Therapy Weirdness: not so mini rant

i don't really know what to make of our therapy at the moment. when i go in for the appointment, i go blank, and i feel like im being blocked from saying what i want to say sometimes (about anything negative going on). I feel like all i can say is good stuff. Granted, my life isn't going horrible atm. Aside from the usual bs, i'm not completely losing my mind, but i often feel like i have stuff i want, or need to say, and then i prepare and try to get stuff all sorted out, but the second i go in to the room *poof* gone.

so i say the good things, and there are good things going on *major yay*, but i dont feel like i'm getting anything out of therapy. when i get flashbacks, i can't talk about them. when something inside happens, can't talk about it without great difficulty. When i discover someone new (or not so new), i get so scared i can't talk about it, or feel like it's not important enough to say.

it's always "what's the point right? what's an outsider going to do, how could they understand?"

Fear of judgement, yes. Fear of being thrown into denial again, major yes. being silenced, yes.

on the bright side, our therapist thinks we're a very able system, well of who we've been able to talk about anyhow

she's a little too quick to say "oh, so you're this -insert wrong role here-", or "oh, so there's 4 of you and one sub-personality, the rest are just... extras". Uh, no... we've had like, 5 sessions or so, you haven't met all of us... *crickets chirp*. What does she expect? for me to just throw around our numbers and names when i don't know her that well? I feel like the higher the number, the less believed im likely to be, even though that's wrong technically i guess? Hell, i've exactly one person our estimated number, or even how many knowns we have, and that's my loving extremely open minded SO.

i guess i'm not seeing the benefit of doing all this therapy if i feel like i still need to hide stuff. i know i'm probably not so weird for a DID person or being with multiple souls that i couldn't tell and be believed, but somehow i have that overpowering thought false or not that prevents me from saying stuff.

rant rant rant rant rant... bright side to all this, diagnosis is slowly getting underway with a psychiatrist. i guess if this doesn't help me in the traditional way of feeling better or whatever, at least it got one ball rolling.

Hugs if wanted. We know the feeling that you can't 'be yourself' in the fact that you can't be completely open and everyone come out and say anything they want to. It took us an awful long time, we managed it through writing down what we'd done each day - very simple but then we felt brave enough to put faces on it so she knew how we'd felt and I didn't have to say anything, she would have a look at it and start conversations which then led onto other things, now we often have days that we are able just to tell her whats been happening without needing it in front of us (gives us the bonus that when we forget things, we have in writing what has been going on as we have no idea!)

I'm starting to wonder if there's even a point to continue therapy as things currently are. i feel like i'm wasting everyone's time.

-- Wed Jul 17, 2013 11:08 pm --

thanks for the hugs debetiole

I so could have written this post when I started therapy like 3 years ago. It pretty much mimics word for word how I felt about it at the time.

The first thing I'd say is, no, you are not wasting time. Even if you feel like you might be. The fact that you have started to recognise that you are consistently not making the most of your therapy is already an important thing for you to be recognising and thinking about how you might try to change this. Ultimately it is this type of reflection that your therapist is trying to guide you towards. It's not like your therapist has the power to make the changes for you, so it's not like they do anything in that respect, they just guide you toward the type of reflection and give you an appropriate environment with which you can make those changes for yourself. Ultimately though, without that outside input that causes you to think a bit differently than you usually would, you might not get into that place of reflection and hence change, so it is worth keeping going.

Already you have recognised two really important things about therapy, which now it will help you to act on. The first is that you are not making the most of your therapy because you go blank about whatever it is you have thought about being important to say and have fallen back on saying the good things that you can think of. You have recognised that you go blank and you have identified some of your thinking processes that might be behind that going blank such as various fears both of her response and of how that response might effect you, questioning whether she could understand, feeling like what you have to say might not be important etc. I think these various fears and questionings are difficulties that we all struggle with from time to time. The important thing though is that we can't learn to overcome our fears without taking risks. We have to take a risk with what we say in order for us to recognise that whatever it was we fear might not necessarily happen or be true.

I've come to think of this hesitancy with saying stuff or just plain forgetting what you wanted to say as avoidance essentially. The most helpful things I've found to conquer it is to write a journal for my therapist expressing some of these things. I write about whatever it is I had thought to talk about but then know I will forget to mention. I write about however it is I'm afraid of him responding. I write about all of these things and then give it to him to read. It has helped decrease my avoidance of topics massively and it has helped with the therapeutic process a lot. I'd definitely recommend you try writing to your therapist and take it to session with you for her to read, even if you only take really small risks with what you decide to write to her initially. It will definitely help in terms of remembering more about what you wanted to say while you are actually in therapy.

