#therapy modalities

[vmures]

The Profound Beauty of Being Able to Visualize Your Older Self

The above may be a head-tilting title to some. US culture treats aging as if it is something horrific in a lot of ways, and many people actively avoid thinking about themselves aging. Many more do their best to slow the visible signs. But until recently I honestly could not picture myself older, probably because I expected to die young (mostly thanks to C-PTSD and severe depression and anxiety).

So I made it to my forties and have tried to celebrate every grey hair and laugh line as signs that I survived and am doing well. I'm out here living my life and that is awesome. But I still found it a struggle to truly envision myself older. The future just seemed impossible to visualize.

However, I recently tried a new therapy modality, Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART). It's similar in a lot of ways to EDMR therapy, which I had heard of but never tried. Most of my previous therapy was talk therapy or cognitive behavior therapy.

ART was really strange and I had to actively work on letting go of my desire to overthink and logic the hell out of everything. But I decided to give it an honest go and was really surprised by how effective it was. It definitely gave me some handy new tools to use going forward.

But honestly one of the most profound aspects for me was the moment when I realized that I could see myself older--by days, by weeks, by years, by decades. And there is something so profoundly beautiful in being able to imagine that, in being able to see a future for yourself. Maybe it's a vague future, but it's still a future. For me, the inability to see myself old wasn't related to fear of aging. Nor am I blinded by a romanticized idea of aging. I have paid too much attention to my loved ones as they've aged to think it will be all great. But I also know from those same observations that it can be wonderful even with all the failings our bodies and minds can experience. We can still experience so much and I certainly have cherished the moments I've had with older friends and relatives. Life keeps going. We keep learning. We keep loving. And while I've always tried to believe that, it wasn't until recently that I could actually see that for myself.

And I can only hope for that for everyone. May you be able to see a future for yourself. May you see yourself growing, learning, and loving for decades to come.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

I was talking to a client today about "how to identify masking" as part of the process of learning how to shift masking from a reflexive coping strategy to a voluntary and conscious one and I feel like it led to a really important shift in framework FOR ME about masking and social distress.

Paraphrasing, the ideas we came to are as follows:

One of the reasons masking can be so difficult to recognize is because, essentially, masking is the act of performing "yourself" as a mirror for the other person you are interacting with. It's this idea of "I will micro-manage my own mood, affect, behavior, mannerisms, and environment in order to reflect back to you whatever version of "self" you need from me because if I don't there will be consequences". So because masking is essentially performing "mirroring" as selfhood by amplifying or minimizing aspects of yourself based on what you think the other person wants to see in you, it varies significantly from one context to another. The major commonality is that it takes up an INCREDIBLE amount of energy, mental and emotional resources, cognitive processing power, etc. So you don't identify masking by specific behaviors so much as by the feeling of "having a significant amount of your mental/emotional resources be occupied by the act of social interaction" to the point that it doesn't leave enough left-over for other cognitive tasks, or leaves you feeling exhausted and worn out, or basically by the impact that masking has on you during and after.

In this framework, part of why we get so anxious about new or unfamiliar people or situations is because we don't know how to mask in that context yet, and so until we get there and figure it out, we're basically just terrified of what could go wrong since we don't know what we're walking into.*

*This is the underlying framework of anticipatory and obsessive anxiety as well. Anticipatory and obsessive anxiety functions as the mechanism by which we conduct both predictive reasoning-basd advance planning and review/self-correctionof our mental predictive model.

Autistic aversion to uncertainty has a lot to do with our need to be able to use predictive reasoning-based advance planning to cope with "social deficits" aka how much harder it is for us to interpret subtextual/nonverbal cues, learn/meet social expectations, and work through/around disordered sensory processing. That predictive reasoning requires us to be familiar, in advance, with the stable constant factors that influence decision making in social contexts. If we aren't familiar with the constant variables than we can't plan, if we can't plan than we are more likely to make noticeable social mis-steps, and if we take notable social mis-steps there are consequences. It becomes necessary for us to be hypervigilent to observable patterns in other people's behavior in order to try to reverse engineer the social interaction playbook on the fly. That ends up making us more likely to assume personal responsibility for predicting and managing the emotional regulatory needs of people around us at all costs, replicating the behavioral/cognitive impacts of chronic traumatic stress due to the activation of our sympathetic nervous system from chronic hypervigilence.

Essentially, masking is a cognitive defense mechanism to severe and/or persistant traumatic interpersonal stressors. As the neurological impacts of chronic traumatic stress heal, we mask less frequently. But in order to heal from chronic traumatic stress, the human brain requires a safe environment that does not trigger a retraumatization episode or replicate feelings of helplessness/fear for safety. In other words, reducing/terminating masking safely requires us as autistic people to have consistent access to social environments in which we are able to utilize autistic interpersonal boundaries without fear of consequence or chonically unmet need. This requires the people around us to be able to respect not only autistic interpersonal boundaries, but also autistic self-expression/advocacy modalities and mediums.

I feel like a lot of the pieces of this framework have been rattling around in my head for a while but the flavor of words hit just right today and all the connections snapped into place.

Anyway, I'm still sort of sorting through the clinical implications of this framework but I think it's a direction I want to keep exploring for sure.

[lemony-snickers]

x reader fiction can be so healing, actually.

[dashing-hyphen]

I'm struggling so bad with OCD. I've done compulsions probably like. 60+ times today. It's EXHAUSTING.

