keep on keeping on

we don't have a fixed day for our appointments. we just make a new one each session, depending on what is needed. this situation mainly came up because she got sick.
I've had contact with our clinic T. he always seems so thrilled to hear from us. It helps a bit.

But the basics of what you need don't change. Why don't you go every week with a fixed appointment?

I mean, is it your idea to do that, because you don't want to get too connected, or her idea for some reason?

If you went every week as a basic frequency (which is the minimum that's recommended for DID), then if you were having a difficult time, you could ask for an extra appointment.

Then you would have the security of a fixed time every week that you could depend on.

I'm glad you can contact the clinic T sometimes. He's such a good guy, and a good T. I'm sure he is thrilled to hear from you, because he probably gets how hard it is for you to contact him, and he also really gets how important it is to show his positive feelings to you.

We don't want fixed appointments. the flexibility helps us not to feel trapped even if we see her regularly. it triggers severe avoidance when we try to see her more.
Seeing her every other week gives us the chance to keep up a stable every day life. We struggle with extreme fatigue and we cannot manage more therapy sessions AND keep up with life. Especially not once we return to seeing her in person, which includes 4 hours of traveling each time. yes, she is the only DID T in a huge radius.
We can ask for extra appointments any time. she just might not have any to offer. Which is the case this week. if she had an earlier appointment she would have given it to us. the last one was cancled because she was sick. it happens.

We've thought about the differences between our T and the clinic T... I think working in a clinic and only seeing patients for 4-8 weeks leads to a different approach in therapy. he doesn't wait until trust slowly grows, he jumps right in. he is quick to reach out and intervene and he takes greater risks in treatment, knowing that a team of docs and nurses would catch any crisis he causes. it helps us because he builds the bridge between us and meets us more than halfway. he is a lot more proactive in that.
our regular T is careful and she waits for us to make a move. she tries hard not to overwhelm us or scare us away when we could take a more forward approach. she keeps so much more distance and we struggle with how to signal that that's not necessary. we look like that is what we want but that is the fassade we as a system hide behind. She seems to mirror us in this when the reality behind the fassade looks different.

we are working on sorting through the experience. there is a lot of the mother issue coming up in this interaction. if we can't fix it with her we can ask the clinic T for help when we are there. we will spend the summer there, if everything works out.

L is back and starting to take up responsibility again. we wish the T would have been there to support her as she gets oriented.

birdsong87 wrote:our regular T is careful and she waits for us to make a move. she tries hard not to overwhelm us or scare us away when we could take a more forward approach. she keeps so much more distance and we struggle with how to signal that that's not necessary. we look like that is what we want but that is the fassade we as a system hide behind. She seems to mirror us in this when the reality behind the fassade looks different.

You could "signal" by telling her what you need.

It's interesting that we've had the exact opposite problem with our T. He's very proactive, and jumps in--he sounds a lot like your clinic T, actually. All of the warm positivity was helpful in establishing trust, but all the delving, and exploring, and thinking ahead was too intrusive and pushy for us.

Now he's doing a much better job of staying calm and quiet, waiting for us to lead, and showing us his feelings and caring with his expressions and gestures. But it was a long, hard road to get to this point.

If we need him to say something in words, he will, but then we often have to interrupt him by saying "stop talking" and waving a hand at him. He welcomes that because we're reminding him of what we need, but it's not easy for him to stay so quiet.

we have a really hard time speaking about things with females. especially needs. there are 20 years of trauma history with women who used every vulnerable info they got against us. I think Asti said it, we run into mother/grandmother issues a lot with that. Writing is easier, we are very precise with the way we express ourselves in writing. But she discourages emails with more than info about appointments.
I think what Asti means with signaling is that you can tell people things a milion times but if your tone of voice and body language doesn't support the message people don't believe it on a physiological level. Like their bodies and therefore their being doesn't get it. That is one step further from speaking, but it is something that has been a problem in many relationships. Our body doesn't sync up with our words or feelings and people tend to believe what they see, even if that is subconscious and they try to pay attention to our words.

