Going Down the Rabbit-Hole

Hi BeccaBee,

I won't comment on the dog thing but I hear you about wanting a companion that you may not be able to take care of as well as you'd like/she needs.

First you wrote about how maybe you were doing well enough, and the stress of doing trauma work and even just going to therapy is not worth it. And then you had a big setback that made it clear that not doing the work will leave you vulnerable as well. Is that how you read it?

I have some thoughts about your situation. It seems like therapy as it is may not be supporting you as well as it could. (Do you think this is true?) Do you like your therapist? I was actually talking in a general way with my trauma therapist about how some people find therapy so stressful that it's like a vacation if they just don't go. (I used to feel this way myself.) She said that when this is the case, she would question the speed of therapy and the connection with the therapist. Or something like that. The thing that my therapy team (couples therapy and individual) really stressed to me is that may take a long time of building trust with therapist before I am able to do the processing work. So that means not overdoing it in therapy, talking instead about other topics which may at least seem totally beside the point, to build relationship with the therapist and self-knowledge.

I am lucky because my insurance covers most of the cost of my therapy. But also I never got close to being able to do the big work until I found the right therapist and started to see her twice a week. Now my system is very gradually "letting the secrets out." That is a frequent need of people with PTSD from childhood issues, apparently, even the ones who hold themselves together pretty well and are functional. But of course this isn't a requirement and many people progress and see a therapist much less frequently.

Like you, I am still trying to figure out how I can possibly face the most horrible stuff while holding together my relationships with kids, work (although I only work a little) and in my case my partner. I have thought I might have to wait until my kids are much older. But for their sake I also want to get better sooner than that. So it is really hard.

I hope nothing I wrote here sounded off or inconsiderate. I am having a rough time right now but wanted to comment now before I changed modes and forgot what I wanted to say.

yes and yes.

it does feel like a vacation to not go. I am not sure on the time line but I kept up weekly appointments more or less for about nine months and we didn't do ANY trauma work. I still had some progress like prioritizing my time as my most precious resource. and endless worrying is just a #######4 distraction.

but it is just ######6 exhausting to keep going. I think she is a good T and I am sort of on the fence about the frequency. I guess I should say too that not doing the trauma was fine with me and she wasn't in any hurry to push it either.

I have so many balls to juggle. and I don't mean it in any kind of poor me way. but the facts of my life are I am a single mom who works full time and that $#%^ ain't no joke.

I have consciously chosen to break for T during holoday season because that is always stressful time and finance crunch. also our year end at work is kind of a bitch.

if i find regular "maintenance" appointments this tiring, how will I ever ever do the "real" work?

I was thinking about halving the commitment. and going EOW instead of weekly. I just dk.

thank you though. I don't always look back and see the continuum. I don't have that linear understanding.

it is not fair that I cannot have my doggie.

BeccaBee wrote:
if i find regular "maintenance" appointments this tiring, how will I ever ever do the "real" work?

I was thinking about halving the commitment. and going EOW instead of weekly. I just dk.

thank you though. I don't always look back and see the continuum. I don't have that linear understanding.]

I hear you and think your decision making process makes sense.

But about the question above, I have a few thoughts, and they may not apply to you at all. It is about me.

Doing the maintenance thing might not be very rewarding because it can feel that I am investing time and money but not really getting much out of it other than continuing to function at the crappy level of functioning and unhappiness that led me to therapy in the first place. And it can also feel that it is endless, I'll have to do maintenance for the rest of my life. By increasing my commitment and looking toward doing trauma work, therapy becomes more meaningful. And, when I actually succeed in opening something up, it can make me feel worse and be scary, but it also feels like a relief in a way. The way I'm doing my trauma work is going very, very slowly right now. If I could intensify it, I think it would be easier for me in the long run, as long as I can either have planned periods of not functioning well or keep myself functioning at a basic level consistently. DID/PTSD is so hard to plan for, though. Sometimes I can go through some big realization with no problem, and other times some minor occurrence is a giant trigger. So I'm not sure when I'll be "ready" to do more intensive work. For now, I'm just acting as if it will happen some day.

that is very interesting food for thought.

I see that point in myself as well. the time and money invested is a pretty big deal, so what is the return on the investment?

if i go all in and do trauma work then will it destabilize me?

if i have spent all this time and money on building trust then wtf now?

this $#%^ is hard. ######6.

thank you for taking the time to help me reason through this. I need to make my appointment for January once I get through year end close.

I am still not sure where 2017 will take me. sometimes.....I forget I have DID. idk how, but I still do.

BeccaBee wrote:it is not fair that I cannot have my doggie.

