[Kiya]

Here are some ideas about what TO do:

• Be genuinely honest with your yourself. The more honest you are, the more healing you will accomplish.
• Be genuinely honest with your therapist. Your therapist can help best when they genuinely understand the issues.
• Remember that your healing is to be focused on you, your behavior, your feelings, your mistakes, your strengths, your weaknesses, etc. Your therapy is about you, so keep the topics focused on you, even when it is hard to look at yourself.
• Do your own homework in between sessions. Your healing will progress as you put your own time and effort into it.
• Be kind, appreciative, thankful, and polite. This doesn’t mean to grovel or do penance. Just use normal social manners and social politeness.
• Remember that your therapist does not have to be your emotional (or physical) punching bag. If you are hitting too hard, redirect your anger towards your abusers, where it belongs.
• Give yourself adequate time to work through the complexities of your healing process. An experienced therapist will not rush you, and it is truly ok for you to take as much time to heal as you need.
• Separate yourself from other survivors that are troublemakers and instigators of negative drama. Just like school days, if you hang out with people causing harm, you’ll end up doing the same, or being tangled in their web. Their poor behavior will cost you. You can decide if that is worth it to you or not.
• Ignore the drama queens determined to cause trouble in front of you. If you refuse to buy into their antics, they will move on to other pastures. If you give drama precedence over your own healing, you will not be progressing in your own healing. Protect the entire dissociative community by supporting your therapeutic resources.
• Remember to think for yourself. All too often, survivors listen to any strong, authoritative voice that tells them what to do. If someone is telling you negative things about your therapist, set a boundary, stop, and re-evaluate all sides of your situation.
• Talk openly with your therapist about any concerns you have. Give yourself the chance to problem-solve any difficulties or conflicts that arise. Working through conflicts is an important part of your healing process, and it does not necessarily require a therapeutic rupture.

.
If you can truly apply these guidelines, you will be honoring your own healing. You will also be showing respect to your individual therapist, protecting other ongoing therapeutic relationships, supporting the greater survivor community, and enhancing the larger therapeutic community.
Maybe most of you think that you are not actively involved in the destruction of the therapeutic resources, but if you support it, believe it, allow it to go on by your “friends”, etc, then you could be more involved than you realize. You can either help to maintain effective therapeutic resources, or you can allow their destruction.
It’s a conscious decision that each one of us has to make.
Everyone has to do their part in protecting the therapeutic resources available-especially for dissociative survivors, which are even fewer. You can choose to support the destructive people, or you can choose to kick them to the curb, and get along with your own healing.
Remember, if you genuinely focus on yourself and your own healing, then you are doing all you need to do.
___________
By:
Kathy Broady LCSW
http://discussingdissociation.wordpr...tic-community/

[darkrunner]

Thanks for this Kiya.

[moonrise]

That was great. Thank you.

[FooZe]

Originally Posted by Kiya

Be genuinely honest with your yourself... Be genuinely honest with your therapist.

Gee, I always figured that therapy was about learning to be genuinely honest and that once you got the hang of being genuinely honest you wouldn't need therapy any more.

[deliquesce]

i am a bit confused, fz - i can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not?

[FooZe]

Originally Posted by deliquesce

i am a bit confused, fz - i can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not?

Sorry, deli -- I wasn't and now I can't tell what gave you the idea I was.

[sittingatwatersedge]

>>>> Remember that your therapist does not have to be your emotional [...] punching bag.

ow, ow, ow!! but thank you for the reminder.
after 6 wks I am still berating myself for blowing up at T. She must be committed indeed, to put up with that kind of thing.

[sunrise]

Originally Posted by Fool Zero

Sorry, deli -- I wasn't and now I can't tell what gave you the idea I was.

