Met New Therapist

Una+ wrote:Did she ever seem to not remember events that should have been memorable? How about that business with the hammer?

Um YES! 1. She said "next time I'll get out the play-doh and we'll work with that". And she NEVER DID. I was so mad lol. There were times where I swear she would do the exact same thing or say the exact same thing that she had said in another session. I remember asking her about it and her saying "oh, I don't know, I say the same things a lot some times."

The whole hammer thing was just freaking weird. The day I left for my Dad's, that's when I feel like I must have lost time or missed SOMETHING. Then the seizure/hospital incident happened, and in the hospital I was hallucinating things related to hammers and roses and 4s, finally in the end thinking ***trigger*** that "when I was 4 I killed my little sister named Rose with a hammer and that my mom had made me do it". When I got back, I told her about some of the hallucination stuff, but nothing about the hammers roses and 4s. I was telling her about how something had scared me and seemed to snap me out of the child mode thing. She seemed to dwell on that, saying "but it did snap you out of it?"

At the very next session, she kept on referring to a picture she had nailed up on the wall, but I kept on not really noticing. I had this weird thing like I was scared to look towards the left.(I had told her the session before that while at the hospital, all I wanted to do was go to room 4 and look toward the left, and when I did, that is when I "saw "my dead Grandmother(her name was Rose, something I didn't tell her) At the end of the session, she asked me if I had my rubberband. Then she pulled a hammer out of her drawer and said "This is what I use on all my plants". When she turned around I started to feel my body going in all weird directions, like the same patterned movements with the "seizure". I started to snap my rubber band, and she said "keep snapping" as my head (somewhat unwillingly)followed her movements left and right(she would lean to the left and rearrange something on teh bookshelf, lean towards her right and rearrange something on her desk to the right).

I said "There's something about hammers". "Oh this? I just used it to nail up THAT picture on the wall right THERE". And as she used the hammer to point towards the picture, my head immediately snapped to the left where I took in the picture of the rose. (Actually rose petals with water droplets). "And flowers...or roses..." I said. I know I was then totally snapped into adult mode, and started crying saying I didn't understand what was happening to me.

Next session I said "I don't know how you knew about the hammer!" "Oh I didn't know about the hammer I was just rummaging in the drawer and pulled it out. I had used it to nail up that picture."

I know. This all sounds totally warped. Now you see why I am so ######6 confused lol. Don't worry. I'm pretty sure I never had a little sister named Rose, let alone killed anyone. But it seems like there's a connection...

LinaEve, sorry I took over your thread. How is everything going with your T? I am debating on what I should bring to my first appointment with my new T. Like my journal or posts or anything. If I do I am gonna feel super...and I hate this word...but super crazy. I mean even I think I'm nuts when I read it. I always think, "well I felt that way then ,but not now. I was rereading over what I wrote on the intake form I emailed yesterday, and I am just thinking oh no. This woman already knows before she even sees me that I am totally and completely cookoo. I mean so many of the thoughts on there look like they were written by a 10 year old. UGH. I can't help to already be embarrassed and I haven't even met her.

On the intake form, I didn't say DID, but I did say all the stuff about how I feel very child-like and small sometimes, which leaks out sometimes like I can't really control it. I said that both of my last two Ts mentioned "dissociation" , but that I am still unsure how this applies to me personally and whether or not this is the main problem. I wrote that I really need a name for this problem though! And I wrote that I feel like thoughts and images just randomly pop into my head sometimes for no reason.

Were you nervous before you showed her all that stuff???

dividedtruth89 wrote:LinaEve, sorry I took over your thread. How is everything going with your T? I am debating on what I should bring to my first appointment with my new T. Like my journal or posts or anything. If I do I am gonna feel super...and I hate this word...but super crazy. I mean even I think I'm nuts when I read it. I always think, "well I felt that way then ,but not now. I was rereading over what I wrote on the intake form I emailed yesterday, and I am just thinking oh no. This woman already knows before she even sees me that I am totally and completely cookoo. I mean so many of the thoughts on there look like they were written by a 10 year old. UGH. I can't help to already be embarrassed and I haven't even met her.

