*TW* Memories of Mistreatment while inpatient

we work a lot on just being ourselves and that it is ok to just be.
which brings up a ton of memories from our stay in a clinic in 2014, just after we had lost a host.
it is not the worst mistreatment that we experienced in clinics, not by the kind of abuse.
but it goes deep and we can remember the pain, the fear, the stress and the helplessness so well.
it is haunting us. and we think it is connected to the progress of learning how to reduce control and relax and be ourselves.
that clinic is in the city where we have therapy. in the first session with our new T we mentioned it and she said she knew the responsible leading therapist. she was fair, allowing our perspective but she also made it clear that she thinks highly of that T. I bet she is good, but what they did to us, the whole team, was not good.
I am not sure if I dare to tell the T about this again tommorrow so I thought I would practice here first.

when we came to that clinic they ignored that we already had a secured DID dx from 2009. they didn't know what to make of us so they sent us to the unit for personality disorders. from then on the whole team was trying to make us have a personality disorder. it was super obvious that not even they could dx us with borderline because we really don't have that at all. but they put OCPD and some other stuff on the list.
one saturday morning, they were sending everyone home over the weekend, I told the doc on duty that I was extremely scared that one of those severe acts of self-harm would happen. she told me I was having compulsive thoughts and if I just didn't think about it I would be fine. it was another part who would sometimes front, cut inside the vagina and watch it bleed, then switch back inside. I wasn't having obsessive thoughts, this has happened a dozen times before and it happened again. she just brushed it off and I never knew whom to talk to about this again.
they told us that we were not authentic. that we should be authentic!! especially the nurses. we were switching all over the place while Asti was trying to not have us draw attention and blend in. we couldn't stay present but she tried to make us conform to all their rules and not show any problematic behavior. all we got was the team telling us that we are not showing our real face and that we should start being authentic.
then we decided to work it out on our own, somehow find a new host, built connections within the core team, get to know the main players. I first heard Astis voice in the hallway of that clinic. the first thing she said was "I am Asti and there will be no drama". she was very clear about trying to stay covert. I was too shocked by how sure she sounded to even be very frightened. when we worked alone to fix ourselves the team kept telling us that we should work with them, that we need to allow them in. all they ever offered was schema therapy.
it didn't fit. they wanted someone to be the 'healthy adult' and we couldn't find that inside. I tried as hard as I could but we kept switching. they tried to teach me how to control the others and Danielle ran away. twice. control doesn't work.
it felt like if we didn't hide everything that was going on inside we would get in trouble. and if we did keep it all locked up they would push us, constantly confronting how we are not authentic.
I think by the end they had us listed for half of the PDs out there but still wouldn't believe the DID and since we had to hide it to not get into more trouble...
another patient there attacked us violently. she saw us switching during a basektball game. I got triggered, Annett stepped to the front to protect. she pushed the other player away from us, realized it was the middle of a game and left the field to calm down. she did everything right. but that woman saw the change and from that moment on she started attacking me whenever she saw me, yelling that one day I would explode with rage and kill someone and that we needed to be locked up because we are dangerous. the clinic team did nothing. they listened to me but only sent me away to fix it myself. they say conflict happens to learn from it. we were scared of getting beaten up by that crazy woman for days and days, she never calmed down, always started yelling and threatening when she saw us. nobody protected us. nobody stood up for us. they just let her do whatever she wanted.
I told them that an ECG could be triggering. I meant, being connected to wires, because we have been given eletric shocks like that as a child. I was scared to dissociate into these flashbacks. the nurse told me that it would be ok if I dissociated, the heart would still be beating and they would get their data anyway. like wtf. nobody cared about the flashbacks.
I was drowning in flashbacks, dozens within an hour. the whole unit was triggering the heck out of me. trying to come to terms with Inside was not helping. I felt like I was going crazy. they thought all that was our general symptoms. like that was what they were supposed to diagnose. we don't have all that stuff they wrote down. we were just showing a trauma reaction to an environment that was not safe for a second, where the nurses were bullying us and the patients attacking us and the Ts were just watching to see if they can diagnose the $#%^ out of us.
we are not like that and we have never been like it again. it was 80% situation, only about 20% us struggling that they were seeing. in any other unit we would have shown different symptoms. with any other approach. with a T who would actually be willing to think outside their little PD box and see that not everyone who comes to that unit actually has a PD.
it was one of these trauma situations where you still have to partner with the T somehow to get through it, somehow pretend like they have nothing to do with how the rest of the unit acts. like it wasn't his fault.
But for 3 months we were struggling to form an inner team with close to zero support from the outside while also being put through intense pressure to be different. and no matter what different was, it was never right.

