EPA Therapist Didn't Get It -- Doing Meditation 2X a day to fight C-PTSD

[bethanny]

I haven't been on here for a while.  I was quite optimistic when I turned to EPA counseling at work when a troubling manager began to trigger me with irrational and unwarranted criticisms like my now deceased unreovered borderline mother had growing up and through the first part of my adulthood.  She had been an invalidating manager, but she was ramping up the abuse to an alarming degree.  I was being scapegoated and gaslit.

I was assigned a difficult therapist and asked to be assigned another one.

The second one seemed very smart and considerate and I was optimistic.  But there was something about the drift of our sessions where I found myself going over so many of the intensely crazymaking moments with my mother during my life. 

I wondered if I needed to do this for my own recovery and dealing with the troubling manager whom I managed to stay away from as much as possible on the job and then fortunately have had some vacation time from.  Or was there something covert about the dynamic with the "nice" new therapist?

I think as the five weeks wore on the therapist became impatient with me.  She was very passive, but I seemed so compelled to keep spilling events in my past.  I had the sense that she couldn't hear what I was saying. At times she made comments that didn't seem to get the borderline nature of my mother's behavior.  Like a one off situation, not a recurring, crazymaking pattern.

She didn't seem to want to dwell on either my relationship with my mother or the manager, which is why I contacted the organization.   

I was trying to make her see how very crazymaking and demoralizing it was with someone who has so much power in your life and who can turn on you with such annihilating anger and who can't begin to do conflict resolution.  Her way or the highway.

Who is so overwhelming you begin to doubt conflict resolution could be accomplished with anyone in life and you learn to keep things shallow, avoid issues, or run away when the sh*t hit the fan eventually.

I blamed myself for talking so much about the past with the therapist.  I suspected she wanted to deal with current day issues in my  life. Was I avoiding that?  Maybe to a degree.

Was confused over myself, why I was so persistent and compulsively sharing so much history.  But with our  last session I realized why I kept sharing.  I was desperately trying to make her appreciate the intensity of the chronic trauma.

She simply and glibly said at the end, "You and your mother were a bad match."

What? 

It sounded to me like she was saying it was about mere temperamental differences that caused me so much distress from my history.  After so much disclosure?  That's the best she's got?

NOT THAT MY  MOTHER COULD TURN INTO A FRIGHTENING ATTACKING MONSTER IN A NY MINUTE BECAUSE SHE HAD THE PERSONALITY DISORDER OF BORDERLINE PERSONALITY THAT IS CONFOUNDING TO ANYONE BUT ESPECIALLY TO A SMALL HELPLESS DAUGHTER WHOM SHE ONWARDLY CULTIVATED TO BE TOTALLY OBSEQUIOUS TO HER, TO WALK ON EGG SHELLS AT ALL TIMES! 

I never fully exhaled around my mother. I think my chronic anxiety in her presence prevented it. I always had to be on red alert for her next mandate.  I couldn't afford the luxury of a full exhalation in case I missed one of her cues.

Five weeks of reliving so much anguish and sharing it with this therapist and she seemed more and more quietly repelled by my earnest reciting of the traumatic events with my mother at all the developmental stages of my life than someone offering comfort and insight. She seemed a bit passive aggressive.

I felt like I was a bad girl for not anticipating what she -- the therapist -- expected from me.  I also felt I was far more informed about victims of trauma than she.

I think I just kept presenting her with the crazymaking moments to try to make her see. I knew that was necessary for the sake of our therapeutic communication.  But that never happened and I really didn't get it until the very end, though I see now something in me did get it since I kept trying so hard to educate her about myself and vulnerable children in my situation.

But she was someone who couldn't relate to what I was saying.  Is she a mother and couldn't get it and felt defensive by a daughter taking such an angry inventory?  Is she an unrecovered borderline herself?  Was I a client who frustrated her by talking too much?  Each week I marvelled why I was so driven to share more and more history with her.

