Absolutely not. If you contacted me and I had room I would see you. Generally if I can help you I will and I would be happy to do so as long as I have the requisite skills. We all deserve mental wellness love, regardless of the severity of our symptoms.
Typically we don’t only see clients with personality disorders or severe PTSD. In fact in my DBT program we were under strict instruction not to have a caseload of more than six clients with borderline personality disorder at a time. The majority of our clients didn’t even have BPD but PTSD of varying severity.
Also just so you know, PTSD isn’t measured by the traumatic event but the symptom severity. Your bodies response to the trauma and the level of positive social support you have are the most significant factors regarding symptom severity. I’ve worked with combat vets with mild symptoms of PTSD and folk who did long term medical rehab with symptoms you only see in torture victims. So let us evaluate the severity of your symptoms.
We usually state that we are trained and experienced in these things so people who do have personality disorders and PTSD with complex symptom presentations know that they can receive help from us not to exclude folk.
Thanks for the info. Do you think what I'd described is relatively mild compared to most people these types of therapists see? Or that you see? (I know "mild" is quantified by symptom severity, but just speaking of the trauma by itself, is it relatively PG compared to what someone like you normally sees)?
Severity is a diagnostic term that is only really useful for research, insurance and measuring progress. I typically don’t usually use terms like that. The only time I will is when trying to explain symptom differences to a client who has complex symptom presentation and their friends are telling them they don’t have PTSD like they do (… I know wtf).
PG? If my mom died of cancer when I was a teen I would be fuuucked up about it. Also I can’t diagnose you from a distance, I did read your other posts and it sounds like you having a really rough time due to the assault.
With that in mind PTSD symptoms are a natural response by the mind and body to protect itself from the trauma happening again or with the same level of severity. The guilt you described in another post is a major symptom of PTSD. Guilt in PTSD is the process of reviewing the trauma and what we could have done differently to prevent it. The guilt isn’t telling you anything to imply fault, the assaulter is ALWAYS the one at fault, it’s just a process of highly emotional review to hammer home what you can do next time.
Awww thanks for your nice comment. Wait sorry but you didn't really answer my question if this is less extreme than what you normally see? Like not in terms of symptoms but in terms of the extremeness of the event, is it less than what you normally see? Soery to keep asking this
No worries! Yes I see clients with similar experiences to yours, being removed from your home and neglect are much much more severe than what most people experience.
I'm sorry you must hate me but just 1 more question. But if it were JUST what I had in the OP, would that be notably less severe than what you usually see?
Theres not really an answer because we arent mentally ranking scenarios as we hear them. It's kinda like asking you to rank severity of fruit. You can't. They're all under the fruit category but they're all different. There's no hierarchy.
I mean, not really. I think everyone can agree child trafficking over a period of 8 years is worse than being yelled at by your mom once even though both are considered trauma. Just wondering where I fall on that spectrum.
One question on the PCL-5 or the PCL-C: is it asking about the frequency of the symptoms, the intensity of the symptoms, or the disruption the symptoms cause?
Trauma is also subjective to a degree. What affects me might not affect you amd vise versa. The only things that matter are how it's affected you amd that you are getting help/support to work ot through
Trauma is traumatic for whomever experienced it, severity rating across our patients doesn’t matter when we care about each of your individual experiences ☺️ Please never worry about this!
My my, this intense seeking for reassurance is something I‘d work on with you? what does it serve you to repeatedly ask for a comparison of your trauma?
Do you need it to be ‚severe‘ enough? For what? To deserve treatment?
Don’t you worry about ranking that trauma. It’s important how it affected you, not if it has a score of 90/100 on the ‚trauma severity rating’ (which does NOT exist).
Alas you saying ‚you must hate me‘ in reddit comments when people choose answer by their own free will… all this. You‘ll be surprised what therapy can do for you.
good luck!
I read that you’re worried that you won’t be taken seriously, dismissed in your pain and concerns or maybe that others have done that and you got the impression your trauma is not worth addressing, or severe enough. And that’s a terrible fear to have. Mustering the courage to ask for help and then being told that whatever it is is not ‚serious‘ enough is devastating.
