How do you guys deal with lonliness?

Hi so i started seeing a therapist about The beginning october. Things have been pushing along pretty fast because i’ve been trying my best to make sure everyone is cooperating and helping if they need to. Were now coming to the point to where she (the T) wants to start fixing ‘secondary benefits’ for having DID or alters. Like having alters; since you always have someone your never alone. With our history she thinks we benefit from having alters because we dont want to be alone. So she wants us to be able to cope with being alone. My reaction was a bit different than i expected because im the protector and this is the first time i feel threatened. I think i feel scared because its true i enjoy the company but is it really that wrong? Doesnt everyone enjoy company? I guess we need to learn to be alone but it just makes my hair stand up. Shes stated plenty of times she isnt into forced integration and that at the end of the day its our choice. We say great we dont want to right now. Yet SHE STILL PUSHES IT EVERY 5 SECONDS. This ties to the idea that we need to learn to be alone because it sounds like shes shaping us up for integration that no one wants. So hows that gonna work?

Do you guys think its important to learn to be alone? If so what are some good ways to learn to be alone.

Thanks for reading

I can’t respond to the loneliness piece of this but would suggest telling her how’s shes coming across.
She says one thing but does another.

i think that it is important to learn. some of us are sometimes not available and if the others freak, that is not helpful.
But I also think that your real problem is one with your T.

Usually you would express goals and your T would help you get there.
is there no other problem left that is more pressing than dealing with loneliness?
is it creating real trouble for you today?
We strongly believe in priorities for therapy work. and facing the loneliness problem when there is no demanding reason for it seems a little off.
In which phase of therapy are you?

We are still working on stability and our T actually encourages us to keep each other company against the loneliness. And to regulate our emotions independently from the outside world and other people.

you can be around a lot of people and still feel lonely. the loneliness lifts when you learned to connect with others. we find it a good way to learn that with each other. this is not stopping our progress with connecting to the outside world. the opposite really.

Thanks for the advice.

We are in the stability phase. She wants to make the host more stable so she can work with the host instead if me the protector. So in order to do that we need to learn to regulate emotions better because right now if anyone breaks down the whole system gets frazzled. So we need to learn how to deal with some very strong emotions like lonliness. Personally i wanted to help the new alters that showed up with her help or maybe help some trauma splits that we have. Instead were doing this which maybe makes us more stable(?). It confuses me a lot i sent her an email about how i felt so i’ll see how that goes. I wish she would just shut up about integration its just irking any split that trusts her at this point.

Hannasue wrote: She wants to make the host more stable so she can work with the host instead if me the protector.

I'm pretty sure this goes against the isstd guidelines. All parts are equally important, and therapists are not supposed to favor one over another. Perhaps you could print them out and highlight the important points? (Or just ask her to read them).

Also, a big part of stability is trust, and it's likely that you, the protector, are the one dealing with her because trust hasn't been established yet. It seems to me that the T's primary initial job is obtain and then maintain trust. When my T has said or done something that triggers me to feel like I can't trust him, it's the protector who stands up for my system and lets him know the impact on me. We don't move on until we've worked it out.

And that part about "secondary benefits" irks me. I could see if much farther down the line you had worked through all of the "primary benefits" of having DID (namely to protect you and help you survive), and had processed all the trauma, but were still somehow only keeping the alters around for company rather than taking risks to connect with outside people, that this could possibly be an issue. But haven't you just started therapy for DID? It's a long process.

Meditation, hobbies, music

We just started our first therspist two months ago. Our current therapist is our first therapist. However i started self treating about 4 years ago. So we made a lot of progress we still dont know what are trauma truly is we just know the general idea of what it could be.
The favoritism over the host i think is so in theroy she can work on things from the correct perspective (?) like you have to speak to the host to heal in a way.
When it comes to trust shes nice but i guess i truly do not trust her. I have been doing all of the ‘living’ for the past year since the host stepped down to relax. So i didnt exactly come out to protect everyone from her i was already out.
The secondary benefits irks me as well. I think its a bit weird to work on that but not trauma or maybe other splits needs first. I think its really odd. I have always been the hosts companion so it made my hair stand up when she said being with alters and making friends with them is a secondary benefit that needs to go away. Like. Come on thats my way of life why does that need to change. It makes me uncomfortable to say the least.
OMNICELL i will try your suggestions thank you

this is 2 months into therapy??
this is not right.
does the T have any DID training?
and what is her dx for you?

next ting she says you need to remove dissociative walls because they keep you from knowing everything...

while this might be partly true this is not the right approach.

She does she said she has 30 years of experience and has seen plenty of people with DID. So far shes given us things to do like timelines to mark trauma or significant events, a list of coping skills, a grounding technique and some stuff about finding my ‘wise mind’ and using that instead of rational or emotional.
Yes two months in. I would love to know what i should be working on cause i honestly have no clue lol. Thank you

treatment will depend a little on which kind of philosophy your T follows
"treating trauma-related dissociation" says this

phase 1 stabilization
creating safety: in the outside life of the patient (including financial safety, independence and breaking contact with abusers) and building inner sense of safety for all parts, crisis plan

skill building: how to deal with hyperarousal and dissociation, how to calm yourself down, grounding techniques, self-soothing techniques, mindfulness, self-care, emotional regulation, connecting with the body, life skills for coping with daily life in a practical way

relationship building: learning to trust the T, then building relationships inside (mapping the system), communication, co-operation, relationships with safe others, new relationships skills, boundaries

symptom reduction: as DID often comes with comorbid disorders, that could be insomnia, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, OCD, self-harm, addiction and a lot of other stuff

in this phase there can be talk about trauma, but it doesnt go deep. the focus is on containing it.

phase one is about creating a "normal" life without constant crisis and dissociation.

in our second month we def didnt talk about stuff like relying LESS on alters. its more like the opposite... still getting to know each other, our strength and weaknesses, and learning how to co-operate in a way that is good for the system.

in phase 2 it would be about trauma work, putting together the puzzle of memories and working thru them

phase 3 would be about ingetration, or not, depending on the goals. that is when you would work on skills that have to do with coping without the need of having parts.
fusion leaves a hole, the loneliness is surprising and I dont think that you can prepare for it in any way. that is why the T usually stays for post-integration work.

this is a very modern 3-phase model. your T might not be working with it. but it is what the heads of the ISSTD wrote.