Sometimes she would express empathy for my mother and the stress in her life.  Yes, that was true of my mother.  But I don't think my problems came from my minimizing the troubles of my poor mother, which seemed to be what she was suggesting.  Dealing with an irrational being is not like communicating with a rational being in a certain difficult mood.  It is like dealing with someone with paranoia who is beyond finding common ground with.

The stress in my mother's life is what hooked me with pity to stay in her needy and dominating thrall.  To congratulate myself on being a sympathetic daughter in order to deny my actual terror of her.  Scott Peck once said it is evil to titsuck from and control the same person at the same time. I needed my therapist to see my mother's condition not from episodic and justified stress, there was indeed plenty of that on her, but for my therapeutic need, from a chronic, unrecovered borderline personality disorder.

It is a lot to get.  I have tried to explain the trauma to a few people in my life, including my siblings, and after spilling so much, I also get the sense that the total scope of trauma, the very continuation of it, was minimized for some reason.  Some knowing my mother, the non-dark side persona she presented so that made it hard for them to grasp the dark mommy who lashed out when inconvenienced or challenged at all at me.  Perhaps for my siblings, they did know or sense that dark mommy but not as directly as I, but are still fighting their own denial to a degree after all these years.

But for those neutral others ... they just can't get it, I guess. I couldn't get it the first decades of my life, and I was the actual victim!

Maybe I am reading this wrong. But I don't think so.  The nice second therapist could not grasp what I was saying about the HORROR of dealing with a hair-trigger unrecovered borderline parent ... who consistently punished if my focus wasn't kept on her, and her needs were not consistently and accurately anticipated by me, which even if one tries to anticipate another's wants and needs, mind reading of another can be at times profoundly inaccurate.  The punishment for failure was sustained and harsh. Part of the irrational treatment of an irrational uBPD personality.  I won't tell you what I want, but you better just know it. You owe me that. And I will shame you non-stop for being such a disappointment in not understanding my needs thereafter.  I will never be able to forgive you for your lapse.

At the end of the disappointing sessions I came across someone online, Anna Runkle, who calls herself the Crappy Childhood Fairy and has youtube presentations talking about recovering from C-PTSD, or more specifically what she calls childhood PTSD which she says is a subset of Complex-PTSD. 

Disappointed with the invested time with the EPA therapist who didn't seem seriously committed to helping me after all, though I kept fighting to deny this week after week, I began watching some of Anna Runkle's offerings. 

She spoke of neurological damage from chronic trauma growing up. She recommended doing meditation two times a day to ground oneself.  She had a 20 day bootcamp of short lectures.  I took the course and meditated two times a day and I think it was helpful. 

I am still doing the meditations... I got a good 10 minute one off the internet that focuses on one's breathing ... and it makes sense that physiological recovery like from meditation would be helpful to the anxiety and depression provoking C-PTSD.

Runkle doesn't endorse talk therapy and I don't go as far as her with that.  I am not sorry I studied why I have the symptoms I do from my history.  Even reliving some painful stuff with that therapist ... even if it didn't move her... it reminded me of what I have been through and I don't think those 5 weeks were a waste of time. I was listening to me, even if she couldn't.

Runkle advises not to "ruminate" over the past and I agree with her there.  She says we get dysregulated physically and emotionally and we need to get back on track to be functioning and satisfied human beings.  The meditation helps that.

I realize the manager was dysregulating me with her in the face disrespect that felt to me so much the opposite treatment of what I deserved and what I earned.

I am taking another Runkle class.  Following a series of short videos over a course of a few weeks.  I think it is worth exploring.  I go back to work on Friday.  I will have some anxiety but I trust I will be sturdier with the meditations and the efforts about childhood PTSD.

I have been meaning to get back to this website.  I felt some shame that the EPA counseling wasn't what I hoped it would be.  Some shame that I am not further recovered in my life at this point.  I was confused and wasn't sure what I wanted to say when I came back here.  But I knew I needed to.

I am a survivor.  I survived a therapist who couldn't get me.  I will deal with a manager who is still ongoingly abusive. 

