I know, therapy probably hasn’t been a walk in the park so far. If you’re here, you’re probably looking for more information, more help, or more reassurance that you’re not the only one looking for a way out. But there’s no real substitute to having a professional to keep you grounded, processing the right materials, and creating personalized progress goals in line with your individual struggles.

As someone who did NOT want to go to therapy, after two very bad experiences with people who didn’t know what the hell they were doing, I can tell you, my trauma brain completely changed the day I found a qualified trauma therapist. And I want everyone to have that experience. 

Today, let’s talk about the challenges of finding effective help and the caveats of safely turning to prescription meds. Because trauma requires trauma-trained therapy, and there’s a lot to choose from.

For more help finding a practitioner who matches your personal preferences, go to https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists. 

For help affording therapy, check out https://openpathcollective.org/

Hit up t-mfrs.com to see some gnar-graphics that accompany these chats via the Blog. To talk with other MFs about the challenges and triumphs of this MF life, hit up patreon.com/traumatizedmotherfuckers to join the private support community. See you there.

Cheers y’all

Jess

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Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/complextrauma/message

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Transcript:

Well, hey there, glad that you shut up for this next round of figuring out life.

Now, what’s a fucker to talk about since we finally now know a thing or 20 billion about the mechanisms and likely outcomes of PTSD and CPTSD? How about changing those outcomes by finally finding someone who can fucking help you?

Because I know therapy probably hasn’t ever been a walk in the park so far. If you’re here, you’re probably looking for more information, more help or more reassurance that you’re not the only one looking for a way out.

A supplement to therapy at the very least, if you are even open to counseling at all right now. And that’s what I recommend you use this show and community as if you do want to be involved.

A supplement to therapy, because I can talk about the background of trauma, the experiences of trying to live despite a set of messy neural connections, and the ways that I’ve figured out how to move on from it. We can all support each other through some rough times, but none of that is a substitute for having a professional to keep you grounded, processing the right materials and creating personalized progress goals in line with your individual struggles.

Now, as someone who did not want to go to therapy. After two very bad experiences with people who did not know what the hell they were doing.

I can tell you, my trauma brain completely changed the day that I found someone who could actually talk to me about what was going on in the right way. Not someone who just wanted to talk, “therapize me.

” The difference being what you want, first and foremost, is a trauma trained and experienced practitioner. You do not want to go to a general therapist, or someone who has a bit of knowledge when it comes to depression and anxiety, you know, the more sparkly symptoms that you might think you want to tackle, but I swear to God, you won’t fix them if the wiring is still all janked up underneath.

You need the specialization of trauma therapy to be firmly under their belt. They need to guide the sessions with intention.

This should not be a situation where you walk into the office every day, and they casually ask, “So what do you want to talk about this time? ” At least, not in the very beginning when there’s so much heavy lifting to do and unknown triggers to watch out for.

So, what is the difference between a trauma trained therapist and any old counselor? Well, they need to know how to interact with your brain programs without actually setting them off.

They need to give you the validation that you have been through a lot, and it can lead to the issues of X, Y, and Z. They need to be able to reground you after visiting the past and trying to do some processing work together.

They need to understand your rapidly, biologically programmed, shifting emotions, energies, perceptions, behaviors, and even opinions about therapy itself. They need to know about dissociation and likely dissociative identities, but we’ll get to both later.

They need to be sensitive to the influence of shame, of self-blame, of criticism, even to the influence of ambiguity. And they need to know how to help you move past it all, knowing that at the core of the issue is a loss of self and a sense of perpetual helplessness that cascades into a “why even fucking bother” outlook every few months, weeks, or hours.

But in the beginning, most importantly, is their ability to help you resolve erroneous memories from the past without letting you get engulfed by them, which is where many of our therapy efforts fail immediately. For us, therapy is not going to be about just letting our brains wander or talking about our childhood for 30 minutes at a time.

It’s going to need to be directed, and it’s going to need to be conducted intentionally, in line with whatever is going on in our lives at that moment. For instance, if you’re in an extremely stressful time at your job, it’s not a great moment for your therapist to throw you into the deep end of your early abuse memories.

If your energy starts changing, your cognitive patterns are negatively shifting, and you’re on the verge of kickstarting an anxiety or obsession-based mental program, they need to feel that vibe change and pull you back out of it. This is the real work that trauma therapists have to take on, not to mention upholding those safe and firm boundaries so they don’t get any trauma transference or emotional enmeshment going on.

