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anyone tried intensive talk therapy?

Messages
17
Has anyone tried intensive talk therapy? Like 4 hours a week or more? The emotional weight of CFS is so great I'm wondering if that would help. And many of us have suffered a lot even outside of our CFS illness so extra therapy may be beneficial. Once a week therapy has never helped me, I'm just wondering if multi-session therapy would help?
 

taniaaust1

Senior Member
Messages
13,054
Location
Sth Australia
I have not tried it but you'd be best doing smaller counselling sessions over time. 4 hours of talk therapy would be very draining but you say once a week sessions did not help you.
 
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jesse's mom

Senior Member
Messages
6,795
Location
Alabama USA
I had three years of therapy when my baseline went down in 2011 and I began to have chronic pain. I went once a week for a about an hour on my own, then another hour with a family member. It was helpful to all of us.

It did take a lot out of me, but it was worth it.

Some therapists do skype sessions now if you are house and or bedbound.
 

BeADocToGoTo1

Senior Member
Messages
536
If you have the energy for it might be worth doing. One tough thing is finding the right person who is familiar with chronic illness and pain. Someone who has been there. It is helpful to learn coping techniques and guidance through all the trauma stages. If it does not click with the person, find another and do not feel bad about it.
 

Dechi

Senior Member
Messages
1,454
If I could afford it I would have therapy once a week. But it is very draining and I don’t think I could do 4 times a week. In fact I know I couldn’t because I can’t even go put of the house 4 times a week,

If once a week doesn’t help, why do you think more would help ?
 

IThinkImTurningJapanese

Senior Member
Messages
3,492
Location
Japan
I was looking more for specifics of anyone who has compared 1 hour a week of therapy to multiple hours a week?

I have survived this illness by getting intensive therapy, followed by weekly aftercare. Plus an an amount of self-study that should have earned me a degree.

Not all "talk therapy" is created equal though. I've experienced therapy that was so helpful, that when encountering some other methods I was simply annoyed.
 
Messages
17
I have survived this illness by getting intensive therapy, followed by weekly aftercare. Plus an an amount of self-study that should have earned me a degree.

Not all "talk therapy" is created equal though. I've experienced therapy that was so helpful, that when encountering some other methods I was simply annoyed.

Interesting, what methods did you find not helpful? I have found many not helpful myself.
 
Messages
17
If I could afford it I would have therapy once a week. But it is very draining and I don’t think I could do 4 times a week. In fact I know I couldn’t because I can’t even go put of the house 4 times a week,

If once a week doesn’t help, why do you think more would help ?

Because sometimes you have a breakthrough when you get some momentum with lots of consecutive therapy sessions in a short period of time. It is very expensive though as you can imagine.
 

gbells

Improved ME from 2 to 6
Messages
1,491
Location
Alexandria, VA USA
I treated for depression with anxiety. The therapies that were suggested by a clinical psychologist and helped me best were: ACT therapy (read The Happiness Trap book) and the Headspace meditation app programs for anxiety and chronic pain.

I didn't have to do longer than 1 hour sessions every 2 weeks for short term therapy (up to 12 sessions).
 

jesse's mom

Senior Member
Messages
6,795
Location
Alabama USA
My therapist and I went over an hour many weeks and I had another hour per week with my family members, my partner/caregiver went to this therapist for an hour per week on their own for the fallout from my body breaking down.

I have a child at home who went an hour a week, then we met for about 15 minutes at the end of her session.

Added up I was going for 3 hours and 15 minutes per week. This was a peak of our family therapy. Yes. being in therapy can make you cry, that is OK too.

I found that when one is in a family with illness everybody hurts. The partner does not know what to do, the children feel responsible somehow.

My partner found through all this that he had more issues to address, my child now feels more free to speak up.

We stay open to the fact that, because mom is sick, things come up and we go back to therapy when needed.

In my opinion it is not how long I went to therapy that is what has helped us, it is were we ready for therapy... how much we worked in therapy, how honest are you willing to be?

Things are so much better now in our house, and of course in my daily life!

If there is a chance to have decent therapy, check out the therapist's credentials and go!
 

mattytoo

my pronouns are they/them thanks 😊
Messages
43
Location
NSW, Australia
I did 3 sessions a week with my therapist of 6 years at one point to try out a very strict specific treatment protocol for PTSD he was training in (I think it was CPT - cognitive processing therapy. I don't recommend it & he decided it also wasn't for him) and although it wasn't illness related I can say 3+ hours of therapy a week was exhausting and had to be the only/main focus of my life for a period. there was no space for me to do or process anything else. maybe it was this particular protocol being overly intense but yeah.

If you get to each weekly session thinking "oh thank god I made it through another week to therapy I have so much I need to talk about" that might be a sign you need sessions more often. or If you feel you are only just getting into the hard nitty gritty work as your session is ending, maybe ask for a longer session, or I can offer tips to get into that headspace sooner in the session, if you want to try that (I had a whole routine haha)

The most helpful therapies for me are kinda hard to untangle because usually my therapist and I just talked and wove in CBT, ACT, narrative therapy as it was helpful. I use a lot of CBT strategies day to day (and ACT is very helpful but I use it less often), but I found structured CBT courses (in inpatient psychiatric facilities, workbooks, etc) at best useless and at worst actively harmful. as they never had space for exceptions to the "rules" & were almost always about twisting everything into making you believe nothing was wrong. Finding the right therapist is more important than finding the right therapy protocol, in my experience.
 

IThinkImTurningJapanese

Senior Member
Messages
3,492
Location
Japan
Interesting, what methods did you find not helpful? I have found many not helpful myself.

Perhaps it wasn't really the method that was the issue, but the approach.

I have been very fond of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but I haven't had to endure practitioners naive enough to suggest that I was experiencing "false illness beliefs".

For me, most of that crap has come from society, and I'm still willing to give them a chance. :D
 

gbells

Improved ME from 2 to 6
Messages
1,491
Location
Alexandria, VA USA
CBT is considered old fashioned by the psychology community. It has limited usefullness only for easy problems. A SEIDs patient would lose hope when it was proven that their problems weren't due to "cognitive distortions", in other words, exaggerations of reality, but were due to real issues that they couldn't overcome.