I don't want to not reflect on the pain in my past at times.  But I also realize I need to get my neurological damage repaired as much as possible and if meditation can help me with that, Hallelujah. 

I will see. 

Thanks for listening, now and earlier.  And even far earlier than that. This website has gotten me through some very tough times.

Best,
Bethanny 

[stargazer95]

Hi Bethanny,
 
I just finished reading your post, so powerful in its honesty and authenticity. It takes a lot of courage to share these things and I, for one, am happy you did as I felt my current struggle is very close to yours. I have been in that place of feeling thee need to share past events with my mom to make others underestand that this is not just some over-protective parent or cultural differences (we are from Iran). that there is something so fundamentally wrong.
I really admire your resilience in being able to hear the truth of your story despite not having sympethatic ears. After a few interactions with people who were like "oh yea your mom has been through a lot" or "how much of this is really just cultural norms?" that I began doubting my experience. My T came to my rescue. I cant even imagine what it would be like to not have a T who is rooting for you. Do you have another T now?
I was reading waking the tiger recently and it also does talk about how talk therapy is limited when it comes to trauma. that more somatic experience is needed. I found out that there are centers that just do somatic therapy which is focused on the body. Have you heard of those?

all the best friend. As hard as this is now, you are doing wonderful in the face of all these challenges.

[bethanny]

stargazer95,

Thank you soo much for the support. 

I am not young anymore and have been slugging it out for awareness and emotional groundedness for a long time.

Part of my reluctance to share a lot on this website is that I don't feel I am a voice of a recovered person since I still struggle with anxiety and depression, though it is mostly low grade. I know I still isolate way too much.  Am still very shame-based at times.  I avoid stress instead of conquering it.

I have had therapists some good and some bad in the past, but known was familiar with Borderline Personality Disorder or able to apply it to my history.  I spent decades in 12 step rooms, very helpful, and read thousands of self-help books.  Still, no mention of BPD.  I had insights for dealing with the alcoholic family dynamic.  But the BPD dynamic was a HUGE puzzle piece that eluded me most of my life.

What confounded me when I finally challenged my mother's ABSOLUTE domination of me was her TOTAL inability to communicate.  She automatically used her hysteria to motivate everyone in my network to try to control me to end her hysteria and get me back in line.  But she could not take a breath and listen. I was awed by how UNABLE not unwilling but downright unable she was to relate respectfully to me.  To give me a hearing.  I had opportunities where I could re-enter the role of dominated daughter once again probably, but never an option to have her relate to me as a fellow adult.  Any push to do that re-inspired her hysteria and "annihilating anger." 

I was conditioned by terror since I was small.  When I was 3 I told my mother I hated her.  I was 3.   She quietly and coldly rose from the chair in the living room, went into my bedroom and packed a suitcase for me. I watched in horror.  She was threatening to put a 3 year old out on the dark city street alone forever.  I remember thinking at 3, doesn't she know i am too little? 

When I brought up that memory my family had a good laugh at my mother's using psychology on me. 

That was trauma. And from that day forward I learned that my mother would not abide me expressing any inconvenient feelings her way without there being profound consequences of rejection and punishment. 

There was a strange kind of egotism symbiosis she had with me, whereby she projected her self-anger and shame outward at me.  I was to be the perfect child version of her.  I knew I could not be that and was paralyzed often around her since it was an impossible and spirit-killing mandate.  Her Medusa looks.  She was not able to unconditionally love herself, so that self-loathing besides directed at herself was also directed at me.

In the last decade a friend suggested that BPD was the issue was with my mother.  I read "Understanding the Borderline Mother" and bells went off -- I practically read it all in one sitting and it is a loong book. 

This latest short term therapists "seemed" so empathetic but had a blind spot to what my real issues are and were.  Maybe she was simply a mother who didn't want to hear another mother's inventory taken so earnestly?  I know when I went to Alanon at the beginning of recovery years ago some of the mothers asked me to go to another program, Adult Children of Alcoholics, because of the stories I was sharing about my non-alcoholic BPD parent. It made them very uncomforatable, maybe guilty.

