BOOK CLUB: The body keeps the score

I am glad you saw it @CheerBear and that you didn't think what I wrote was bad. Kobecat emailed me and that helped. They said they will take it up with the safe big ships (which I will also do).

You are doing a super good job of role modelling sitting with your big feelings. Your comment about waiting for your thinking brain to kick in again so you have a nice balance of feeling brain and thinking brain made me think about how good you would be at DBT. In DBT they talk about "reasonable mind" (what I call my thinking brain) and "emotional mind" (what I call being flooded with big feelings). The aim is to achieve "wise mind" which is where reasonable mind and emotional mind are both working in balance. Maybe after we have read TBKTS, we should work through the DBT skills manual.

I super hope @mudsum isn't mad at me for slightly derailing our TBKTS thread so quickly. It really was bizarre that the icky experience happened here in Forum Land just after I posted my reflections on TBKTS. Let's call it experiential learning @mudsum

I finished chapter 12. I found it a really tough read, as I have for a lot of this book so far. I think chapter 12 was hard because of the whole justice seeking in the context of violence related trauma thing. It brought back memories of things for me that I wish so much I was able to talk about here but know I just can't. I want there to be a more trauma sensitive and safe way for people who have experienced it to be able to live through that system too. It's as broken as the rest.

😞

While I am finding this book incredibly validating and sense-making, it is a struggle for me to read it. I am hoping that the next half, the fixing it part of the book, will leave me feeling better about it all.

Hi @mudsum and @CheerBear,

I totally agree that there are good helping people out there @mudsum...I just haven't been able to find one in the entire city of Sydney!!!!! I worked SUPER well with my uni counsellor and I am still grieving very deeply for her 18 months after she left my world when I graduated. I know that if only I could have kept working with her, I would be in a MUCH better space now. Since then I have seen ten different mental health professionals. Some I sacked, some sacked me. My current psychologist (A) is hanging in there, but we both know we aren't a good match and she is actually doing harm at the moment. It's complicated...

HOWEVER, on that note, I have started reading chapter 13 of TBKTS and I am going to take it with me to show (A) tomorrow. I'm going to ask her to read pp. 210 - 213. It is all about the central importance of relationships in healing trauma, and then it talks specifically about the therapeutic relationship. Van Der Kolk describes EXACTLY what I am looking for in a therapist. I think one of the big issues in mental health these days is the over-emphasis on "coping skills". In my experience, for a lot of therapists (including A!!!!) "therapy" seems to have been dumbed down to simple psychoeducation. Don't get me wrong, learning skills such as relaxation techniques, distraction, self soothing etc. is super important...but to me this isn't "therapy." To me, that is the stuff you can get from a book. I don't understand why anyone would pay a therapist to just tell them stuff they can read for themselves in a book. I am seeking a therapist who can actually help me to HEAL from my muddle, and, as Van Der Kolk says, feeling safe in the therapeutic relationship is central to this. I so very very VERY badly need to feel safe. Yep, I'm definitely taking TBKTS with me tomorrow.

@CheerBear I am curious about your fears around DBT. Do you have a sense of what that fear is about? I think like any therapeutic approach, it depends on the therapist as to how it goes. I think with a good therapist, DBT could be awesome, but with the wrong therapist it could be experienced as punitive and quite demeaning. I have a feeling that there are a lot of therapists out there who have done a 2-day course and then call themselves a DBT therapist!!!! For me, it was really valuable to read the treatment manual as well as the skills training manual. I bet there are a lot of therapists out there practicing "DBT" without having actually ever read the DBT treatment manual.

Anyway, that's my rant for the night. I'd better not say anymore - I don't want to get accused of inciting hatred against the profession or anything.