I have CPTSD. I'm not happy. Last session was vague and mushy. Haven't sent this. Have promised myself I won't send it before Friday. Seriously considering going to a once every 2 or even 3 week schedule, as this week, I'm getting far more done on my own than with her help.

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Background: I have lowered affect. No flashbacks beyond mild to moderate unexplained moods, slight elevations in pulse (10-15 bpm) and once a pain in dorsal edge of my diaphragm. I have contact with a bunch of parts from secondary trauma (neglect) but so far have not been able to contact ones from the primary trauma (CSA, age 3) No hijacking at all.

Dear Therapist

I’m disappointed.  I wanted to be challenged.  Assumptions rebuked.   I wanted to be educated.  It may be that I’m moving too fast on the Parts Mediation.  Ok.  give me work elsewhere.  Mindfulness exercises.  Mediation techniques.  I’m guessing how to do this.   

I ask questions in email,  They were not answered in sessions, or receive vague answers.

I told you I don’t do subtle.  But when you were talking that some part of me was data driven, did I detect some … condescending?  Patronizing?  I got sensitized to that from the arts crowd when I worked for the U of A.  Since we agreed to not do subtle, I’m granting you the benefit of the doubt.  But that’s how I picked it up.  I’m awful at body language, but pretty good with voice.

It also occurred to me that this was deliberate on your part to try to piss me off enough to see if you could get me hyperaroused.  If so, didn’t work.  Did manage to get my pulse up in the low 90’s in the shower (more measurements…. <grin>) thinking about this.  Mood: moderately annoyed.

In correspondence with nerdityAbounds, he suggests that the existence of numbed emotions already says I'm working outside my window.

My mental model of the process must be in error.

I'm seeing two control mechanisms: numbed emotions and window of tolerance, that interact with each other.

The numbing "circuit" either clips or compresses the range of emotions that I feel.  If something deserves grief, I max out at sad.

The window adjusts the clipping level.

Push the edges of the window somewhat, you can stretch the window. Nothing bad happens, clipping level is decreased, allowing stronger emotions through. You have somewhat greater tolerable moods.  How much push?  How often?  How do you do it?

Push the edge a bunch, and you enter into hyper/hypo arousal. Do this frequently, and the clipping level is adjusted to take out more of the extreme emotions.

If this model is incorrect, please point me to something that explains how these two subsystems interact.

Right now I’m deliberately pushing the edges a bit.  The exercises I  told you about.  But also working with the anger toward the people who put me in this spot, and anger toward the abusers of the trauma survivors I meet on line.  As I mentioned, I’ve had a few flickers of wonder this week  And my heart aches for some of the people I interact with online.

This would be safer if I understood how much I could push it, what the danger signs are.  If hyper arousal is measured in pulse, O2 uptake and adrenaline levels, then I’m not pushing very hard.  Pushing the parasympathetic system is harder.  Pushing fog

I said at the beginning that I wanted to be part of my program.  I feel that you aren’t giving me the tools.  Today I felt like all your answers were… mushy?  Ill defined?  The kind of answers I gave in class when a smart student asked me a question that told me that *I* hadn’t paid proper attention that day when I took the course.  (When this happened, my response often was, “Oops.  I don’t know the answer to that right now.”  Try again tomorrow.  And move on to the next topic.

At the end of this session I didn’t feel that you had a plan.  You seemed to be winging it.  On 3 occasions I stopped talking having nothing more to say on that subject.  You didn’t pick up on that and either ask a question or move on to the next item.  You were waiting for me to say something.  

When I taught, I had to have a plan.  Often just a list of 6-8 points, and a homework assignment.  Depending on the subject, the first 5 minutes might throw the whole plan out the window.  One day in the 70s in Grade 10 science in a unit on energy, one of the boys asked “Why are we learning this sir?  Few of us will live to age 20.”  This was the height of the cold war. The fear, uncertainty, doubt got a lot of press. The arithmetic to understand what it meant was not spread so far and wide.  Nuclear Winter was the latest topic.  A nuclear war meant 10 years of darkness/dim light over the entire northern hemisphere.  I spent the entire hour talking about the errors in the Nuclear Winter theory (more like nuclear fall)  What the hazards were.  How to mitigate the hazards.  And I put 4 questions on that week’s quiz about it, telling them I thought it important.  I gave them hope.  A light at the end of the tunnel.

Everything I’ve read about trauma says it’s at least half education, and a good chunk of seemingly non-related skills – (multi awareness, grounding, mindfulness are the ones I’ve picked up so far) 

I expected reading assignments.  Buzz words to look up.  I expected a few minutes each time that you would ask me about what I learned.  I don’t like designing my own curriculum.  I miss important concepts.  E.g. it was only 2 days ago that I found the term “Parts mediation” as an umbrella term for Fisher, IFS, SE.  The stuff I’d read in Fisher and Walker seemed to assume some concepts I didn’t have yet.  I may find some of those here.

But the model of parts is not consistent:

Consider a traumatic event that occurs preverbal.  

• The body reacts with a fawn response.  
• At the pre-verbal stage the only way to implement fawn is with the vaso-vagal system, yes?
• Yet this part is treated as a conversation capable child able to understand language, and plot attachment repulsion strategies.
• Same event, but happens at, say, age 6.  The kid is verbal, but is still highly right brain in his thinking.  Now you have the fawn response responsible for all sorts of interesting strategies.  See Pete Walker’s From Surviving to Thriving Chapter 6
• Based on Fisher, these events are brokered entirely in the mammalian brain. The pre-frontal medial cortex is cut out of the circuit.  These parts do NOT have access to language.  They also do not have planning abilities.  The amygdala is recognising certain combinations from the thalamus that say, “threat”  institutes an emotional response, floods the system with adrenaline or cortisol.  If it overwhelms the front brain, you get an event that you have no clear memory of, possibly no memory.  Otherwise it can put put you in an emotional/somatic state, and let your left brain interpret this and create an action plan.
• Yet Fisher uses conversation all the time to illustrate the lessons.  She ascribes intent, agendas and planning to fragments.
• In a different cluster of concern, you have DID with much better fleshed out personality fragments, even whole Alters.
• Clearly parts have some form of development as time goes on.  But I’ve not seen this mentioned yet, except the two words “latent age” in one of Fisher’s appendices.

I feel like I’m trying to repair a riding lawnmower with the description of a gas engine from a 4th grade science book.

My trust in you took a big hit today.  I’m not convinced you have a plan.  I’m not convinced that you really want to or perhaps are not able to give me the tools to heal.  I do not feel that my time was well spent.