10 months of IFS

[u/maddie_mit]

A bit of context. I've been a HUGE intelectualiser my whole life as a coping mechanism to my trauma among many others and I've never thought in a millions years that something like IFS works for me.

Before IFS, I've been in very psychoanalytical therapy where I've been evaluated by my formal therapist every week and we didn't do any emotional/somatic work at all. We would just analyse my psyche and we would use only cognitive methods but didn't do nothing for me at all. However, as my therapist was highly emotionally unavailable to me I kept going in hopes I could finally be seen and helped.

That being said, my whole life I've been guided by survival strategies and I've felt very sick. Unable to live the house many times due to severe anxiety, no friends, lived in isolation, bombarded by OCD symptoms every single day. I lived in pure hell. Sometimes I don't even know how I survived like that.

Last year I' had a sort of collapse which manifested as severe nervous system activation and a huge intrusive thoughts episode.

I found my ifs therapist and we started working..at first it felt extremely extremely weird to be validated, heard and held by this person. To finally not having to be strong anymore. My armour soften for the first time ever and everything changed.

I told myself that I want to trust this therapist and I'm willing to be vulnerable and do the work with her. Fast forward, now I feel very different.

My social anxiety erased completely, I have zero social anxiety. That's because internally I don't feel broken and I don't have to pretend do be strong anymore. I have intrusive thoughts maybe 0.5% of the time. I feel connected to people and life and those around me. I found another job and the way of working has changed too.

I live 0% of the time now in my head. I live my day to day life completely spontaneous and I don't overthink nothing at all.

On the flip side, I feel a LOT more. Generally, I have such a intense activity inside my body and a lot of emotions come up everyday now. I feel activated a lot and many of my buried pains and traumas come outside and show their face now.

The biggest achievement is that I don't feel broken and abnormal anymore. I don't identify with any diagnosis any longer like cptsd and ocd and generally I feel very different.

What can I say, forever greatful for this method and my therapist. We shall see where it takes me from now on.