[arovoidant]

anyone else w avpd find it wild how often cbt is suggested to treat avpd when it’s well known that cbt is not typically appropriate for people with complex trauma & that avpd is often caused in part by complex trauma……

[quasieli]

I know meds sometimes take a while to kick in, like your body needs to get used to them and shit, but I'd really appreciate it if these new anxiety meds kicked in right about now. I'm vibrating and I really Don't Like It

[echthr0s]

post I just saw that was like "I don't need therapy I need to be 8yo at Halloween again" and a therapist reblogged it to talk about doin childlike stuff at Halloween anyway (inner child work, yknow) and while yeah that's definitely a valid approach I also think that sometimes when it comes to feelings like "I need to be 8yo again" there's a specificness about Being An Actual Physical And Psychological Child that cannot be replicated as an adult, and grieving that is also a valid approach

similarly, I can watch all the cartoons I like but I will never know the feeling of being a child excitedly getting up to watch Saturday Morning Cartoons in pajamas while eating too much sugar cereal. because I didn't have that experience; I wasn't allowed to be that type of child. there is no amount of watching cartoons as a grown ass spider -- even if I do it on a Saturday morning, even if I do it in my bed clothes, and I don't even like sugary cereal so -- that would give me the exact sensation of childhoodness that that image evokes. I'm just a grown person doin what they feel like doin, bc that's what adulthood is about

outside of, idk, age regression or having a child alter or something else I'm overlooking, there's really no way to Be A Child again in the way that I understand it when I see a post that is saying I wish I could be eight at Halloween again. and like I don't think that means they shouldn't eat fistfuls of candy and dress up like a janky lookin dracula and watch scary movies until 2am (sounds like a great time tbh) but I just think the grieving part shouldn't be overlooked either

[findmeinthefallair]

Anyhow let's see how EMDR kicks off tomorrow after I hand in the intake form with my dark af thoughts on it

[flock-of-cassowaries]

Starting to realize that “They should be working out their issues via fanfiction” is my “She should be at the club”.

[bloodyke]

who wants to invent therapy that works

[juno-infernal]

digging into the literature on my particular form of PTSD and so far it’s 1 part feeling unexpectedly validated by case studies and 1 part thought-provoking inquiry into the underlying causes and mechanisms of the problem but also 1 part I Do Not Want That Treatment >:|

[tinylittlecubby]

When your patient that has a paranoia disorder is paranoid

[pebblegalaxy]

Harmony and Healing: Navigating Holistic Therapy's Path to Wellness #BlogchatterA2Z

Harmony and Healing: Navigating Holistic Therapy's Path to Wellness #BlogchatterA2Z #HolisticTherapy #WellnessJourney #HealingModalities #PositivePsychology #MindBodySpirit #TransformativeHealing

The Path to Wholeness: Exploring Holistic Therapy and Transformative Healing In a world where the complexities of modern life often overshadow our holistic well-being, holistic therapy emerges as a beacon of hope, embracing a comprehensive approach to health and healing. Defined by its recognition of the interconnectedness of mind, body, spirit, and emotions, holistic therapy stands as a…

[woundoxygentherapy]

Explore the cutting-edge Two2 Extremity Chamber at AOT Inc. Elevate patient care with our advanced healthcare solutions. Learn how this innovative technology enhances extremity therapy for optimal outcomes. For getting more information about A unique multi-modality therapy you visit:-https://aotinc.net/healthcare-professionals/two2-extremity-chamber/

[shamanflavio]

Portal to your own Universe...The Mastana

On the path of consciousness evolution, what could be roughly called the initiatory path of becoming a shaman, a separation happens. The universe is understood under the same dynamics, but now the inner power of the apprentice is fully acknowledged, and his/her capacity is elevated to the status of being able to create his/her own portal into a personal universe. The symbolic tool used for this…

[reasonsforhope]

Workbooks to improve executive functioning

Since the post I made last night about improving executive functioning was so popular, I figured I should pull these out of my comments and give them their own post, in case it's helpful for people.

I have worked with the publishers of all of the books linked below and can vouch for their psychology books. The publisher of most of them, New Harbinger, is an extremely credible evidence-based psychology publisher.

Obvious disclaimer that everyone's brain is different and what works for someone else may not work for you.

Is there evidence that executive functioning can be improved? Yes. This book appears to be a very thorough overview of the field, and contains both advocates and detractors of cognitive training, for a balanced perspective. From the table of contents, I would really recommend jumping straight to Part 3: Developmental Perspectives for executive functioning (EF) writ large.

Certain therapy modalities are specifically designed for skill-building in areas like impulsivity, decision-making, emotional regulation, and cognitive flexibility, all of which are EF skills or very dependent on EF skills. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is probably the best field to look at for these - skill-building in those areas is its core goal.

Some DBT workbooks:

The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook: Practical DBT Exercises for Learning Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation, and Distress Tolerance

The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Teens

There are also a lot of workbooks for ADHD that are sometimes more broad but also can help with executive functioning:

The Adult ADHD and Anxiety Workbook: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Skills to Manage Stress, Find Focus, and Reclaim Your Life

The CBT Workbook for Adult ADHD: Evidence-Based Exercises to Improve Your Focus, Productivity, and Wellbeing

The Neurodivergence Skills Workbook for Autism and ADHD

General executive functioning workbooks:

The Executive Functioning Workbook for Teens

Executive Functioning Workbook for Adults: Exercises to Help You Get Organized, Stay Focused, and Achieve Your Goals

Hope these are helpful to someone!!