3 x stroke survivor turns stroke counsellor

Hi Ryan,

Hoping that your new found skills lead you where you want to go.  That's a big question - what helped, what didn't help in terms of counselling because my stroke background was seperate to other traumatic incidents in my life.  

CBT definetly felt like being kicked in the head and prevented me from opening up. CBT made it even more difficult to get to reason of my deep distress, it inhibited my speech even more than it already was. Not a fan of this approach.

Lots of body work, expressive, grounding - my healing journey has been so varied, I no doubt exhausted any health professional of any sort who came across me because a lot of my basic human needs (despite life living saving techniques) were very unmet from my acute stroke experience. So very emobodied trauma from that time.  What ever approach you use following up with compassion helps and being mindful of any extra traumas that add to the inbalance of power in a counselling space which I'm no doubt you are already fully informed about.

Nina

Thanks for your response, Nina.

Thats disappointing that CBT wasn't helpful for you. I wonder what your relationship with your therapist was like? Did you click with them and did you like them? The client/therapist relationship is so important in creating a safe and supported space, where you can be yourself and totally honest. I find using Person Centred Therapy helps to create this supportive space where healing is more likely to occur.

Can you please tell me what bodywork & expressive grounding are exactly?

Thanks Nina,

Ryan,

Reconstructingwithryan.

Hi Ryan,

My experience of Bodywork involves any movement based practice involving observation linking into thoughts, memories, feelings - so mindfulness combined with yoga/exercise to feel my body's responses to life's happenings. That's a beginning, I really don't know how to explain it more in terms that are more professional than that.

Expressive and grounding for me involved anything to outwardly express emotion that I could be more factual about from a period of my life when my expression made not a lot of sense to me or anyone else. A couple of examples are poetry writing, art.  Returning back to mindfulness after expression helped with being back in the present.

Self education has helped alot too. I feel far more empowered by seeking to know what I'm getting in to.

It's been a long time since my stroke - lots of hits and misses as far as me being safely engaged in any kind of therapeutic approach. It was as it was and my reason for being active in advocacy and activism is because not one size fits all. 

I hope that makes sense because I'm not very rigid but I am self protective in my approach to finding ways that work and don't work for me.

All the best! Nina

Thanks for clarifying Nina, and reminding me about taking care of the body, as well as the mind in rehab. Finding an activity that's enjoyable helps adherance when movement is so hard.

I'm glad that you found the modes of rehab that work best for you. Like you, it's been a long time since my strokes. Lots of trialling of different therapies & rehab methods. It took a long time & much frustration, but I'm certainly glad that I perservered  because I'm feeling great now. These days, in my counselling, I predominately use the counselling modalities that worked best for me (Person centred therapy, Narrative therapy & Acceptance and commitment therapy) but I'm also aware that we're all different in our recoveries and not all my clients will resonate with these therapies like I did.

Thanks Nina, all the best!

Ryan.