JeffreyWKramer
01-12-2007, 02:26 PM
As always, when I talk at all about my work, some information in the following account is changed, and a lot is omitted, for purposes of confidentiality and in order to preserve client privacy.
EDIT: I forgot to mention, when first posting, that (as is sadly common when I discuss my work) this case discussion does include some rather graphic comment. Those easily distressed by discussion of trauma should read with caution.
A client I’ve been working with for a short while brought up something rather different during one of her most recent appointments. She stated at the outset that she was reluctant to talk about it, for fear I’d think her nuts – or “even more nuts,” in her typically self-deprecating manner. Finally, though, she came out with it.
“I think the place I moved into is haunted.”
She stated that she’s never really thought much one way or another about ghosts, but how, since moving in to a different home right at the end of December, she’s been experiencing lots of unusual feelings and sensations. She said that while she was in the process of moving in, she “picked up bad vibes – what a cliché,” in one room, and got the sensation of “an evil presence” in another. She said she’d occasionally get a chill or a sense of dread or “a déjà vu sort of feeling”, and that since moving in, she’s had more trouble than usual sleeping, and more nightmares than usual – this from someone that suffers from chronic insomnia, partly due to chronic nightmares, in the first place. She admitted she felt silly thinking about this as “ghosts or evil spirits”, but that she felt very troubled, didn’t know what to do, and thought she might have to move.
When she asked me what I thought about this, I told her I wanted to hear a lot more about these experiences and feelings… where did she feel these various things, and what were these places in the house like, and more specifics about the feelings and sensations. As she answered those questions, the pieces started falling into place – for me, and in fairly short order also for her – and it turned out, not surprisingly, that what she was dealing with was not ghosts at all, but rather something all too real.
This client came to me with complaints of chronic depression, feelings of inadequacy and difficulty trusting and opening up to others, all of these relating strongly to an experience of lots of abuse while growing up, most prominently by a rather sadistic older brother. Said abuse was psychological, sexual and physical in nature. Somewhat amazingly, given the trauma she experienced, she didn’t qualify for a formal diagnosis of PTSD – no flashbacks, not much in the way of intrusive memories, not enough of various other symptoms to qualify for that diagnosis – but she did have a lot of nightmares and was both very jumpy and very sensitive regarding personal space, and she sometimes thought more than usual about her past, and became unusually depressed, when something reminded her of or forced her to think about her past abuse experiences. Mostly, though, her abuse impacted how she thought about herself and how she'd learned to relate to others - or failed to do so - more than it involved direct intrusion of unpleasant thoughts and feelings into her day-to-day life.
As I got her talking about her new home and these strange feelings and sensations, and describing various aspects of the new house and whether there were any elements to the place – and to the specific rooms where she got these odd sensations - that reminded her of her unfortunate childhood experiences, it quickly became apparent that she was haunted not by the spirits of the dead or by malevolent demonic entities, but rather by subtle reminders of her past abuse – a walk-in pantry that closely resembled the big closet in which she was sometimes abused, the low-ceilinged upstairs bedroom that reminded her of the guest room over the garage where she was sometimes taken for rape sessions, the dark corner of one room that recalled how dark her brother had always kept his room, etc. It didn’t take very many questions for that proverbial light to come on in her head.
From there, we talked about what she could do about this. I suggested two things: 1) when experiencing these sensations, focus on grounding herself in the here and now by focusing on things other than the sensations, and on reminding herself that the place she was in now, while reminding her of the past, was not the same place, and 2) working on changing the appearance of problem parts of the home via decorating, repainting, changing lighting and so on. At her most recent appointment – this week – she reported that she’d followed through with these sensations, and that they seemed to be working wonderfully, because the “haunting” sensations had stopped completely. She said, though, that even before she did most of the redecorating, just being aware that this was just a case of subtle cues triggering below-the-surface memories seemed to make all the difference in the world. When she got home from that earlier session, she was able to face things as for what they were, because the sensations, no longer being mysterious, were still unpleasant but not really scary.
Now, this sort of thing doesn’t even come close to explaining all the things that people experience as possible encounters with ghosts or the supernatural, but I’m nonetheless guessing such psychological factors count for at very least a good chunk of such reports. I’m also thinking that a lot of people could be spared a lot of pain and confusion - not to mention a lot of flim-flammers and frauds put out of business - if more people weren’t predisposed, by lots of cultural factors, to think of more real-world, naturalistic explanations rather than jumping immediately to supernatural oogy-boogy explanations for any weird and unpleasant experiences.
