So, I think I am at this place. The place where I can get past those horrible, frustrating, triggering, and often times painful moments without more therapy. At least for now. I cancelled my last two therapy appointments. I just wasn’t feeling it. But, never say never, right?
A couple things I love about the above. First, it was posted over the weekend by my 70 year old Aunt on her Facebook. I love that. I also love the 10 second part. Ten seconds is a pretty long time to be yelling at the top of your lungs. I picture myself doing this actually, and freaking out a bunch of people. Although I have a potty mouth on this blog, and Blue Eyes hears it (he started it, the swearing thing, I never used to swear AT ALL), I don’t in public. Sure, my kids hear me say the word Fuck… never in the literal sense of the word, of course, just as an expletive. I am myself with them. I want to be myself with everyone, but you know, some people frown on swearing in public and I am a rule keeper by nature. My parents didn’t swear. To be honest, I don’t really have that big of a potty mouth in real life, but I find it a great venting mechanism. In lieu of say, punching Blue Eyes in the face.
Back to therapy. At two years, five months, and 17 days, I am going to call an official tally. I have seen a total of five separate individual therapists, all women. Blue Eyes has likewise seen a total of five individual therapists, all men. We have seen three therapists for couple’s counseling, all women, all were my individual therapist first. Of all the individual therapy I partook in, I would say that one was really really helpful and others were not and a couple of them were fairly traumatizing to be honest. Blue Eyes, on the other hand, has received something valuable from all his therapists because, well, he has a shit load of wounds to deal with. For most of the time he has been open to therapy and getting to the bottom of his issues. I, on the other hand, really wanted to tackle my trauma and therefore, the only real healing related to therapy came from the highly trained trauma therapist who also understood sex addiction. She did not counsel me to stay. Her mission was to get me through the worst of the initial trauma.
As of now, the deepest wounds have healed. In many ways, I feel like a different person, but in most ways, I am the same. One of the most difficult parts of this journey has been dealing with the fact that while going through trauma, I had to weed through a bunch of shitty therapists to get to that one special person. It’s another one of those things that feels very unfair. Haven’t we suffered enough that we also have to be treated poorly by someone we are paying, someone who is supposedly trained in knowing how to deal with what ails us. Yeah, I know, life ain’t fair, Kat. I am now standing up and yelling FUCK at the top of my lungs for AT LEAST 10 seconds! Join me?
try not to cry on my rainbow 
Kat,
Here is a meditation that I have found very helpful……..enjoy!
Hugs,
Kit
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Thank you! 💖
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Yes. Just yes. To your aunt’s post. To your insights.
To the mass amounts of therapists who don’t get this space and harm more than help.
And to the reality that there really isn’t any other word that describes or encompasses or releases or expresses or fits like fuck.
Yes.
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Goodness – I really liked my first therapist initially and then I felt like she just started saying the most stupid, off based things! I would have done better screaming all the frustration out instead of seeing her, and having her add to it!
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At the beginning I was in shock and was blindly looking for someone to somehow help me understand my situation and assure me everything was going to be alright. I think it was potentially worse that I wasn’t screaming at all. I was in such a place of deep deep sadness, it was a bit scary. As it turns out, it was four therapists in that I finally received the kind of therapy I really needed and the whole goal was to assure me that I was going to be okay. No one could guarantee or even assure me staying with my husband was a viable path. In fact, many people suggested separation, because I was so attached to HIS outcome, for my own theoretical safety. For so many months I was convinced I could help him. Well, I’ve learned a lot, but yeah, therapists contributing to the trauma, it’s just not right! And I now know they don’t have to. It’s not us, it’s them… there are a lot of bad therapists. Thank goodness there are a few gems out there. ❤
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Fuck is my favorite word lately. And I have screamed it in the car when thinking about all the shit I have put up with in the last 2-3 years. I am lucky. I have a fantastic therapist. I also have colleagues who are fantastic CSAT’s. Therapists are crazy people, I should know, I am one. What I tell everyone I talk to about therapists. ALWAYS ask if your therapist is in supervision and therapy. If they aren’t don’t go to them. They aren’t working on their shit. I won’t even practice now because of all the shit I have to go through. I have known therapists who have had big life issues and were still counseling people. Incredible right. I am glad you are in a good place. I hope to be there one day!!
