Black Xanthus

Have you heard of Vibe Coding? /s

I hear you saying how that intensity is immense.

You are on the right journey. Therapy is not a straight line, more of an upward spiral. It might seem like your not making progress, yet you’ve already seen how the techniques are working as intended - they have reduced your outward reactions.

The intensity will need more self exploration in an emotion-based therapy like person-centered, or psychoanalytic. You may find some support in emotion-based group therapy, for example, anger management or anxiety support groups. The loudest emotion will help to identify a relevant group. While these groups are no substitute for therapy, they may help you in the journey if your location makes therapy inaccessible or too expensive.

You’ve expressed that you shut down even the intensity it too much. Being able to articulate that is an important step. Hopefully you can continue your journey in a way that’s helpful for you.

A wise person of my acquaintance once said ‘Feelings are Newtonian’.

What they mean by this is that you feel in reaction to things. The strength of your feeling will be related to what happened.

For a simple analogy, if you get stabbed, it hurts. If you never take the knife out, it will always hurt, and every time someone pokes near it, or the knife itself, it will hurt. If left, the wound festers so the pain becomes so intense.

When it comes to emotions, we feel them in response to something. If you have a wound, a trauma, it will intensify the emotion. Of course, emotions are quite a bit more complex than this.

The strength of emotion is one thing, how we deal with it is another. These are two different approaches. DBT for dealing with how we respond to them, counselling for the intensity of the feeling.

Of course, you mentioned at the end that you were trying various psych meds. If your emotions are connected to a medical response, counselling can still help reduce them, but sometimes it requires a perscribing psychologist to manage it

Therapy takes time. It can also take practice. Keep at it!

It’s difficult to offer specific ideas, as we don’t know what country you from. Based on the notion of ‘insurance’ I’m assuming the U.S.

I’m hearing a lot of frustration in your therapy journey, and there may be some confusion on the role of a therapist.

A licensed and trained therapist will have been trained in a method (Modality). This particular therapist seems to have a grounding in something that’s person-centered adjacent. The theory in person-centered (outlined by Carl Rogers) is that it is the client who is best placed to know their own solutions.

The process works by exploring the world from a client’s perspective, and helping them see and articulate solutions that will work for them. This type of therapy is useful for the broadest category of people when done well. It is not useful for everyone.

Emotional Disregulation, as you have described, has two primary sources.

1. Medical: a client cannot, on their own regularly their emotions due to issues with hormone production. This requires a doctor or a psychologist to diagnose.
2. Developmental Trauma: a client has been disempowered with emotional regulation during key development stages. It may be compounded by adverse experiences when showing emotion.

However, it can also be a mix of both, and one could be feeding the other.

A therapist is going to seek to help you explore your own self-understanding, to see which areas are a struggle, and help support a client towards readiness to change, and change itself.

You say in your writing that your looking at support in your job, I wonder if there’s some anxiety there.

You also ask about tips on dealing with things. Those kind of responses are better supported with a more practical modality, CBT, DBT for example. These require practice, and repetition. Lots of repetition. It is no suprise, therefore, that your therapist revisits the same sections of a book.

I wonder, however, if the mixed use of person-centered and practical therapies is not functioning here in a useful way. I wonder if it would help to approach different therapy sessions seeking different outcomes. Exploring CBT/DBT with one, then to explore if there is anything underlying with another.

Generally, a client should only with with one therapist at a time, however.

I hear your frustration with the process, and the desire to moved forward. From your writing you’ve already taken the biggest step in finding therapy. Hopefully you can find a therapist that works for you.

Never think of your writing like that. Remember that both Twilight saga and 50 shades of grey exists as best sellers. Your writing is clearly better than that (just from this post!).

Consider something like Smashwords, or even sticking it on Amazon for free/cheap. You may not be the next Tolkien, but you worked on the book, let people read it!