The messenger gets killed?

The frustrating thing with this therapist was she was so passive about it.  I wanted to trust that it was obvious the abuse I had suffered at my mother's hands.  She also kept urging me to bury the past ... and burying it is not the answer.  Though I am appreciating that "ruminating" about the past is not the only path for recovery which is why I am trying the meditation route.  I was getting massages which were great until pandemic hit.

Never heard of "Waking the Tiger".  Will check out. 

For now I will visit this website and the Crappy Childhood Fairy one and keep doing my two daily meditations.  It seems to be helping.

We belong to a counterculture of awareness and empathy.  We are survivors.

Thanks, again.

Good luck at your end.

Best,
Bethanny
 

[beatricex]

hi bethanny and stargazer95,

I wanted to mention that I relate and I have been looking for more of a somatic therapy as well.  Bethanny, have you tried hypnotherapy?  I found that worked well for me after doing cognitive behavorial (reliving every past trauma and reframing those events in a more positive manner) didn't work long time.

I have been looking into dance or horse therapy, and can't wait until the pandemic is over to try one or both of those. 

I also started doing research on complex PTSD, as I find I am dissociated a lot, and I don't like that feeling.  Ever drove somewhere, got there and wondered how you go there, you were so lost in thought?

Dry brushing is one thing besides meditation/mindfullness I have recently started doing as well.

Please share more, I like taking the proactive approach to my mental health, and am really hoping to learn more.

Besides all this, I am going more Low Contact with my BPD'd mom, as I felt I was moving back toward enmeshment with her.  I am not rude or mean to her, nor do I confront her anymore, I just don't spend much time with her nor do I respond to her emails/texts as much (she is the one always trying to initiate it).

 

b

[bethanny]

Appreciate your feedback and quest, b.

I will continue on with the Crappy Childhood Fairy meditations and podcast for now but will look into hypnotherapy if I can at some point.  There seem some terrific meditations on the internet these days.  Also learning opportunities although I was fooled by a narcissist in therapist's clothing by one and even went to an expensive seminar only to discover he was such a flaming egotist narcissist.  Hah!

Sorry I never tried EMDR.  Someone in my IRL network recommends it. 

I appreciate this website because somatic recovery is important but we need to keep each other's consciousnesses raised, to fight the normalization of abuse in our pasts and gird against it in our presents. 

That is why I was so seduced by the recent "nice" therapist who ultimately didn't get it after hearing about profoundly pathological and traumatizing behavior from my mother.  She didn't respect the pathology of a psychological disorder nor the impact on a tender hostage child.

Good for you to stay detached as possible.  After my estrangement, I offered a safe degree of good will and affinity to my ubpd mother who was by then sadly physically disabled by two strokes and an alcoholic father still very active.  I had to mourn that there would never be a bond based on enlightenment and true intimacy.  I had to accept the reality. 

There was geographic distance at that point to help me sustain my boundaries.  But great sadness and loneliness to be processed.

Take care of your precious self.

Best,
Bethanny
 

[I Am Redeemed]

Hi bethany,

I just want to say I am terribly sorry you had this experience with a therapist. Unfortunately,  many therapists are not trauma-informed, and I doubt this one was at all. A lot of therapists are not trained in personality disorders, either.

EMDR has helped me a lot. However,  like you, I do not consider myself recovered. I  still battle depression,  anxiety,  and dissociative tendencies. I still isolate myself a lot. I am working on it and it's a process, a long process.

I think you are very brave for laying your struggles out here so honestly and eloquently. I also encourage you to not believe that you must be recovered completely before sharing your story. I  love hearing from other people who are in the middle of it but who are not giving up. 

Your middle might be a milestone for someone who is just beginning to understand the truth about their trauma.

I find that mindfulness meditation helps me. I struggle with the motivation to consistently do it, though.