I am trying to find my way back into normal life. it is hard to remember what needs to be done. I took care of some paperwork and emails and then I sit there and can't remember our routine and the chores that need doing. it is good to be more active and I also feel a bit lost without supervision. Asti is stunned how bad my sleep is. she was able to sleep just fine while she fronted. I had to double the sleeping meds last night to get anywhere close to sleep.

There is a lot going on.
contact with our father. I am worried that I am not critical enough because I want him to be like me.
Progress with the trauma clinic. only 4 more weeks.
therapy tomorrow. I hope we can do something useful. the last session L went to was kind of bad and destabilized her more.

I am pretty pissed today so I want to make it clear that if you want to use our blog for more than personal education, you need a written permission from us. We allow the use of our work for educational purposes within reason but we usually give out an authorized version. If you want to translate our work and publish it somewhere else you too need permission for that. We do own the copyrights and it is super bad manners to just take things without asking. Even if it wasn't copyright protected. Please keep proper boundaries with us. We like to cooperate with people when we are approached in a cooperative way. We even sometimes write guest posts especially for other websites and give them the right to distribute it as they see fit. But you are pissing us off if you just steal things without asking.
Just wanted to make it clear because it concerns members of this forum we usually value. We are here. just one pm away. we are on social media, we have email. we are basically just a click away at all times. it isn't too much to ask that we get contacted.

I'm sorry that happened to you. We didn't do anything, did we? Sometimes we post a link to your blog, or to a specific article, on reddit, so other people can find it. But I don't think we ever even quoted from it.

Good luck with therapy tomorrow. I hope it goes well.

you've done nothing wrong. please don't worry about it.
we can see when people post links on reddit or other places and that's pretty cool actually.
I am talking about publishing whole articles somewhere else. We sometimes catch these because of coincidences. sometimes when it is a public forum we just let it go.
but when its a whole website made of articles that were taken from all over the internet...
we have recently changed the protections on the blog and it forces more people to contact us who would just have stolen things before.
I hate to say it, but some survivors are lousy when it comes to boundaries. asking costs nothing.
stealing costs relationships. I am more pissed that this is coming from fellow survivors than anything. that kind of stuff is abuser behavior.

Asti is trying to coach me with the weird experiences lately. it is not like regular intrusions. the dissociative barriers sometimes slip away and suddenly I feel and know things other parts feel and know and I get overwhelmed by it. like I as a part vanish and all that I experience is someone else. so deeply confusing. Suddenly it feels like I did things that I used to have amnesia for and that I never understood why they happened. it was me. I wanted that.
Asti wants me to keep my own perspective and not pick up the other experience as ultimate truth. both has been right. the flooding doesn't serve integration much. it just makes me understand other parts more but if I try to be that, it all goes terribly wrong.
Asti thinks that maybe some of the Big ones cause the flooding to happen. like a punishment because I want to have a life and not follow their rules. because I want life to get better and they have different ideas of safety and of our place in life.

i emailed our T, writing her things I would never be able to speak about. now I am scared. the mother transference is still strong. I expect the rejection of our mother when someone bothered her with a problem. how dare I take up time between sessions. it makes me want to never say a word ever again.

only 3 more weeks until we get to the good trauma clinic for a planned stay. we will be gone for 8 weeks. We are worrying about a lot of things. the T being too nice for us to cope with. the other patients. wearing a mask so much. dealing with our weight and pain issues. we need change but it will be hard to get it. it scares me a lot.

Those are a lot of new experiences and big steps. It makes sense that you feel scared, confused, and off-balance.

I hope your T responds in a helpful way that counteracts, in a least a tiny way, some of those past experiences.

And I'm so glad that you'll have 8 weeks with that other T, even though there are a lot of worries about the clinic. Don't forget that you can always tell him that he's being too nice, and have him help you, a little bit, make progress toward feeling like you're worthy of that.