now I am sitting here and I try to learn that being us is ok and it just doesn't work because all I remember is that clinic where nothing was ok. we were the most not-ok it could get and they kept telling us, that nothing about us is ok. we got on their nerves with constantly being different and constantly trying to not show it.
they even saw that we had different handwriting and I dissociated when they told me. so they just never addressed it again. whenever we showed signs of DID they didn't want to see it. they wanted us to have a PD so badly. I feel so deeply misunderstood.
we struggle to trust Ts to see what is inside. especially since we know that our T is friends with their head-T. she will protect her friend. I have urges to self-harm when thinking that this might turn out the same way as in the clinic. we know our T and we know she is diplomatic. she knows that what works well for others won't work for everyone. I want to believe that she can see that things didn't work out for us. But at the same time I am deeply scared we will somehow face this same impossible pattern again.
I think it is about time to get angry with the responsible clinic T. we always kept good connection, for 3 more years of occational outpatient sessions. I email him sometimes with news. But I might not be able to pretend for much longer that he had nothing to do with all this.
this learning to be angry thing is really difficult.

please do me a favor, don't comment your own stories of mistreatment. thats not what this thread is about. it is about being oneself, being allowed to be that way and getting angry with people who try to change and twist reality to make one fit into their box.

To me being "myself" is also dangerous. For similar reasons. I am myself at home mostly and especially when the children are not around. I just let myself switch as necessary. But hospital appointments (like today), at work, outside in general it's always having to have the best person for the job and trying as much as possible to be "normal" and present some kind of unified continuous person. It's very draining.

Today at the hospital I wasn't expecting a hearing test. I was prepared for poking in my ear. Sitting in the chair I stalled a bit, talking nonsense, and inside I was panicking and asked "who hears the best" the reply was "rabbit" and I don't even know who that is but thought "we'll get rabbit then" Hearing is in normal range. But why did I feel the need to get "the best hearer" why couldn't I just take the hearing test without panicking? They would "do" anything to me if my hearing was bad, my ears are blocked.

I think it stems back to having to be ok as a child. Having to present as "normal" and even now "being yourself" isn't ok because of that fear of someone seeing or noticing "not one person" or "not normal" or "has something wrong" Drawing any kind of attention is or was bad for me as a child. I walked a tightrope of trying to be invisible, mostly to my mother.

So yes it's all the misdiagnoses, the bad treatment, people not understanding what you mean because they're listening from a brain that works completely differently. But it imo or for me anyway it stems back to childhood of "attention or anyone noticing anything about you is bad bad bad"

It's be nice to just be myself. I don't even stand up to the doctor when I'm not trapped in a hospital, I don't get angry but I see where you're coming from and perhaps I should sometimes when appropriate.

That time-period must have been incredibly confusing and scary. I'm so glad you are not in that situation anymore. It really sounds awful; so lonely...

Maybe you can talk about talking about it with your T first. Share that there is something you'd like to share, but you are afraid of her response because it may entail a conflict of loyalty for her. Sometimes it helps to preface things like that. Either way, I hope you got some practise by writing it out like this, like you intended.

I hope you can remember to titrate with the anger and difficult feelings. The anger sounds really rough too. All of this smells like inner conflict to me - activation of all kinds of different responses to try and find a strategy that will help somehow. Seems like you settled on OC, which is an excellent strategy to avoid the full scope of helplessness. You did a really good job surviving, but it doesn't take away the painfulness of it.

Now that we try to reduce the OC the old fears come back. questions whether it is safe with this T.
it was no accident that we became the way we are. by now we are very much the product of our therapy as well as of our past.

Yep, it makes perfect sense. It shows you that it was traumatizing, that you learnt lessons from it. Lessons that helped you at that moment, but also prevent you from comfort now.
Maybe you can go back and look at the work you've done with this T so far. Based on that, how do you think she will respond?