Neural networks formed in developmental stages of childhood can absolutely be changed and that is what true trauma informed therapies like somatic experiencing and EMDR accomplish. It's reprocessing the trauma so we can move past it.

Talk therapy uses the strategy of parallel thoughts, the familiar way in which the learned messages from childhood have formed the neural networks and the new way of thinking which is the truth that we now know. Thinking harder about the truth is what talk therapy is about, but it is not as effective as actually flipping the neural network from a negative message to a positive one.

[bethanny]

Thanks for response, I am redeemed.  Like your name.

I love that we can play messengers to others, without often not even knowing what nugget of insight we share that gets passed forward over the internet sites.  And we are always works in progress.  

What a long journey it has been trying to leave the F-O-G of a dysfunctional family.  I forget where I heard this description ... iirc letters stand for FEAR, OBLIGATION and GUILT.

When fighting for clarity it is a challenge when the primary perpetrators of your abuse are protected by your supposed social network ... who don't want you to  bring them with you on your path to clarity because it is too threatening.  On an unconscious level they know or suspect the truth, but embracing it would be too inconvenient.

We were raised to place faith in our dominating significant others, rather than ourselves and our own blessed intuition.

There is a saying I got from the 12 step rooms.  "I have the right to be healthier than those around me."  I think of that old "If" poem by Rudyard Kipling about honoring your own perception and standing by it.

This meditation exercise I try to do two times a day with the meditation is supposed to be prefaced by doing a quick written stream of conscious of what you are currently fearing. I do this part reluctantly and fast since I don't want to deal with fear (-- FACE EVERYTHING AND RECOVER or FALSE EVIDENCE APPEARING REAL are my favorite acronyms -- is that the right word?... ) but I see whereupon then doing the relaxation meditation immediately after it is helping me calm down about said fears.  And sorting through the ridiculous ones against the more profound ones.  

Sometimes I conveniently forget to do the fear part of the exercise until I am starting the meditation. Lately I make a deal that I do the fear part at least once of the two times I do the meditation each day.  A deal with my inner child, HAH! If I overstep the fear stream that is okay.

I find it helpful also in this particular program led by Anna Runkle that she talks about ways to re-regulate oneself when one feels dysregulated.  To monitor oneself through the day and notice when one feels particularly paralyzed and passive.

Having been raised by a histrionic all or nothing upbd parent and a narcissistic and rage-aholic other parent, my own psychological equilibrium can be ambushed easily and I can be overwhelmed with a sense of hopelessness and impotence quickly. When as a child one was chronically conditioned to be reactive not proactive as almost an original part of our neurological hard-wiring it is difficult to turn it around in adult life.  Focusing on fighting that dysregulation when it originally gets triggered is key.

Runkle mentions in one of her podcasts the 4Fs.  I thought there were only 3.  She lists flight, fight, freeze or fawn.  I realize that in my circumstances I was entrapped into relying on the "freeze" or "fawn" responses.  Paralysis or (fawn) obsequiousness to the aggressor to avoid punishment or rejection.

I am still trying to ritualize my twice daily meditations.  Also simple physical exercising on a daily basis.  Usually 15 or 30 minutes.  

Runkle says sometimes being dysregulated is comforting since we can space out to avoid dealing with responsibility -- "the ability to respond."  But dysregulation has consequences later.  Avoidance leads to avoidance of "positive stress" and "positive stress" often provides excitement, joy, passion, adventure in our lives.  

I am finding using a timer is helping me to monitor my daily activities and fight mood shifts to paralysis. Also, when I start flagellating myself for "wasting" time. Being a human doing, not a human being, and not respecting that I have the right to both satisfaction and gratification.  Often gratification efforts growing up with a demanding parent are dismissed as selfish self-indulgence, not a rightful part of our human existence.

I am not as anti-ruminating about the past as Runkle's program seems, but I spent years what I called "wall-watching" ... maybe a mourning activity about the trauma in my past.  But maybe that is being on overwhelm by the "dysregulation" mode I am now hearing about.

