starting therapy...well perhaps

Hi,

I'm meeting a therapist on Monday for the first time to talk about this stuff. I've spent a lot of time thinking about why I want to do it and hopefully what I can gain. Only problem is I'm so very very nervous and I'm not even sure if I'll be able to talk to the person let alone share anything with them. I'm not sure if the more recent flashbacks, which were about mind games that they used to play, are adding to this and to my feelings about trusting others and myself.

I guess also most of the time I kinda feel that the having different parts and the extremity of stuff in the past just seems like something I've made up. I mean I know stuff went on but the extent and entirety of it has been a recent thing over the last 6 months or so. I'm worried that I'll turn up and end up saying thank you for your time but there is nothing wrong with me or I made the whole thing up cause I'm a bit mad, crazy and totally untrustworthy like that.

any advice would be really helpful, even if its sharing how you felt when you met someone for the first time re this kinda thing. Thank you

This isn't so much about what to state at therapy but I've found it really stabilizing to keep in mind, actually make a list, of evidence I'm aware of that I have DID. Because over and over again, even recently, I fall back to the suspicion that maybe I'm just making this up. I have a list in my head about what evidence I have that cannot be written off as something else. Foggy, unbelievable memories that someone outside the body has confirmed for me. Odd behaviors or thinking patterns that do make sense in the context of DID, my alters, and the remembered abuse, but don't outside that context. Things my alters have told me that I never had any clue about that turned out to be true. But the strongest evidence I've had are [1] the flashbacks of things that happened and [2] the overwhelming emotions that are triggered for an alter and which are expressed in the body but which I have absolutely no connection to or clue about or control over. Some of the latter I haven't yet figured out but the reasons for most become clear over time. I believe it's critical to have these anchors, and have them written down to remind yourself, of what you absolutely know sometimes to be true, but other times are sure you're making up.

The only alternative explanation I could possibly have for everything I've experienced regarding DID, my alters, and the memories of abuse is that that I had somehow, for unknown reasons, internally constructed a vast puzzle of the span of my life and a cast of characters, all secret to my conscious self, and that I had placed a multitude of clues in the past waiting until I reveal, sometimes decades later, information that solves parts of my made-up puzzle. Add on top of that that I am able to generate spontaneous and extreme emotions and bodily wrenchings that take me by surprise so that I can "pretend" I'm having flashbacks of DID -- and -- that this grand construction is entirely consistent over time. I would also need to somehow get other people to buy into my whole made-up scheme (and not be aware of having done that) and convince them, at appropriate moments, to play their part in confirming parts of the whole confabulation as real. If so, I am the greatest (and most pointless) storyteller in the history of humanity.

You would say there's nothing wrong with you, or is that fear you have that the therapist will say that?

You go through periods of denial like a lot of us on here seem to do. But that denial doesn't make the experiences you have any less important or significant. It just means we beat ourselves down with the denial rake at times which actually makes it worse for ourselves but we can't help it.

If you go in there consciously aware that you might shut down and not say anything then you can try and do everything in your power to combat that. Perhaps even start by warning the therapist that that might happen. I've always been an open book with my life to anyone who wants to know or listen. It never reallly has been a problem with me to open up to therapists with what has been going on for me, it was dealing with their reactions that always was the issue.

Remember you are going into that initial therapy session interviewing her as well. To see if she is a good fit to you. You may be able to sense things in the air like I do. I know when someone just is not going to be a good fit for me, and so I don't waste their/my time. Simple as.

I wish you the best of luck and I hope it is a very refreshing experience for you,

Bourbon