What was your initial complaint when starting therapy?

My initial reason for starting counseling was couples to fix my marriage. I believed that, so that’s what I told the therapist. Eventually the kids’ dad quit because he was “fixed” and clearly I was the problem, and my therapy started addressing issues of abuse and recovery.

My initial reason for going to therapy was SH. Some friends had a sort of "intervention" and one of them who is a social worker asked me to let her find me a T, so I did. She found former T for me who I worked with for 10 years. We still work on SH but also a whole host of other problems/issues. I found out I'm more messed up than originally thought, I guess. HUGS Kit

I always find it interesting how often and how much therapy is focused on relationship issues because I never feel that I would want to involve a third (or fourth etc) party in those in my own life. My Ts actually pointed out that I rarely talk about relationships in therapy but I just did not have those kinds of challenges during that time and I usually really prefer to resolve them with the actual people involved or if not possible, I just end those relationships. I only brought up those things when I talked about my past, in connection with more practical current problems. I think I would also be one of those who would most likely refuse to go to couples counseling.

I also use therapy for dealing with work stress. In the beginning I was getting triggered a lot by clients' pasts it was a weekly check in question. The last couple of years I get triggered a lot less but on occasion it happens and we process it.

Anne, can I ask how therapy helped you with nightmares? I have had recurring nightmares that I can very easily relate to a form of anxiety I tend to have but have not been able to eliminate them stably. They tend to surface when I procrastinate or otherwise slack with my discipline and then worry about tasks, so it is not trauma-related or maybe related to traumas I sometimes caused myself not dealing with practical things consistently. The themes of my dreams is always very similar and predictable and I don't care too much as they only cause discomfort when I am asleep and for a short while after waking, but would love to get rid of them somehow. I talked with quite a few people about them but that does not seem to do anything, only my dealing with things better does.

with my ex-therapist it was that I felt my trauma responses were starting to creep back out on me again.

With my current therapist, it was that I was recovering from a traumatic experience with my ex-therapist.

Long time ago, but what first led me to therapy was out-of-control compulsive eating.

I was initially referred for post partum depression. Im not sure when post partum depression starts being just regular depression, but now I go for that as well as issues around eating.

With Emdr T what I told everybody including both Ts it was to deal with my trauma and figure out how to cope with it. The reality and what I recently told Emdr T when T moved out of state and was commuting to work I feared she would fond the 2 1/2 hour drive each way to much so she would retire. I feared she would retire and I would still be trying to figure out how to deal. I thought Emdr was supposed to be really quick (had one Emdr T tell me it would take one appointment). My goal was see emdr for a very short period of time "fix" the problem and then when T retired I would be fine. LOL nothing worked as planned. Now I see her for everything and it will not be ending any time soon.

First time was to deal with exam anxiety it turned out to be other issues childhood issues. Next time was to deal with depression and trauma still working away now with a brand new therapist she is trained in trauma so hopefully i can get help and get some where. I think i will always need therapy for self care it seems very difficult for me to do it on my own, i feel so low some times it's hard to get out of the deep depression

I was severly anorexic and also PTSD.

I wish I had a better answer for you, but my nightmares were trauma related. So after I started digging into the details and dynamics of that, I noticed the nightmares started to diminish. Perhaps this makes sense within a theoretical framework where the mind tries to resolve what is not resolved during the day; so nightmares are being "resolved" by the brain at night. When you deal with it consciously, then the brain doesn't need to engage in nighttime resolution. At least it seemed that way to me, seemed to work that way for me. I'm not sure whether this would apply to you.

If there's an analog to your situation, I wonder if it is what it means to you to not "deal with things better." If there is something underneath your anxiety (which I also share) when the practical stuff slides behind other priorities. For me I think my anxiety is a kind of Henny Penny thinking, where the "sky is falling" if there is any disturbance in my workday or the "taking care of business." In other words, I wonder if you can break the association between doing X or whatever and feeling anxious about it, maybe that will eliminate the dreams as well.