The second really important thing that you've identified from your therapy so far is your responses to what she is saying. It's important that you communicate these responses to her in your sessions. If you feel like she is too expectant of you to give her a number or name tell her that. Tell her that you don't feel like she'll believe you the higher the number you say. You can only resolve these type of tensions with your therapist by talking about it. It is more helpful to you if you learn to say, "I'm not comfortable telling you that because I don't feel like you'll believe me" than it is for you to respond in some other non-authentic way. If you tell her how you are feeling like she won't believe you, then she will have the opportunity to actually address this concern of yours openly and that will actually help you in the process of your therapy. She can't do that though if you don't initially take the risk of telling her that you don't feel like she'll believe your number... Or telling her whatever else it is that you might need to about how you think she'll respond to whatever you might say...

Yeah so overall, even though you might not have felt like you have done much with your therapy so far, you actually have. It's already starting to help you identify your thinking and from there you will be able to decide to make some changes in responses to that. This is actually a really positive stage you are sounding like you are at that will most probably lead to a lot of growth. So don't give up just yet.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a detailed response for us . You do make a lot of points, and i realize that i keep my opinions to myself probably way too much when it counts. i would feel so weird being so open about what i was actually thinking, but in the end it might be needed.

one of our issues is i can't speak my mind as clearly as i want to sometimes, and then i end up getting overwhelmed and switching, but no one else in here can speak my mind, they only speak theirs so i'm starting to what i can maybe start working on as far as personal growth goes.

-- Thu Jul 18, 2013 4:01 pm --

You got to get assertive, not rely on us to do the dirty work. Grow a pair and ###$ what she thinks of ya, at least you spoke your mind, not gone home all deflated and feeling silenced.
I got there and told her what I think, even though she was all throwing her wrong guesses at me too. You got to correct her, otherwise she thinks she's right, you know? Then she gets all confused when one of us tries to correct it just because you were too chicken $#%^ to do it when it should have been done.

She tells me she thinks i'm the female version of Birch, I ######6 correct her and explain we're super co-conscious at the moment, so she gets it (not to mention she never even has met Birch for more than a like, a minute, so I'm wondering how the ###$ does she know what he's even like? ). She isn't in our head so how'd she know what's going on in there. It's not like our outside appearance shifts when we do, it's why we got to use words.

Therapy is hard work, and as already stated, you ARE getting something out of it.

I can t add much more, but did want to send you an encouragin hug if wanted.

Nina11

right now im experiencing a lot of issues with communication. i can speak (about 50% of the time anyhow) but when i do something else other than what i want to say comes out of my mouth. i know that there's some of us in here that are doing it, but it feels like it could be me doing it too because of the actions coming from 'me'.
i am trying to get help for a part that's having a really hard time, but when it comes down to speaking to an outside source, my brain goes blank, or i cant form sentences. *tw* it feels like im super high as far as the inability to communicate clearly goes *tw* even right now i know what i want to say, but somehow its like im running into walls trying to say stuff. i know what i want to say, but the second i go to address it, it vanishes.

its making me feel really frustrated and like im wasting people's time, because to them, they see me speaking, but dont know im not saying what needs to be said.

yesterday we had the option to go to an emergency therapy appointment or go to the hospital so we chose the therapy appointment.
some of what we talked about was the being afraid to correct someone when they're wrong, and our therapist said she wants us to correct her and its not seen as rude or challenging authority, but more working together.
we had to tell our caregiver about us due to the crisis events but it ended up going well. our therapist did the explaining and did a way better job than we could have ever done.

*trigger warning - flashbacks, breaking down, SA*

last night i had a really bad 'dream'. i get nightmares every night, but this one was different. i think i unblocked part of the SA that happened to our system, it was a different 'scene' from the ones we usually get.
i cant get it out of my head or feel clean or safe. i want to call my therapist, but we were just there yesterday or the day before (i cant remember) and i don't want to be needy.
i didnt even go through the worst of the SA, i dont know why im getting these images.
i feel sick and scared, and no distractions seem to last long enough, it always comes back to the bad images and feelings from the 'dream'.
i feel so floaty right now, like i never woke up and cant get back down to the body. i feel like a little filthy speck in a huge void.

waking day wasn't bad, but everything feels so tainted now.


-- Sun Jul 28, 2013 8:23 pm --

A lot of us get these flashbacks, even if we didn't go through the experience our selves. I don't know why it is like that either. I've heard of 'sharing the burden' and all, but I'm not sure if that applies to memories.