Quote:
Originally Posted by peaches100
I've been in therapy for several years now and feel stuck in a certain dilemma. I don't have DID according to my t - I have Complex PTSD and GAD. However, I have a pretty significant dissociation between what I'd call my adult side and my child sides. They feel like night and day to me. I don't lose time - I am aware when I switch. But I seem unable to control the switch. I also find it very hard to be in "both" an adult state and child state at the same time. It is usualy one way, or the other.
For the last while now, my t has been working with me to try to hold my adult mind in the present, while at the same time accessing the child parts with their traumatic memories. Her hope has been that when the pain hits, my adult side can kick in and provide relief to the parts of me that hold past pain.
I did start to make a little bit of headway holding them both in mind at the same time, as long as the child state did not merge with the adult state and fill me with unbearable pain. Whenever I got close to getting overwhelmed with pain, my t had me ask that pained part to "step away" enough so that the adult state could maintain composure and continue talking/processing the memory. A few times, it worked.
But after a little bit of success, it wasn't long before I got completely engulfed with the pain and could not bring myself out of it or rescue the child part of me from the pain. This is always where i get stuck.
When the pain gets too bad to endure it, if I can't get myself out of it, I want my t to jump in and soothe me with words, and with physical comfort if it takes that to keep me from feeling retraumatized. But i have a hard time asking for what i need, and while my t would comfort me, I know she would rather have me learn to do it for myself.
Because of this, about 3-4 months ago, I had a particularly painful session where my adult side disappeared, and I was stuck in the trauma state. I was not able to get out of it, and my t did not step in to stop the pain or rescue me either. The result was that i felt totally like I had relived the trauma all over again. It felt just like it did as a child when I suffered and nobody noticed or helped me. Since then, I have felt totally disappointed with myself and my t. I'm afraid to do "any" work with old traumas or child parts of me now. For now, we are just going over DBT skills in the DBT book.
The problem with this is that the DBT book only engages the reasonable adult side of me. That part of me is happy and fine with staying in the book and not doing parts work. In fact, the adult part of me is exhausted, fed up, and feel incapable of dealing with my trauma and my parts that hold pain. I don't want to do it anymore. In fact, I feel that i would like those painful parts that hold pain to just disappear, like they were gone before I ever had my breakdown.
The problem is that they never really "go away." I can cut them out of my awareness for awhile, but they eventually find a way to show up again. Like yesterday at my session, we were doing the DBT book. I was totally in my adult self, feeling fine, no pain, no neediness, nothing. But at the end of the session, my t asked me what else I needed from her before ending the session. Immediately, i started crying. I knew it was those child parts showing up. They were crying because they have been feeling left out, ignored, and not able to connect with my t or be comforted -- ever since I decided not to work with them anymore, to just stay in the DBT book. I guess it has been about a couple of months now that I have kept this whole part of me pushed away.
I am doing better without them. I don't feel the old pain. I don't need to email t between sessions. I don't feel separation pain when I miss a session. But then they show up again unexpectedly. . .with their separation pain, and their missing my t, and missing her comforting words and being with her. I don't know what to do!
I can't go back to doing "parts" work because my adult self does not have the strength and skills to heal the pain that the child parts hold. As i said, i tried that awhile back, and i ended up feeling so retraumatized I almost quit therapy completely. For whatever reason, i just can't heal my own pain, and I don't want to keep asking my t to soothe/comfort/rescue me when I know i need to learn it for myself.
If anybody understands what i am talking about, please reply! I need some advice on what to do.
Thanks,
Peaches
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Peaches...I no longer carry the diagnosis of DID. All my alters have been integrated. what that means is the alters are still with me but in a normal way like what you explained happens to you.
here where I live and work the mental health community believes everyone has "internal children" "inner child". here where I live and work what this means is everyone has times when they feel the emotions, trauma's, events... they they went through as a child. Just last night I was at a new years eve party and suddenly felt real small, shy, and claustrophobic like I used to feel when I had to enter the mine shafts with my abuser. My wife saw I was having trouble pulling myself out of those child like feelings, but because my therapy goals do not include her being in charge of self nurturing me out of those emotions, she could not do a thing for me. All she could do was sit there waiting for me to use the therapy technique my therapist taught me. It took a bit of time for me to stop expecting my wife and therapist to "rescue me" "fix my problem for me" and take care of myself like other normal people do. I kept looking to her for help and she literally had to turn away from me. finally my therapy sessions kicked in, I looked at my champagne glass, took a sip to feel and notice the bubbles. then I while I still could speak, I politely excused myself with saying I wanted to check on the dogs before the fireworks started. I found my dog and I petted him until the feeling passed. Then I went back to the party, making a point of giving my wife a thank you kiss for following through with letting me be the big girl and do the self nurturing that I was taught to do.
when i first learned that the therapist and my wife would no longer "rescue me" "fix my problem for me" it scared the crap out of me, and I thought i would never get the upper hand in this new normalized type of switching from my normal aware self to the hurt, emotional child self and back. It took a while and wanst easy but the more I continued to follow my therapy plans of my using the grounding and self nurturing tools I learned in therapy, the more I gained control over it.
Unfortunately or in my thinking fortunately we dont have the Utopian mental health system where therapists will always be there every time we need them to "rescue" us / "fix the problem for us" If we did i never would have learned to stand on my own two feet and now have the better life of being healed and able to help others learn how to stand on their own two feet.
For me it was very fortunate that I have a therapist and wife who cares so much for me that they want me to have a life free from mental illness and be a fully functioning adult. they and I know the only way in which I will have the good life I want and strive for is if they dont treat me like a child by "rescuing or fixing my problems for me"
Im not always successful in pulling myself out of those child like feelings, emotions, trauma's, events.. but each time I follow through for that I become stronger every time.
please dont give up, just take it one day, one event, one child like moment at a time, and some day your being able to pull your self out, rescue yourself and fix your own problems like a responsible normal adult does every time they too feel those child hood feelings/traumas.
In the end therapists can not always be with us every second of the day when we encounter these child like times. Only you can "rescue" "fix the problem" so here's a suggestion....
maybe you and your therapist can make a list of all the grounding / self nurturing things that do help you ground and feel better about yourself. Carry this list with you for a bit. this way when this happens at any time even in therapy you will know how to help yourself. It helped me a lot to carry my list around.
My therapist thought it was great that even in therapy I would start feeling those child like times and reach into my pocket, pull out that list and start doing whats on the list until i was ok again. we even celebrated each time I attempted to re ground / self nurture, whether or not I was successful. We also celebrated even more so when I was successful.