keep on keeping on

Thank you for saying that. It made us kind of emotional to read it. I'll post on our journey thread when I get a chance, but I'm not sure it's laudable to tackle the hardest thing first, and to keep crashing and having to pick ourselves up. It seems much more practical to do what you're doing, which is to make progress on many "easier" things (which are still difficult), and work on changing patterns from the inside out rather than starting by changing patterns with an outside person.

I guess every therapy is different. Sometimes I feel like I'm making big progress tackling huge issues, sometimes I feel like I'm ignoring the elephant in the room, sometimes I feel like I'm doing "fork theory" about it and easing up as many tiny things as possible in order to regain strenght.

We juggle between what we can do and what we need to do. We are all impressed by the progresses others do, because what they need/can is different from ours.

We are all awesome in our own way. Which means that, you are all super awesome in your own personnal ways. And it's an honor to be able to read about your progresses, your struggles, and how you are able to keep going on and on because you are strong and awesome.

@TheGang, I am thinking of you. We know the feeling that we keep running into a wall over and over again and how badly it sucks, how very much a door is needed and how bad it feels to just run into the wall again instead. Sometimes it is necessary to try something new. like we did when we started writing our T to somehow manage to be more open and clear. There is no recipe. It is all a big experiment. We are here to support you in anything you want to try and experiment with. figuring out therapy is tricky. I know that sometimes trying to soften words isn't going to be helpful. It doesn't change the situation and how painful it is. just know that there are people here who are for you and who want to see you succeed. you are not alone.

Birdsong is right, we also care about you a lot, Gang. We hope that things will get better for you really soon.

We are making some progress with D. It remains unclear if our T is helping or getting in the way.
We decided to try a fragment of IRRT, a therapy approach we know from our clinic T. It uses imagery to meet parts within the trauma scene they are stuck in. Then you defeat the abuser, help the part and resolve the situation. Ours is a neglect situation where the abuser is passive and doesn't really show up. But we tried to figure out how to help D within that scene. My first impulse made a big impact. we decided to stop there and wait until we can see the T about it. But the attempt to do it with her failed due to a misunderstanding, I think.
that session was kind of rough. With several triggers along the way. and a full blown panic attack when her door bell rang for the next patient. great time to lose it. her suggestions missed the mark too. There was a development with emotions though. which ended up triggering more stuff...
now we try to sort through it all, see what works and what doesn't. We had an idea when we realized what to avoid with D and I tried it out today. it needed a lot of focus but it looks like its working and helping and that would restore some freedom in the area where D got all restrictive. Takes some responsibility from her that has become too heavy.
Her emotions are very important and valuable. We just need to make sure that we guide her through it when she is not triggered. the triggered response makes it all get out of control. So, in a way we are making good progress and we learned a ton from the way things escalated in session. not sure if therapy is meant to work like this though... we have a strange way to come up with solutions.

I just looked up IRRT to see what it is. It looks like a very doable approach and doesn't seem intimidating or scary to us. We usually think of trauma processing as a very painful thing that we try to avoid at all costs, but IRRT appeals to us. Maybe because it has taking care of littles kind of built into it.

Anyway, it sounds like you're making good progress, although with some rough spots along the way.

It really helps that our clinic T is advocating for gentle techniques. He is trained in a bunch of them and that gives us the chance to experience new things. We recently wrote about IRRT on the blog too.

it looks like we found a solution that helps D. for now. One of the big issues with her is the parentification we experienced with our mother. Once we realized that I end up in the mother's role, reenacting an old pattern, it made sense to switch roles to set the old wrong right. So right now I do the base shopping, it takes me a lot of energy because I am not used to that, and D. looks around to find additional items we might also need. we removed it as far from prices as we can by promising that I will pay, this is not the same as the trauma of the past. the grocery store chain we go to just made it so much easier because their new coupon program gives you fruit and veggies for free if you buy fruit and veggies regularly. like, we got a whole head of lettuce for free this week. and unlocked more free stuff for next week... first cool coupon program they started.

