Therapy Question

So. I have known about a month that I indeed am a very complex individual. So far I have told three people. None of which is my therapist. So. How do I tell her? None of us know. We have been brainstorming and we've got nothin. No one is aposed to telling her we just aren't sure where to begin. I have been seeing her for three years. This may go one of two ways. One. I tell her and shock the sh** of her. Or. She already knows. I'm not really prepared for either response.

I'm sure there is someone who has some advice for this newbie... We would appreciate it. We see her Thursday.

Thanks,
S

Try putting it in an email and asking her to read it before you session.

When I first went to my T I had a journal going and she read all that before our first meeting. I write a journal each week and email it to her the night before. She knows all my little dark secrets!

Isnt that terrifying? I'm so nervous. That is a good idea though. I can be completely honest if I'm not looking at her. Why do I feel like I'm going to be scolded? This isn't my feeling either. I am reLly nervous.

When I finally broke down and called to make my first T appointment it devastated me. I spent the day crying. I think, at least for me that it was hard to ask for help. I had never done that before. That was the the last time i have felt emotion myself. Switch maybe? This part of me came out to deal with all this perhaps. My T says i do everything right as far as dealing with all this. She is pleased.

Most of us are raised in an environmental where if we asked for help we thought we or somene we cared about would be killed, due to threats by our abusers. Those are the dreams i have now since i go to T and write on this online group about the abuse i never mentioned all my life.

There is probably a huge list of reasons you could write down as to why its hard.

That is why writing it and sending it off is the easiest. She knows, but you dont have to face her to tell her.

I told my therapist the day I met her for the first appointment. She looked surprised a bit but she is an excellent therapist and she comforted me with the idea that we would work together as a team to archive a healthy mind.

For us, we make sure our T's come to the conclusion themselves. Our first T came to the conclusion only after we had stopped seeing her. Our second came to the conclusion a few weeks after we saw her. And our third T kept jumping around. He was hesitant about it. But mostly we just talked about D.I.D. and their opinions of it. We talked about movies and books that related to it. We talked about research we had done. We basically guided them to see us, but made sure we didn't out-right say we thought we had D.I.D. Eventually our third T said, "I know you don't like the idea, but what would you think if you had D.I.D.?" I got very angry with him actually and told him, "I'd be furious and I'd tell you that that is stupid." He asked, "Why?" And I said, "Because then I wouldn't be able to get into the career I want. Because I know the past of those people." "Not all people with D.I.D. have abuse in their past." "I know that." "I know you know that." "Because I don't have it, that's why!" It took me forever to accept the term. I still don't appreciate him using it. He stopped for a while. We kept using "my people" and "others" and "taking the driver's wheel", but then one of the other alters came out and told him we were ready to start using the terms (D.I.D., switching, alter, etc.). And we are ready. We've accepted it. It still sucks though... We've accepted the label, but not the cause. I'm rambling... my apologies.
~Banna~

We went through this exact sort of thing last week, actually.

We'd been seeing our current therapist for about a month and couldn't figure out how to explain things about our life to her without explaining "us". So we made an agreement to tell her, even though we were extremely scared to do so because we didn't want to seem crazy or risk telling her and having her not believe us. Flat out telling her was out of the question as that would have been so stressful we couldn't have done it.

We ended up writing things about us and our dissociation on three sheets of paper. The first one just mentioned how severe 'my' dissociation and time loss was, the second described things in greater detail and explained that 'I' became different people at different times, and the third one explained a specific event in great detail that included the names of the four who had switched during it. We started off our session by telling our therapist "There's something I've written that I'd like to show you." We figured we could show her whichever pages we were comfortable with. For example, if we chickened out we could just hand over page one which only included a bit more information on things we'd already talked about.

In the end, we gave our therapist all three pages. She had a lot of questions for us and it took a long while to explain to her that it wasn't just that 'I' acted differently in different situations, but that it was actually multiple personalities sharing the same body. She finally had an ah-ha moment and said: "So, you're like a spaceship! You all exist in the same thing but there's lots of different crewmembers who take turns being captain!" Close enough.

Even though it went pretty well, telling our therapist was really hard. We were panicking as she read the papers, wondering what she would think and what she would say. We psyched ourselves up that it would inevitably end in disaster and honestly struggled to not run out of the room while we were waiting. We had thought about sending her an email instead or just giving her the papers at the end of the session, but the anticipation would have been too much. Giving them to her face-to-face allowed us to face our fears and actually talk about things we never thought we'd be telling anyone ever. Even though it was difficult, we're confident it was for the best. After all, how much can someone truly help you if they don't understand what your issues really are? Or the extent of them? If you've been seeing your therapist for three years, we'd guess that she probably has at least some idea of what you're going to tell her.

However you decide to go about telling your therapist, we wish you the best of luck!

SeekingTheTruth (Banna) wrote:Because then I wouldn't be able to get into the career I want.

What career is that?

How did it go?

Hi, was your appointment last thurs or this thurs? If it was last thurs hope it went well.

tylas wrote:Try putting it in an email and asking her to read it before you session.

When I first went to my T I had a journal going and she read all that before our first meeting. I write a journal each week and email it to her the night before. She knows all my little dark secrets!

I think writing things down can be a good idea, cause sometimes if one alter takes over it can be difficult, depending which.

btw, i like the people wrapped in each others arms avatar.

smflottemesch wrote:Isnt that terrifying? I'm so nervous. That is a good idea though. I can be completely honest if I'm not looking at her. Why do I feel like I'm going to be scolded? This isn't my feeling either. I am reLly nervous.

Sounds like one of your alters feels like they are going to be told off for telling her about the DID, or is maybe used to being scolded or rejected for sharing your feelings maybe you could tell her how you feel about that before you tell her about the DID, it might help in more than one way ?