how have you customized therapy?

What happens in therapy is a rehearsal for the real world and I think that should be true for both the client and the therapist.

I've been paying more attention to what works for me in therapy, what doesn't. Yesterday I said "no, don't offer help like that." I was talking about my not standing up for myself enough -- so much so that another alter has to step in. In the middle of it all I observed "I'm a wimp." My therapist quickly said "you're not a wimp."

That response was 100% predictable, I knew it was coming, and it occurred to me that something isn't so therapeutic when it's automatic. On top of that, I experienced it like her shutting me down, like I'm not allowed to express negative emotions or thoughts about myself. I told her I didn't want her to jump in and support me automatically like that, I don't like it, it stops the flow for me. I wasn't saying wimp as some fact, I was feeling it and wanted to say it.

To her credit, she got it right away. We've already been talking about her tending to step in with suggestions or reassurances rather than just letting me or others express what we're feeling. I notice we do the same thing for others in real life too so I'm rethinking that.

It just occurred to me that telling my therapist to stop saying I wasn't a wimp was standing up for what I wanted, an unwimpy thing to do. lol

She does plenty right too. I'm better at communicating stuff that doesn't work or that I just don't like, but I feel like I'm still missing a lot. Also, I get pretty dissociated during sessions so don't even recall some realizations I have.

How have you guys changed things about your therapy so it works better for your system. What have you asked for? Have you noticed things that didn't work and did you ask for the therapist to change those? Is your therapist responsive? How do you spot things that need to change about therapy?

Hi Johnny-Jack,

We've customized therapy a lot! Chrome wheels, fuzzy dice on the rearview mirror, and a sweet cherry red paint job.

Really we get to take off our shoes. We sit on the floor sometimes and our T joins us. Sometimes we walk around and talk. We have a new T so we're teaching her how to calm us down when somebody is flashing - teddy bear, soft voice, that stuff.

Iain

This kind of thing is a big part of my therapy, and I'm lucky to have a therapist who is committed to responding the way that I need him to. One of the things that has been important to me is to have him respond more with feelings than with words. It's easy for me to understand the process in words, at an intellectual level--I don't need him to explain how and why my responses in the present might be related to my past experiences. I've got that pretty much sorted.

What I need is for him to help me experience and tolerate the feelings related to those experiences. I have an example from yesterday (because they come up all the time...). I was explaining something that I had realized recently about how I automatically hide things from people--I don't expect to get comfort or empathy from others about something that's going on with me, because it always feels like whatever I'm experiencing will be perceived as weird. But I've been hanging out with a group of people who are mostly younger, on a recent project, and seeing how they just naturally share things and support each other.

I wasn't sure he was really getting it, so I told him an example of getting an injury when I was about 8 and how I didn't tell anyone about it right away. I could see his expression changing while I was talking about it, but it would have helped to have him stop me and comment on the feelings, since I wasn't feeling or expressing them, but was getting more upset on the inside. But I wasn't aware of it enough to stop myself and ask him why he made that face, or whatever.

We ended up writing him an email later in the day to explain how he had missed all the feelings, and didn't he care about how we had gotten hurt and had been kind of alone with it?? (A lot of influence from a little there...) And he wrote back this morning, really getting it--apologizing for missing all the hurt that was a part of what we were telling him, and thanking us for explaining what we needed so that he could help us feel more supported.

dude. I feel you. I have customized therapy by not going cuz I'm a ######6 asshole.

I really hate.....I mean like I rarely confide in anyone anyway and then when I do to have them shut it down. with $#%^ like "dont cry" or "dont say that" pr "you arent x" they arent letting you Express any negative emotions. but sometimes that's what support is just hearing somebody confess the darkness they are battling so bravely against. to deny it and invalidate their feelings is no support at all.

ugh on people AND therapy. $#%^ is hard. I applaud those of y'all who invest the time and the money and the work in therapy because that $#%^ is hard. so ######6 hard.

I think we have a weird compromise because of our need for control...
in the past it got to the point that it was crippling our therapy work, because we wouldn't let Ts do their job. we recently read that it is called 'unskilling'. like we put up a huge wall any time a T wanted to try something new.
so now the agreement is that we won't try stuff before they explained it. so Ts get used to explaining what they are planning to do, we run them by the #######4 detector and then agree or disagree.
we also work closely with goals we set for ourselves. it is always us bringing the topic we think it right for that day, expressing a goal where to go with it and then we work on that.
we can't do therapy when its just sitting down and telling about our life. not structured enough to feel safe.

