Manipulation or not really?

Is it manipulation when my T is trying to bring triggers during session to switch our identities...? She said to bring something that matters to me to the session to bring me back after switching.

I cant speak to why your treatment provider wanted you to bring something in to therapy with you but I can tell you why my treatment provider told me to..

he wanst trying to manipulate or trigger me to switch.

therapy is about going to a treatment provider to work on hard to handle problems. sometimes doing that will cause anyone whether they have a mental disorder or not to feel triggered.

feeling triggered means feeling emotional.

my DID / depersonalization derealization, amnesia and so on were/are dissociative meaning any time I encountered something that made me feel emotional I would dissociate. I would feel numb, spaced out and when I wasnt integrated would switch into and out of alters during therapy.

my therapist wanted me to bring something in to hold so that when I was feeling emotional, instead of dissociating I could use that personal object to stay grounded, to not dissociate....

example storms were one of my triggers. my therapist was not a mind reader, they could not jump into my brain and know every single thing that caused me to feel emotional.

if I was triggered (feeling scared, sad) when my treatment provider asked me about the weather that day (talking about the weather is just a normal thing, people wake up in the morning they look outside see what the weather is and dress accordingly, turn on the news and what do you get a weather forecast...my point weather is just something every human being encounters many times a day, it normally would not trigger someone so my treatment provider has no idea that it would trigger me just by saying hi, come on in what do you think of the weather we are having today, normal conversation.

me the moment I see rain my anxiety builds, my dissociation symptoms increase. let alone answering my treatment providers perfectly innocent welcome how is your day and what do you think of the weather would send me to being spaced out and disconnected.

by having a personal object or my service dog with me I can practice self care instead of dissociating. I can look at the object, notice its colors, texture, how cold or hot it feels, breath and calm myself then look at my therapist and say to him I dont like this weather, it scares me, it reminds me of when I was abused in a mine shaft and had to find my way home during a thunder/ lightening rain storm.

in other words therapy is about hard to talk about things and my bringing my service dog or a personal object helps me to continue to participate in therapy while at the same time ..........not.......have my anxiety, depression, dissociative disorders interfere with what we need to do.

my suggestion would be to talk with your treatment provider, they will explain to you what your treatment goals like whether or not therapy for you will naturally be talking about hard problems that you are seeing them for, and why they asked you to bring a personal object in with you.

Sometimes our therapist helps us to get grounded so we can switch back if we switch in therapy and sometimes she just carries on the discussion with whoever has presented. It depends on the circumstances. We are still in stage 1 of DID therapy so we are learning about the system and learning grounding techniques. It isn't any good to us if a terrified one switches out and can't talk so T always helps us get grounded again when that happens. But sometimes like yesterday an alter comes out who T really needs to talk with so she just goes with it unless whoever is there is distressed.
We don't find it manipulative, it just helps us do the therapy things that we need to do. have you talked about it with your T?
Oh, and we take things to therapy to help with grounding like that, I have some really nice smelly things that help me. We also sometimes take things that help other alters to be there, like yesterday we took in old family photos that trigger certain ones in us to come out, and that is why that alter was able to be there and talk to the T for the first time. T asked us to take the photos again next time. To do the same thing I suppose. But we don't find it manipulative, we find it helpful, so we give consent for it. If you don't like using things to trigger certain ones you can tell your T you aren't comfortable doing that. We didn't use to like it but we agree to it now because we have more trust and because we are actively trying different ways of getting the therapy work done.

Do you know what suppose to happen in therapy and everyone at least the more conscious understand the tatics? It is to manpuilate to get to the ends of something for possible a better? Make sure that you ask in the beginning so that you know what will happen along the way. I'd expect literature of all the manipulation strategy, but dont think iti is a guarantee of anything