keep on keeping on

we're sorry you're dealing with all that stuff. we totally relate to how being alone goes from like the default to feeling actually lonely. we're coming up on 2 years of not leaving home unless we had to, of not being able to connect with people outside a few rare specific ocasions & its really rough.

we really hope things improve for you, & for everybody who wants to stop being alone!

thats exciting about trying to get something published! we wish you all the success in that! and thats good news about the relationship with your T. we hope that stuff it brings up isn't bad tho? like we hope things are going ok with the T.

and sorry you're not feeling wel today. we relate to that too, anhedonia or whatever its called. we hope you find something fun, or at least something pleasant to make your day better

We are making great progress with Tara. By now she can stop a reenactment when we tell her to notice how it really feels. She seems to be in a bit of a trance when it happens and when she makes an effort she can sense that it really doesn't feel good and is able to stop.
We learned that there is an abuser part telling her what to do once we got close enough to actually hear it too. more work I am not happy. But it can explain how she even gets caught in that behavior. We are working on creating an inner helper and a safe place for her. she really does carry attachment cry like nobody else in our core team. she goes nuts when she realizes we are alone. that is why the helper is more important for her than anyone else. we are working on combining elements of a real person with a fictonal charakter and try to figure out how Mike can help.

I am super stressed and there isn't enough to balance my own mood. this work is hard. life is not fun. I feel so deeply unhappy so often. Our T did not help when she said stuff that sounded very much like 'this will go on forever, you will never get better'. she didn't mean that. She meant that this is a long-term thing and I need to establsh a life that makes it possible to do this long-term. but what she actually said was so discouraging it is insane.
My current homework is to examine my coping behavior to see what is dragging me down, what is doing nothing but numbing or distracting and what could possible give me energy and joy. I am not good at joy. and I know very little that I do enjoy. so that will be an interesting task.

right now I wish Asti could do all our sessions. she was very good at working with the T. it feels like whenever I am front there is misattunement. she didn't even realize she wasn't talking to Asti and wanted feedback for last session when she knew I had withdrawn because the topic was too triggering. there surely are ups and downs in this T relationship.

birdsong87 wrote:she really does carry attachment cry like nobody else in our core team. she goes nuts when she realizes we are alone. that is why the helper is more important for her than anyone else. we are working on combining elements of a real person with a fictonal charakter and try to figure out how Mike can help.

That sounds intriguing. How do you combine elements like that? We seem to always be dealing with disappointment that our T is not identical to the ideal imaginary person that we conjured up as a child--someone who is always present and understands us perfectly. Sometimes the T merges with that ideal when he is very attuned to us, but then he makes mistakes and disappoints the littles again, and we're left feeling completely alone, and like we're better off without the T and just with the "imaginary person." But maybe you're talking about something different here.

birdsong87 wrote:Our T did not help when she said stuff that sounded very much like 'this will go on forever, you will never get better'. she didn't mean that. She meant that this is a long-term thing and I need to establsh a life that makes it possible to do this long-term. but what she actually said was so discouraging it is insane.

You can let her know how you felt about what she actually did say, and have her restate it so you can hear the right words in her voice. Then you won't have the previous misspoken words echoing in your head as much.

birdsong87 wrote:right now I wish Asti could do all our sessions. she was very good at working with the T. it feels like whenever I am front there is misattunement. she didn't even realize she wasn't talking to Asti and wanted feedback for last session when she knew I had withdrawn because the topic was too triggering. there surely are ups and downs in this T relationship.

That sounds hard. I'm sorry you're going through that right now. Maybe you can let the T know about this and figure out together how she can be better attuned to you.

@TheGang, did you create this ideal therapist inside to be a helper for younger parts, what the kids call NPC these days? or is it just an ideal, an idea you want him to live up to?
What we are working on is an inner helper who is created to match personal needs. We take elements that we have experienced as helpul and try to give a shape to them. From our clinic T we take only the aspect of feeling seen (as a whole) and deeply understood and accepted. Because we have the experience stored in our memory we are able to use it in imagery. that is different from an ideal image of someone.

