Alter in love was a mystery to me

Hi Una! Well, you know how easy it is for some of us on the board to remain stuck and unsure of our own perception that things with a particular therapist are not working. There are many reasons why we may need to move on. This one sounds like trust was involved. If a T feels it necessary to redirect a client, they should be able to explain why and should do so overtly, then ask for feedback.

I went to therapy last week feeling pretty strong and jokingly told the T something like "let's get me started on an hour of EMDR." She immediately grabbed the bilateral stims and handed them to me. Now we virtually never start with EMDR, we ease into it. But it really made an impression on me that she was ready and willing to allow me to set the direction and pacing of my own therapy. It felt like respect.

When I visit a new T, I want to give the relationship a fair shot, but how do I really know when it's time to cut our losses? Most therapists are not going to be a good match for most people. I have no stats to back up that claim, just gut feeling. Even a therapist that means well in their own way can do tremendous damage over time by not listening to the client or steering them somewhere they aren't ready to go or don't need or want to go.

I saw a different T with a lot of experience in dissociation a bit over a year ago. She was empathetic, we liked her as a person very much, and I felt we "clicked." However, Sphinx (mainly) had us end it early because she didn't do EMDR and it was the right move.

I wish you the best in finding a new therapist who gets you and is in synch with what you want. In some cases it's comes down to an issue of chemistry.

Good for you, John! This new T of yours sounds like a keeper.

I went to the last therapist seeking help dealing with projections and projective identifications by others onto me. That therapist was no help at all, so I have fallen back on print resources. I am finding guidance re handling projections in some books written for therapists and psychoanalysts. Psychoanalysts write the most about projection.

There are a couple of other to-do items on my treatment plan, and one in particular is bothering me again. The problem of command hallucinations, and what to do about them.

I sometimes hear command hallucinations but as far as I know they do not originate in my system. They do not seem to be alters. I experience them as coming from outside, from the environment. One was nonverbal, a compulsion to write down a message, a command, addressed to another person. Wow was that weird! Others were voices. They have never threatened me nor ordered me to threaten or harm anyone. They always concern the "other man" I so often write about in this thread.

Although I am agnostic, I tried doing what it seems believers would do in this situation: I prayed. "Oh God, why do I hear these voices? Why don't the voices just talk to the other man directly? Why me?!" And immediately my prayer was answered by (this is so ironic!) another voice. It seemed to me to be a new voice. This new voice said "Because you love him." Argh! So I love him. So? Because I love him that is reason for them to use me, or try to, to communicate something to him? But is this a reason for me to oblige them? Who are they? Why should I trust them? What am I supposed to say to him? Or is their plan just to get us into a room alone, and then somehow they will talk to him through me? See, again, I am agnostic: I just don't know! And this is creepy.

The paragraph below is a repeat of something I shared in someone else's thread today (DID Forum: Help with my sig other). As what I shared is part of my story, it belongs here too.

I have DID and I am married. On the whole I am very happily married. And yet part of me wants a divorce, doesn't want to be married to anyone ever, and more than once has told my husband so. From what I have written above [in the other thread] you might think that my husband, hearing me say I want a divorce, should promptly make it so. But remember that I also said the DID person's internal conflicts are their problem, not anyone else's. My husband does not want a divorce, and that is his answer to me: if I want a divorce then it is up to me to make it so. My internal conflict over this sometimes causes me fits, but the fact that I am able to experience the conflict, to "hold" it, is a huge step forward for me. That reflects a level of internal communication among my self states that formerly did not exist. Formerly they were compartmentalized. I would be all in, then there would be a switch and I would be all out. I would just walk away from any conflict and move on to something else.

thanks for sharing this concept about letting the conflict just be.

I have been working on this... not making rash decisions due to cognitive dissonance. I used to just want to eliminate whatever made me feel conflicted. Now, I am working on taking time to make those kinds of decisions. I hate feeling conflicted. It is a comfort to know other people are working on that too.

BeccaBee (and others):

My favorite author on the topic of resolving internal conflicts, and making choices more generally, is Dr. David Schnarch. His most popular book is Passionate Marriage: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Emotionally Committed Relationships.

And I want to mention again my all time most helpful self-help resource: Ms. Byron Katie's books and Judge Your Neighbor worksheets.

Time to update this thread!

I have this coworker who has a problem with telling lies. Or confabulations? Or both? Also there have been incidents of witnessed inappropriate behavior followed by blanket denials and then admissions of amnesia. I provided the DES and the coworker volunteered the score. It was much lower than normal and improbable given what I had observed. Now I am seeing and hearing reports of apparently out of character behavior, a combination of insubordinations and inappropriate assertions of authority which seem to be all of a kind, reflecting a domineering bully ego state.

I am sure many readers can see where I am going with this. The index of suspicion for this coworker having DID is getting higher and higher.

I feel no obligation to help or protect this coworker. I have been up front about myself and I have provided the DES. That is more than enough.

After writing my last post I suddenly remembered I also had a dream about this coworker, recently. It was a memorable dream but at first I remembered only that I described it in detail to my husband the following morning. He remembers that I told him a dream about the coworker but neither of us could remember any details. I wish I had recorded it in my journal. Now the details are coming back to me, slowly. Amnesia sucks and recovering memories is hard work.

Other people rarely appear in my dreams, so that alone was notable. And then there was what the coworker did in the dream, which was also notable and relevant to the coworker's odd behavior in person but I won't share here except to say it is uncanny how much coworker reminds me of Other Man.

Should I acknowledge the identity alteration when I see it? Should I address the collective person? Or does my coworker need to maintain the facade?

Setting aside for the moment the question of Who am I?, here is an update on "me." Lately Una and Alter 2 have been mixing it up in odd ways. One result has been some out-of-character behavior "glitches." It is very apparent that integrating these two parts will require our resolving the question of whether I stay married.

There was also an embarrassing amnesia last week. I tried to call a colleague to discuss something important and when he called me back I could not remember what I wanted to discuss. I could have kept that to myself by, for example, not taking the call or saying I was in the middle of something and I would call back. But I didn't. Instead I made a point of saying I was experiencing an amnesia. As usual, trying to remember gave me an extremely painful migraine type headache. But after a while I did remember. Yes!

Yeah amnesia is no fun. I am always forgetting things now days, and I used to have excellent memory. Anyway, just wanted you to know I have been reading your updates, and it sounds like you are getting better. Hope you figure everything out with your husband and what not. And good luck with the integration.

is alter 2 still in love with the other man?