Multiple Personalities Support Group
Dissociative identity disorder is a diagnosis described as the existence in an individual of two or more distinct identities or personalities, each with its own pattern of perceiving and interacting with the environment. At least two of these personalities are considered to routinely take control of the individual's behavior, and there is also some associated memory loss,...
I would like to know if anyone else has a therapist that is helping them to accept their parts. For me it is embarrassing and freeing. I feel both ashamed and relieved at this diagnosis. I feel embarrassed when she asks me to talk to my parts, especially when she asks me to ask their permission to talk to other parts. It is also wonderful to feel totally understood and to know that the goal is not to get rid of my parts, but to establish communication and acceptance of all my parts and to be aware of them. I feel embarrassed when some of my parts start talking out loud to each other. I am becoming more aware of my parts and more accepting of them and less that I have to justify them. I am starting to be aware that the denial of the abuse is a part that does not want to believe it. I have another part that is afraid to share at a deep level with another person. I am starting to become aware of how many separate and distinct parts there are. It feels good that I can own these feelings and I am feeling more comfortable with myself.
nice work and keep going!
I feel isolated because information onTDI has just reached France and everything is quite backward.
My therapist is very kind but he struggles .He told me TDI is not recognised in France.He is shit scared of the whole thing, I can feel it and it does not encourage me to go forward and "explore" my lost parts.I tend to get scared or silence them to keep"normal "and functioning.
Is there a book that has helped you work on your parts?
I found"the haunted self" and "safe passage to healing " specially helped because of the survivors' experiences quoted.
They are giving a seminar in Paris next spring.
Did your therapist train with them?
As soon as it gets dark, it's another matter with my parts all over the place, the terrified ones, the abusive ones who would like me to cut etc..
i am also incapable of accomplishing simple actions and have phobias .
On the other hand, I saw on Oprah once an interview with someone with MPD, who had gotten a PhD in psychology, mainly to learn more about his diagnosis. I B-A-R-E-L-Y made it through nursing school at 32 years old, to be fair, while I had 4 children at home on my own, and paying for a house and a car. I paid a very high price, though, as my children were taken from me (still undiagnosed with MPD or bipolar) right in the middle of school. I had a brief breakdown and unintentionally abused one of my children. I never got them back again. However, I am now seeing my resolve to stay in school pay off, as all of my children are persuing a higher education and Isaac, my oldest that we lost, had plans to and I'm sure he would have if he hadn't succombed to the destruction of our family tree.
My experiences in therapy have been sometimes helpful and also sometimes very harmful , but I have not yet found anyone whom I can trust enough to go any deeper than I already have. My last one, whom I was able to trust the most I thought, kept asking me what was going on inside, etc. and I told him that just makes me withdraw more. After the third time doing this, I got extremely angry, although I did not let him see it, and decided to quit therapy since I've already been down that road with disasterous results.
My general advice to avoid disasterous therapy results is, take the therapy relationship slowly. Those of us who are survivors of abuse tend to trust people too easily out of desperation and wind up in over our heads in any kind of relationship. This includes therapists. I have found most of the time, over time, I wind up growing up to, and/or past my therapist's own level of maturity, and if and when I start to refer to anything they may have mis-stepped on, they tend to "forget" what I know they did or said, or just deny it. When that happens, it's all over because by default the "blame" gets laid on me. After all, I'm the one with dissociative disorder, right?
In the past when I've had such problems, I've rationalized it because therapists have to talk to many people every day, and it has to be very difficult to keep up with each person's different situation. Which may be true, but still, I think some certain things I've pointed out before would be very difficult not to be able to remember if they were really paying attention.
Especially when working with the last few therapists, after getting a good idea of what DID therapy is all about, I have early on in the process mentioned that I am not looking for merging, but working together civilly and fairly. However, even when that request has been accepted, (and sometimes, reminding them of that, as in the last therapist I had) I have found that the therapist has ultimately always focused on merging. And when that happens after previously agreeing on civility, it comes accross very strongly to me as the therapist needing to be in control, and bypassing my own feelings and needs. In other words, ignoring my boundaries. Which is more than a little disturbing, as that is a strong pattern in my past (and most others) with abuse. The therapist should be well aware of that, and know better than to go past what is comfortable for the therapee to deal with.
Especially with the last therapist, we had discussed more than once whether or not he really needed to talk to each one, and he said no. We agreed (or so I thought) that as long as I was progressing on the outside, it could be presumed things were getting better on the inside. However, he kept coming back around asking who the "protector" alter was, and who the "all seeing and all knowing" alter was, etc...and it quickly started to aggrivate me when we had the discussion about not needing to do this for the second or more time and he still persisted at trying to communicate within. He also asked me once if I thought I could trust him. I thought for a few moments on how to tell him "no", and told him I didn't think I could trust anybody. Which is also true. But he seemed to disregard (or forget) my answer, because he kept right on stepping past my own boundary without regard.
So for now, I am taking a haitus from therapy, and just enjoying myself and relaxing for the time being. I JUST today got my boyfriend, "S" back into detox and treatment. It feels strange, as I have no emotion about it in particular. Maybe it hasn't really hit me yet that I don't need to consume so much of my time taking care of him for now, at least. Meanwhile, here come the holidays....