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Pshychoanalysis anyone?

Pshychoanalysis anyone?2011-10-27T05:43:38+00:00

The Forums Forums Tools, Techniques & Treatments Therapy/CBT Pshychoanalysis anyone?

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  • #109139

    Anonymous
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    Post count: 14413

    I know! It’s one thing that really bugs me. Long term and I just don’t go well together. I plan to see how it goes, and if it has obvious benefits, then I will continue, but it has to come to an end sometime. The other concern I have is that it won’t help what I want it to help. A work colleague had therapy, and I can see the inner strength it has given her, but she is still forgetful, disorganized, and never on time. It helped with her gambling, she got out of an unhappy marriage, and came to terms with her dysfunctional upbringing, which is great, and I can see the change in her, which is part of why I would like to give it a try, but I don’t think it will help some of my problems, cos it hasn’t done anything to change my colleague’s similar symptoms.

    Regarding my son, I see his inner struggle at times, and think therapy could help, especially if he does not want to continue with his medication. He will need inner strength to deal with his life and accept who he is. I find it hard to believe that his ADHD symptoms could be caused by inner conflict, though they certainly could have been made worse by issues in his life.

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    #109140

    Anonymous
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    Post count: 14413

    i really said that tongue-in-cheek, I think it’s true, but I also think I can stop seeing my therapist any time I want to. Since we’re doing meditation training with some therapy to help with personal material that gets in the way of the training, he periodically asks his students/patients whether they want to continue on with him or not. And he does ask us to commit to the work (practices he gives us) or he respectfully says he won’t work with us, nothing personal, just that he wants the commitment to the practices. So at least once a year, or even every 6 months, he asks us to ask ourselves are we really committed to working with him. There’s an exit door whenever I want it. But I find it so useful that I am not ready to give it up.

    There are MBCT programs, which is Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, which combines mindfulnessness training and therapy, and these are quite successful, as far as I hear. I took the MBSR program, or Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program (Jon Kabat-Zin program), and it was a great beginning for me. So if that’s something offered in your part of the world I would check it out, the combination of mindfulness or meditation training and therapy is quite effective.

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    #109141

    Anonymous
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    Post count: 14413

    DSpice…….I was a little overcome with emotion when I read your post….it was a nice feeling…..your very generous of heart.

    Toofat

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    #109142

    Anonymous
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    Post count: 14413

    No_dopamine, I sort of realised that the comment wasn’t entirely serious, and I know that I am able to stop whenever I wish to (my psychiatrist ensured me that I could change my mind about continuing at any time), but therapy has the potential to go on for years, and it scares me that I could wait for that long and then find I still have to be referred for an ADHD diagnosis regardless. I am still of the mind that I am probably best off hedging my bets and getting referred on for an ADHD assessment and medication soon. If therapy helps things so much that the ADHD symptoms improve, then I can have a medication-burning party 😉 I don’t really want full time medication anyway, just for driving, and for those days when I feel particularly scattered but really need not to be.

    The mindfullness training sounds good, but between my current therapy, my committments, and the kids’ committments, I don’t think I could fit it in, either time-wise, or financially. But when the kids get older and take up less time and money, watch out!! I will be on the “getting help” bandwagon lol :mrgreen:

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    #109143

    Anonymous
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    Post count: 14413

    KrazyKat, in January of this year, I talked to my therapist (psychologist) about ADHD, how I’d read the book on ADHD and its Effect on Marriage and how I thought I had it (my husband thought I did), and was he familiar with it or could he prescribe meds (knowing the terrible relationship with my GP). He said no, he wasn’t familiar and he couldn’t prescribe meds (only psychiatrists can). But he did write a letter to my GP saying that he had seen consistent symptoms that could be ADHD, and that he supported a physician-supervised trial of meds. My GP received but never read the letter 👿 and it’s been a challenge getting her to take me seriously instead of viewing me as a person seeking performance-enhancing drugs.

    My therapist says that if you need a crutch, you should use it. Therapy and behavioural techniques can only go so far, and meds are supportive. So I am big on getting a proper diagnosis. I don’t want to take meds either but it seems that I need them.

