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by maltyr
1463 days ago
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I recommend starting with reading The Body Keeps Score by Bessel van der Kolk. It gives a good "state of the field" with regards to therapy. See if any of the forms of therapy described there resonates with you It may take a few therapists before you come across someone you feel you can build a good relationship with. You also need to fully commit to the therapy - a therapist can only take you so far, otherwise. Personally, I did not find CBT all that helpful for dealing with known traumas. I did find Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy resonated with me, which I discovered through that book. |
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I also agree with you on finding the right therapist, and also on taking the work seriously. It's like a running coach or a personal trainer: they can point you in the right direction, but they can't work out for you.
And for youniverse, one way I've found it useful to look at therapy and meditation as self-instrumentation. As you've already started to do, you need to pay attention to correlations and unexpected reactions. At first you will notice these things with a fair bit of delay and thought. But with time, you can gradually become aware of the reaction in the moment. Once you've gotten there, you can begin the debugging work. Often that's just giving yourself a different experience in the moment. E.g., you'll feel the anxiety spike, recognize it as trauma-related, and then take a few deep breaths and consciously relax. In the same way your body learned when it wasn't safe, it will gradually re-learn when it is safe.
For me it's also been helpful to build a pretty chill life for myself so that anxiety stands out against the baseline. For me that means things like living in a quiet place, going to bed early enough that I don't need an alarm clock, and strictly limiting intense media and video games. When I was your age my life was pretty intense and anxiety-making not because I had to, but because that was familiar to me. If I was a bit frantic all the time, it was much easier to ignore trauma reactions! [taps temple in I'm-so-smart gesture]