Treatment options / do you need a specialist T?

Things haven't been easy, but we're managing.

Something to remember:
A T explained a new metaphor/tool to us: puzzle boxes. Periods in your life have their own puzzle box. However, sometimes the pieces get mixed up. So, you can gather all parts inside and look at the pieces of the present and gauge whether they are in the wrong box.

We love puzzling, so this is a very concrete metaphor to us. Maybe someone else also likes it.

Next week we have therapy again, so I think that we should be able to wait until then to share anything that's important or coming up. I don't really have words for what's happening inside, but my opinion is that I should be able to self-soothe. And even if I'm struggling with that, it's okay, because it will motivate me to learn how to do it better.

Bottom-line: I don't want to depend on the T, especially when nothing "big" is going on.
I want to be able to solve it by myself...

Plus, I've been feeling shame/like I take up too much space. I'm feeling pretty dysregulated. Lonely. Bored. Scared.

I'm having a bit of a dilemma, because I think that we will "build a shield" if we DON'T reach out to the T (and next session will be more difficult). But if we DO I feel like we're asking/needing way too much.

It sounds like something important is going on and that it feels important to share it with the T now rather than push away the feeling of wanting to connect. Of course you can survive without contacting her, but it sounds like there's a feeling that doing that will come at the cost of walling yourself off from deepening the connection.

we feel like that a lot. strong needs for independence but also the need for support or even help and a real struggle to figure out if it is right or wrong...
we try to figure out whose impulses all these are. some of us will always vote for distance and walls, but especially when it gets difficult and they feel like we need to be protected. distance is our primary way of protection. but it helps to see who wants to have the contact too. if it is needy Littles and maybe we can take care of it ourselves. or if it is literally me who needs another adult for support, or stuff that we honestly don't know how to solve.
it can help to get some distance and do a reality check. maybe it is a situation where help is needed and someone just wants distance because that is the only way they know how to act when something is painful or tricky.
maybe it would help to look at it as something different than right or wrong. it is just one step on a long path. asking for help once won't make us dependent. not asking will not suddenly create this huge wall that is impossible to get past in the rest of all the future. if it is just one step we could take it and see if we like the results or not. then we can still adjust the direction we are going next time.

Thanks, Gang and birdsong.

I ended up texting to ask if the T is working today and that I think we would benefit from a short conversation, but that I don't want to ask for too much and it is no problem if it isn't possible. She replied that she has a busy day, so feels reluctant to promise anything.

That feels really safe, because it means that she is protecting her boundaries - which means that I can relax a bit on trying to do that for her. That already seems to resolve a bit of the "stuckness" inside.

Thanks for the reminder to find out what is going on inside and to pay attention to the nuances. Some of us definitely feel much safer when having distance.

We're glad that you reached out to your T, fireheart, even if she wasn't able to see you. And that you see the positives in the boundary that she set.

And we hope that you're able to resolve whatever is happening inside.

MDs

I feel good about the T and about the progress we're making. She has met several of us by now. After meeting one of our littles, she said the following time that she realized that switching doesn't have to be a "last resort".

In the way she acted, I could tell that now she Believes me. She believes it is DID and that it is different from C-PTSD. Oof. Soooo scary. I noticed that I carefully tipped around having any more conversation about alters.

She also asked me to think about what felt good in session. She has been asking me to observe feeling good (or imagining feeling good)a handful of times now, and every time it was only possible for maybe 5 seconds before there was a sudden change into feeling awful.

Her "validation" and asking to focus on feeling good is very difficult to tolerate. I'm not sure why, but it feels extremely dangerous. I don't think I have explicit memories of good things getting taken away, but somehow I learned that being too happy about something was NOT good.
Feeling her curiosity also feels like a warning sign. I'm not going to be your experiment, or your new case study. You're not going to revolutionize treatment, get recognition from working with me. It's all really not that interesting. We're not seperate people, we're just dissociated parts.

I also noticed/remembered a scary dynamic from the past. We talked to our dad and felt really close to him, like he actually cares/we have a good bond. He promised us something. And then later (presumably after discussion with his wife) he did something other than what he promised. That happened all the time when I was a child. One on one, sometimes it seemed like he REALLY loved me. But then he would talk to my stepmum and she would say that I was manipulative, selfish, bad, etc. and then he would treat me accordingly.
It would put the interactions in a different light. She would ascribe me qualities and thoughts that never would have occurred to me.
But at the same time, a lot of the time I was doing what my mum told me to do. And my mum is quite manipulative, so maybe she was using me like that.
It leaves such a deep feeling of being bad.
I think i should analyse at what points I can do something differently in this pattern.

fireheart wrote:Her "validation" and asking to focus on feeling good is very difficult to tolerate. I'm not sure why, but it feels extremely dangerous. [...] somehow I learned that being too happy about something was NOT good.

This resonates a lot with us, fireheart.

Sending you encouragement.

MDs

I read "The Mind-Body Stress Reset" and it is a lovely book.
It's helping us to understand what the T is trying to do when she asks us to focus on feeling good things. I think that reading it while at home is really helpful. Seeing people generally already puts me on high-alert, so reading is easier than listening. I also got to practise at home, with other sensations than "while in therapy" sensations. That feels much safer and more feasible.

I'm noticing that I am actually capable of helping the body calm down. Revolutionary.

The next session after I wrote on here was really difficult. I think maybe I should've cancelled it, maybe it was "too much, too fast". I felt disconnected, as she obviously had no idea how difficult it was for me to tolerate the feelings about last time. She tried to call for that connection, but L. was there, with his vast shield. We shared more of the inner turmoil later on in the session, but she reflected saying that that was the hardest part of the session (like I got upset then) - and for me the hardest part was at first, because that's when I was alone with my upset. After that we also had a difficult phone call (in which I tried to repair things - didn't work). Tomorrow is a new chance for repair.

fireheart wrote:She tried to call for that connection, but L. was there, with his vast shield. We shared more of the inner turmoil later on in the session, but she reflected saying that that was the hardest part of the session (like I got upset then) - and for me the hardest part was at first, because that's when I was alone with my upset.

That's a very important thing for you to get her to understand. She only knows what she sees on the outside, and I think T's tend to think that we experience the most pain when we're crying and upset on the outside, when it's really more painful to be alone with it on the inside. For me, letting it show is a sign that I'm feeling more connected and I'm willing to try sharing a feeling that I would otherwise just keep inside.

But they can only know that when we explain it.

I'm glad the book was helpful for you. I haven't finished it yet--I'm on the second of the 4 skills. But the concept alone has changed a lot of things for me.