Beyond just surviving.

Hi,

I am super struggling. Last week I had my TENTH negative experience with a therapist in TWELVE MONTHS. Two years ago I managed to get out of the "complicated" relationship I'd been in with my therapist of 16 years. That was SUPPOSED to mark a whole new beginning. The plan was that I would find a therapist to help me deal with all of that muddle, heal my brain, and then figure out where I fit employment-wise. My clearly stated treatment goal was to gain and sustain employment. It really didn't sound that hard.

Yet here I am, just staying alive. And now I need to ask, is this all there is? Every therapist I've seen, (including my current psychologist) seems to be at a complete loss as to how to help me. The mindset seems to be that given I already know the DBT skills inside out, back-to-front, and standing on my head, there is nothing else to be done in terms of helping me create a life worth living. It's like the entire profession of psychology has been dumbed down to skills training.

I am a big fan of DBT, I find the skills super helpful in helping me to stay alive, BUT WHEN DO WE GET TO THE CREATING A LIFE WORTH LIVING BIT???? Every single day on the forums I see people making suggestions to others about distraction, grounding, sitting with the feelings etc etc etc. That's all great. That is all super super helpful in helping people stay alive, and staying alive is a pre-requisit for anything else. But THAT IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ALL THERE IS!!!!!!

How is it that I have been in therapy for twenty years and yet I don't have any sense of actually having DONE THERAPY. "Therapy" seems to be about surviving. It seems to have been dumbed down to just teaching clients distraction exercises, mindfulness and grounding techniques. From what I've seen in the past year, most therapists do little more than provide psycho-education to their clients. Well you know what? I'm sick of just surviving. I want to thrive, not just survive. I want to feel ok inside. I want the career that I spent 12 years at uni working towards. I want to be able to function in society knowing that I'm not at any moment going to get triggered and end up on the floor screaming and hitting my head against the wall. Every single time that happens, it cooks my brain a little bit more...and last week it happened in a psychologist's office because she tried to wing-it through a conversation with me!!!!!

I feel utterly hopeless. I try so hard. I try and I try and I try and I try...and still I can't get beyond step one of staying alive. People try to tell me "these things take time." Seriously? Twenty years in therapy and I'm at step one. Exactly how much more time is it supposed to take!!!!

I really like my psychologist, I really do. I feel like she cares, she copes with me expressing big feelings in her office and she is open to changing the way we do things. So yeah, I really super like her...I just don't have any sense of how she can actually HELP me....which is largely due to the fact that she has said she doesn't know how to help me.

I know about fifty thousand emotion regulation strategies and they all work a bit, some of the time. But sometimes the trigger is bigger than all those strategies and everything goes very a*se-up super quickly. The idea that it's just a matter of getting better at the strategies makes no sense to me. Show me anyone who can sit quietly and focus on their breathing when their body is on fire? Sometimes the pain is just too great. To me the answer lies far more in reducing the pain of the triggers, and this is where I seem to be having no success at all in finding support. That is precisely why I am (or was!) doing the neurofeedback. I want to HEAL my brain, so that the triggers aren't so triggering. Why oh why oh why is it so damn hard to find a therapist who can actually work with me to do that?

I live in the largest city in the country. I've been in therapy since 1996. I've seen ten therapists in twelve months. So...is this all there is?

@CherryBomb @Former-Member @Former-Member