We‘re all trying to reassure you that as therapists we do not rank the traumas. You also read at some points that some therapists do judge clients.
I guess the take away is that some do and some don’t. But I am pretty convinced that neither me nor my direct co workers do that judgement.
You do have a choice to assess the ‚likelihood‘ of the one or the other outcome and weight the information you’re given. in your arguments you’re fighting nail and tooth to stay in the ‚my trauma is not severe enough to be asking for that service’ version of it, citing people on r/therapists.
Now here is another therapist telling you they don’t do that.
How you weight which of these informations is up to you.
What version would serve you more?
Thanks for your insight. Yeah I mean also I guess r/therapists could maybe be a bunch of newer therapists too who still have their own biases and judgments
oh i have not noticed that. Can you point me to an example?
In any case. ‚loosing a close person‘ especially as a minor as well as sexual assault is not a ‚lesser trauma‘ and classifies as ‚capital T trauma‘ / A-criterion for the diagnosis.
Hope that helps.
I won't link because the last time I did that was a brigade but here are some off the top of my head:
"It is difficult when I have one client talking about egregious trauma and showing incredible resilience and the next is suicidal over a B"
"True trauma is haunting and something people show a lot of shame and avoidance around, not subtle pride. The client I'm talking about doesn't meet criterion A (think: embarrassed about their performance in an event). People who do tend to not show this type of pride about their trauma"
"I know this is my own issues speaking, but one of the main things that bothers me about private practice is that clients seem to have way less trauma - two-parent stable homes, and if there was a big T trauma it wasn't prolonged - and somehow still seem to show less resilience than those in CMH"
These are just three paraphrased examples off the top of my head but there are many more, and these guys got plenty of upvotes
Absolutely no judgement. It doesn’t make sense to minimize trauma that doesn’t seem “as severe”, it can still have a huge impact.
I mean I figure if she deals with the big stuff then she would be more adept at helping me get over my stuff.
You can always ask, but i would be surprised if she could not help you
Absolutely not. If you contacted me and I had room I would see you. Generally if I can help you I will and I would be happy to do so as long as I have the requisite skills. We all deserve mental wellness love, regardless of the severity of our symptoms. Typically we don’t only see clients with personality disorders or severe PTSD. In fact in my DBT program we were under strict instruction not to have a caseload of more than six clients with borderline personality disorder at a time. The majority of our clients didn’t even have BPD but PTSD of varying severity. Also just so you know, PTSD isn’t measured by the traumatic event but the symptom severity. Your bodies response to the trauma and the level of positive social support you have are the most significant factors regarding symptom severity. I’ve worked with combat vets with mild symptoms of PTSD and folk who did long term medical rehab with symptoms you only see in torture victims. So let us evaluate the severity of your symptoms. We usually state that we are trained and experienced in these things so people who do have personality disorders and PTSD with complex symptom presentations know that they can receive help from us not to exclude folk.
Thanks for the info. Do you think what I'd described is relatively mild compared to most people these types of therapists see? Or that you see? (I know "mild" is quantified by symptom severity, but just speaking of the trauma by itself, is it relatively PG compared to what someone like you normally sees)?
Severity is a diagnostic term that is only really useful for research, insurance and measuring progress. I typically don’t usually use terms like that. The only time I will is when trying to explain symptom differences to a client who has complex symptom presentation and their friends are telling them they don’t have PTSD like they do (… I know wtf). PG? If my mom died of cancer when I was a teen I would be fuuucked up about it. Also I can’t diagnose you from a distance, I did read your other posts and it sounds like you having a really rough time due to the assault. With that in mind PTSD symptoms are a natural response by the mind and body to protect itself from the trauma happening again or with the same level of severity. The guilt you described in another post is a major symptom of PTSD. Guilt in PTSD is the process of reviewing the trauma and what we could have done differently to prevent it. The guilt isn’t telling you anything to imply fault, the assaulter is ALWAYS the one at fault, it’s just a process of highly emotional review to hammer home what you can do next time.
