Does your T address your alters?

Disunion wrote:One of my alters made their first appearance today with our T! I was mortified...is that normal?

Mortified?! Or just alarmed and surprised?

Does the T have experience with dissociation, DID specifically? If so, that's a disturbing reaction. If not, could have been just a shock for seeing something they weren't expecting... and failing to handle it professionally (concerning, but possibly not devastatingly bad if they manage to get over it and do their job better in the future).

Disunion wrote:One of my alters made their first appearance today with our T! I was mortified...is that normal?

Hey Disunion. I'd say it could be normal? Like it depends tbh.

In our system, V1 gets uptight and if the alter who popped out at T was say a little & they were acting really young, then V1 would be really embarassed & stuff. If it was like an adult alter & they didn't act "too wierd" then V1 would still be freaked out but not as bad.

Others in our system tho are less uptight & wouldn't really care. Or would even be glad for it cos it'd maybe mean that the new alter needed or wanted to talk to T, and we'd be glad they were comfortable enuf & able to do it.

Viola

brockovich4321 wrote:For those of you in regular therapy, which of your alters goes/who talks to the T?

Good question for discussion. Many, many others show up, though only one on a regular basis, John, one of our hosts. This mostly works.

I found out yesterday that only 4/16 of my parts are participating in our regular therepy sessions. I would prefer if it was 9/16 parts minimum.

Just curious, why 9? So that it would be over half or are there 9 specific alters you feel should participate actively to make therapy more effective? Are several of you not showing up and not participating?

A lot of us participate through John. It feels as if switching fully would break the continuity. John often gets confused when he goes too far offline or away and he's the one guiding things, holding it together. Then we have to spend time bringing John back to the present space. Also, some of us, like the surly ones, just don't not want to be sitting there in therapy, though they're fine answering questions from inside and may offer suggestions.

I guess my question is, are there some of you who are more or less refusing to participate in therapy in any way? That could pose a problem over time.

If an alter announces themselves, does your T acknowledge that alter or do they call that alter by the host name?

We would find another T if we realized ours knew someone else was fronting but chose to call them by the body's or host's name!

The T always acknowledges other when she's reasonably sure who it is. She uses names when she knows but there are so many of us, and we tend to be all over the place in our sessions, especially during EMDR. We're not even sure who's fronting or talking much of the time and it's often a mix. For example, we might be talking with a young voice, meaning a little is at least partially fronting, but what we're relating includes observations from our "adultness."

For the first year or so with this T, I didn't like switching fully to a younger part, we don't trust so easily as a rule and although she's a very effective T, she's doesn't "mirror" the feelings and personality of our younger alters in the same way a former T did. So they don't feel as acknowledged and welcome to be themselves, to just hang and chat.

For us, it worked better in ways when our former T welcomed new alters and spoke with them directly. The message to them was that she was just as interested in spending time with and hearing from them as individuals as she was with our adults. That said, I feel I could ask our current T to do what worked with our former T and she'd try.

brockovich4321 wrote:For those of you in regular therapy, which of your alters goes/who talks to the T?

This was something of a mystery for a while. We fronts would collectively prepare for therapy and have our journal and ideas for topics and then minutes or seconds before the session started the journal would be tucked away and the session would go in a different direction. It must have been months before we caught on to what was happening. Once we did and started paying attention, we were able to determine which part was going to therapy. Then it was possible to start negotiating therapy time.

Bringing a journal is still fairly upsetting to some parts so we have an uncomfortable agreement not to (some really want to) and we still do not consciously switch in therapy, nor do we identify ourselves.

Despite this, the therapist still 'speaks through' to other parts and works to make sure they know they're acknowledged and that when they are ready (or the, ahem, protectors are ready) they are welcome to participate.

Johnny-Jack wrote: The T always acknowledges other when she's reasonably sure who it is. She uses names when she knows but there are so many of us, and we tend to be all over the place in our sessions, especially during EMDR. We're not even sure who's fronting or talking much of the time and it's often a mix. For example, we might be talking with a young voice, meaning a little is at least partially fronting, but what we're relating includes observations from our "adultness."

Yes, this! And its very validating to have that acknowledgement. It was confusing when a little would co-front and articulate non-little ideas. For us this happens more often while journaling, writing big colorful letters but the words are from somewhere else. 'Must mean I'm faking!' I used to think.

Ours is very, very good at asking who's fronting, and can now usually recognise fairly easily who's who (although struggles with Jen and I). This is partly because we established right at the beginning that we're multiple, and it would be deeply difficult for anybody in the system to form a constructive relationship with her if she wasn't extremely on the ball about who's who. We also have fairly solid internal rules around therapy, esp if there's something urgent to discuss, but this can and does get overruled if somebody needs to speak.

(for context: we have a good amount of trauma around medical professionals re: DID, so it's an absolute dealbreaker for us that she recognises and accepts different alters as being individuals with their own experiences/backgrounds/beliefs/etc).

Disunion wrote:One of my alters made their first appearance today with our T! I was mortified...is that normal?

That happened to Host and it was super hard for him to go back to the next session. (I thought he was going to like totally lose it in the waiting room!) Hope you go back and that your T lets you know it's alright to switch. Our T was like 'sometimes people switch in here' like it was totally normal. After a while Host promised that we could have our own relationship with our T and he wasn't going to interfere. It works pretty good.

Iain

IainEtc wrote:That happened to Host and it was super hard for him to go back to the next session. (I thought he was going to like totally lose it in the waiting room!)

Aaagh, we always relate to how you describe your host. Ours tend to be so committed to appearing sane and "not crazy." Even though we know it's counterproductive, even though we usually end up dropping the pretense and there's never anything like a catastrophe. That need to "look normal" is just still there!

I think the casual joking persona Johnny developed on top of serious adult was necessary to capture and explain the weirdness we couldn't avoid from having DID -- bad memory, missed meetings, gaps in understanding. Be funny and self-effacing, yet earnest, and they may not notice or care that you're full of holes.

I know my T has spoken to over a hundred alters of clients in her practice, she specialized in DID. That still doesn't make it comfortable for us.

Hi,

Thanks Johnny-Jack. Our Host does this thing we call 'Super-Normal' where he is way more normal than anybody ever was. Mostly we've learned how much we don't have to be NORMAL!!! to be normally normal.

Iain

"Be funny and self-effacing, yet earnest, and they may not notice or care that you're full of holes." is totally Iain.

Colin

brockovich4321 wrote:For those of you in regular therapy, which of your alters goes/who talks to the T?

For us, mostly me, as I'm the host and until I knew about the others and that we were DID, it was ONLY ME that I knew about.

If an alter announces themselves, does your T acknowledge that alter or do they call that alter by the host name?

Our T is good at using the name of who he is talking to. In fact, I think _I_ would be upset to find out that he refused to and instead called THEM by my name, as that sort of thing would be an attack on their validation and existence, and would likely be causing stress and damage in the system that we do NOT need or want.

Most of the time our T recognizes whose there. If not, will ask. Have a couple who refuse to give T a name but he knows the difference. Some don't drive so they have to be chauffeured. Occasionally, there is a change in the lobby. Either to one who wants to talk to T or to a protector cuz of too many people or an incident. Several therapists who usually stagger clients but life happens.

T will ask 5 minutes before end of session for someone who can drive to come. Safety.

T has told us someone came who hasn't been there before. Know there have been others who peeked checking him and office out. He assures them that they are safe there, that they are welcomed to come back whenever they want. We joke he knows more of us than we do! Not sure it's a joke.