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I am so impressed that you have set some healthy limits with an abusive person--that is really, really hard, especially as your mom--and that you have found EMDR and therapy! And you're doing so at such a young age; I didn't really start grappling with trauma till my 30s. Welcome, and I'm glad you're here!

I appreciate what Kizzie said too about having a supportive partner but still having dreams of betrayal, invalidation, or dismissal--wow that is so me! Our brains marinated in awful relationships and those wires run deep and are still wanting to get us safe. Sometimes it gets mixed up with who is right in front of us. 

Welcome LandedBird! I too believe we are suffering the symptoms of a diseased world! I'm glad you put it that way. The safety of children is a communal responsibility, and if we all really kept children safe from trauma we wouldn't have CPTSD. I am sorry to hear that you are suffering from immobility that is so triggering. I am sending you healing wishes and a warm welcome.

hi SapphireQueen, I'm glad you're here, glad you're exploring life beyond abuse and that you have the support of a therapist. Welcome!

Hi Beet! Welcome! And kudos to you for being a mature grad student while healing from CPTSD, and taking the steps to be here! I'm grateful to 21 year old you as well. I've been going through a rough patch myself and it's a comfort to have others join this space.

Hi Lina, I'm so glad you're here. Welcome! Thanks for sharing your story. I am so, so sorry for the abuse you suffered. I too was abused by an older brother and parents were no help, though in a different way. I'm glad you are working on healing now, you deserve it.

Welcome, I'm glad you're here! And I too am grateful to find kindred spirits here. I liked what you said about nonverbal trauma being the hardest when triggered, that really speaks to what I have been going through recently. And yes I have found Janina Fisher helpful as well. I am grateful you have found helpful therapies. I am in my 40s and have had so many fits and starts with therapy--for me after I make some progress the relationship always breaks down and I feel like a failure. I am hopeful for my next decade of healing after meeting you here.

Hi Pete, welcome! I'm glad you're here, and well done working on healing your CPTSD. I second the recommendation of Pete Walker's book on CPTSD. It was my impetus for this last go-round of trying to heal. None of us are without hope, especially those of us who are working to heal. I'm really sorry about your most recent breakup, that really hurts. I'm sure it caused emotional flashbacks too (one of the most helpful concepts I got from Pete Walker). I know I can get really angry really quickly too, and I feel ashamed of that. You're not alone. It makes sense given how our brains developed in a state of constant fear, and brains can always heal.

Welcome back! I totally get the feeling of being scared coming back after having needed to take a break. Glad you're here.

Hello, and welcome! I'm glad you're here. It's totally OK to be in the middle and be unsure of like, was this trauma? You're not alone, and you can trust yourself

I agree with all of the above suggestions. Some questions I wished I had asked are around ruptures and boundaries and feedback and treatment plan. How often will be circle back to our treatment plan to discuss progress and what we're working on? How do you foster a collaborative working relationship? What are your policies around out-of-session contact? How will you respond when I tell you that I'm feeling bad in the relationship, or didn't like something that you did or said, or it doesn't feel like it's working? Can you give me an example of how you handled a situation like that in the past?

Thank you to Blueberry and everyone for this thread. I'm grateful you asked the question. I have always wondered this, if I'll ever really get to "process", get to the "remembrance and mourning," do the "unburdening," or have the EMDR "target"--all these therapy terms!!!--for my sense of inner worthlessness. Sometimes it sounds like a fantasy. Though supposedly we are supposed to be able to get there with a good therapist, and Judith Herman's T&R seems to imply that it happens.

I myself have tried long-term therapy many times, the last two times with therapists I sought out specifically for their EMDR expertise, the last one specifically for CPTSD and they did IFS, and both times the relationship ended after 2+ years in very painful ways. We ended up re-enacting some dynamics, it's sad. I really tried. CPTSD therapy is intense, transference-wise, I know that. Sometimes it feels like if I were healthier--felt less shame, less worthlnessness, more trust--we'd be able to actually process the trauma, but that's a silly circle! Mostly I think that therapy just isn't set up generally to provide therapists with enough support to stay steady through all the countertransference they experience.

So sadly the answer is no. But what helps me, if that might help you, is two things. The concept of glimmers, like maybe focusing on little moments that echo the feeling of goodness inside that we would like to really live in, embody, 100% of the time. Small moments of safety, like someone mentioned above spending time in nature, and just noticing them as much as we can.

