Thanks for the Boundary Ninja Tales link. Looks like some very interesting stuff! I'll enjoy looking through it, lots of different things.

My last T was a specialist in trauma and dissociation and I believe that she did help a lot with that. She used the phase idea and we worked in mostly in a psychodynamic style. But she had also diagnosed some personality disorder issues, which I agree with, and did not have special training in personality disorders nor, I now believe, was she aware of all of her own issues. Perhaps/probably? I triggered some of hers.

At any rate, she was probably an attachment figure in the early years of our therapy but wasn't able to sustain it until I really internalized or developed a secure self, however that might be described. . .but even though it has been very hard I don't feel that I have to have that now because I have all of my "parts", the previously cut-off emotions and impulses, from the trauma therapy.

So all in all I've been very lucky. Reading and posting here on PC has been very helpful, filling in and providing a kind of place where I can try to be myself and see the consequences without totally dying of embarassment at my many social faux pas. That's sort of what I have felt that I needed, once the dissociated parts were well known, in order to learn and develop a sense of myself.

The personality stuff -- that's definitely related to narcissism and shame and when a therapy experience sends you back to feeling worthless, useless, bad, horrible, etc. I don't think that the stories we write here about that can be understood or "empathized" with by people who haven't experienced them. The problem is that it just destroys (again, like in an early childhood experience? I certainly don't remember but it's the theory) your sense of self and you never developed a whole, strong one to begin with!

Maybe therapy isn't the only way to get that, though. It's just so hard, you don't know what you're missing if you never had it.