Multi-faceted & semi-precious.

last week we found out we might be losing another big chunk of our income
the worst part is it was the one job we could actually handle without any stress
yesterday it was confirmed that its going away
combined with the other stuff its like half our income has gone in the last 4 months

now we have to seriously focus & budget stuff
we will have to cut back therapy, and maybe stop completely
its a luxury we probably can't afford anymore

viola keeps going into a panic
as much as she wanted to write for a living, the prospect of actually becoming dependent on her writing makes her very scared
it puts increased pressure on her that she's not able to manage

the stress is affecting our sleep and probably our health
we only managed 3 hours sleep last night
and have been feeling ill on&off since last week

I'm sorry you're going through that, Amythyst.

Are there any low-stress part-time jobs you can find? I know people pay to have other people edit their writing. I had a friend who was doing that for awhile--she got paid for each article she edited.

It had been sounding like therapy was helping you guys make some progress. Maybe it's not a luxury?

It really sucks to not sleep well. We've been going through that. It can ruin the whole next day and beyond. Can you take anything to help you sleep?

thanks Gang

writing is probably the lowest-stress thing we can do & we're probably making more doing that than we would part-timing at a minimum wage gig. so we're gonna keep focusing on that for now.

what we need to do is work out some budgetting & do some planning. we know we can do that, the challenge is figuring out how to do it without getting stressed. its overwhelming for viola because it requires some grownup level decisionmaking & aprt from Em everyone else is even younger.

we told our T the other day we're cutting back to every other week. we'll see how it goes. some of us would like to quit seeing her entirely, there's some growing feelings that she's not as good for us as we'd like to think.

and we feel like most of our recent progress has come on our own, stuff we've figured out when she was away or whatever. she's helped put some things in perspective after we identified them, but idk. there's a lot of indecision & self-doubt, we were raised to question and doubt our experiences and decisions & ignore/forget when stuff is bad or upsetting. makes it hard to know for sure when someone isn't good for us or not.

bottom line is we've startd to feel bad about going to therapy & started to not want to do it anymore. Ciara no longer trusts our T & Vanessa has decided she never wants to even meet T. maybe every other week will be better, maybe we can do more that way? if we feel its not helping or getting worse then we'll hafta think about just stopping entirely.

(we call it a luxury because long-term therapy is only available to people who can afford it or have health insurance that will pay for it. free health care here doesnt cover mental health like that.)

This kinda feels, to me, like you are trying to protect yourselves from the frustration of having to give up part of the therapy. So you may be trying to find a good reason, within your own control, to give up therapy. Such as, "She is not good so we decide to cut down" instead of "We have to give up therapy due to factors outside of our control".

Just a thought. She very well might be not good enough for you, too, for all I know of her.

Take your time regarding your decision about therapy, take lots of notes, discuss a lot among yourselves. You will find the answer, with some patience. Try to focus on the objective things if you cannot trust your guts yet: what she actively does, what your needs are exactly, if she can answer those needs or not or only some of them, etc. Patience. You can do it. You can always decide over somebody else, or only once a month with her, if it's better for you.

I totally understand the "therapy is luxury" point of view. A lot of things are not covered in my country (eyeglasses once you are adult, most dentist stuff, some types of surgeries, most psy therapies though meds are covered, some meds are not covered...). The "basic necessities" are covered but the people who decide what is "basic necessity" and what is not, are healthy, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied and able-minded individuals. So they do not see what the necessities of the disabled and/or queer people are.

Good luck finding a solution. And tons of moral support.
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Morwan.

thanks Morwan

re. therapy i'm not sure if we're understanding what your'e saying or if we have it backwards lol, like we get what your saying except aren't sure if we have it forwards or backwards

basically our general feeling is we've been having doubts about our T for months (actually since last summer?) & thinking about quitting or whatever. now we have a financial reason that gives us an excuse to cut back so we don't have to just outright tell her we have doubts about her

and we totally agree wrt the people who decide what's a necessity being cishet nt etc etc. they're also generally men & typically well-off, & have no idea what marginalized folks need.

Ah, alright, thanks for clarifying. I had unterstood the other way around. Disregard my interpretation of the situation, then.
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Morwan.

yesterday we had our first every-other-week session with our T. (at the start of the month we told her we had to cut back to alternate weeks cos of money) we also asked to do the session online, same as the previous one. iirc we haven't seen her inperson since december?

anyways its probably too early to say for sure but we felt it worked out ok. like right now our feeling is every week is too much and it wasnt working for us, so the financial thing was a good excuse to cut back.