Meaning, I know that transparency can be really reassuring, but you also don’t want to get a therapist who’s too friendly with you. You honestly probably shouldn’t know much about their background or personal history.

You shouldn’t be texting or calling them with a crisis too often. There shouldn’t be any threat of multiple forms of relationships going on between you.

Your therapist is your therapist, and that is all. Now, I only say this because for those of us with CPTSD, that can be a pretty painful fact to accept, and we can let these lines get pretty blurry.

We often haven’t felt seen or accepted before in a way that a trauma therapist can impart. We might transmit feelings onto them, like they’re our saviors, best friends, or substitute mothers, and this all needs to be at the forefront of the therapist’s mind.

Otherwise, it can be destructive for everyone. Edit, it will be destructive for everyone.

So, don’t take it hard if they set firm boundaries with you. If you only see or hear from them during set office hours.

If you ask questions that they kindly refuse to answer. If you can’t text them during every emergency.

If you start to feel like you might care about them more than they care about you. If you realize one day that you’re paying them for a professional service, and this is a strictly professional relationship.

Look, it’s not personal. These boundaries are the way to heal your brain.

These are all the normal things that can happen during therapy which throw us for a loop and make us question the whole nature of the relationship, and if we can trust them. But unfortunately, they’re just patterns that we’re really not accustomed to after a lifetime of people being, sorry, pretty fucking inappropriate and calling it normal.

So, right there are two major points that stop us from getting the help we need. Number one, you have to get a trauma specialist.

No, no other kind of therapist will do. And number two, you have to understand that they are treating your brain, which might mean that they have different instincts, expectations and desires that they know are beneficial through training and experience are the best ways to help you.

Even if they feel pretty bad. And thirdly, you’re going to want to try to find someone with the same beliefs as you roughly on a core level, as in, don’t go see a religious counselor if you’re an atheist.

Don’t see a conservative therapist if you’re LGBTQ. Don’t talk to a Western medicine educated psychiatrist.

If you’re looking for a more holistic approach. And you can find all of these things out fairly easily through using things like the psychology today provider finder resource, for starters, it’ll at least help you weed out the people that you definitely don’t jive with right away.

And then during your first sessions, do not be afraid to ask your therapist about their opinions on any of these important areas of life. And also don’t forget that you are letting these mental health professionals audition in a way to be your therapist, which is a pretty big role.

So, you aren’t looking for just whoever can take you right away. You’re looking for the right fit.

If it’s not feeling right, you don’t have to keep at it. You can find another provider today, a lot more easily than ever.

Thanks to all of those telehealth options. You can talk to anyone, anywhere, even if your immediate environment is not giving you great opportunities.

As someone who grew up in a backwards ass cornfield town with racist undertones, holler. But don’t give up.

Don’t work with someone who’s going to make the issue worse by accidentally shaming you for your lifestyle differences. Don’t work with someone who doesn’t seem to respect your goals or necessity for pacing, but also don’t work with someone who’s not going to make you feel better by being too lax and on a call or falling or failing to set new goals for you.

And if you find yourself failing to make progress with your old perch practitioner, you actually might want to consider a change up in order to kickstart a new recovery process. Or you might want to finally jump the shark and get that trauma specialized therapist that you’ve been putting off.

And what else can we say here? Let’s talk psychiatrists.

Let’s talk about getting some medical help when you’re starting therapy, because lots of us need a little chemical boost to even things out and stabilize what has been rapidly headed towards disaster. And that’s completely fine.

It’s a good idea to get to a safe, secure place if you’re on the edge of giving up entirely. When things are at a crisis level, I think that medication can be the best way to take it all down a notch and then do the hard work that you need to.

But, and remember, what the fuck do I know? Absolutely nothing.

Please be wary of providers who want to throw you on too much medication right off the bat, or professionals who aren’t prescribing meds that feel in line with what you’re trying to describe. Or family members who are pushing you to just get over it already and do something.

Meaning, take a pill and your broken brain will stop negatively affecting them. So make sure that you trust your psychiatrist just like you trust your therapist.

Your impressions here matter. You can talk to more than one provider to get multiple opinions, if you’re in doubt.

I do realize that it isn’t cheap, but also please realize it’s much cheaper than losing years of your life to being in a pharmaceutically induced coma that isn’t treating the underlying issue anyways. I’ve got friends who can attest.

