answered questions, and they will remain that way because it's unfair on them to raise them now. So I've got to live with them, and deal with them through therapy.

The influence of everyone who ever touched our lives in any way at all, especially as kids and young adults, shapes the way we deal with life.
And as such we MUST consider these influences when we deal with our abuse.
Abuse can become the main focus in our lives as we overcome the problems it causes in our lives, but never forget that there is a life outside of our abuse that has probably governed and shaped our lives to a greater extent.

A book that has been recommended to me by many people, my therapist included, is the British actor / comedian / writer John Cleese' bestseller "Families and how to Survive Them"
I've yet to read it, but apparently it's very good.

Dave
 
Just remember, YOU are the boss in therapy. You should be the one to 'drive' it. The therapist is the expert who gives you opinions, thoughts, is someone to listen and not be judgemental. It is like to build a house. Maybe I know what I want, and can design it some. Then I will go to the architect, and he can tell me why, no, you can not put the ceiling on the floor, and whatever else I may screw up on my own! It is still my house, but I have the expert to help. Therapy is the same idea.

leosha
 
Thanks for this thread. My T has talked about the emotional abandonment and manipulation that I received from my parents as being at least equally as important as the SA and my couples T was not the least bit surprised that I was sexually abused given my home environment.

All that leave me torn and desparately trying to sort out emotions and their origins.

Honest_lion, your post had particular impact on me.

Dave
 
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