    My therapist was quite surprised when I came back with a diagnosis of narcolepsy, and I told him about the study of severely fragmently sleep with mice and the memory issues (terrible sentence structure, sorry, not my forte), and how the diagnosis explained a lot. We had backed completely off a lot of the practices that we were doing before I had my worst bout back in April, and now we are pretty much starting afresh with this new information, trying to get some stability before starting to work again. I am glad to have him available to me, and right now, I can’t see myself stopping our meetings since they are so useful to me.

    Many people start the mindfulness training later in life, I did too, only back in 2003. It’s never too late to start.

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    #109144

    Anonymous
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    Yeah, I certainly need a crutch at times!

    In all my psychoanalysis research, I could have been put right off, with all the talk about penis envy and desiring your mother, but I have seen a severe psychosomatic disorder which shows how much the mind can influence the body. This woman was completely paralysed. It had started as a limp, which got her the attention she craved, and ultimately she ended up a quadriplegic. So the mind can certainly affect the body hugely. If not for that, plus the experiences of you guys here, and my work colleague, I would have decided not to bother, and to go straight to the ADHD specialist. Now I plan to attempt to travel two paths at once. Just so I can have that crutch when I need it most.

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    #109145

    Anonymous
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    Post count: 14413

    Yes, any kind of training or therapy is good for those times when the going gets extremely tough. Who couldn’t use help with that?

    Going back to your original post about how some relaxation techniques can help people with mouth ulcers, etc – the mindfulness programs developed by Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn at U of Massachussetts have been used in different ways – I attended a symposium (for meditators) where he did a presentation on how effective it was for people suffering from psoriasis (how the heck do you spell that?) – their treatment was to stand naked in a light box for very long periods of time and the training helped improve the rate of lesion clearing. Studies have also been done with the same program by Dr Richard Davidson in the midwest (he is the same researcher who studied Tibetan monks with fMRI) showing that people who were taking the MBSR program (it’s only 8 weeks long) had a boost in their immune systems.

    Here’s a technical link about the psoriasis study http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9773769

    Here’s a more user-friendly article http://www.psoriasis.org/publications/psoriasis-advance/2011/summer/meditation-mindfulness

    Here’s a technical link talking about both studies http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/content/65/4/564.full

    Here’s a description of the training program:

    The training consisted of a class that met weekly for 2.5 to 3 hours per class, along with a silent seven-hour retreat that was held during week 6 of the course. In addition, subjects were assigned home practice that consisted of formal and informal meditative practices that they were instructed to perform for 1 hour per day, 6 days per week, with the aid of guided audiotapes.

    I took this program and it was a good starting point for meditation practice. They offer “grad” sittings once a month and there are more and more meditation groups forming around the country.

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    #109147

    Anonymous
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    Post count: 14413

    My day so far…..

    Three hours sleep, then I woke and couldn’t return to sleep for ages. I taped my hubby snoring (LOL!!), fiddled with my phone, and eventually took a sedative to help, as my RLS was playing merry hell and I just was not going to get back to sleep without help. Missed hubby’s alarm going off, and woke to my iPod alarm, which my son had set for himself the day before (but had left the iPod in my room!). It was half an hour too late for me.

    Raced around getting my daughter ready for school, then went to my son’s school for a parent teacher meeting due to issues with his behaviour. That went pretty well, and I think we are all on the same page for the time being. Rushed home to do a couple of things, then it was off to my next psychiatric appointment.

    I did what I had planned to do. I asked to be referred on for a trial of stimulants, as well as to continue seeing him for therapy. He was convinced that it would not be useful to do both, as the medication would improve my symptoms, and thus take away the motivation for seeing him, though he was happy to see how things went. I am of the opposite viewpoint, as my son’s medication does not take away all of his symptoms, so there would still be motivation there. I also brought up my driving concerns, and he mentioned that we have to really monitor things, as therapy can often worsen symptoms temporarily. Great!!! Just what I need. So he conceded that medications might well be needed under those circumstances anyway.

    So I go the name and number of yet another psychiatrist, and I have phoned and left a message, to try and get an appointment.

    At the end of our session, we did ten minutes of “therapy”, as an example of how the process works. Yuck! I had better see some results soon, or I am not going to last long. We touched on my conflict with my mum as I was growing up, which wasn’t anything major when I look back, but which felt big to me at the time. I guess I always hated having to be the grown up one (I was the eldest of three) and I felt shunted to the side by my youngest brother’s youth, and my middle brother’s schooling issues and constant accidents. Afterwards my mind was full of guilt over wanting something he didn’t really approve of (medications), anxiety over having to go through yet another round of psych appointment making, referral getting etc, and stress over how I really felt about my parents when I was growing up. I felt like such an emotional wreck afterwards (especially after hardly any sleep) that I called in sick to work. And I ran a red light after the appintment. Which scares me enormously.

