EMDR FORUM ARCHIVE, 2000
Wow
Barbara · 11/15/02 at 4:44 PM ET
Okay. I will reply. I think that it's clear that I'm not a therapist, and I'm not promoting anyone or anything. I will try to help some more, although I think that you should re-read my original response and consider it more seriously, particularly if you like my astute reading of your emotions. I learned to do that somewhere. You are searching for happiness, or freedom from depression. Just curious for you. You might want to explore this. Have you ever not felt depressed? If you have, I suggest that one way to access that feeling, and begin to work with it, is to remember the times you have had good feelings. Get the image of those times. The people. The places. The feeling. Remember how it felt in your body. Close your eyes. Get quiet and comfortable, and spend several minutes, or however long you enjoy it, bringing those feelings back into your body. Feel the feeling. Feel it in the different parts of your body, whatever it might be--peace, love, joy, self-esteem. This is the meditation that I use, that I have made up, that has helped heal me. In fact, I highly recomend it to anyone. You can do it when you first go to bed. Feeling the relaxation overtake your body. You can do it when you first wake up, a different sensation. I guess the next question you are asking is how long will it take before you know whether therapy works, and how will you know if the therapy and therapist you have chosen is working? I'll throw out my experience to you. Twenty odd years ago I was hurt by therapy. Traumatized is the current conceptualization of it. Acutally, I have also come the the Complex PTSD terminology of it. That's pretty awful therapy considering this is the response people have who have been tortured and captured. I lived in misery for years for what it did to my mind and the utter destruction it caused to my personal and work life. I tried everything to fix my life. About seven or eight years ago, I got serious about undoing the damage. But I got serious by using alternative therapies. You name it. If it was on the fringe of therapy I tried it: NLP, Huna healing, hypnosis, meditation, and hands on healing. Eventually, I found an excellent healer who said look, you need therapy. So, I tried the conventional therapy route. Yet the license or the degree made little difference. In some ways, the therapists were disturbed or as kooky as the alternative healers. In fact, some were down right scary if not just incompetent. So, I said, Barbara you are a smart and very educated woman. You know how to research. You have a fancy degree. Go about this as if you were doing research for a thesis and find out what works in therapy. Well, the short of it is that cognitive therapy is supposed the be the quick and effective answer to all emotional problems. Good I said. Where do I find those therapist? Again, this was a little before the Internet had it the big time, so it took a little effort to eventually come to the U of PA to find top cognitive therapists. I wanted to find someone who really knew how to help people, not just a therapist who was trained in the therapy. Well, the long and the short of it is that cognitive therapy wasn't quick and it didn't work for me. However, I found a sensational therapist who fit my other criteria as well. Someone well trained. Known to get results. Smarter than I am. Successful in the field. And a few other attributes that were important to me. About seven years later, I still haven't solved the problem that I entered therapy for. However, I have healed. I have changed a great deal, in that I have become myself. People notice the difference. I am less depressed and feel many more good emotions. I realize that this is part of what needed to happen before I was strong enough to fix the work and personal parts of my life. What made the difference? The relationship. That's it. Nothing more. And, in the end, that's the only thing that is shown consistantly to heal in therapy. If you want a citation I think that this was written about my Martin Seligman, although I could be wrong. At least that's where I believe that I read it. I am acting purely on faith. I don't know how long it will take to fix my life, or if that is ever possible considering the damage done to me. So, my answer and advice to you is this. Find a therapist who is known to get results. Preferably, find someone who you can love. I don't mean that in sexual terms. Commit to it. Stay with it. Have faith. Let this be your conventional healer. Also find an alternative mode of healing. Work with the meditation I suggested. Try Reiki and learn what it is to feel energy. That's right. You can feel energy. It does shift things. I won't go into that here, but I can do sensational things with it. This is the fun/hobby part of the program that you get to experiment with. Meditate. Find some form that you like and stick with it. Truth about therapy. There are 400 or more recognized therapies. Few are proven effective, and those that are are effective in very specific ways. Most of the time therapy is either ineffective or partly effective. The other small percentage of the time it's highly effective or harmful. There's just no guarantee. However, I can assure you that with a little work, luck, and determination that you can come up with the right mix that will help you. Just hedge your chances of success by taking some of my advice. It really does work. Again, I can only speak from my experience which has been the worst of the worst and the best of the best. I hope that you can benefit a little bit from my hardship. I read a neat paper about therapy recently by a well respected therapist. I will post it if I can find it. I think you might enjoy it, and it will answer some of your questions.
Replies:
|
| Behavior OnLine Home Page | Disclaimer |
Copyright © 1996-2004 Behavior OnLine, Inc. All rights reserved.