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One of my therapists definitely needed to be in therapy. Ironically her husband is a therapist and her parents were both therapists. Maybe she was in therapy for all I know, but in my opinion she wasn’t fit to treat others. It’s definitely true that people need to keep shopping to find the best fit, and in the meantime, try not to let bad therapists fuck us up further in the healing process.
I hope you get to that good place soon! xx
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Sophia…I am grateful for your insight (supervision and therapy) and more so for your recognition that you need to step back for a bit. That’s so healthy…so healthy that you can see you need to breathe and heal before you can really walk alongside others. I applaud you so much.
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Thank you. I hope one day I can practice again.
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Oh, I am sure that you can…and will be so enriched and able to provide care in a way you could not without your own story. Take care of you right now. xo
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Therapy is not supposed to last forever. I would have liked to stay in counseling longer than I did, but at some point, I think you should feel safe enough to fly on your own. Only you can make the judgement of when the time is right.
I only curse in my blog, not in real life LOL. I wonder what that says about me.
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I curse a little in real life, mostly to help drive home a point with BE!
Some people do need a lifetime of therapy, unfortunately, like my sister. I am grateful my wounds are healing and good therapy was a part of that. ♥️
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If u are in therapy for a lifetime, I think you got to question if it’s actually working 😉 the goal of therapy is healing after all
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Fuck is my favorite word…and screaming it only makes it better! 🙂
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Haha, this is awesome! I join the band with not being a ‘swearer’, but boy I use foul language on my blog to let it all out. I mean, all this shit we are working through deserves to be not packaged in polite flowers of speech but come out just as it is. Like: FUCK! FFUUCCKK!!!
Also, this therapist-topic… seriously, I can’t believe there are so many wackos out there. I don’t have as many experience as you do, but my first therapist (ever) here in Hungary, whom I saw when I didn’t even know my husband was a sex addict, I just knew something was going on and had strong suspicions of him cheating on me, this therapist told me when I told her about how I feel deceived and betrayed: “is saying the truth ‘really’ that important”? I was like, dude, are you fucking serious? Don’t you fucking see what a wreck I am, purely from not knowing if my husband has cheated / lied / whatever? Sure as hell telling the truth is important TO ME at least. Ugh. I’m still traumatised by her. Then when the sex addiction thing came to light, well, that’s a whole different story: there are no therapists in Hungary specialising in that (or at least not one I could find), so for me it wasn’t about codependency or trauma model, it’s understanding sex addiction in general… so I now talk to someone over the phone who is absolutely wonderful. But I would still love to have face to face therapy one day, to see how that can help.
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MWS, I really hope you are able to experience good face to face therapy sooner versus later. There is nothing like a professional who is well trained and who gets what we have been through and understands our emotions and validates our feelings and also helps us back to feeling whole again. The truth is incredibly important… most important of all is knowing they can actually tell the truth and live in their own reality. I mean seriously, them rationalizing and fantasizing and deflecting and gas lighting and lying is the messed up part of them. Of course the truth is really important. I have written so many times about how it really is NOT about what they say, but that they can actually speak the fucking truth. It does take time and if we want the relationship, we have to be patient, but yeah, they need to get to that place of honesty to be able to live in reality with us!!! xx
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Yeah. Wading through shitty therapists when traumatized, I can relate
to that. Shoulda screamed FUUUCK at the top of my lungs and gotten 302’d for a weekend. woulda save myself 10 years and close to 100 grand.
Let’s start a therapists who don’t suck list.