I think we need to talk to the T about transference again. that was the main problem, she sounded like the mother who never believed in us. She also confused reducing pressure and snuffing hope. We need hope, even if it sounds unrealistic. She cannot mess with hope. that isn't therapeutic. our hope is not unrealistic, it just takes a long time to get there. our prognosis is actually really good and I don't understand why she feels the need to keep hope small there. Unless it is a mother-transference issue. We are done with people who try to keep us small.

I am sorry things are so hard for L. I felt such a relief that our session went well. former Ts kept saying that I sabotage things or that I am too controlling or don't allow them to do their job. It felt good to see that is works out well, that we can speak openly and that we are very productive. it just sucks if she expects that from L and doesn't realize that she needs to approach her differently. she is not all mind. she needs encouragement a lot. not people telling her she won't ever be better.

our T is kind of weird. she talks through things that went wrong with us. but she rarely apologizes. she does when she made an obvious mistake but when she thinks she didn't have a chance to do better she just doesn't. she just makes sure to do better next time. I actually think that it is more important than just promising something and never changing anything. I am just not sure what she is modelling there. repair on both sides but without the kind of submission we are used to? we both put in the work, that is pretty clear. we both work on repair too.

she took extra time to help me with a new symptom that showed up, making sure to be very thorough. it did show how incredibly experienced she is. she just knows so much more than we do. I think we got on top of things again. there just might be yet another part...

birdsong87 wrote:she rarely apologizes. she does when she made an obvious mistake but when she thinks she didn't have a chance to do better she just doesn't. she just makes sure to do better next time. I actually think that it is more important than just promising something and never changing anything.

That makes sense, and doesn't sound weird to us. And it's great that she adapts and changes in order to do better!

I guess you're feeling more connected to her again? If so, I'm glad you were able to repair things.

you know how we have a more german kind of working relationship... she did incredibly well taking time and being thorough with the problem I had. it helped me a lot to remember that she is very much unlike my mother. And she blew me away when she came to her conclusion without me having to tell her about our suspicion first. It means she was actually able to make more sense of my experience than me, which is rare these days. it took me 2 weeks to even get to the suspicion... so our working relationship is very much restored. it doesn't mean that I suddenly developed personal closeness.
it just was a very much textbook-like session where we were able to analyse the symptoms, get ideas how to get more important info, made sense of what we knew and developed a plan on how to continue. the kind of session we appreciate. I think she is very good at meeting our needs in that. and doing it without making us feel inferior.
she is actively encouraging emails on our side now, seeing that it really does help. the agreement is that she won't write back, that is her boundary, but that we can use it to help her prepare for the next session and to give feedback. she is asking about feedback regularly these days to make sure she is helping those who talk to her and that nothing the others feel about it gets lost.
its small steps but we are getting a bit closer to being able to express ourselves more freely, like we can do with our clinic T.

That all sounds very positive. I'm glad the connection is growing and that she's helping you make progress!

We started to put together a book. Basically articles we already wrote in an order that makes some sense, updated and linked by additional texts.
One of the reason is that we had a lot of people come to us lately asking for the whole text. another is our frustration with the lack of newer self-help books or the quality of them. And a third is that our life is about to change. We won't be able to keep up the way we've been writing before. It just makes sense to collect the key info now and make it available offline.
it is also too early to do it all right now because otherwise we won't have a financial benefit. As long as we are on disability we can't have an income. So our plans with the work rehab need to move forward to get us to a good place.
It feels weird to do this. really really exciting. but also like we do something forbidden. and something too big for us. there is so much that goes into the making of a book...
before you ask, we do it in german for now, since we are a leading voice in the german-speaking community. As soon as we earn some money we can put it toward getting it properly translated.

when we told our T we explained all that and she was so totally neutral, like we are telling her that we want to go swimming regularly for our health. yeah, great idea. keeps you busy and happy. it never stops feeling weird how neutral she is and how she supports everything we do without excitement or personal involvement. We wrote the clinic T because we know he at least will show excitement for us. For a long time we resisted the idea of a book. doing this feels like a big change. and it isn't one of those doomed projects you start but never finish. Most of it is written already. We just have to put it together. It takes time but it won't take another 5 years like writing the blog so far. we can actually do this. finances for publishing will be a problem, but we can do the writing for now.

I understand your frustration for her neutrality. This is such an exciting and important project, not only for you but also for the whole DID community! I can barely sit still waiting for the published product to be available.
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Morwan.