I also wanted to say that when we tell Ts things and they just respond with a 'no!' or shut us down it is a treatment mistake. it happened to us once when we shared a terrible memory with a T and she just couldn't bear the truth of it so she denied it in her very first impulsive expression. she was actually pretty crushed because that is like a psycho-dynamic beginners mistake...

Two things popped into my mind immediately upon reading this. We used to have a lot of problems right after therapy. Ones who came out or were nearly out would be in chaos. We stopped 10-15 minutes early, at first, to get organized & calmed down.Decide who was most capable of safely driving home for example. Even who would get follow up time next session. Secondly, we'd set a topic ourselves before a session & bullet points. Didn't always follow it but!!!! Could be a particular problem, the one with an issue, something that happened between. Sometimes T could say *I'd like to follow up on x* next time.

IainEtc wrote:Really we get to take off our shoes. We sit on the floor sometimes and our T joins us. Sometimes we walk around and talk. We have a new T so we're teaching her how to calm us down when somebody is flashing - teddy bear, soft voice, that stuff.

Thanks for that. 3+ years with this T and I've just barely begun the discussion about variations on our physical presence: lying down instead of sitting in the exact same place. Somebody little really likes the idea of sitting on the floor. The idea of standing or walking never even crossed our mind! some of our best intercommunication happens while walking.

TheGangsAllHere wrote:One of the things that has been important to me is to have him respond more with feelings than with words. It's easy for me to understand the process in words, at an intellectual level--I don't need him to explain how and why my responses in the present might be related to my past experiences. I've got that pretty much sorted.

Wow, this exactly. Thank you, it's pretty much what we've wanted to say. We don't need advice as much as we need to be heard. I'd rather have her ask questions to understand what we mean or what we're feeling rather than giving suggestions for what we should do.

A previous T who retired was so effective with emotions. She mirrored the emotions of whoever was out in such an amazing way that whichever of us visited was really present. We got a much greater sense of who they were. This was in spite of my then stronger need to control things in each session.

She modulated her interaction so that she responded to the age of the alter. If a 15-year-old was out, it felt like she was talking directly to a kid that age. She was able to empathize with our pain without triggering our need to pull it back so that we didn't upset her.

BeccaBee wrote: but sometimes that's what support is just hearing somebody confess the darkness they are battling so bravely against. to deny it and invalidate their feelings is no support at all.

Yes, this is what we're looking for. I feel like we may have actually held back on some of this because it's a disappointment when we get what feels like pity rather than empathy. I know she cares and is feeling things. Sometimes she'll say she's really angry at the people who hurt us and I know she means it. The main reason I stay in therapy despite the time, cost, and frustration is that I've tried periods without it and things just get worse and darker.

birdsong87 wrote: I think we have a weird compromise because of our need for control...
in the past it got to the point that it was crippling our therapy work, because we wouldn't let Ts do their job. we recently read that it is called 'unskilling'. like we put up a huge wall any time a T wanted to try something new.

Agh, we tried to control therapy also, way too long. It's at least a part of why we didn't figure out the DID years ago. My current T alluded to this sometime during the first year. It really pissed us off but we couldn't argue with the truth of it because we'd already noticed it. We actually feel now that if we don't dissociate as some point during a sessions, it's a fail. If we don't switch, if I, John, feel a solid continuity about the session (meaning I fronted the whole time), if we don't use EMDR, if we're not flooded by emotion at some point, it's just a social visit. I don't like paying that much for something I can do elsewhere for free!

KingsleyHere wrote:We used to have a lot of problems right after therapy. Ones who came out or were nearly out would be in chaos. We stopped 10-15 minutes early, at first, to get organized & calmed down.

For a long time with this therapist, we told her we didn't need the wind-down period she was talking about. We told her we could do EMDR even until the last minute and "snap back" to a host to get us home. We stated it as a matter of pride, we excelled at putting it all away. We haven't really thought about this until your reply but we've moved away from that. "Snapping back" -- yes, we could do it, but why? It isn't comfortable, it's like jumping into a cold shower after a nap. So we do wind down now so that we're calm when we leave the office.