So I talked to the T about this stuff. It kept coming up and it is obviously in the way.
I told her that this happened in therapy in a clinic. I didn't tell her which clinic and that her friend was the chief T responsible for it. It... doesn't matter that much. not the who. just the what and how.
I think it was a helpful conversation.
she pointed out that people act according to the situation. we know the typical bias... we just turn it around. when its others we can see that behavior was in response to the situation, when its us we think the reason for behavior must be a giant character flaw. basically, that clinic unit was war and we tried to survive while there was still nobody we would trust around. of course we acted in difficult ways, confused, all over the place. but that is ultimately not our fault, it is mostly the situation.
I realized that there were needs unmet back then, stuff that got stuck. like being known, being accepted the way I am, being respected...
basically the T says that we need to be that for ourselves. we need to start accepting us, respecting us... what others do doesn't matter as much as the culture we create within. when we cultivate a rich inner life the situation won't bear us down like that. and it won't define us.
I think all this might help to get over the lessons learnd before.
I also wonder if I should write the T who was responsible for us, and what to write. somehow I hope that he can acknowledge that things didn't go so well. but from what I just learned, first I might have to admit it to myself. includig his role. personal sympathy does not excuse him. Damn, at that time he was about the age I am now. it's not like he was very experienced. for him it is easy to say that the situation was the problem. but maybe there is personal fault also.

It just occurred to me the strength of mind it takes to keep saying "this is me" and not accept some other diagnosis because other diagnosis seem easier. But it also occurred to me that it's very dissociating to accept stuff you know is incorrect.

I think it may help your relationship with your T in the long run to mention which clinic and who was running it. Your T is an adult and can see all the angles and put aside her friendship for a moment. She probably knows her friend's flaws pretty well.

I told a former T that the psychiatrist who referred me to her and was her friend and colleague that I had stopped seeing him because he looked us over when we went to therapy one day in a tank top after working out. I knew he was gay and in fact I had sought out a gay therapist, thinking I was gay at that time, but others inside were disturbed at him looking, even if was understandable, and forced us to stop going to him.

Her response was not at all what I expected. She immediately wanted to know if anything happened, like did he make a move or anything. She was protective, she was on our side first. Nothing did happen and in hindsight it wasn't even over the top but it was enough to derail our therapy.

It should help you be able to speak about it completely honestly when it comes up again, without your having to remember to leave out certain details. Your experience was valid as was your upset and outrage.

Frankly, Ts are some of the most flawed people I know and I wouldn't want it any other way. As long as their specific neuroses don't get in the way of helping me, as long as they see my imperfections through the lens of their own, I'm fine with that. We've never felt much affinity for super well-adjusted people anyway,

I will think about it. right now I am not sure if it is helpful to explore more details of the situation.
The T responded with a solid understanding that Ts make mistakes, even mentioned a recent scandal, to point out that it can happen with everyone. that seemed good enough for the moment.

there has been a significant shift in emotions. when all this and a memory from school came up there was mainly deep shame. the understanding that we are a terrible person because we acted so badly in these situations.
the T helped to see that the situation was a major factor that contributed to behavior. it is not a character flaw and it is not our fault that people didn't recognize what they were seeing and didn't treat us like we needed it.
it dissolved the shame, which no doubt was taking the role of a protector here. now I can feel anger, upset and the beginnings of disappointment. I never used to have these feelings, it used to be all shame.

I emailed the T from the clinic team back then. I told him that things didn't go well for us there. I am still practicing how to communicate upset in a way that opens a conversation instead of shutting it down. I was also testing his willingness to talk about it. I don't think that this is something that our current T could solve, we need to talk to the person who was mostly passively watching, and not helping. it is hard for me to admit that the passivity was hurtful, I like him as a person. but what he did, as a bystander, was no less abusive than what the mother did when we didn't intervene or sent us to spend time with family. this is like pulling down my own golden calf, I was always protecting him, telling myself that he did well enough. somehow seeing him like he had nothing to do with the rest of the clinic team. this is a trauma patterns of dissociating reality to protect the mind.

I will continue to follow the thread and see where it leads me. the way it is developing looks good to Mike and Asti, and I am not sure if it will be meaningful if our current T knows these people or not. ultimately, the focus shifted away from the chief T of the unit towards the T who was actually responsible for treating us one on one. as far as I know he has worked in a task force against ritual abuse with our current T but there might not be more of a connection.

this topic is still very active inside us, bringing things up, processing...
we've been writing on blog posts about EMDR lately and what we know today shows so clearly how badly our first experiences with it went. there is not so much shame about these situations as there is anger. it is difficult to allow ourselves to be angry with therapists and to show anger at all. I hope writing things down will help us like the first round did.

