Best way to deal

[walking on broken glass]

I have been struggling lately due to recent developments in my PD family, that made me realize I am much more isolated and scapegoated than I thought I was. I feel very stressed during the day and I can't sleep properly during the night (disrupted sleep, very vivid dreams etc.), which of course contributes to more stress during the day - a vicious cycle. I have had a couple of sessions with the therapist I was seeing in the past but I did not find them particularly helpful. She is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and it's always great and reassuring to talk to her but I don't feel that I have gained a new insight about the situation or found ways to cope better. She told me I can get in touch with her whenever I want to have another session (she is close to retirement and does not have many clients just now). I wonder if I am being impatient and I should give myself more time to adjust to the new situation or I should ask her to have regular meetings during this more challenging time? Or should I change the type of therapy I am doing at the moment and seek something different, like trauma therapy? I am very confused.

[notrightinthehead]

WOBG, I can relate to the therapist dilemma. I also got to a stage when my psychodynamic therapist was no longer helpful for me. In fact, I felt worse after another hour of talk therapy. Another hour of looking at my childhood, the abuse endured from my mother. I liked my therapist and felt guilty but I switched to one with CBT background. She was more eclectic and was trained in Trauma therapy, Ego states therapy and hypnosis as well. She helped me a lot.
Do you watch the videos of the  Crappy Childhood fairy on YouTube? She has one, where she explains why talk therapy did not work for her.
I hope you find a solution and get the help and support you need.

[Rebel13]

Oh, it's so tough! You have gone through a lot lately. I've been having trouble lately too. The way I'm framing my situation for myself is noticing the difficulty I have tolerating feeling bad. I have lots of anxiety about "bad" emotions as well as anything health-related or that could have a health impact, like lost sleep. I've also had EMA/terminal insomnia the last couple of weeks and I'm not sure why. Is it possible there could be a seasonal aspect?

I also think it's likely that there's no one thing that will fix it.  I joke sometimes that I want the Staples "Easy" button that I can punch and all my problems will be solved.  But instead, there are probably many small things we can do to help ourselves, including just learning to tolerate that sometimes we feel sad/anxious/hurt/angry/tired/depressed and there's nothing really wrong with that. All people feel those things sometimes.

Anyway, I'll share the below, which is what my trauma therapist said to me last session when I brought up the latest episodes of insomnia. She showed me this "body clock" from Traditional Chinese Medicine: https://www.nirvananaturopathics.com/blog/traditional-chinese-organ-body-clock

She said acupuncture could be useful as those practitioners know how to work with this information. I have an acupuncturist who's great, and I went for a session, but it didn't seem to have any impact on the insomnia. In general, acupuncture doesn't do much for me except make me super relaxed. I did fall asleep in the chair so I suppose that's something!

Anyway, I'm not endorsing this, just sharing in case it helps someone. I don't think there is a "best way" -- I think there are a lot of things that help different people. Maybe some other folks will have other ideas that will hit the target for you. For me, the nervous system interventions have helped the most (starting with what I described in this thread https://www.outofthefog.net/forum/index.php?topic=95788.0), and of course I'm super nervous now that I have this "new" symptom that nothing seems to touch. But I'm trying to stay calm and believe that I'm not going to get fired just because my brain isn't working so well missing a couple hours of sleep in the middle of the night!

Editing to add: Oh look! https://www.sleep.com/sleep-health/seasonal-change-sleep

[Rebel13]

Sorry to dominate the thread, but I'm back to say:

1.  You lost your dad, who you loved and had a loving relationship with.
2.  As a byproduct, you lost the family you thought you had, due to your mom's outburst and her enmeshment with your sister.

This is HUGE. Major life event(s). When I lost my partner many years ago, it took MONTHS if not a year before I stopped having daily waves of overwhelming grief. Fortunately I had quite a lot of support, especially at first.  (People seem to fall away after a very short time after a death in my experience.) It doesn't sound like you've got much support, at least not from your mom and sister and other relatives. It doesn't sound like your family members are thinking about you and your pain and grief at your father's death. Is your partner being supportive? Do you have supportive friends? Can you go to a bereavement group? I did that, and found it SO helpful to talk to other people in the same state as me. It's hard not to feel like you're overburdening regular people with grief sometimes, but others who are struggling with a death will GET IT. You can tell the story as many times as you need to. That really helped me.