So let me give you my opinion real quick, you can totally ignore it. But I think that psychotropic meds can play a really big role in getting folks out of dangerous mental situations, like when suicidal ideations are running rampant or functionality has slipped down to zero.

But I don’t really think that they should be a lifelong condition. As a biology nerd, I feel like body functions are going to perform best when you aren’t pumping your system full of exogenous chemicals.

I also don’t believe that biochemical imbalances are the basis of mental illness. I think that they’re often a symptom.

So, I think, but what do I know that there’s amazing potential in getting on a mood stabilizer antidepressant or anti anxiety med, short term. This might allow you to deactivate some default brain programs, which then allows you to work on rebuilding the broken ones, or creating better ones.

But the actual rehabilitation part of the process is going to be making those neurological architectural changes, little by little, over time to resolve whatever brain patterning is causing you to spiral out into depression, anxiety, obsession, and every other kind of fit, not the insert new neurotransmitter part here. Do those brain programs cause biochemical imbalances?

Yeah, I believe they do. But does treating the downstream effect of dysregulated neurotransmitters travel backwards to correct the mental shittery that’s causing all the brain and emotional upset long term?

No, no, I don’t think it works that way. Again, not a professional listening to me could always be dangerous, I could be wrong.

I just know what I’ve seen and picked up so far. So, try meds, but don’t lifelong rely on meds.

That’s my standpoint. Overall, just make sure that your psychologist and psychiatrist are working together.

Do not see a regular primary care physician for the medicine that is going to make or break your brain. And try not to get too married to the idea that these artificial chemicals are saving your soul.

Honestly, it cuts out another pretty important part of the trauma puzzle, which is believing that you have the power to make changes. Counting on medication means you don’t think you’re capable yourself.

It makes you dependent on an outside factor, a prescription. And that’s a bit of a learned helplessness continuation at the core of it.

Don’t you think? So, as far as knowing what the best specific kind of help for you really is.

Well, realize that there are a lot of trauma specialties within the trauma specialization as well. So do you want someone who does EMDR or bilateral eye movement therapy that helps you process old traumas more effectively?

Maybe. Do you want CBT or cognitive behavioral training that teaches you how your brain and feelings are interacting to create your reactions?

Maybe. How about DBT, dialectical behavioral therapy, which helps you build mindfulness, emotional control, personal effectiveness, and distress tolerance?

Maybe. Do you want to get an IFS practitioner or internal family systems therapy, which examines the multiple neural structures in your head that might present as distinct personalities and are accessed through dissociative events?

Maybe. Or do you want an ACT therapist, acceptance commitment training, which teaches you to stop ruminating and start absorbing newly presented information so you can start making definitive decisions and moving forward more quickly.

I mean, I recommend this a lot for anybody but I’m biased so maybe. The point is there are a lot of approaches, and you might find that the answer is a little of all of the above, or it varies depending on what you’re processing at the time.

There’s no way to know until you find out through experience and see what actually works for you. Different strokes for different folks.

You’re going to have to decide first, what makes the most sense and makes the most difference in your life. This is your therapy, your recovery, your brain, your future.

But if you want to ask a few hundred fuckers who’ve already been through it about what they’ve figured out. You know where to find them.

Head to the TMFRS traumatized motherfuckers private community, which is available through Patreon, and the Patreon gated discord, and get chatting with more than this one individual perspective right here. Find out what fits for you and get the social support on the other side of therapy to enable your professional progress to continue outside of the office.

If you’re into the idea, just hit up t dash m fr s. com or patreon.

com slash traumatized motherfuckers to get more information, more connection, and more support than you’ve possibly ever received before, even if you are an experienced therapy client. So I will see you there in the traumatized motherfuckers community where you can get tons of info on your brain and experience so far via one or 200 some podcast episodes already published and waiting for your consumption.

They span everything from the neuroscience to the not so compliant brain based experiences of living with unmanaged CPTSD in early days today, and pretty literally everything that’s happened in between. So until next time, when I throw some more mental nutrition at you.

Because next time, we’re going to be talking about dissociation, a pretty big topic for all of the traumatized motherfuckers out there. I’ll see you then.

And until then, hail yourself. Hail Prince Archie.

And don’t forget, there is someone who can help you, even if you feel like you’ve been alone in all of this so far. Cheers, fuckers.