Em did the talking & fronting but i was kinda there too, & like alot of the other background voices were paying attention & stuff too. like i guess it was kinda like lots of us were involved, even tho Em did the actual interacting stuff.

we've had some more rough stuff over the past week but it kinda ended yesterday morning, like we kinda worked it all out internally so when we saw her we just let her know what stuff had been going on. not even the whole thing just like, enuf for her to know there was rough stuff but we handled it. tho we had help from a good friend, someone we talk to almost every day on discord.

we also talked about some meta stuff, like just the general weirdness of DID / being plural. like weird stuff we experience that probably sounds super scary to singlets but we're used to it so we just deal with it. like we described something & we were kinda smiling & trying not to laugh so T asked what was up with that & we're like, we know its probably scary to most people but like, its just life right?

then we got into this little discussion like about how we feel every one of us is important & valuable just by existing, like we value & cherish the diversity inside us, & T asked if all of us agreed. & like, that wasn't an easy answer but like all of us who are aware of us agree. thres probably some who still dont know, like still hidden away so they dont know & we cant ask. & we also have like a whole lotta fragments & pieces that aren't self-aware enuf so the question's irrelevant to them.

actually we dunno what the T thot of all that, like if she thinks we're wrong or something? but yeah, we value & cherish every one of us, we know each of us exists for a reason but we don't need to know the reason & we don't need to justify our existance to each other or anyone else. so it doesn't really matter what she thinks or if she even understands that, as long as she respects thats how we feel & doesnt try to change it.

so it was an ok session & we'll see how it goes next time, we dont see her till the start of march. dunno yet if we'll actually go in person or if we'll ask for online again. it'll probably depend on the weather & how we feeel & stuff.

viola (& Em & other various voices)

so our next therapy session is wednesday & we don't really want to do it

definitely don't feel like going in person. not sure we even want to do online?

idk. theres a sense that we should probably keep doing therapy but we don't feel like it

not that we think we're all better or whatever?

maybe that we're questioning if therapy is actually helping or whatever

idk. guess we'll see how it goes tomorrow & make a decision. or just stick with online for now since it's less distrubtive to our day

meh. indecisisive & just dont really feel like doing therapy.

we decided to do yesterday's therapy online cos we really didn't want to go in person
we werent really that interested in doing it at all tbh but online was the compromise we agreed on
except there were technical difficulties with the online thingy so our T rescheduled us to friday
and we really weren't bothered about that
we'll try online tomorrow & see if it works

still questioning / debating about whether or not to even keep doing therapy
like we know we're not a 'proper functioning adult' & we dont even try to fake it hafl the time
we're not doing or feeling great, we're dealing with some depression & anxiety & loneliness
but we're honestly kinda happy with who we are as a system

huh. putting that into words sorta gave us a *feeling* there

we're happy with who we are as a system

voices say we've spent over 4 years focusing on mental stuff, maybe focusing on physical stuff will help with the depression etc

anyways back to the topic of therapy

we talked with one of our best friends the other day & they suggested maybe we're burned out on therapy. they're not a big fan of our T, like from the stuff we've mentioned over the past year or whatever.
like how our T treats Ciara, and the fact that we're afraid to tell our T stuff sometimes because of how she misinterprets it or misses the point or whatever.
we find it really hard to be objective about some stuff like this cos we end up questioning if what we feel / experienced really happened or if we're just remembering it wrong
(tho we know thats a trauma thing, like we were basically raised to doubt our experiences & stuff)

we should probably talk to our T about all this stuff, but that's another trauma thing, like we can't talk to T about T because its dangerous (like talking to family about family or talking to authority figures about authority was 'discouraged')

meh

doing online therapy every other week is our compromise for now. maybe we'll taper that off even more? idk
feels like we've mentally disengaged from therapy & we're just doing it out of habit or because thats whats expected of us.

It does sound like you are "burnt out on therapy" and have reached the maximum of what your present T can do to help you.

I sincerely hope that you will find an efficient solution for the depression because it sounds like a major issue for you all right now.

Sending moral support.
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Morwan.