we've run into a serious problem with one of our old friends and it took a long time to figure out what happened and why. part of the problem is that conversations go bad the moment there is a big trigger. I know from our recordings of therapy sessions that I tend to not perceive the conversation properly. I see it through a lense of trauma. only some snippets get through to me and those I misinterpret. and someone else, whoever that is, continues talking. there is no way to tell that I zoned out. I sound engaged and the conversation is going somewhere, I just can't remember any of it later. it hits me hard because I pride myself in not showing so many symptoms and not being so obvious but the impact on relationships is real. I hurt people when I don't remember what they felt was meaningful conversation. its just gone. I used to joke about my ability to answer questions in any state of mental breakdown but it looks like this really is a different part and the way we learned to do this is more sinister.

The trigger in this last big drama was a friend silencing me because of her religious beliefs, that I don't share. So first we had a discussion about theology where she clearly commuicated I need more wisdom and revelation for not seeing things she does. When really its a school of thought and not some clearcut spiritual rule. but she tried to silence me. for describing something that is objectively true. this is bad. She refused to talk about it. The friendship got hurt badly and she won't make an effort to fix it. when I say something she just gives me a cloud of religious talk that has nothing to do with our problem. Not sure if that is how american christians solve their conflict or if its just her. it is just adding pain.
and of course I had to question myself relentlessly. but this is the reality I experienced. I was silenced for speaking the truth and I am refused another conversation about the topic, effectively silencing me again. she might not mean any of this but this is what is happening. and it is not my DID's fault that we can't fix it. I tried to find the fault in me really hard. I do have symptoms and everyone knows that.
standing up for myself is still something that I am learning. and something that triggers problems from the past. every attempt to do that used to get punished badly, in ways that cause fear of death. Some parts were even trained to take over the role of punisher and they struggle with intense impulses to self-harm when we dare to say something. so it ends up being more than a normal struggle for assertiveness. it triggers a whole set of conditioned behaviors. it feels like fighting 2 battles at once. I think we have left the season in our life where we used submission and appeasement at all times when there was conflict. We start to dare to speak our opinion in a conversation. it leads us right into trouble.
Our T is helping us to sort through the conditioned stuff. Going into these topics makes us switch more. its not terrible. not much different from what we have done with the clinic T. we have enough of a foundation to do this. its just... how much trouble can you get yourself into when you just try to tell a friend that they can't silence you because of their religious opinions.

I am glad the coupons program is helpful and that you manage things step by step with D.

It is infuriating when people take their own beliefs for the one and only theological truth. I love to hear about other people's beliefs as long as they are explaining what they believe and not trying to convert me. Silencing someone due to beliefs is even worse! Sending lots of moral support. I hope this situation will get resolved soon.

we are still triggered by the conflict with our friend. maybe we should listen to our own advice and treat it like an emotional flashback...
We had our first 'normal' therapy session where we share things from our life and the T gets to comment. Kind of a big step in trust for us. especially because there is so much to say about this friendship. She managed to take our side while not speaking badly about our friend and we respect that a lot. We have seen Ts get too involved or frustrated with people we love and that isn't helping. She earned some real trust points with this.
D. is still fuming with anger and I am more and more ready for better boundaries. Its just... I can't allow other people to tell us how to make sense of the world anymore. We have done that for all our life and we are done with it now.

I feel a bit lonely and terribly ...driven. Our Ts are all on vacation. We should rest and have a good time. My mind is all over the place, thinking all the time. I can't make it stop thinking. So I get another textbook because that gives us focus, it slows things down. But it makes my head swirl with even more info to think about. the race just never stops. I feel signs of burnout and they make me slow down the pace for book writing. It just feels overwhelming to deal with the topics. So I write 3 posts in one week for the blog. because I can't stop. I just can't stop. I need to cope with this head and what it does to me and reading and writing are the only ways I know outside of antipsychotics that make me vegatable. Starting to long for those meds because then it would at least be quiet. I could just do one thing after the other without my mind racing everywhere all at once. I know enough about burnout to know that we are in the spiral already. damn. How am I supposed to make use of our free time and not go nuts