Trauma und innere Redeverbote // Podcast #232

Hello and welcome to the Creative Transformation Podcast, the

podcast

for great people who want to create a true life of connection and consciousness. Today is Question Friday again, which means I'm here with my dear friend Kathi Kleff and we're. Devoting ourselves to a question. Above all, this question refers to a very important area that has to do with therapy and deals with the question of how it is possible to trust the therapeutic relationship when there are great feelings of shame and when there are internal obstacles. trusting and opening up at the same time feels that this would be very important and very healing, so we will take it seriously in a benevolent and loving way and try to create something useful.

We wish you valuable insights and beneficial inspiration as you listen. Dear Kathi, we have an interesting question before us and we would like to warmly thank dear Carlotta for this submission and of course Carlotta actually wants to say something different, hello dear Verena and hello lovely people, it's great that you are here, a topic super important, that's not it. It's weird and also an important concern that Carlotta has there, the girl is a little longer, but I think it's important to hear her in her entirety, which is why I would like to read her in her entirety.

Carlotta has been writing for two years. I have been able to do very valuable and useful therapy with a

trauma

-sensitive therapist. I trust him in a way I didn't know before and I'm more able to open up more than before, but. I still experience the situation over and over again in therapy that I want to say way more than I can because of shame and guilt. Since my childhood, I have always experienced sexualized violence from men, so a young part of me has a very. disturbed image of men I have a great need to talk to my therapist about my memories and fears, but when it comes to these

trauma

tic contents, there is a part of me that is very strong and that makes sure that I remain silent;

That's a part that makes me believe that what happened isn't bad enough and that I can't be taken seriously or that my therapist thinks I'm dramatizing things. This part says, you can't tell anyone about it, you didn't. defend yourself, you wanted that too, it's your fault and so on. After therapy, I get angry because I feel like I finally want to say so many things and sometimes I just haven't been able to. the experience of how liberating it is to talk about it in therapy, but I know that I don't know what difference it made in being able to talk about it.

I'm thinking about writing it all down to my therapist in the hopes that. I can get out of myself more. At the same time I wonder if it wouldn't be better to be face to face and sometimes I also think if it would be easier for me to talk to a woman about this. I would be very grateful for your experience or assessment in this regard. We would like to try it, so first of all, as always, I would like to point out the positive. It's so nice that Carlotta has a therapist next to her that she can talk to.

She feels a level of confidence that she has never known before. That is a very good sign that speaks of a new experience, a corrective experience and a very good basis for real and healing changes in this therapy and I also think it is wonderful that Carlotta feels within herself. and she has already been able to experience how great the inner pressure or inner longing is to talk about things that she has never talked about before and thus accept many things. There is something valuable there, so, first of all, a big shower of resources to anyone who has already experienced something similar, who feels that in this process something is developing that is good and at the same time feels a little inadequate.

First of all, it is important to notice what is well developed. it's a sign of a great, good movement, yeah, and it's incredibly well reflective, and it's really cool, yeah, why so many of our listeners, yeah, this ability to reflect, it shouldn't sound like, oh, someone already reflects completely and others less so. We should not understand the ability to reflect as something like intelligence alone or something like that, but rather it is a capacity that grows with our inner ability to regulate ourselves, so we can allow ourselves more reflection. If we have more capacity and if we are over-reflective, then everything is fine.

Reflecting to the extreme can also lead to an experience of overwhelm because sometimes what we then reflect on cannot be integrated at all or is still disconnected from the feeling. and I suppose you also meant that you were looking for the differentiation with which Carlotta describes what she is describing. At this moment she is experiencing exactly how aware she is that there are parts that express something, for example, you can't tell anyone about it, in other words there is already a distance between her and this part, yes she realizes that this is happening, then the last question: In the end, how is it possible to trust more?

