it was a very weird session. disconnected. i guess we were still on the topic of what we are doing... and on the topic of how i need to function better than i have been. i sent him this email afterwards:

(i will warn people that this might be triggering to people with DID. i'm trying to come to a conception of my difficulties that works for me. it might not work for others. everyone needs to find their own way. this is me though. its something that alters a bit through time... but this is me).

here it is:

Hey. I wanted to send you this because I'm not sure how to talk about it...

Trauma work... Maybe... I am ready to do that.

I found something last week from those trauma pages:

> The critical issue is to introduce the capacity to flexibly remember the trauma. In order for this to occur, some new information that is incompatible to the traumatic memory must be introduced (Foa et al., 1989). The most important new information is probably the fact that the patient is able to confront the traumatic memory by a trusted therapist in a safe environment (van der Hart & Spiegel,1993). In order to help the patient regulate emotional arousal, secure attachment may be even more important than evoking the traumatic memories. Therefore, it is important for the patient to establish and maintain an emotional connection with the therapist.

http://www.trauma-pages.com/a/vanderk.php

My DBT therapist used to smile at me and say 'be kind to yourself' instead of trying to do the cognitive restructuring thing. Now... When those kinds of thoughts occur to me I remember her kind face and her tone of voice and it helps. It helps me be able to look at myself kindly. It helps me be kind to myself. It helps. Not sure if you remember this but I felt shame once. And you just kind of sat there... And I felt like you were kind of feeling it too. And it was ok 'cause you weren't running from it or afraid of it or averse to it or anything. And you just let me feel it and didn't try and make it go away or anything and you were there with me. The shame feels a bit easier now 'cause when I feel it I remember you being there. It feels like you are there, and it helps.

I guess pacing is hard. I know that its not supposed to be just about narrating, I know I have to feel the feelings too. But feel them a bit in a manageable way. I haven't done much of this before... Therapists are usually focused on trying to change the feeling (through cognitive restructuring or distraction or whatever). But I have done some... I know that sometimes talking about it and feeling it makes things a bit worse for a time. But then othertimes talking about it and feeling it makes things a bit better for a time and it is like I actually can properly put it out of my mind for a bit and focus on my work. I guess pacing is hard. But I'm willing to try. I guess I wanted to say that.

Here are the crucial bits from Griffiths:

> The potential to develop MPS could have developed very differently. Another society might make something very different of the individuals who are now made into sufferers of MPS.

> Socially constructed categories in this third sense are social pretenses that cannot survive the realisation that they are merely our inventions. The general acceptance of Hacking's analysis of multiple personality syndrome would have a corrosive effect on the social practices of the modern MPS community.

So... What is one left with? I have the realisation... But where does that leave me?

If alters just are complexes of thoughts / feelings / behaviours then what is the difference between losing time / being taken over by ruminations of thoughts / feelings / behaviours and being losing time / being taken over by alters? Why describe things the latter way when the first one will do?

I'm sorry the contract thing didn't work...

Knowing medications (e.g., SSRI's) are largely placebo tends to undermine their placebo response...

I have the realisation... But where does that leave me?

> In 1928, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Charcot's version of hysteria in La Revolution Surrealiste, Louis Aragon and Andre Breton proposed their alternative definition: 'This mental condition is based on the need of reciprocal seduction, which explains the hastily accepted miracles of medical suggestion (or countersuggestion). Hysteria is not a pathological phenomenon and may in all respects be considered a supreme means of expression.'... Aragon and Breton, physicians manques, understood as well as anyone what Charcot and Freud appeared to forget - that the symptoms of hysteria were always shaped by the 'reciprocal seduction' of doctor and patient.'

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/009...&sr=1-1&seller =

What does one need to say... What does one need to do... To get a little help?
Would you have referred me on for DBT if I had just told you about that?
I wonder... I don't know.
It doesn't matter now.
But you need to know.
This isn't denial.

I don't want to play the game.
I don't want to play games at all.
Games are a defence.
A diversion from the real stuff.
The real stuff that needs to be worked through.
Because...
I really really really really really want to get better.
I want to do the work.

I'm just don't think that focusing on currently fashionable symptoms is the optimal way to do that.

Make sense?

PS I don't expect you to answer. I just find this hard to express in person. Wanted to send it to you. Can talk about it on Friday. See you then.

________________

I'm not sure what he will make of it... but i need him to hear me on this. i just found that passage yesterday... about 'mutual seduction'. i think there might be something to that. what do i have to do to get you to want to work with me, to want to help me? i see your interest... i see the way your face lights up. dammit... i want to get better.

I was telling him about how sometimes I get stuck. Think 'i'll just sit down for 5' and then its two hours later. He thought if i made a contract with them it might help. I was like... It is trauma ruminations that is what it is. A contract won't help. He looked dubious. I was like 'I see the clock every 5 or 10 minutes but I'm just not done yet' (he thought they might be doing other things). He was like 'what are you doing?' I'm like 'I'm collecting myself to get ready' and he was like 'hmm... collecting yourself... what does that mean'?

There is something in the lit about how people deny DID one minute only to emphasise their symptoms the next. He was trying to get me to do that.

Damn him. How long is it going to take for him to believe me?

Or to see that his fishing...

Is what tends to make it so.

I won't play the game...

Will he reject me?