Quote:
Originally Posted by feileacan
I'm wondering what you mean by saying that your attacking responses were dissociated. For me, my rage (and also other stuff) is/was dissociated as well - in my non-therapy life I barely ever got angry to anyone, mild frustration was the most I experienced. The things I've experienced in therapy are/were definitely coming from a part unknown to me before starting therapy. For a long time I could see that things happened to me in therapy and I could remember and recount them afterwards but I couldn't connect to them emotionally. I mostly still can't but while previously I absolutely couldn't reflect on anything while in those (I would say borderline'ish) states, now I've discovered that I can at least a little bit, which is a new thing to me. It seems to me that when you talk about dissociated experiences you mean something different?
It actually took another therapist (whom I saw because of a temporarily moving) to realise that my self is fragmented and consists of parts - not in a DID kind of way, but still parts that don't have much connection between each other. . .
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Thanks, feileacan. This does sound very similar. 8 years ago I eventually got a diagnosis of DDNOS as well as PDNOS. These DSM categories have now changed I think, but there are others with the same idea. In the literature DID is tertiary structural dissociation and my therapist thought I had secondary structural dissociation.
I'm glad to hear that your therapy, and therapist, seem to be working for you. I fell apart after my late husband died. But my kids are grown and seem to be doing OK, thank goodness. Not perfect but their lives seem to work for them. At least for now. I'm very grateful. I also tried to compensate rationally -- didn't know exactly what the problem with me was, then, but I had had an eating disorder as a teenager so I was careful in trying to note when I was not doing "mothering" very well, according to what I knew rationally and instinctively.