in 2008 we went to a clinic. we were still living with the abusive mother. the abuse didn't end until a couple years later. that alone should have been a red flag for any trauma work. they didn't ask, the host back then didn't know much. they didn't realize that they would have to work with a bunch of parts who know way more than the host.
they did the classic EMDR preparation. containment, safe place, a vague idea of grounding. the host was completely dissociated from emotions and body awareness. you don't do trauma exposure with someone who is that dissociated, what were they hoping to achieve?
after just the very basics they started with EMDR. the T leading the whole hospital did the first session. he was a week away from retirement and he probably learned EMDR when it was new and didn't get any further training later.
basically, he used it as desensitization tool, blocking all association. he used the positive and negative cognition to speak them during the process to keep host in a constant state of stress. when the stressed seemed to go down (as it ######6 SHOULD that is the whole point of EMDR!!) he would repeat the negative cognition to plunge us back in. intervalls were endless. today it is taught to keep them short with extreme trauma survivors. whenever the mind associated, like it is supposed to do, he would make us return to the target memory to keep us stuck there. he took all the processing out of it and made it pure exposure. looking at it with our knowledge of EMDR, what he did could hardly be called EMDR, even though there were elements of the standard protocoll. just elements. what he made of it actually kept it from working the way it should, he changed the KEY elements of association and processing.
this session was meant to show my T in that clinic how to do it. that old T left the clinic, the lady following him had just broken her leg. there was nobody there with any trauma training to treat us. she had one ######6 session to pick up the basics and then she was let loose to practice with us. and we were not the only trauma patient there who was suddenly treated by a novice who didn't even get the real training, not even outdated training. just 60 minutes of watching someone with outdated training and weird ideas!
what followed were endless weeks of getting worse and worse. the only treatment we got was DBT and EMDR. no stabilizing sessions in between. just EMDR every week. we kept switching, new parts kept showing up during the bilateral stimulation, the T didn't even realize what she was seeing. Deb almost hit her at some point and she could only just jump out of the way. we got more and more depressed with every week. at some point they told us that they can't send us home because we are not stable enough to survive. we stayed for 22 weeks in the end. it was re-traumatizing every single week.
when they sent us home they sent us back into an abusive family system. only 3 months later there was a big family meeting in the abuser mansion. everything we learned just made this even more hellish.
all this should never have happened. they didn't bother working with the system. they only 'treated' the host. who knew almost nothing. the whole system was in chaos. we lost 50 pounds once we were back home because we couldn't make ourselves eat.
if it had just been DBT, to help with regulation and to avoid more self-harm, that might have been closer to proper treatment.

It was 2014 when we started working with an EMDR T in our town. the only trauma therapist available. she had just finished her EMDR basic training. she didn't know how to change things for complex trauma or DID. she actually avoided the DID topic to an extreme. she never got any training or even consultation/supervision about the DID. she just told me that she doesn't want to see any children and that was it. we keep rules if it costs us our life, a trauma pattern. so when I felt like the system was ready I would let her know and we did a few sessions of EMDR. she did the proper standard protocoll. but she left me alone with everything concerning the system. I knew it was not save to mention what was going on inside. at one point Danielle showed up and she was NOT oriented like she is today. the intervalls made communication easier and she was just yelling at me, blocking progress. we got stuck with that topic. we couldn't tell the T what was happening, mentioning parts was not allowed. losing the only trauma T in town was not an option. the EMDR I did with Thamara worked and it helped. but it was also stressful enough to drain me for months so the system was left to manage without me.
we just read a simple book on EMDR and DID. it was published in 2012. there would have been any chance in the world to open ONE ######6 book and read how to approach these things without killing hosts. but that T avoided the DID so hard she didn't bother opening a single book. she just thought that she would somehow figure it out in case something shows up. and the system felt that she was in over her head so we took the full burden of figuring out how to work as a team all on our own.

we realize that while in treatment there is a tendency to idealize therapists. mostly because we depend on them so much. like we depended on parents. and even when it gets abusive, we... still need to keep that perfect picture in our mind because they are the only help available. years later we are finally able to put these things into words. that was not proper treatment.
today I think that if we are incapable of seeing a Ts weaknesses we are probably stuck in idealizing them somehow.
there are currently only 2 Ts we trust enough to work with them. we know they have the proper training, they constantly get more training to keep up to date with treatment options, they work in teams so there is plenty of feedback and super/intervision. there is no way to be fully safe with a T. but I hope we will be able to recognize when things go terribly wrong now. the idealization seems closely connected to being so terribly dependent and we used to be just that. it makes it so hard to open up now. we are very much the product of our therapy these days. we have changed considerably over the last 4 years.