Re:PSTD

You suggest that you feel that therapy has failed to help you because you don't fit neatly into a conceptualization of a problem. (There must be a more elegant way to put that.) I am right there with you. I think that the researchers who respond on this board will probably tell you that in order to do a study they must select people who fit neatly into certain criteria, and this is probably often not very representative of people actually seeking help. Perhaps this is why treatments seem to demonstrate incredible healing powers in studies, but fail in practice. There are many more factors to account for in real life.

Also, I've come to understand that much of the focus in psychotherapy has been on changing behavior and thoughts. However, more recently, there's been a new sort of emphasis on changing emotion, which is really the root of the problem. Thus, the interest in meditation I understand, and probably EMDR. You might want to do some reading on emotional change in therapy and determine if this route could be helpful to you. Maybe someone could be more specific than I can be. I tend to lump all of the things one can do to access that "other mind" into one category. It's a matter of trial and error to find something that works. EMDR is among those things. However, clearly many feel that EMDR is very different from meditation, hypnosis, imagery, prayer, etc. Again, I know that there are many who respond to this forum who formulate a distinction between these practices, and perhaps they can discuss the newer directions in psychotherapy focusing on emotion.

Replies:

Re:PSTD, by Dede, 07/21/03 Re:PSTD, by ellen, 07/23/03 Re:PSTD, by Sandra Paulsen Inobe PhD, 07/23/03 Re:PSTD, by ellen, 07/24/03

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