Here are some ideas about what TO do:

• Be genuinely honest with your yourself. The more honest you are, the more healing you will accomplish.
• Be genuinely honest with your therapist. Your therapist can help best when they genuinely understand the issues.
• Remember that your healing is to be focused on you, your behavior, your feelings, your mistakes, your strengths, your weaknesses, etc. Your therapy is about you, so keep the topics focused on you, even when it is hard to look at yourself.
• Do your own homework in between sessions. Your healing will progress as you put your own time and effort into it.
• Be kind, appreciative, thankful, and polite. This doesn’t mean to grovel or do penance. Just use normal social manners and social politeness.
• Remember that your therapist does not have to be your emotional (or physical) punching bag. If you are hitting too hard, redirect your anger towards your abusers, where it belongs.
• Give yourself adequate time to work through the complexities of your healing process. An experienced therapist will not rush you, and it is truly ok for you to take as much time to heal as you need.
• Separate yourself from other survivors that are troublemakers and instigators of negative drama. Just like school days, if you hang out with people causing harm, you’ll end up doing the same, or being tangled in their web. Their poor behavior will cost you. You can decide if that is worth it to you or not.
• Ignore the drama queens determined to cause trouble in front of you. If you refuse to buy into their antics, they will move on to other pastures. If you give drama precedence over your own healing, you will not be progressing in your own healing. Protect the entire dissociative community by supporting your therapeutic resources.
• Remember to think for yourself. All too often, survivors listen to any strong, authoritative voice that tells them what to do. If someone is telling you negative things about your therapist, set a boundary, stop, and re-evaluate all sides of your situation.
• Talk openly with your therapist about any concerns you have. Give yourself the chance to problem-solve any difficulties or conflicts that arise. Working through conflicts is an important part of your healing process, and it does not necessarily require a therapeutic rupture.

.
If you can truly apply these guidelines, you will be honoring your own healing. You will also be showing respect to your individual therapist, protecting other ongoing therapeutic relationships, supporting the greater survivor community, and enhancing the larger therapeutic community.
Maybe most of you think that you are not actively involved in the destruction of the therapeutic resources, but if you support it, believe it, allow it to go on by your “friends”, etc, then you could be more involved than you realize. You can either help to maintain effective therapeutic resources, or you can allow their destruction.
It’s a conscious decision that each one of us has to make.
Everyone has to do their part in protecting the therapeutic resources available-especially for dissociative survivors, which are even fewer. You can choose to support the destructive people, or you can choose to kick them to the curb, and get along with your own healing.
Remember, if you genuinely focus on yourself and your own healing, then you are doing all you need to do.
___________
By:
Kathy Broady LCSW
http://discussingdissociation.wordpr...tic-community/