We love to have a good dog to play with and cuddle and walk. I hope you get to the right time to have a dog. Maybe you could have pretend dog (imaginary or a toy dog) to show someday you will have a real life one.

she did promise me I could have my very own stuffy doggie and it would be the softest doggie and big as I want. because I do not have my own stuffy.

it is still not fair because I will take care of a doggie!!! but nobody else wants to take care of the doggie and since we have to take turns I have to share. and that would not be fair to everyone else who has the jobs and stuff. but this is not fair to me.

but.....we are a team and everybody has some stuff that's not fair.

it's a secret that we might get a new job that is more money.i am not supposed to tell but I want to really bad and I guess it is ok to tell here because this is our special place for telling secrets!

but it will likely be several weeks before I have an answer.
the dog issue continues to be something we are working through.

about trauma work...
we have discussed this with several Ts. they seemed to agree that they have seen patients focus on stability and grounding only but the PTSD never got any better. they learned how to live with it.
while trauma exposition, at least for us, meant that a lot of the fear went down as well as hyper vigilance and some things that used to trigger memory dont trigger anymore. it was worth it.

we had a trauma session every few months. when the system was stable and everything else was fine enough. the week after was always a little rough. more confusion, problems with memory, a lot of emotions. it never lasted more than a week though. then we focussed on stability and other stuff again for a few months before the next trauma session.
this can be done without loosing it all.

we have had maintenance session and they were good for nothing. at least for us. barely enough to catch up on what is going on, not even enough to get any real help for that.
if i could do it again i wouldnt change much. i would cut the maintenance time that we had cause it didnt do anything for us.

birdsong87 wrote:about trauma work...
we have discussed this with several Ts. they seemed to agree that they have seen patients focus on stability and grounding only but the PTSD never got any better. they learned how to live with it.
while trauma exposition, at least for us, meant that a lot of the fear went down as well as hyper vigilance and some things that used to trigger memory dont trigger anymore. it was worth it.

we had a trauma session every few months. when the system was stable and everything else was fine enough. the week after was always a little rough. more confusion, problems with memory, a lot of emotions. it never lasted more than a week though. then we focussed on stability and other stuff again for a few months before the next trauma session.
this can be done without loosing it all.

we have had maintenance session and they were good for nothing. at least for us. barely enough to catch up on what is going on, not even enough to get any real help for that.
if i could do it again i wouldnt change much. i would cut the maintenance time that we had cause it didnt do anything for us.

Thank you so much for posting this. It confirms that my experience isn't just a fluke or wishful thinking for me. I think I am stable enough to handle trauma more than I go after it. I just get so shaken when I do, because the change between me being untriggered and being triggered is so extreme. My therapist is a pro at EMDR for people with DID, and she says I'm not ready for it. I so want to be ready. Did you use EMDR? What other ways have you worked with your trauma directly in session (if you don't mind sharing)? Thanks again for sharing your experiences.

we have tried EMDR before we were ready and that backfired. there needs to be a certain level of cooperation in the team i guess. and somehow... a willingness to let go.
then we had EMDR with a pro. not even a pro for DID, but for EMDR. 90 minute sessions. the intervalls were just 20-30 seconds long. countless intervalls with breaks to calm down a little.
we switch really quickly and we did switch during those intervalls, whoever came out was supposed to just continue with the eye movement. eye movement seemed to work better than sound or touch.

there are other techiques but we dont consider them save. in a clinic we have been to they recorded patients telling the story and had them listen to that repeatedly. there is just too much room for dissociation in this and its not recommended for DID.
we read a little about different methods and EMDR seemed to be the most practical when it comes to including parts who shared an experience.

we do have a very stable core team. practically 4 adults working to keep things stable. a lot of planning ahead. i always made plans for the 5 days after a session, complete schedules that had to be followed no matter what. and daily short phone calls with the T.
for a few days this can really get HARD. we found a pattern, like going thru different stages of mourning in a really short time. a lot of emotions to deal with.
i guess if you somehow got over the phobia of the inner experience of many AND learned how to deal with emotions AND show some ability for self-care under pressure you could try.
for trauma work you need a team

Hi Nondescript it's good to hear from you again.

The big thing that kept Host from going to therapy is that he always worries about his career and all the stuff he has to be good at. Then it got like we started to fall apart and HAD to go. Host has a deal with our T that she works slow. Sometimes that's too slow for us. He still worries all the time about being 'functional'. I get it. He doesn't want to mess up important stuff. I guess what I'm saying is T is hard and scary but going slow isn't always the best way to make it less hard and scary.

You totally need a team.

Evan wants a dog too but Host says we can't have one because we travel for work too much. I'm not sure Evan really understands. He's just being a good boy about it.

Iain