Therapy history -- long story. For anyone who want to make their way through it.

My expectations about therapy were formed around the time I went to a mental hospital for anorexia nervosa when I was 15, over 55 years ago. I expected them to “fix” me, eventually. I needed to do my part – face my issues, be honest, etc. But eventually I expected that I would get or be “OK”. That’s my expectation, but it’s what the profession encouraged people to believe at that time, too.

Therapy and even that attitude about it did help me, eventually, kick the anorexia, go to college, get a job, get married, have children and be almost normal, at least to outside appearances. I had meaning in my life, my late husband loved me. When I had problems with the kids that I thought were mine, I owned them, took my daughter to therapy, went to therapy myself.

But the therapy I went to as a parent didn’t really “fix” me. Or the issues I was having with my daughter. I owned them as much as possible and tried not to lay them on her. But that’s about all I could do.

Rage first erupted in a session with a therapist I was seeing originally for parenting issues about 30 years ago. I had been telling her for weeks that I felt like I had a pocket of (infected) rage in my left forearm. I started feeling it after we talked about a particular family situation, but I wasn’t expressing it outwardly.

Then, she double booked on me and I was having a hard time dealing with it. It was therapy so, I expressed myself -- that she was terrible, just like all the other therapists I had seen. I threw my car keys on her sofa. She couldn’t handle it. I left and went looking for somebody with more experience and training, who said that they could deal with rage. I didn’t find anybody I could make any progress with and stopped looking after about 4 years.

Then my husband was diagnosed with a terminal illness and I “knew” I was going to need some “help”. I went looking for a therapist then for about 2 years. No luck. I liked the hospice social worker, and her down-to-earth dealing with reality, and asked her for a referral. I went to see him after my husband died, but it wasn’t anybody like her, just another regular counselor. I didn’t make any progress and quit.

Then, after about a year, my young son mentioned a counselor that his girlfriend at the time liked a lot. I didn’t have very high expectations, but I was getting more and more depressed, so I went to her for awhile in the early 2000’s.

I continue to feel that something was very “wrong” with me. I had been in graduate school in cognitive psychology in the 1990’s and had looked stuff up in the university library. There I came across some books about shame and narcissism that seemed to ring true. Not in terms of outward expression so much as inner experience. I looked up some stuff about narcissism on the internet and showed to the therapist I mentioned above. She said “Why do you read stuff like this.” She, apparently, didn’t see anything like that in me and thought my looking at it was the problem. We continued therapy for several more months. Eventually we reached an impasse. I got angry and one day erupted saying what I don’t exactly remember. Then I said “Now, do you believe I have a personality disorder?” And she said, with disdain and superiority, “Yes. I thought you were better than that.” I left.

So much for trying to face one’s issues honestly.

It’s possible for me to say now that I didn’t so much express my anger as allow it to take over – but that is as much as was possible back then.

I continued trying different therapists, some for several years. I tried several Intensive Outpatient Programs. I went to support groups. Eventually, as I was discussing some problems I was having with my then-therapist, a group member who had DID thought she recognized some symptoms in me and suggested that I go to see a consultant/author/trainer she knew from her history looking for her therapy.

I did. The consultant suggested the diagnosis of DDNOS. She couldn’t take my case personally but recommended the last therapist I saw, I Ph.D. with 2 years of post-doc experience and training in treating patients with dissociative disorders. She diagnosed me with DDNOS, too, and also with PDNOS. She consulted with someone she knew who had more experience with personality disorders and went to see another person whom I had suggested, either for myself or both of us to see together, who was a self psychologist. So, she tried. And I’m not sure that many people can say they are very competent to treat personality disorders other than BPD.

The last therapist, and the consultant who filled in for her for 6 months while she was on maternity leave, did help with the trauma and dissociation, I think, but not on integration and the development of a sense of self. I saw them for 6 years. Although the last therapist may have been thinking about “the relationship”, I wasn’t. I was trying to develop a coherent, integrated sense of who I was. My attitude was “I’m going to make this therapy work, or else. These people are as competent as they come, if they can’t do it no one can, and I’m not going to go try somebody else. That’s ridiculous.” So I pushed.

There was the day I came to session and told her in advance I had my activated, antisocial parts(the “demon”) with me. We discussed ways to try to resolve things and move forward. I suggested an idea I wanted to try, based on some ideas I had from Heinz Kohut’s work. She said “That would take a long time.” I said “Yes.” She thought about it then said, “We have to do something that will work for both of us and I don’t want to do that” or words to that effect. My activated state felt just floored and called out “B***”. It was describing what it saw, a woman I had hired to help me, refusing to do what I felt was necessary for me to move forward, because it threatened her position or sense of authority or something. The T glared at me in disdain and disapproval. The combined state of me began to crumble and back down somewhat. Eventually the “demon” left, the T saw what she had done, it was the end of the session.

Next session I came back without the activated state. The T said that she had been “triggered”. Didn’t explain more than that. Expected me, apparently, to accept that it was OK for her to get “triggered” but not OK for my activated state, which I could have kept shut off, to say “B***”. She was just not going to accept that from anyone.

We continued sessions a few more weeks, didn’t get anywhere. She didn’t want me to leave, but then when I said I felt like I was being exploited THEN she said “I don’t want you to feel exploited.” The next session was when she said that she could not continue the therapy because she didn’t have the emotional resources.

Reality, but –

Therapy and therapists suck. That’s my activated state’s conclusion but I do listen to that part of me from time to time, now.

Some might say from all this that therapy “succeeded”. It just surely didn’t “succeed” in any way that I ever expected. And I’m still angry at all the pain, and the time, and the money, and the blind alleys, and. . .There needs to be a better way.