Quote:
Originally Posted by HD7970GHZ
Thank you Amandalouise,
I appreciate you sharing your own experiences with life and in therapy. 
I don't know much about the IFS modality; it is news to me that IFS leans towards suppressing the pain of the exiles / little / trauma parts. So far my therapist has been facilitating my little part, allowing me to show up with my teddy bears in sessions and wrap up in blankeys. Perhaps what you are referring to takes place at a later stage of recovery, which I suppose might make sense if the goal is to no longer need to regress when under stress.
I definitely don't resonate with full on DID alters / parts, however, the parts that I have do have their own needs, wants and desires and there is a lot of ambivalence between them. Sometimes I will spend all day in my little space coping with stress and giving my little side what it wants, but as a result, I will experience guilt and shame for not doing more adult-like things. It's as though I cannot find a happy medium to do; I'm damned it I do and damned if I don't. My therapist is currently helping me to identify my parts and learn what it is they need, want and desire. I believe the goal is to provide balance for my parts so that I am not always stuck in little-space or adult-space.
Thanks,
HD7970ghz |
sorry my post wasnt clear. I was taking mini breaks during the rush rush of family festivities....
I did not mean it causes or requires you to repress, supress, distract and so on, it works ....with .....those issues. think of it like a therapist that works with PTSD helps you to handle times when you have flashbacks.
IFS works with people who have problems with pushing away their feelings, or supressing them or using distractions rather than paying attention to what they need and taking care of their problems.
let me show you an example from today...
I was at a family gathering and someone said something that made me angry. rather than stand there and say you made me angry and deal with the situation, I acted out, told them where to put it and then pushed my anger down and went to talk with another group of family members as if everything was fine. it wasnt fine, that situation kept interfering with my enjoyment of the get together. This is a completely normal thing that can happen to anyone whether they have a mental or physical health problem or not...
if I was in IFS the process would look like this....
find a quiet place and have an internal conversation with myself (not alters in terms of DID, Im talking normal parts of self anyone can have)...
ok exile I just gave you my anger out there, its yours and you have every right to be angry. but you should not have told them where to go.
ok firefighter how are you going to go out there and fix this and manager come up with a plan so that it doesnt happen again.
Still talking to self....
but she said...
I know she said that but we cant go around telling people where to go and what to do.
I know we will go and apologize
and then we have this much time left here how about we do this that and the other thing (making a plan)
(during this conversation working with the normal parts of myself...(the feelings of needing to push things away (exile role) put out the fires (firefighters role) and micromanage everything (manager role) I keep asking myself questions until I feel everything is covered and I can go back to my life again.
this style would not have worked for me because there was no supressing, repressing, distracting....I had DID alters i didnt have exile, firefighter or mangers. each one of my alters were there to completely take care of those things that caused me to dissociate. for me dissociation was not a willful pushing away of my emotions and distracting myself, it was things like feeling numb and spaced out, disconnected. then my alters took complete control and handled that which I could not. example if what happened today happened before I was integrated my alter red would have taken control and took care of the problem, no supressing and pushing away of the emotion anger, red would have handled it completely