There is another quote if I can struggle to remember it.  Something about us not being able to stop the birds of unhappiness from flying over our heads, but the importance of not letting them build a nest in our hair.  If that makes sense.  One of my favorite quotes.  

Then there is St. Francis quote, "Nothing to excess, including moderation."  which makes me smile ... and helps to remind not to be too perfectionistic in trying to "self-help" ourselves.

To be continued, I hope.

Best,
Bethanny
 

[zachira]

I hear your pain and frustration with having had two therapists that did not validate your experiences and you as a person. Unfortunately EPA therapists are supposed to deal with short term problems and do not treat CPTSD. I too was raised by a mother with BPD and have CPTSD. EMDR was enormously helpful to me and talk therapy has had limited results. EMDR taught me how to be present in the moment and to be able to do meditation. With a BPD parent we learn to ignore our feelings and I still constantly need to remind myself to stay in my feelings in the moment to keep getting hijacked by all the past trauma. Do keep practicing meditation, seeking the help you need, and you will get better. You may want to make a list of what you seek in a therapist  and interview several before you settle on one.

[bethanny]

Zachira,

Thanks for your comforting support.  It is a challenge when one feels threatened, in my case by a manager at work, and takes the risk of reaching for external support.  And the support falls short and presents yet a further challenging and frustrating frontier.  It did make me aware of my own strength and my own resilience in seeking beyond the first solution that didn't work out like I had hoped it would.

I invested so much time and energy trying to communicate with that second therapist who could not hear me. I kept trying to convince myself she was hearing me, but deep down I knew she was not and I kept trying to bring her more evidence from my past. Our final session made it clear.  I was blaming myself for over-focusing on my past but I realized I was trying to catch her up to my genuine reality to today ... and she was not willing and/or capable to grasp that reality.

I don't think I wasted my time.  I did go over my old history, and even though she for some reason could not "get it", I certainly felt great compassion for the young confused child I was struggling to help my disordered parents and playing shock absorber for the symptoms of their crippling disorders.

I still have a toxic manager. But I trust I will be able to withstand her slings and arrows.  I have a renewed support system here and I am appreciating the new website where I was encouraged to do my meditations twice a day with videos to help me learn even more about recovering from C-PTSD.

Thanks for the reminder to honor and focus on my feelings in the moment.  I seem to often automatically treat myself the way I was treated, with impatience for not being automatically perfectly "productive."  Assuredly how my uBPD mother had been also treated as a child.  And my alcoholic dad. For never being "enough", whatever that elusiveness "enoughness" even included.  Usually too much in an unrealistic time frame.  Or an emotional capacity frame.

Take care of your precious self and thanks for the support. I remember you have given it to me in the past, as well. So appreciated.

Best,
Bethanny
 

[zachira]

Bethanny,
You have tremendous self awareness and the ability to know what you are feeling and whether your feelings are being understood. You have a long journey ahead yet you will get there because you are empathetic and motivated. You seem to be on the road to making a new life for yourself in which you will find yourself surrounded more and more by people who reciprocate your caring and love and places that nourish you.

[beatricex]

hi again bethanny,
I totally agree with zachira and Iamredeemed,

You are not alone in having had a bad experience with a therapist.  Have you heard the saying "take what applies, and leave the rest"?  I guess that saying applies to the experience you had, since you had the clarity to recognize that your therapist wasn't really helping you.

I am a list person, and wondering if you are too?  Sometimes, when I start getting down, I like to make my list and take it with me and mentally check the boxes.  Like, have you ever interviewed for a new job, and felt really nervous and maybe a little scared?  I like to flip the script, make my list and interview THEM not the other way around.  It sort of goes this way in therapy, I think.

I one time went to a therapist's house, and the cat hair was overwhelming (I am allergic).  It's not personal, I just can't be around cat hair when I'm trying to concentrate on tough emotions.  Think of your therapist experience as "the cat lady."  She may be great with some people, but for some reason, you and her didn't mesh.  NEXT (List, list list)

Not that I have to say this but...don't give up.

 

b