Is it even possible to work? with a male therapist? How can I get around this guilt and shame or perhaps resolve it? Can we make ourselves aware again and again that all the braking forces within us want to prevent you from trusting? in yourself, that are against you showing up, are actually protective forces and it is a completely natural dynamic that the more opportunities arise to open up, to process, to confront, etc., the more tension arises at the same time. We know that internally we also know this in the tension between improvements and simultaneous deterioration, so for example circumstances improve, you are finally in a beneficial relationship and then the physical symptoms increase, we have already talked about it, this is natural and classic because there is a great process of internal change.

There may be a lot of things to do, and some of them just don't fit right, you just have to say something like that, and that's what I read from what Carlotta writes to us. That is, she is experiencing a new framework in which there is space and would like to also take a seat with what she wants to go there and at the same time something inside her slows down and prevents what she perceives as very disturbing. everything must be recognized that this tension, this discrepancy and this difficulty is, in my opinion, actually the expression of a very good movement, it fits, it would be a shame to say that I prefer to leave the therapist Now, because I can probably discuss this better with a woman, but it is precisely this tension that can be part of the healing dynamic.

It always makes sense to ask the question: Am I better off with a woman or a man? That makes sense, but I don't read it because of what Karlotta writes here, but especially because she writes that she had a very disturbed image of men because she had experienced a lot of sexualized violence and felt it. But with this man there is a certain level of trust, it is an opportunity for a corrective experience that you would not have with a woman and that comes out in what she writes here. She uses such beautiful words that it is a very valuable and useful therapy, that is a quote of hers. and yes, and also the experience of how liberating it was to talk about it with this therapist and these are all words of gratitude that just make it clear that there are already corrective experiences happening here that are now becoming different for me, I must say, be Pay attention and move forward and do not look for the error but follow the process, yes and I think it is also very important, dear Carlotta and all those who listen to us now, to make clear the parts of us that later tell us that.

It wasn't that bad, that's totally normal, let's take a look because she describes it very clearly and she also quotes her internal dialogue, that there are parts that prevent it. Where exactly do you write that, if not when? this trauma content, a part of me is very much in favor of making sure I stay silent, that's a part that makes me think that what happened is not bad enough and that I can't be taken seriously or that my therapist thinks I'm dramatizing things and then he quotes that part about how you can't tell anyone, tell me you didn't defend yourself, that you wanted that too, that it's your fault and so on, that's also something that a lot of people know, esp.

With strong experiences of violence, what this part represents reflects the reality of that time, and that is exactly what you get. In such violent situations it suggests that you are to blame, you love it too, you can't tell anyone. and it's not bad at all because you behave like that, I have to do that to you, for example, something like that could also happen, probably less with sexual violence, but with these terrible ones, yes when it comes to violent people in disguise. In many topics, it often happens that you are blamed for your own behavior in a terribly precise way and this part represents the reality of that moment and tries to maintain the security of that moment, that is, what you learned then and how you behave in this situation.

The best way to survive is to reproduce it here, so to speak, and there is an incredible need for protection in these statements. There is the fear of not being taken seriously and then being devalued by the dramatization, yes, and when we watch. From the outside, of course, you immediately notice how far from real reality it is when we realize that an innocent child has repeatedly been a victim of sexual violence, so it is incredibly, incredibly unfair, terrible, traumatizing and there is nothing that it can be dramatized because it is simply one of the worst things that can happen and that is exactly what this part is and that is something that is very important to me, that this part or parts are very strong in producing silence, So to convince Silence is a very, very important function because in the vast majority of cases there are simply very clear connections inside me.

When I cancel my silence, then it will happen. It's really bad, it's very important to understand that it's not just about the perpetrator acting loyally. or keep alive what you have introjected there again and again, but it is a conviction that if I become visible with it then something really terrible will happen it was my black tar carpet the black tea had a swan I found the image because it felt exactly the same myself and I did not experience physical violence but rather complex trauma but also a lot of quite intense emotional violence, yes exactly, and I am in therapy.