The second thing that I lean hard on with the worthlessness, is the line from Trauma and Recovery: "The abused child faces an formidable existential task as well. Her sense inner badness gives her meaning, hope, and power. If she is bad, then her parents are good. If she is bad, then she can try to be good, and then someday finally win the protection and care she so desperately needs." Basically, feeling worthless has given me meaning in life, and weirdly a sense of hope, and a sense of my own power. Because it once was the basis of my attachment to my FOO--my food, shelter, all my human connection possible. I feel that deep shame needs and deserves respect and almost gratitude, and we can respect the tenacity with which our systems hold onto it.

Oh a third thing: I printed out Pete Walker's reparenting affirmations from his CPTSD book and turned them into flashcards I look at every day, in the hopes of imprinting in them into my working memory. I don't know if it works, but it certainly gives me words to say to others in my life, and to help me know what I need to hear.

Solidarity

Thank you for this post! And for the commenters for following up!

I appreciate the Janina Fisher CPTSD flashcard that points out that anger itself can be triggering--feeling it or being around it in others.

I'd also encourage you to never tell your anger that it's unjustified. It's there for a reason. It may be triggering an emotional flashback as well, at the same time, but I'll bet it's coming from something real in the present that deserves your care and attention.

My kids get really angry over seemingly little things, especially when they are hungry or tired or we haven't been able to connect. When I interact with them, I hope I wouldn't tell them their anger was unjustified! I find we are able to soothe together when I actually over-emphasize that their feelings matter. Same goes for little parts in adults.

I went to my survivors support group recently and others were talking about their rage--mostly at other people who deserve it. But I really mostly have it constantly at my therapist. I feel embarrassed about that. But I appreciate your post's title because I feel less alone!

Thanks for bringing this up. Structural dissociation theory is a parts therapy that's not IFS. It's more sort of like, if we are in parts it's because of trauma, and there are a fixed set of parts, not like infinite ones with their own histories etc. Someone above recommended Janina Fisher's book and I highly recommend that, and her flashcards for CPTSD!

Thank you so much for your thoughtful and encouraging response.

It's been a few months, and we have talked about all this stuff, the sessions usually feel comforting. I am trying to get over the fact that this therapist

a) sees someone I know well both socially and through work, someone who does not have CPTSD and who I was attempting to get closer with but whose response to a disclosure that I'm a survivor made clear she is not someone who will be supportive;

b) made the choice to schedule us back to back for months once she found out we both knew we were seeing her, which I feel was something she should have known as a CPTSD specialist was risky to the trust we were building in therapy and potentially triggering given that I have CPTSD and struggle with compartmentalizing my life, relationships, and trust; and

c) minimized my feelings about it for the past year whenever I brought it up; even after she stopped scheduling the friend/coworker back to back with me because I had started hinting that it was hard for me to see her on my way in, she then suddenly did schedule us back to back before a very difficult session, and we spend the whole session talking about it, but mostly treated it like not a big deal. It was after that session that I had the huge emotional flashback/amygdala hijack that led to the huge rupture in which I wrote this.

I kinda wish we could somehow work through this, but as you can see it's nearly September and this blew up in May. The situation itself has been going on now for 13 months, of me knowing I share a therapist with someone I had tried to be closer friends with, and that I have to work with forever (though not necessarily see very often because of the nature of our jobs). It's gotten to the point where I'm avoiding the (now ex-)friend. I can't tell you what course our friendship would have taken if we hadn't shared a therapist, and if I hadn't gone through a period of seeing her weekly on the way into therapy. My best guess is, I probably would have figured out eventually this was just a "work friend" like Amy Poehler and Tina Fey joke about 

I really don't like that I have a therapist who exacerbated a sticky situation by scheduling us together and not getting curious about it or talking about it with me until I blew up, and now it has influenced my social and work life outside of therapy.

Over the past few months I've told the therapist about how when the friend was scheduled back to back with me, I used to deliberately try to arrive late, or hide in my car to avoid her. Then the therapist changed offices around the time she stopped scheduling us together, and I got a break from scanning the parking lot (hypervigilance) on my way in. In case it helps to know, I usually feel nauseated and shaky on the way in to therapy. It's kinda like, scared parts of me coming up after being hidden all week. So suddenly flipping into work mode seeing this person--who has made it clear I cannot talk about my trauma or my biofam estrangement around her--sucked. I realized that one of the things that was so triggering about what happened when I saw her at the therapist's office in May was that my system was caught off-guard. I had kind of let myself believe (wishful thinking) "oh maybe she went on a hiatus from therapy again" as the friend/coworker had done before, and stopped scanning the parking lot preparing to run into her.