On the intake form, I didn't say DID, but I did say all the stuff about how I feel very child-like and small sometimes, which leaks out sometimes like I can't really control it. I said that both of my last two Ts mentioned "dissociation" , but that I am still unsure how this applies to me personally and whether or not this is the main problem. I wrote that I really need a name for this problem though! And I wrote that I feel like thoughts and images just randomly pop into my head sometimes for no reason.

Were you nervous before you showed her all that stuff???

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Oh I'm sorry I got this so late! It's been a rough weekend. I hope this is in time to help you!

I was extremely nervous! Before I met her, I had a crappy therapist. I was actually pretty sure all therapists were like him and wasn't quite sure how I was going to handle it if she was the same. I probably would have sworn off mental help forever! But she turned out to be fantastic, and I really like her so far.

Don't worry about sending her all that stuff. I'm glad you were honest with her; better she read it and know before hand than see it/hear it and be blindsided! Does she have experience with DID, by any chance? If she does, then she's heard it and seen it before; she definitely won't think you are crazy!

I didn't say DID either on my intake form. I also didn't say anything about what I thought was going on; I really wanted to make sure she came to that conclusion herself based on evidence. I brought in my journals, every single post I have on here (came to almost fifty something pages! ), some random writings, even poetry! She took her time and saw how uncomfortable I was and kept her questions to whatever I was comfortable answering. In fact, she talked more about how we were going to make her office 'safe' for me. Such as: what bothered me about the room (like the couch being beside the door so I couldn't see it), if I wanted more child-friendly things (like toys, coloring books), even if the lights were too bright or dim! The second time I came in, she had a comfy chair opposite the couch ready for me so I could see the door and bought an elephant to accompany the lion (since I said one of us liked elephants; we still aren't comfortable giving out names or even really talking much about us).

I'm not sure when your appointment is (I really gotta get back in the loop!), so please keep me informed on how it went! I wish you the best of luck, and I sincerely hope this therapist is better than your last (and that you enjoy her company more!).

Dude that is SO COOL! I REALLY hope that this T wants to do that. I mean, make the office feel safer. Because that is HUGE. Like, if she has a brown leather couch in there...I don't know I may ask to sit on the floor!!! And stuffed animals would be nice...

See, in my first email(not intake form), I asked if she had experience with dissociation, and I was gonna ask her that when I talked to her on the phone(I think she was expecting me to, I mean, she had already read my first email when she called me to make the appointment) but I freaked and just said...um, do you take Aetna insurance? Lol. At least she KNOWS though that dissociation is a concern of mine.

So yeah, my appointment is actually tomorrow at 2, so you weren't too late I will keep you updated. Sorry you had a rough weekend Let me know if you need or just want to rant

re: Dr. Tollefson

I've done incorporation therapy with Dr. Tollefson personally, and was at WIIT probably a total of like 4 months in three years of working with my DID. In fact, I got diagnosed with it there, at Hollywood Pavilion in South FL.

So I probably know your therapist, or at least know of her. If she knows incorporation therapy that means she worked there full time and is also a licensed hypnotherapist. Crappy therapists never lasted there and certainly wouldn't know incorporation therapy techniques.

Incorporation therapy helped me a lot, but it didn't get rid of my time loss. So I have hopes integration will help more with this. I will say, though, that it helped me a LOT even if it didn't work exactly how it said on the box. And I don't think I could have even thought of trying for integration without incorporation first.

The man is brilliant and it is a HUGE SHAME the world has lost his 100+ groups on things from shame and guilt, emptiness, internal communication, loyalty and trauma bonds, informational groups on brainwashing and programming, overcoming doubt, religion vs spirituality, trauma holidays/anniversaries, just a huge treasure trove of groups that were all amazing and helped me a ton. Hopefully he will find a way again to get them out there.

PS: Hollywood Pavilion let Dr. Bill go after pretty much forcing him to sell them the program. I'm not going to go into details but I'll never go to WIIT again after that. Also everyone who was working there at the time quit, so there is all new staff. They really ruined a great program that could have went national and helped a ton of people. It already has helped many. They also didn't let him get closure in group with any of his patients in inpatient or outpatient, many of whom used the program for years to get them through DDNOS and DID. It really screwed some people up in IOP when this happened, when we all found out he couldn't even come back to say goodbye. Luckily he has a decent online presence and is very approachable still, I talk to him from time to time on facebook.