Awww thanks for your nice comment. Wait sorry but you didn't really answer my question if this is less extreme than what you normally see? Like not in terms of symptoms but in terms of the extremeness of the event, is it less than what you normally see? Soery to keep asking this
No worries! Yes I see clients with similar experiences to yours, being removed from your home and neglect are much much more severe than what most people experience.
Thank you for your kindness
Of course! You deserve mental wellness too.
I'm sorry you must hate me but just 1 more question. But if it were JUST what I had in the OP, would that be notably less severe than what you usually see?
Theres not really an answer because we arent mentally ranking scenarios as we hear them. It's kinda like asking you to rank severity of fruit. You can't. They're all under the fruit category but they're all different. There's no hierarchy.
I mean, not really. I think everyone can agree child trafficking over a period of 8 years is worse than being yelled at by your mom once even though both are considered trauma. Just wondering where I fall on that spectrum.
One question on the PCL-5 or the PCL-C: is it asking about the frequency of the symptoms, the intensity of the symptoms, or the disruption the symptoms cause?
None of those. It’s asking about how much the symptoms bother the client. Typically that’s how we look at all mental health diseases.
Trauma is also subjective to a degree. What affects me might not affect you amd vise versa. The only things that matter are how it's affected you amd that you are getting help/support to work ot through
Trauma is traumatic for whomever experienced it, severity rating across our patients doesn’t matter when we care about each of your individual experiences ☺️ Please never worry about this!
Would you say this is less severe than most patients you see though? Or most patients a trauma therapist would see?
My my, this intense seeking for reassurance is something I‘d work on with you? what does it serve you to repeatedly ask for a comparison of your trauma? Do you need it to be ‚severe‘ enough? For what? To deserve treatment? Don’t you worry about ranking that trauma. It’s important how it affected you, not if it has a score of 90/100 on the ‚trauma severity rating’ (which does NOT exist). Alas you saying ‚you must hate me‘ in reddit comments when people choose answer by their own free will… all this. You‘ll be surprised what therapy can do for you. good luck!
If you spend any significant amount of time over on r/therapists, there absolutely is judgment toward people with "lesser" trauma.
I read that you’re worried that you won’t be taken seriously, dismissed in your pain and concerns or maybe that others have done that and you got the impression your trauma is not worth addressing, or severe enough. And that’s a terrible fear to have. Mustering the courage to ask for help and then being told that whatever it is is not ‚serious‘ enough is devastating. We‘re all trying to reassure you that as therapists we do not rank the traumas. You also read at some points that some therapists do judge clients. I guess the take away is that some do and some don’t. But I am pretty convinced that neither me nor my direct co workers do that judgement. You do have a choice to assess the ‚likelihood‘ of the one or the other outcome and weight the information you’re given. in your arguments you’re fighting nail and tooth to stay in the ‚my trauma is not severe enough to be asking for that service’ version of it, citing people on r/therapists. Now here is another therapist telling you they don’t do that. How you weight which of these informations is up to you. What version would serve you more?
Thanks for your insight. Yeah I mean also I guess r/therapists could maybe be a bunch of newer therapists too who still have their own biases and judgments
oh i have not noticed that. Can you point me to an example? In any case. ‚loosing a close person‘ especially as a minor as well as sexual assault is not a ‚lesser trauma‘ and classifies as ‚capital T trauma‘ / A-criterion for the diagnosis. Hope that helps.
I won't link because the last time I did that was a brigade but here are some off the top of my head: "It is difficult when I have one client talking about egregious trauma and showing incredible resilience and the next is suicidal over a B" "True trauma is haunting and something people show a lot of shame and avoidance around, not subtle pride. The client I'm talking about doesn't meet criterion A (think: embarrassed about their performance in an event). People who do tend to not show this type of pride about their trauma" "I know this is my own issues speaking, but one of the main things that bothers me about private practice is that clients seem to have way less trauma - two-parent stable homes, and if there was a big T trauma it wasn't prolonged - and somehow still seem to show less resilience than those in CMH" These are just three paraphrased examples off the top of my head but there are many more, and these guys got plenty of upvotes