JayDee
Why not? The object of CBT is not to make the triggers go away (they won't) but to change how you react to them. So if it is working you can simulate a trigger and have it cause panic and stop the panic in it's tracks. Can you do that? Have you not been doing that with your coping and relaxation skills or have you been tolerating it because you thought like many that at the end of the program it would go away never to come back again? Well it can but only if you are ready. So it sounds like you have moved along too fast and aren't ready yet. From all I have seen here you will be, you have the determination. Maybe you need more coping skills specific to your triggers.
Most triggers are non realistic fears and knowing that can be enough. Mantras and changing how you think can be enough but if they are very strong you may need more.
Here is an example: I'm not claustrophobic but I have limited flexibility now so the thought of being stuck in a confined space is terrifying. Instant panic which it draws on from my memory and invariably I start thinking about being stuck in a culvert. My coping skill for this is to use visualization. I take a scene from a movie about little animals using a culvert to cross under a road, add the large culvert here under the road and transpose them onto the situation at the moment and I see myself as a little mouse in a big culvert which changes to me sitting in a big culvert watching the world go by. This gives me time to stop the panic long enough to realize I would never get into a situation like a culvert or any other tight place. It gives me time to realize the trigger was a stupid unrealistic thought.
So can I think of what it would be like to be stuck in a culvert. Yes I can and some times it has absolutely no panic and some times I have to shut it down but the point is that I can do it and have no need to ever fear it again.
The other point is that no matter what it is that is a trigger I can think something to counter it and almost all of it I do subconscious now.
Starting small when simulating panic will put the skills in place where you can and will use them without conscious thought. This may be the most time consuming part of the program, but doing it is the difference between recovery and just getting by. Getting by is fine but it limits your ability and you have more ability than that, we all do, we just need to find it.
It is like exposure, exposure doesn't cure anything but the skills you have so you can do exposure do. Exposure like simulating panic is a test of how well you have these things in place. When you have them well established you will use them without even realizing you have which in turn causes you to have no need to pay attention to the trigger and it fades away, sometimes never to come back again.
Like the saying, "if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it does it make a sound? " Of course it does but if no one hears it is it relevant? Only if you make it so.
Any questions? I hope this helps explain why simulation is necessary.
Davit.
