Penelope's declaration

Penelope declared at therapy that she is never going to go back to Yuckworld. Too bad she has been in it pretty much since Monday. All her behaviors are in the name of "CONTROL." She has lied alot, tried to pick fights with me, not accepting no for an answer, sneaking contraband to camp, totally negative attitude. I know she is trying to cope and I do see an improvement in that from her last visit with her dad, but she is failing and her efforts cause so much anxiety for her, she starts to hyperventilate. I keep trying to cheer her on. But then I am also trying to figure out what else I can do to get her back on track. We are cleaning today. I can see she is getting stronger. But she is trying to dictate what she is and isn't going to do.
While Penelope was in with the one therapist, I met, as usual, with the other therapist to let her know about the visit and how Penelope was doing. I pretty much said the above things. But that I was very proud at her efforts to cope and that this time she actually admits her emotional termoil is due to her visit with her dad. Then her one therapist that does the neurofeedback "brain training" we call it came in after putting Penelope in a play room so the three of us could talk. She wanted us to know that Penelope's anxiety and trauma brain waves (she used more technical language) were very high. I explained again how she has been very hypervigilient sometimes to the point of having a hard time breathing/hyperventilating. But it's manageable. I don't want to call her psychiatrist for more meds. She needs to learn to self-regulate. When I told him of her anxiety levels after the last visit with George, he was concerned about the level of medication not being enough. I only want her medicated enough to function and be safe, not to be numb. One of the goals with the brain training is to help get her off some of her medication. But we have a ways with that. I know what she is like when she isn't on it and we have a ways. She wouldn't be able to go to school without it or get through the day without at least one or two meltdowns.
I told her attachment therapists that my biggest concern right now seeing how hard she is working to cope is how she will be the next time she sees her dad while she is in school. Last school year seemed like a waste of time from a Penelope progressing academically standpoint. I am excited and a little smug about having the school see how different she is going to be this year. I hope - without emotional bombs like seeing her father affecting her. There were a lot of negative reports about her. Issues I can see be in Penelope's past if things go well. But what is going to happen this year? Her lead therapist said that we need to continue to try to push off the next visit until October at the earliest. She'd like Penelope to have 6 good weeks of school before the next visit. I'm not sure how that's going to fly but I'm fine with it. I told her about going to George's therapy appointment 1 1/2 weeks ago. She was on vacation last week so she didn't hear about it. She said she was proud that I went, knowing it had to be hard, but now that the therapist has a better understanding should help it impacts Penelope and quit petitioning for more frequent visits. I told her how his therapist wants me to come to the next session. She doesn't think I should go any more than once every 6 - 8 visits. I've been on the fence about the next visit but I'm thinking I should go and kinda finish what we were talking about and then not go back for a while. There is more to be said to the therapist that she isn't aware of about things. I also want to make sure she truely has the opinion that more frequent visits are not the answer. It sounded like that but she was trying to be as general and non-committal about her opinion as she could be. I want to make sure she understands that we didn't just cut George off cold-turkey from visits. We tried the more structured, less time, visits after her first hospitalization before we cut it off after her second hospitalization. I also want her to know more about where Penelope has been and is at emotionally so she can understand her fragile state. She knows about the abuse now, but that's as far as we got.