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Yes, totally!!! My first contribution to that list is Trish Haight, MFT, SEP, CSAT, CCPS, Psychotherapy & Trauma Specialist. Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Digging out from underneath the trauma of childhood and also the shit others throw at us is costly in both time and money, but is there another viable choice? And… the social services system in America sucks!
Sometimes I feel like I need to be 302’d just to get a break! xx
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Ffffuuuuucckkkk Kat, I’d REALLY love to know how your ‘highly trained trauma therapist who also understood sex addiction’ went about treating you!!! What was her approach? How was it different to the other psychologists? How did it work? What exactly is trauma therapy anyway??!! Ffffuuuuuccccckkkk!!! 😣
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Well, in a nutshell, it was about 25 hours of therapy and if we lived in Los Angeles, it would have been more. This therapist is trained in the Sex Addiction Induced Trauma Model (SAITM) and its Thirteen Dimensions, and intimately aware of what betrayed spouses go through, especially spouses of sex addicts. She is also a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist, so she understands the addict and the process by which they need to heal. She started by not allowing me to speak in the context of “we” and forced me, after 30 years of being a couple and associating myself with being a wife, and 20+ years of being a mother, to speak only as “I.” That was difficult for me. She helped me get back my individual identity and after many hours, reminded me that I love myself and that self love is not dependent on what anyone else does. There was a whole lot of calming me down, getting my heart back in rhythm, guided meditation, focus exercises, touch work, and some EMDR. She is a specialist in mindful body techniques. She questioned my desire to stay with my husband. She forced me to face my own reality. She helped me set up my boundary list for my husband. All this was done at about 4-6 months post discovery. She was the consummate professional and her space was like a cocoon for me during my worst hours.
How does she differ from the therapists I have seen in my home town? Well, one of them didn’t understand sex addiction at all and referred to my husband as Ted Bundy. One claimed she was trained in the trauma model, but kept going back to her co-dependent theories and was particularly sympathetic to my husband, which didn’t really help me at all. Another local therapist was completely disrespectful and self motivated in her methods. She also humiliated me. So, again, I am forever grateful for my trauma therapy. Those that are truly trained in trauma therapy will never make you feel crazy, or selfish, or responsible. I needed someone to really understand me, I mean really understand me and all my own flaws and this specialist did that. I will be forever grateful. xx
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Thank you Kat.
I’m so glad you had such brilliant support. I truly do not understand why there are not more properly qualified people for the betrayed. XxX
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Me either. Therapists are just like regular people… there is a spectrum of personalities and qualifications and it can be incredibly difficult to find a good match. ❤
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I’m with ya sista’! I never used to swear either but then, after hearing the phrases ” acting out” and “had sex with” so many times, I finally just said ENOUGH! Call it what it was…you fucked, you got fucked, you fucked whores and sluts and prostitues…you didn’t have sex or act out or, God forbid, make love…it was none of that It was crude and base and disgusting just like the word. So, yeah…..FFFFUUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!
😇
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Somehow the word just seems to fit so many emotions, ya know? I say we all get together and instead of wearing red & purple (what is that about?) we wander the streets yelling fuck. Instead of the Red Hat Society, we’re the “FUCK YOU Society.” Betrayed women of all ages. LOL! ❤
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Beat you to it. Been there. Done that. Loads of times! And yeah. 10 seconds is a looooong time to exhale so loudly 😘
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I’m still picturing my gray haired Aunt yelling fuck at the top of her lungs. LOL. This is a shit journey. Maybe you could do your run while panting fuck fuck fuck the whole way… just a thought! 😉 ❤
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Done that plenty, too 😉. Actually, when I got quite skinny and was running plenty of k’s in the first 2 years after D-day, it was more, ” fuck you motherfuckers!” Very rhythmic. 😅
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I wish I even remotely liked running. I feel like I would run three blocks then collapse on the spot. I don’t think my body would hold up even if I did like it! 😝
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I hate it. But it was like I was running away from something? I just wanted to hurt somewhere else…
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I get the wanting to replace mental anguish with physical pain. I do get that. xx
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