It really felt like there was a black carpet spreading beneath my son, a black mass that made my head feel like I was drowning in quicksand that separated my head from my body. I no longer had a connection between head and body, although I was separated from it by a carpet of black tar and could no longer answer the simplest questions. I simply indicated to my therapist that he could not respond. She, of course, knew immediately that she was going to take two or three steps back and took her foot off the accelerator. That's a horrible feeling because that's what it was, it is too. very disturbing in the present, especially when you are consciously experiencing it for the first time, when you really think I just lost my voice here and I can't answer, yes, how helpless and today I know I had. , a few weeks ago was the first time in adulthood in a situation where that would go too far, that we would also be too complicated and that had nothing to do with the topic, but where I experienced it again in a conscious state of how happened and that's a really bad feeling, but now I know that's why dear Carlotta, we'll probably tell you that a few times in this episode, it's based on the beginning, but push the river, now I know there's a lot of stress.

The reaction is a high stress reaction for me. So, in the body, the system is always on alert and it has to be respected and appreciated in the moment and be aware of it first. It's not something you can't do now or can't do. that you cannot do or that you should do better, but then the organism clearly sends you the very strong signal and up to this point and no further, at least for this moment, yes, exactly, yes, it is good that you represent it. Again so vividly, even with these images, the internal ones that belong to him, yes, it's just that at that moment Exactly the truth of the experience and it's so hard to classify sometimes when you've barely left the therapy room and you're already Annoyed and think to yourself, why didn't I tell you now?

It was a good situation and it felt so good and then, so to speak, today's reality comes back to consciousness and you feel disconnected from the inner reality or truth that was still in effect, yes, and I think, as you say, it is essential that we respect that and do not want to shake it so that we become aware again of what is needed for that. it can change and that is more than the decision I would like to talk about it or I know that it would be good for me to talk about it, but to be able to talk more freely, find words, put tension in the relationship, so to speak, and risk creating a new experience and it takes time for the parties who are still ensuring the silence to get the idea that what is projected from the past is not will happen, so the part that silences Carlotta will. would certainly happen, that would be my experience at least observe this therapist very closely, this part has a very strong image of men, probably as Carlotta describes, this man is potentially a threat, a perpetrator is potentially dangerous and at the same time This part witnesses over and over again that Carlotta is sitting there and doing well, she goes out and is fine with the fact that this man listens and doessuggestions and offers, she's serious and he's serious about her and that's fine, and it's probably just We'll take more and more of that and then little by little some people will notice that there is currently a truth developing here that exists alongside the old truth, which does not overwrite the old truth because that is a truth in Carlotta's experience that men may have perpetrators and there probably were some in the worst possible way and those parties must learn to tolerate the so-called ambiguity, that is, tolerate that there can be bad men as well as totally good men and beneficial men and friendly men, yes. , there are both that have to learn to endure and develop, so to speak, and I think that's a very, very good example of what that is.

The topic of process work and how long it can take sometimes is something we talk about a lot. a lot and I think the more gently you open this crack in the door, the longer it takes and she writes that she has been with this therapist for two years and sometimes it is like that. Compared to what happened to us when we were children, which in Carlotta's case was simply very serious and in many other cases much more serious than anyone would like to admit in the present, compared to that, two years really is nothing. Years are nothing if you do intensive trauma therapy, that's not all, it's just a, that.

It was, there were serious injuries and they take a long time to heal, yes, and it is also very important to recognize if two years is not what we are saying right now, that means that it is not that nothing has happened in the two years, but that there is simply a lot what to do and that time and caution are simply essential for sustainable change and the level of relationship is also very important and if we trust ourselves too soon, everything often goes backwards. beyond our own limits and we don't really have any feelings for our counterpart and then we are already completely unpacking, then it can be difficult to stay on our feet and that's why when we say two years is nothing, then that means two years Of course , they are two years of intense, important and valuable work, but there is no point, there is no point in waiting or thinking about quick steps and quick changes.