I also realize that I had told the therapist that I was OK with this person being a client at first. I hinted at problems jokingly, "As long as you like me better. But if you say you do I'll have to fire you." And the therapist accepted my minimizing. I realize I had dissociated my fear about this, because I felt deep inside (and still do) that if forced to make a choice, anyone in the world would choose anyone in the world other than me; so I had to fawn and be pleasing to everyone, act like I was totally cool with it just like the therapist and the non-CPTSD-having-person who trusts the therapist unproblematically (she told me so, told me this situation isn't awkward at all for her).

I wish the therapist had realized at the start that me saying I'm OK with something that, well, I have no choice to be ok with or else I lose my therapist and feel abandoned yet again, might still warrant some caution. Like don't turn your waiting room into a weekly meetup. I was already seeing this friend/coworker weekly, sometimes twice a week at that time, but for whatever reason neither she nor I talked about each other in therapy ever (I don't talk about my friends at all in therapy; I'm pretty guarded about my present-day life), and the therapist never asked to understand this relationship that her scheduling choices were now intervening in. The therapist says she wishes she'd done things differently.

I have an appointment with another therapist who tells me they know what's what with CPTSD and a challenging client with many many failed therapies (but I've heard that before). I'm not sure whether to keep it to try it out. I'm still seeing the current therapist weekly, haven't taken a break.

I really like this current therapist in many ways. The session before she * me over with the biggest trigger ever--surprising me by seeing the friend/coworker again on the way into session after 6 months--I had said to her, I've been looking for therapy like this for a long time. And she claims to want to talk this through. And it has felt good to do so. But nothing will ever change that she sees this friend/coworker, and I still have a really hard time sitting with that. Feeling like this therapist is on my side, when she's on my side with a coworker who responded horrified by my disclosure and has insisted through silence whenever I have brought up anything except work. My workplace is very hostile to survivors, and I feel like my therapist is aiding and abetting an oppressive presence in my life, even though cognitively I "get" that she's not.

I also fear this feeling of being surveilled. In my biofam, if you told someone something, the whole group would make sure to respond en masse. The lack of intimacy and confidentiality was enforced repeatedly and traumatically. Now here I am, constantly talking * about this other client of hers because I feel so angry and jealous and insecure. I doubt this other person, who seems to care very little about this situation, is doing the same, but what if she shares things about my life, or where we're at, or even just going on with work with my therapist, and my therapist knows things about my life that I haven't told her? No big deal right if you trust someone but--inability to trust others is a cardinal feature of CPTSD I am trying to heal.

So I'm going to spend yet another week paying this therapist still hashing this out. Not talking about my traumas, not getting support in my daily life, not getting help taking care of myself better. I do think that minimizing this for over a year--both me and the therapist allowing me to fawn when it came up--has made it feel ten times worse than it has to.

I had a moment recently where I re-read Judith Herman on moral neutrality being not the same thing as technical neutrality. And I thought, maybe if I imagined that even if the therapist is technically neutral with the two of us, she doesn't have to be morally neutral when it comes to being anti-oppression and affirming solidarity with trauma survivors who demand action, engagement, and remembering. So this client of hers, my coworker/ex-friend, clearly showed me a part that took the side of the perpetrator in doing nothing but being horrified when I disclosed, but I can trust that the therapist in treating this client for whatever their full and complex life needs, still maintains a moral stance. *I* want to become less oppressive as I heal, as well! So maybe I can see that me and the ex-friend both could be.

But I also just need to grieve that of all the * luck I've had in my life, I finally found a therapy that was working and this uniquely * and unresolvable situation has happened to make it harder. I wish I didn't have to share a therapist with someone I know well. I wish that I could go to this therapist about any relationship in my life and trust (or at least have the fantasy) that they could only see it through my eyes and be on my side with it every hour of the week, not just when they're with me. And I really, really wish that therapy wasn't made any more triggering than it already is by this dumb luck. This is such a huge trigger fest for me. I don't want to be part of a group. I'm not jealous or weird about the therapist having other clients at all. Just this one, because we are connected in intimate but also completely secret and completely unchangeable ways (because of my job and my therapy).

I feel so ashamed that other people can just be ok with this awkward situation and I can't seem to. It's really hard at this point to say it's the therapist's fault when I have been through so. many. long-term therapy relationships. I wish we could work this out. I wonder though if even having the new therapist's appointment on my schedule is making this more stressful, and I should just cancel until I'm sure I want to leave or take a break. How do I know that a therapy relationship is still healthy? Advice welcome.

Thank you!