Apparently my therapist went to a seminar last week and wants to start a new type of therapy with me called IRRT.
This is what little I could find about it on the internet:
Healing Childhood Sexual Abuse
Memories with Imagery Rescripting
and Reprocessing Therapy (IRRT)
Memories are often encoded as images
and sensations inaccessible via language
alone. Learn how to use a powerful
imagery-based/experiential treatment
to help clients address unresolved
memories. Dr. Smucker demonstrates
a method combining imaginal reliving,
mastery imagery, and self-nurturing
imagery with cognitive processing to
promote healing.
Mervin R. Smucker, PhD
Everything I’ve found online is directed toward professionals looking to learn this new technique and not toward patients/clients describing what one can expect during this treatment.
My therapist said that we would need 2 hours together. I already see her an hour per week so our first 2 hour session is scheduled for the 9th of October from 11AM - 1PM. I’m thinking I may need to skip group that day to process the session more fully. She told me that its based on visualizing less stressing traumas and working my way to perhaps the worst of them slowly. She’ll talk me through the visualizing and such and its two hours long to make sure that she can get me stable before the end of the two hours.
She said that it will be more complicated because of the DID and that we have to make sure that I don’t have any sever dissociative episodes where I end up blacked out for a whole day or anything of that nature. I agreed to work with her. Anything is worth trying. I’ll be her first, or one of her first clients to work on this technique with since her class or whatever she took this past Thursday. So we’ll sort of be working together which I’m more than willing to do. I’m her first case of DID and probably her last seeing that its rare and what not — not easily detected due to the lack of education in the field of psychiatry and psychology.
But anyway…has anyone ever heard of or had any experience with this technique? I haven’t heard of it until today so now I’m curious. I know that EMDR has been good for some and horrendous for others. So I’m a bit apprehensive and still excited at the same time I suppose.
But my attitude is that anything is worth trying once. The mind is the last frontier in terms of the medical research, so trying anything new seems reasonable to me. Researchers know so little and 100 years ago they were digging holes into peoples skulls for christ’s sake. Furthermore, the field of Dissociation doesn’t go back much further on a serious level than 20 - 15 years ago as far as honest scientific research is concerned.
Anyway, wish me luck.
Hope Sent,
~ Ani
September 26, 2007 at 8:55 pm
we can honestly say we never heard of it but we are not up on the latest in the world of mental health care, like you said whatever works!! Good luck on this new route but also remember to be honest with yourself and your T, if it doesn’t feel right or does, go with your gut feeling.
peace and blessings and hugs
keepers
November 28, 2007 at 10:45 am
I have been using IRRT for about a year with good success. However, it can be very distressing at time for the patient - things will often feel worse before they feel better, which is often the case when working with trauma. It is especially recommended when a person’s primary emotions about a traumatic event are more than just fear. If you have feelings of shame, disgust, anger, self-hate, this may be a good modality.
April 13, 2008 at 3:10 am
I’ve been reading the IRRT book, “Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment for Adult Survivors of Childhood Trauma: Imagery, Rescripting and Reprocessing” by Mervin Smucker.
I’m just doing some of the exercises myself for my own past trauma stuff. I have had a fair amount of CBT treatment in the past. I have gotten excellent results so far, in that it gives a process of modifying internal images. Its strange how it seems basically no therapists would even consider this process, Exposure, and then Rescripting the images. Well, all I can say is I have gotten a lot of value from it.
November 12, 2008 at 5:04 pm
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