Now something has to happen here for something to finally happen. , yes, and I think the image of the sea anemone is so wonderful, so delicate and so sensitive, and I always imagine it that way with the integration of trauma when we venture outside of our group behavior of sea anemones (they are incredible sea creatures ) and when we then have another bad experience in the present because we can become overwhelmed or because we resort to a method that re-traumatizes us, then the whole organism completely withdraws again and then we really take four steps back, you know, I mean, I think so , so it is better to have good experiences in small steps and progress but lastingly and consistently in positive experiences rather than taking risks.

Now I'm taking a big step but realizing it is completely overwhelming for me. It surprises me because I know it. the people who then say for the next 15 years that they will never go to a therapist again had a terrible experience and he said a stupid line and it scared him so much that the topic is off the table for now. That is a shame and a lot. It's understandable to me and yes, I continually have good experiences with what you just said, that's just what matters. Word security plays an important role in ensuring that you feel safe enough in a collaboration and sometimes so-called experience can take place. in the middle, which you can then reflect on and correct because of course the nervous system of people who have successes in complex dreams is or can be very sensitive and of course sometimes it can misunderstand someone, so don't , of course, and then if you don't reflect on it or the relationship doesn't exist, then of course you can immediately classify it as a bad experience and that would be a great shame, which is why the word security is so important to me.

If we are aware of ourselves in a safe environment, that is, in a safe relationship, we can also have bad experiences, so to speak, in quotes, that is, experiences in which we do not feel good and then we can metabolize and process them in a different way. such a way that ultimately contributes to a good experience. Yes, what you say is very important and Carlotta still asks us or shares with us the idea of ​​whether it would make sense to write it to the therapist in the hope that he can get out of myself. In fact, that's a question she would ask the therapist.

So it might be a helpful next step to discuss it and describe that there are feelings of shame deep down, so to speak, to report on your own process from the meta level and say to the therapist, hey, sometimes I'd like to tell myself more, but I don't. It is possible and then there will be a corresponding useful reaction, at least I hope so and then you could also think about this suggestion together. because you have to write something down and bring it with you so that the therapist can have his or her opinion. You can read the present and here you also have to be very, very careful because if there are prohibitions on speaking in different parts then it may be that certain parts are good if you really tell everything by writing them and it may be that, again, it really bothers other parts or knock them down when they have to watch the therapist reading something they're not allowed to share.

In any circumstance, this can happen. Unfortunately, that happens from time to time in complex processes. The therapy process is a little bit in jeopardy because, again, there will be reasons for you to break things off because you've really revealed too much about yourself. , so in my experience it does not help to look for detours to get around a limit that is very important. So if you, and you can and it is often done, choose a path like writing something, then it should happen small. dose, then I don't write everything that I could and was never allowed to say and then I put this envelope on top but what could be a small part, such a portion of what I don't dare to tell, what could That is so that I don't Let's extend too much because I have experienced it more frequently and it was especially in contexts with dissociative phenomena.

On the dissociative spectrum, it's often a total dead end that many people have also reported I have. I also witnessed supervision that they were trying to get around the gatekeepers, so to speak, by writing and then they really started to get in the way of the relationship. Ban that belief, yes, I believe, yes, there is any famous quote from a writer, at all. related to psychology or psychotraumatology, but it goes like this: the truth is a portion best served the truth is a dish best served in small portions and I think that also applies to these trauma integration processes, i.e. , the Flood principle, which I think also applies to desensitization and behavioral therapy.

I don't think it's that crazy anymore and where it is, but for a while it still was because depending on what kind of disorder, the vlading and confrontation remains. you can do it, but we don't have to find it and you definitely shouldn't do it in relation to trauma. Yes please, definitely don't be precise. Carlotta, thank you very much. Yes, I also thank Carlotta for the question and I wish you all the best. wonderful and valuable experiences with this excellent therapist and that patience can be enough to move forward in small steps and move on and allow a new experience, thank you very much, dear Kathi, until next time, until next time, We hope you enjoy this episode, If you liked it and it touched you in a good way and you can take something valuable with you, how important it is that we take our time and take our inner parts seriously if you like it and feel good.

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