EDIT: I forgot to mention, when first posting, that (as is sadly common when I discuss my work) this case discussion does include some rather graphic comment. Those easily distressed by discussion of trauma should read with caution.
A client I’ve been working with for a short while brought up something rather different during one of her most recent appointments. She stated at the outset that she was reluctant to talk about it, for fear I’d think her nuts – or “even more nuts,” in her typically self-deprecating manner. Finally, though, she came out with it.
“I think the place I moved into is haunted.”
She stated that she’s never really thought much one way or another about ghosts, but how, since moving in to a different home right at the end of December, she’s been experiencing lots of unusual feelings and sensations. She said that while she was in the process of moving in, she “picked up bad vibes – what a cliché,” in one room, and got the sensation of “an evil presence” in another. She said she’d occasionally get a chill or a sense of dread or “a déjà vu sort of feeling”, and that since moving in, she’s had more trouble than usual sleeping, and more nightmares than usual – this from someone that suffers from chronic insomnia, partly due to chronic nightmares, in the first place. She admitted she felt silly thinking about this as “ghosts or evil spirits”, but that she felt very troubled, didn’t know what to do, and thought she might have to move.
When she asked me what I thought about this, I told her I wanted to hear a lot more about these experiences and feelings… where did she feel these various things, and what were these places in the house like, and more specifics about the feelings and sensations. As she answered those questions, the pieces started falling into place – for me, and in fairly short order also for her – and it turned out, not surprisingly, that what she was dealing with was not ghosts at all, but rather something all too real.
This client came to me with complaints of chronic depression, feelings of inadequacy and difficulty trusting and opening up to others, all of these relating strongly to an experience of lots of abuse while growing up, most prominently by a rather sadistic older brother. Said abuse was psychological, sexual and physical in nature. Somewhat amazingly, given the trauma she experienced, she didn’t qualify for a formal diagnosis of PTSD – no flashbacks, not much in the way of intrusive memories, not enough of various other symptoms to qualify for that diagnosis – but she did have a lot of nightmares and was both very jumpy and very sensitive regarding personal space, and she sometimes thought more than usual about her past, and became unusually depressed, when something reminded her of or forced her to think about her past abuse experiences. Mostly, though, her abuse impacted how she thought about herself and how she'd learned to relate to others - or failed to do so - more than it involved direct intrusion of unpleasant thoughts and feelings into her day-to-day life.
As I got her talking about her new home and these strange feelings and sensations, and describing various aspects of the new house and whether there were any elements to the place – and to the specific rooms where she got these odd sensations - that reminded her of her unfortunate childhood experiences, it quickly became apparent that she was haunted not by the spirits of the dead or by malevolent demonic entities, but rather by subtle reminders of her past abuse – a walk-in pantry that closely resembled the big closet in which she was sometimes abused, the low-ceilinged upstairs bedroom that reminded her of the guest room over the garage where she was sometimes taken for rape sessions, the dark corner of one room that recalled how dark her brother had always kept his room, etc. It didn’t take very many questions for that proverbial light to come on in her head.
From there, we talked about what she could do about this. I suggested two things: 1) when experiencing these sensations, focus on grounding herself in the here and now by focusing on things other than the sensations, and on reminding herself that the place she was in now, while reminding her of the past, was not the same place, and 2) working on changing the appearance of problem parts of the home via decorating, repainting, changing lighting and so on. At her most recent appointment – this week – she reported that she’d followed through with these sensations, and that they seemed to be working wonderfully, because the “haunting” sensations had stopped completely. She said, though, that even before she did most of the redecorating, just being aware that this was just a case of subtle cues triggering below-the-surface memories seemed to make all the difference in the world. When she got home from that earlier session, she was able to face things as for what they were, because the sensations, no longer being mysterious, were still unpleasant but not really scary.
Now, this sort of thing doesn’t even come close to explaining all the things that people experience as possible encounters with ghosts or the supernatural, but I’m nonetheless guessing such psychological factors count for at very least a good chunk of such reports. I’m also thinking that a lot of people could be spared a lot of pain and confusion - not to mention a lot of flim-flammers and frauds put out of business - if more people weren’t predisposed, by lots of cultural factors, to think of more real-world, naturalistic explanations rather than jumping immediately to supernatural oogy-boogy explanations for any weird and unpleasant experiences.