[seeker33]

I'll try to sum this up very briefly.
I'm not and never have been psychotic, I have cptsd
I look differently, I was a member of minority where I was born, we moved to another country as refugees when I was 5
Maybe that's why as a child I suffered from a severe phobia of aliens and I also believed my "second soul" came from the star Sirius. I said that my souls have been swapped at around the age of 8-9. I strongly believed I was an alien but at the same time I was so afraid of them I couldn't sleep with my door closed or move from one room to another until I was about 15
Even in adulthood, when I get into a trauma flashback, I think of being an alien (I know it can't be proven and I never talk about it, I'm able to realise it's just my inner feeling)

Last Thursday we tried a certain technique for processing memories and suddenly I saw aliens in the dissociated state (my T lead me to that state on purpose).
They said :"everything's going to be OK" and I wasn't afraid of them but I didn't want to see them and I associated back.
My T asked me why didn't I let them help me? I got into a huge panic because I couldn't process the question. Like... Why would I cooperate with a delusion/hallucination? Who would let aliens help them? I suddenly became so derealised and scared that I accused my T of being an alien herself!
She still says I should make peace with my fear but I don't know. I'm very concerned I might become psychotic if I let them control my mind by "helping me". I have had very negative experiences with meditation in the past and I easily get into altered states of consciousness.
I really don't like the idea of working with these images in any kind of positive or accepting way.
However my T seems to still want me to allow them to help me and make peace with my fear.

I'm anxious and confused about this. Who's being normal and rational here, me or my T?

[ChickenNoodleSoup]

So, I of course don't know all that your T does, but maybe my thoughts still make some sense:

You came to a different country at a very young age and were even before that and probably also after different than most other kids. Being different can to a kid mean many things, you came up with the fantasy that you were from a different planet, an alien. You were also afraid of that reality, maybe because it would mean you were indeed different from everyone else, which I'd assume most kids would find distressing.
I think other people know this feeling too, maybe they don't think they are an alien, but they might feel different to everyone else, like they don't belong and so on, even as adults. You just have some mental image from your childhood in your head that associates that feeling with being an alien.

Now, the aliens you saw while dissociated were telling you that actually even though they are aliens, they are not that bad. You could interpret this as your feelings saying 'hey, yes we might be different to most people here, but we're still not evil, we don't hurt you, it's okay'. If you cooperate with them, you might see it like that too. You might see that although you are different to most people, everything is still fine and there's nothing to be afraid of.

That might be the idea your T has in mind. You let these visions help you and come to peace with them. Then they might not bother you as much and you might feel more comfortable and better overall. Of course there's also some danger there, I'd not necessarily say you'd become psychotic since you seem aware that the aliens are only in your mind, but it might hurt you.

I'd ask your T about this. You're obviously worried that letting them help you might not be a good idea. So maybe it's good to ask her about that? What would she do in case everything got worse instead of better? And what is her idea behind letting them help you?

I don't think it's necessary to cooperate with them nor is it outright a bad idea to do so. It depends on you and your therapy. If you talk to your T and realize that you would be comfortable with the outcome either way or are positive the outcome would be good, you can try again in the future. And if not, I think there's certainly other options to explore that might help you.

[seeker33]

Thank you, that was a thoughtful post.

Whatever we resist, persists.
We all have "stories" that explain our experiences. We're pretty smart to have done that really.

[seeker33]

So do you suggest I dissociate again and let the aliens control my mind? I don't really like this idea. Doesn't feel safe at all. Or am I being "resistant" and "non-compliant"?

Originally Posted by seeker33

So do you suggest I dissociate again and let the aliens control my mind? I don't really like this idea. Doesn't feel safe at all. Or am I being "resistant" and "non-compliant"?

Huh?
You're not psychotic.
I was meaning....... Oh forget it.

[seeker33]

Originally Posted by Trace62

Huh?
You're not psychotic.
I was meaning....... Oh forget it.

Please do explain. I understood that you meant we created stories to help us survive and make sense of things. I got that.
But my original question was wether I should treat my vision of aliens as something real, if I should allow them to be active in my imagination in a dissociated state which is what my T. Wants. I understood that your first sentence was an answer to this.

[Echos Myron redux]

I'm guessing that your therapist is seeing your experience of these aliens as a mechanism created in your unconscious to help you manage deep trauma when you were younger. If that's the case, this vision probably exists to protect you in some way. I think it's likely your therapist thinks that by engaging with their presence, you might find that they are not so scary, as they are your creation, and that this may help you to find some peace with them, in a similar way to how we might engage with dissociative parts or alters.
I can't say whether engaging with the aliens would be helpful for you or not. I would say it's important to listen to and recognise your own ambivalence and to take care as you work on this difficult area of your experience. Keep talking to your T and I'm sure together you can find the right way forward.

[AllHeart]

Why not ask the aliens how they can help you? Set the boundaries...they can help you but they cannot control your mind. You make the rules.

[Ididitmyway]

I don't want to speculate about why your T wants to do what she wants. I assume she has her reasons. Not knowing you and not knowing many details of your life I am hesitant to express an opinion about your T's intentions and about your fears/ambivalence in regards to cooperating with those entities.

All I can say, putting all other factors aside (since I don't know them) and speaking very generally, that I'd approach this situation differently, as a therapist. I'd take a neutral position in regards to aliens cooperation issue. I'd neither push it nor discourage it.

I'd rather spend more time learning about your experience with those aliens over the course of your life time. I'd ask series of questions about them and your experience with them, as well as the meaning they hold for you. I believe that every experience is meaningful and purposeful, especially experiences that reflect deep unconscious processes, but I also believe that only the person, who is having an experience, is in a position to understand it for what it is and to find the right place for it in their psyche when they try to integrate it.

I believe that a therapist can facilitate this process by asking good questions, but the therapist is not in a position to understand it and interpret it the way that the client needs to understand it. Therapists have to accept and be honest about the fact that we still know too little about the workings of human mind to be able to definitively interpret experiences like yours in any way. Therefore, I believe that Ts should have more trust in the client's psyche's inner wisdom and capacity to understand and integrate what it needs to understand and integrate than in the Ts' "knowledge" of the subject which they, frankly, have no knowledge of.

I'd ask your therapist to explain why she thinks that it'd benefit you to let aliens help you. I am not saying it won't or it will. I'd just want to hear her explanation.

[seeker33]

We're going to talk about the roots of this issue today. We'll talk about what this means to me and maybe some memories.
I think the method has done something because at night I encountered the third part of myself. Her names Nameless and she's the angry one. So far I only knew the Butterfly which was the child and then the Alien. I don't think I'm one of these three, I think I'm different. I'm quite curious.