Maybe you can cut yourself a little slack. Someone you really loved, foundational to your life, died. And other family members emotionally abandoned you. You get to have feelings about that, and it's natural they would disrupt your life. <3

[walking on broken glass]

Thank you so much, not right in the head and Rebel.

I was thinking of this too Rebel: that maybe it's supposed to feel like s**t for now and maybe I have to accept that. I am worried about my productivity at work: I am supposed to be writing a book just now that will help my career and I find it really really difficult to focus. It was hard even before all that happened and now I feel that my fragile balance has been completely shattered. It would be different if it was a more 'auto-pilot' task but research and writing require a lot of mental energy, and are quite lonely work.

I am really lucky with my partner and friends. My partner is kind and wonderful, and is helping me so much through all this. And I do have a few good friends who get it and are here for me. I just feel that, no matter how kind and amazing they all are, I am still alone in this. It doesn't help that my current base for work reasons is outside the country, and thus away from my support network. Thankfully I can spend long spells at home so I am trying to cut down on my time away. I hadn't thought of bereavement groups. Thank you for suggesting it. I haven't done much about my grief to be honest, I think I am mostly repressing it! Or the recent events overshadowed it a bit. I am not sure how to work though this. I am really really sorry for the loss of your partner.

NRITH, I have watched a couple of videos from the crappy childhood fairy but I don't remember the ones where she talks about talk therapy. I will have a look. Talk therapy was immensely useful to me in the past but I wonder whether I have outgrown it, in a way. I will see how the next few days go.

[Lookin 2 B Free]

I'm sorry this is so hard, WOBG!  You've had multiple large & really hard losses.  I would give yourself lots and lots of TLC and go very light on what you expect of yourself.  If something feels like it would be supportive or helpful, why not avail yourself of it, whether that's seeing your old therapist, looking for a trauma therapist, or both.  It's a good time to give yourself all the support and nurturing you can.

Is there a downside to looking into trauma therapy?  Would it somehow preclude your seeing the  therapist you've come to know (which can be a comfort in itself)?  Does it seem too hard a task right now?  If there's no downside and you feel like it, why not?  There's no need to hold back or ration when it comes to giving to yourself.  You can be with your feelings, knowing they'll probably last a while, and also seek whatever help & comfort is available.

I moved from talk therapy to trauma T, and that was a great move for me.  I'm no longer eligible for the  trauma T I had been getting, which was really good.  I'm anxious to try Internal Family Systems which a therapist friend told me about.  Once I looked into it, I decided I would love to try it.  I've heard fantastic things about the results they're getting from it around trauma.  I'll have to report back, if I actually get some experience with it.

Meanwhile, hugs to you.   

[treesgrowslowly]

Hi WOBG,

I've had several periods in my life where the insomnia and nighttime anxiety got intense. Honestly, I ended up taking a lot of naps to counter the sleep deficit and I hope it helps to hear from us who have had that.

I didn't track them very well but the poor sleep due to stress and grief would last about 3 months and then improve. So I suspect that somatically you will find that your sleep will improve and it won't be like this forever.

But feeling sleep deprived sucks. And it can be part of normal grieving,  especially the first 2 years after the death of a loved one like a parent.

For a lot of us, myself included, it was a major life event that prompted us to then see and realize (even more) how shitty our childhood was, and how deeply unavaiable our parents are and were.

Not all therapists get that and yes I believe we can outgrow a therapist. They may not have any more insights than the ones they've offered. Time to move on at that point, because ideally you want a therapist who knows how to help you with what you're feeling these days.

When we realize our living parent is not who we hoped they were, therapists often call this ambiguous grief because the person is still alive but you have to grieve the relationship you needed, and I do think that when it is our own mother that we've "lost", it is heavy. It is hard to realize we're not being mothered. I think it hits a deep chord in us to realize that.

Honestly, sometimes I look at the world and think there are two groups of people. People who were mothered and people who were left alone or scapegoated instead of nurtured and protected.

IMHO, a good therapist will have some insights about that,  and help you as you go through the next period in your life.

Trees