Hope gave all her pre-therapy garbage to me this morning. I expected it and did not get physically hurt.
Today's goal was to make a time line of Hopes life. The therapist started with her birth and her birth mother. Then each month of her life in Texas was represented by a large white dot. The AT and Hope counted out 30 days for each month in the beginning, they did this for every month. After a while, they just named the month as put the sticker down. There were so many of them! They used tan stars to represent the months Hope has lived with us. The 22 stars looked so overwhelmed.
Hope was willing to talk about her birth mother and how her birth mother and Baby Hope might have felt. She was willing to imagine why her birth mom might have had to give her. She created a whole story, complete with a detailed picture and spent a lot of time on it. When the AT started talking about the white dots that represented life in Texas, Hope shut down. Completely. The AT got her to come back a little to talk about life with us, but it was a struggle.
We spent the rest of the session doing attachment exercises. Hope enjoyed most of them. The only one she balked at was when see was asked to tell me one time she was mad. She couldn't meet my eyes. She kept saying she couldn't remember. She stopped talking. We waited quite awhile. Eventually, the AT just moved on to the rest of the exercises.
When the AT was done, Hope went to the other room. The AT said that we might not get to the actual trauma tomorrow, we might spend the whole session fighting Hope to access it.
This afternoon we are practicing compliance and lots of jumping jacks. I guess that will also mean takedowns. My goal is not to get hurt.
5 comments:
So hope that--at the end--this helps your whole family. Reading every day and thinking of you all.
Another traumamama
What a tremendous work is being accom;lished this week- praise God! Hang in there- thoughts and prayers are with you from this mum!
Attachment therapy is commonly used to refer to several treatment options that have been controversial in the rehabilitation of reactive attachment disorder.
These methods are not sufficiently backed up by adequate scientific studies.
Aside from the lack of firm theoretical background, attachment therapy is also considered as harmful and dangerous by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the American Psychiatric Association thus making it a controversial option in treating children with reactive attachment disorder.
These methods are discouraged since these are described as physically and psychologically traumatizing to the child.
Dr. Alan Sroufe, a researcher in attachment issues and William Harris professor of child psychiatry at the University of Minnesota, has serious doubts.
"Attachment therapy is about building a relationship with a child in which he can feel comfortable and secure, safe to express any feelings they might have. I don't know how holding a child down while he struggles mightily before capitulating to adult authority serves that end."
Nor does Sroufe understand how attachment therapists can claim their standard two-week therapy--which typically costs $7,000 and includes treatments such as "inner child work," psychodrama, corrective parenting (parents are involved too), eye movement therapy and cognitive restructuring--makes a significant difference.
"There are no quick fixes" to attachment problems, he said.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2000-06-08/news/0006080068_1_rebirthing-candace-newmaker-connell-watkins/2
Anonymous, who said even a second that GB's mom wanted a "quick fix" ?
It's not because is not backed up by adequate scientific studies that it means "it does not do anything good".
We need to be cautious and guarding people about a quick fix, sure.
But saying that "GB's mom wants a quick fix for Hope" because she uses attachment therapy as a tool to help her daughter is insulting. She really does not need that.
She tries to find solutions for helping her daughter. No way she tries to find a quick fix.
She didn't study medicine, but she is not enough neither naive nor dumb to think that attachment therapy is a quick fix. She knows way better than some well meaning MD that quick fixes don't exist.
Also, there are good therapists and destructive therapists.
Whatever the therapeutic tool they use.
Sometimes, psychiatrists need to raise a child with mental illness for a month before claiming that they know everything.
It reminds a radiologist and an ENT doctor saying that Single Sided Deafness has no impact on daily life, nor on socializing.
I wish such know it all live daily with my mom and I, just to see our daily struggle (let count the ADHD and sensory issue, you get it all).
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