Therapist purposefully triggered a part

Does your therapist purposefully trigger parts? Ours did and then denied that they did. So, I am copying and pasting the interaction and you tell me. Did she purposefully do it or did I read it wrong?
***Trigger Warning***


I had emailed the therapist asking her why a particular part was mad at her and this was the therapist's response:

"M was saying that she was never triggered and that she was the only normal one of the group, so I thought I’d see. I told her that she likely wasn’t triggered and that saving A that night from the guys who were roughing her up didn’t affect her in any way. And guess what? She was triggered. She flew off the handle, used more profanities than ever and told me she was going to get drunk and screw whomever she wanted. I apologized for setting her off, truly believing that she wouldn’t be triggered. She hasn’t communicated with me since."

***End of Trigger Warning****

And when I told the therapist that I didn't agree with her purposefully testing this part, she responded that she "didn't intentionally trigger M". This is verbatim. I didn't leave anything out. What are your thoughts on this? Is this even ethical?

D-

The T says that she believed M would not be triggered. But... In my opitnion, this was not very smart on the part of the T to believe that it is possible for a member of a system, to never be triggered by anything ever.

Systems are based on trauma. We might not realize we have triggers until something sets us off. Being a T, they should have thought about it and should have realized M could have "hidden" triggers -unknown to M herself.

And if the T did it in order to prove a point to M, this is plain cruel and abusive.

I would prefer to believe this was a stupid mistake on the part of a T who did not think it through properly. Though, I am not in the T's head and cannot say for sure if the T did it on purpose, or just acted stupid.

If it was not on purpose, it was stupid, in my opinion.

__
Aragorn.

I agree with Arbre-Monde.

1) When you work with someone with DID, you have to keep in mind the person can have hidden triggers, or denial, or only a partial awareness about their triggers.
2) You have to remember you have multiple parts in front of you, and while the one in control might not be triggered, someone inside could be ; and the part who reacts isn't always the part who's triggered (like, for us, Kal can react with anger to Nico's fear when Nico is triggered).
3) All of this means you should always be ready for a part to be triggered, and sometimes triggered by something that looks totally innocent.

And reading again your post, something came to us : maybe we're wrong, we don't want to assume anything, but the way your T phrased it makes our protectors feel it like "what happened was nothing" or "you didn't feel anything during the event". Did M felt those words this way too ?

Because this would trigger anyone, even "normal" people. It's not provoking the memories of the event, it's denying the emotions she might have felt. It's invalidating her feelings. You can have been afraid or angry or else, and still not have clear triggers about the event ; but I never saw anyone living something violent being told "it didn't affect you" and being able to stay calm, not like that.

A more balanced way to see if she has any trigger would have been to ask her if she was okay to tell her story, and watch for signs of dissociation, avoidance or very strong emotions. It would also allow her to stay in control of the process, to stop if needed, to learn to pay attention to what happens to her emotions and inside the body.

So I don't know if it was on purpose or not, but the one thing I'm sure is : it wasn't handled well and the words were chosen poorly. Does your T have a supervisor ?



My T never trigger us on purpose. Her office is supposed to be a safe place. When she thinks we might have been triggered, she always asks, apologies, and asks if it's related to something she did or said, in order to try to not do/say it again. We're not here to be on guard and ready to switch or dissociate. We here to learn how to relax and manage our emotions.

She always asks for our permission before doing anything. If one part isn't okay with the idea, she will search something else. She never tries to force things on us.

We have been triggered in therapy, but it's rare. Usually, it's because our T and ourselves had underestimated the impact of a memory, or we didn't see how a memory was linked to another one, a stronger one. When we're triggered, it's a group mistake, something none of us were able to predict. None of us were ever angry at our T for this, we know for sure it's not her fault. The only time one of us was angry at her, it was because she was the only being in the room while he was triggered, and it stopped as soon as he was more grounded.

There's also mild trigger reactions that can happen, specially when our T ask about specific things, but it's never to prove anything or to confront us to anything. It's just to check if there's an improvement in an area which could help with the rest of the therapy. She never insists and always make sure we're grounded and calm before the end of the session.

ArbreMonde wrote:The T says that she believed M would not be triggered. But... In my opitnion, this was not very smart on the part of the T to believe that it is possible for a member of a system, to never be triggered by anything ever.

Systems are based on trauma. We might not realize we have triggers until something sets us off. Being a T, they should have thought about it and should have realized M could have "hidden" triggers -unknown to M herself.

And if the T did it in order to prove a point to M, this is plain cruel and abusive.

I would prefer to believe this was a stupid mistake on the part of a T who did not think it through properly. Though, I am not in the T's head and cannot say for sure if the T did it on purpose, or just acted stupid.

If it was not on purpose, it was stupid, in my opinion.

__
Aragorn.

Thank you for that Aragorn. I would like to believe it wasn't on purpose either but with her wording in one her responses, she said "M was saying that she was never triggered and that she was the only normal one of the group, so I thought I'd see." Which feels like she was testing M to see if she would react and she reacted. Badly. If the T hadn't of said what she did...M wouldn't have reacted like she did. I believe the T acted with poor judgement. It's hard to trust someone like this if they are going to use our trauma against us. There are other things that they have done and all by themselves they don't mean much but when you start adding them up.. It screams, "danger". Thank you for helping us to process this.

D

D@bestill2020 wrote:with her wording in one her responses, she said "M was saying that she was never triggered and that she was the only normal one of the group, so I thought I'd see." Which feels like she was testing M to see if she would react and she reacted.

& OKAY. At that point it TOTALLY sounds like she did it on purpose to prove a point. Which is completely and utterly and definitely, morally wrong and medically unethical in my opinion.

& Good luck dealing with her.

& Dang, it really sucks. Finding a T is so difficult (close to impossible in some countries like our!) and when we FINALLY manage to get one, chances are, it's a shirty T. URGH. Good luck. I hope it's the only mistake she'll make and that she'll learn from that and stop behaving that way in the future!

__
Urielle