    I have already decided I am going to have to change the time of one of my next appointments, so that I am not driving home in peak hour traffic. And if I have one more close call while driving, then I am going to have to re-evaluate things until I am on medication, unless the doc has a better suggestion to dealing with the driving issue. I am not willing to put others at risk like that.

    Ugh! What stressful things we put ourselves through in the name of “health”.

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    #109148

    caper
    Member
    Post count: 179

    If some of your ADHD symptoms are as a result of a smaller than normal ACC, then psychoanalysis is not going to help those symptoms. People often have issues going on in their head that do not have physical causes, which psychoanalysis is likely to help.

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    #109149

    Anonymous
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    Post count: 14413

    Mindfullness sounds helpful. I re-read Full Catastrophe Living by Dr. Kabot-Zinn. It and Behavioral Therapy and drugs are all helpful.

    Sadly no clinical types nearby. Several hours away and 2 ferry trips, Vancouver has some very good services for Mindfullness and even one for ADHD .. working up to asking if they can work via Skype or something.

    From what I understand of it, ADHD as we understand it so far, is something that we attempt to cope with, by what ever means we have to hand .. drugs and therapy seem useful, even helpful sometimes. Our little island has therapists who specialise in dancing and chanting and another that lists himself as neo-Jungian … I guess if painting myself blue worked, I might try that as well . :)

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    #109150

    Anonymous
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    Post count: 14413

    Today is not a good day! And to top it all off, I have already written a post for here, but deleted it, so my mood is even worse than it was before.

    I am feeling torn between the “believers” and the “non believers” right now. Is psychoanalysis the right thing for me, or is the “medical model” the way to go. Yesterday’s appointment left me feeling ridden with guilt, anger, sadness, frustration, and impotence. If I am to believe the psychoanalytic model, then my relatively normal upbringing, with the usual childhood frustrations and angers, have caused my ADHD type symptoms and my anxieties. And if that’s the case, then I am also subscribing to the fact that my daughter’s anxiety and my son’s ADHD are a product of our parenting, which makes me feel like the lowest of the low.

    I have barely been able to function since the appointment, and the anxiety over it (both before and after) has flared up my RLS to the degree that I have had to increase my medications to keep it under control enough to allow me to sleep. I feel constantly on the verge of tears, and I am wondering if I would have been better off not seeking a diagnosis after all. I have not told any close friends about my issues, so I don’t even have a shoulder to cry on. You guys here are the only support I have, and even then, I feel like an imposter, as I don’t even have an ADHD diagnosis, and might never get one at the rate things are going.

    I guess the light at the end of the tunnel is that I have got an appointment with an ADHD specialist, BUT it’s not until March. That feels like a very long time to wait right now.

    Sorry for my rant. I just really needed to get things off my chest, or I’ll self-destruct.

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    #109151

    Anonymous
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    Post count: 14413

    KrazyKat, I am not inclined to just accept what someone tells me, regardless. That said, my psychologist tested me and had me tell her about myself. She said I was ADHD and I had entitlement issues. It felt right, there was nothing that I felt any need to argue about. Had not considered ‘entitlement’, but it fits, and she has me in some Behavior Therapy to unlearn my bad habits as it were.

    The site here has tests you can take as does Dr. Barkley’s Taking Charge of ADHD. Do the tests, see what you think.

    Beating yourself up is unproductive or counter-productive .. or something .. I have no idea where i was going with that .. good luck :)

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    #109152

    Anonymous
    Inactive
    Post count: 14413

    Lol! Love your last comment. I can so relate to not knowing where I am going with a comment by the time I get halfway through!!

    I have done many, many tests, and all of them suggest that I seek medical attention for an ADHD assessment (apart from one that said I was not hyperactive enough – go figure!!).

    From a logical perspective, I understand that I don’t have to accept everything that I am told. But emotionally I feel really torn. The psychiatrist makes some very valid points about the psychoanalytic perspective, but so do people like Dr Barkley about the biological perspective. The literature supports both perspectives, and the research on the use of stimulants for treatment of ADHD is very muddied, when you consider how many studies are funded by pharmaceutical companies. I honestly don’t know where to go from here.