FZ, I wasn't sure if you were serious in your post either, because to me, therapy is much more than learning to be genuinely honest with someone. So I wasn't sure if you were kidding or not about thinking you would be done with therapy once you learned to be honest. Maybe that would indeed be it for you--we all have different goals and needs in therapy. For anyone's therapy, though, I do agree with Kiya's list that being honest with oneself and one's therapist will help the process. If you can be honest, then I think you can make much swifter progress.

Working through conflicts is an important part of your healing process, and it does not necessarily require a therapeutic rupture.

This is one from the list that I really liked. I am very conflict avoidant, so there is a part of me that feels any conflict with the therapist (or others in my life) could have dire consequences. Just because there is a disagreement doesn't mean it is the end of the world--that sounds so simple, but it has not been something I have truly felt or understood. Still working on it...

[FooZe]

Originally Posted by sunrise

FZ, I wasn't sure if you were serious in your post either, because to me, therapy is much more than learning to be genuinely honest with someone.

I'd say (honestly ) I was relatively serious -- I was expressing a hunch. I still think so but I find I'm ill prepared to explain it or defend it.

So I wasn't sure if you were kidding or not about thinking you would be done with therapy once you learned to be honest.

I'm not currently in therapy and looking back, I can't even say that I learned to be particularly honest there. However, when I currently start feeling any need for more therapy I find that some form of being honest with myself serves (me -- YMMV) as quite a satisfactory alternative to it.

I'm not a huge fan of Fritz Perls but I find some of the things he says in his books very interesting: for instance, that when someone he was working with would say they "can't" something or other, he'd ask them to try saying "I won't!" instead and that would often begin to resolve the issue for them. I can see where someone (like me) could call that "learning to be honest" and where someone else could argue against calling it that.

I am very conflict avoidant, so there is a part of me that feels any conflict with the therapist (or others in my life) could have dire consequences. Just because there is a disagreement doesn't mean it is the end of the world--that sounds so simple, but it has not been something I have truly felt or understood. Still working on it...

Sounds to me as if you're learning to be honest instead of going out of your way to avoid conflict.

[Kiya]

Originally Posted by sunrise

I am very conflict avoidant, so there is a part of me that feels any conflict with the therapist (or others in my life) could have dire consequences (talking about the ruptures that "don't have to happen"). Just because there is a disagreement doesn't mean it is the end of the world--that sounds so simple, but it has not been something I have truly felt or understood. Still working on it...

yeah - having just been through my own VERY PAINFUL, thankfully short, rupture, this was poignant for me as well. I too am conflict avoidant - and trying to work on it. It scares the you-know-what out of me. But it is "mine" to work on. Now, because of this rupture (T didn't even understand the word - *I* had to explain it!) my homework is to look at my relationships with EVERYBODY around me. yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

Originally Posted by Kiya

I too am conflict avoidant - and trying to work on it. It scares the you-know-what out of me. But it is "mine" to work on. Now, because of this rupture (T didn't even understand the word - *I* had to explain it!) my homework is to look at my relationships with EVERYBODY around me. yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

kiya

Another conflict-avoidant person here! I think I've actually done a good job so far of bringing up 'misunderstandings' with T. I about fell off the couch when T said, "what we call ruptures". I didn't tell her I was familiar already with the term, thanks to PC!

[sw628]

Originally Posted by dreamseeker9

kiya

Another conflict-avoidant person here! I think I've actually done a good job so far of bringing up 'misunderstandings' with T. I about fell off the couch when T said, "what we call ruptures". I didn't tell her I was familiar already with the term, thanks to PC!

Count me in! "conflict-avoidant" Yup, I'm working hard to navigate through this.

[Kiya]

My T REALLY Liked this article. Had to give her part two also. We then had to go through the list and see where I came in above average, and what i needed to work on. She agreed that the article was not "this is what you HAVE to do to be kept by your therapist" but she did mention that she has had people who are suicidal every other week or so and it does weigh heavily on her- are they out standing on some bridge somewhere? Will they survive the month...? All those things in the article are important to her.