    I have done some research on some of the names of psychiatrists that I was given a while ago, and am tempted to investigate one of them further. She is local (5 minute drive), and still subscribes to a psychoanalytical perspective, but I have her in mind for my son more than myself, as he is looking for a non-medication approach to manage his ADHD and resultant issues.

    As for myself, I might see how the above doctor goes for my son, and possibly consider her for myself if she is good, as well as do some more ringing around to find out if I can get an appointment (that is not so far into the future as my current one) with an ADHD specialist (or as close as we can get to one here!).

    So I guess I have sort of a plan. But I bet that next weeks appointment puts me into the agonies of indecision and makes me an emotional wreck once again! Ugh!

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    #109153

    Anonymous
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    Post count: 14413

    Well KK…..counseling or a psychiatrist, or meds??? You appear torn…this or that, one or the other…..does it have to be an either or situation…..or is it possible you would entertain a multifaceted approach ??? I don’t know it’s just a thought……

    As you my have read from my previous post, I am a huge proponent of counseling…..I had wonderful success with it. As I have mentioned my counseling did not take an ADD approach, it was more a whole life view. The work we did seemed to focus more on my perspective, my vision of things, living with my heart and not my tricky speedy head. My brain process(s) the way it does……that is not going change. I found however, I could change the way I perceive myself and my world, my vision of who I am and others, and how I internalize that, and react to that vision could also be changed. Understanding who I was, truly and deeply who I was, and what my vison of myself and others was, and what it meant to me, or more importantly didn’t mean to me, were the most soul freeing things I have ever done. That is true………

    I also found, as you mentioned, that yes, once I was into counseling…things got much darker and out of control for me. There were very scarey uncertain times when I was uncertain of anything anymore….mainly because everything I was, and everything I held to be true all of my life, were up for examination. Those things had to be questioned…..they didn’t work for me anymore, likely they never did!! They were unbeknownst to me just “survival skills” not skills that would enable me to live a “fully alive”, peaceful and content life. That examination process can be a very scarey, those tools had carried me through 30 years…….of very very difficult times. They were hard to put down…..but in the end…… I found they were actually harder to hold on to!!! That is my counseling experience in a nutshell!!!

    As for meds……I did use meds for a period in my career…..my position at the top of my game was extremely stressful and the work load impossible, I loved it, or my ADD brain did!!! I was responsible for huge corporate projects, with a crazy number of elements and absurd timelines, so meds really helped me stay organized and focused. Now I’m retired, I no longer use meds…my life is slower and being a little daffy from time to time has no real consequences. So no meds…..

    So KK, a multifaceted approach worked well for me, but my most rewarding, long lasting, life altering element was counseling. Maybe there is something in my story that resonates with you….I don’t know. I know I’m richer for the telling…..so thank-you.

    PS….a good support group (face to face) can be a wonderful thing too.

    Toofat

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    #109154

    Bibliophile
    Member
    Post count: 169

    I can’t see how changing one’s view of life would improve functioning with ADHD. The externalities do not change. The job is the same, familial pressures are the same, financial resources are the same. If someone wanted a lifestyle change, I can see psychoanalysis or CBT being helpful. That being said, I would be highly skeptical of any therapy that did not recognize the influence of ADHD, not only on how I think, but on what I can do. CBT might want me to change my thinking on something, but it does not give me the faculty to do the task any better. I was recently told by a CBT specialist that he could help me with some of my comorbid anxieties, but that CBT could not address the executive function deficits of ADHD.

    Using a computer analogy, a psychoanalyst or CBT practitioner telling someone that the reason that they are not accomplishing X is because their software is faulty, i.e. thinking patterns and assumptions, when in reality it is the hardware, e.g. harddrive, that is not operating in a typical for human beings fashion and is getting in the way of achieving X.

    The question is always, what do you want treated and what benefits do you want in the end. No amount of discussing your symptoms with a psychologist/counsellor will help you via a physical means to finish that book that you are struggling with, to eliminate the perseverative / hyperfocusing fixations, or to regulate your emotions. They may be able to teach you techniques to assist you when you are doing that behaviour, but the neurological under-pinnings (if recognized as neuro-chemical in origin) will still be there. A coach could do that as well.

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