[MissUdy]

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if anyone has experience with their different parts in therapy. I have read about it and watched videos but I still really struggle with it. I have just made different pictures and written on the back the things I have a habit of saying, when I’m identifying with the different parts. I don’t know how many parts I have or if I’ve mixed them up.

I find it extremely difficult knowing how I feel about things. I don’t think I have a soul from which to see my different parts clearly.

Has anyone done it successfully? How did you manage it?

Sorry if this is hard to make sense of.

[Omers]

Hi MissUdy, welcome!
I struggle with disassociation a lot and am not sure if I have true parts or not. My therapist doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to decide or isn’t very worried about it. He pretty much tries to take me where I am at in any given moment. Last session I was far more disassociative than usual and asked him to stay close to me while I tried to stay grounded in the present moment. It didn’t work too well and I am struggling to remember much of the session. I do a lot in therapy with pictures and collages and it seems to help. I can identify the different ages that different feelings or behaviors are coming from but I can’t see parts from the inside out. Hope this helps some.
You may also want to post in the dissociative disorders forum even though it isn’t as active as this one.

[MissUdy]

Thank you Omers.

My therapist seems keen for me to communicate with my parts, maybe because I am so stuck and it Feels like I haven’t accomplished much in 4 years. Dissociation is a big problem for me whether I realise I’m doing it or not, I miss out on all the here and now. I might learn a new thing about myself and quickly forget or lose it again.

Sometimes I wish I could remember things he said, that I could hear them again when I’m lying down and fully present. I have thought about recording sessions before but the risk of anyone else listening to them made me too afraid and I don’t think he’d be ok with it anyway.

Thank you so much for sharing your experience with me 😊

[zoiecat]

Welcome MissUdy. I have DID and dissociate a LOT in session. My T was the one that actually suggested I record sessions on my phone so that I can play them back when I am present and remember what he said. He actively asks me if I have listened back quite often. I really is nice because I can forget something he said before he is finished with he sentence. It's worth asking. My recordings are not easily located on my phone.

It is a bit creepy when you hear one of your others speaking though.

[Elio]

Hi, I wasn't really sure what you were looking for in a reply so this is kind of long.

I do not have DID. When I first started seeing T, I would dissociate around certain things/topics. In those moments, I would lose out on anything and everything going on as I would try to disintegrate/dematerialize/merge with an inanimate object for protection.

I have done a fair amount of work with and around my parts. I do not lose time or memory when working with my parts.

I am just over 3 years in and it seems each year I've added another session a week, so even though it's only been 3 years, I've had well over 300 session. We do not do IFS, which is a specific method of working with ones parts. We've mostly given them space, letting them talk, and trying to get them to feel wanted/welcomed. When I first started they there seemed to only really be 3 parts and they were much more delineated and easier to picture than they are now. Now it seems there are lots more parts but they kind of flow more between them.

Also, 2 of those parts did seem to have some overlapping. I did some reading on parts, and one theory is that parts can sometimes group together to create committees to handle similar situations/needs. At one point, I wondered if my 3 were really committees. I'm not sure.

Our goal with them is to get it so that I can talk to them, they can talk to me and they can talk to each other. I do at times feel a loss of them. At the same time, I am much more stable and I don't slip as deeply into depressive state. I still can feel depressed/sad. It seems my overall scale of feelings/moods has moved up so what is a low day today, still feels bad, it is not as bad as before.

When you talk about a soul, are you talking about the "I"? Or what I call the "I". I have a feeling you might be. Early on there was a lot more "we" talk and when I lose the "I" or when in distress/stressed, I revert back to thinking and talking in "we". My dissociation has lessened considerably and I am able to pick up on signs now that I'm starting to reach that level of distress.

One thing that has been key for me is my T allowing us to go at this slow pace, another thing has been her openness towards the concept that all the parts are welcome that she cares about them all equally and is interested in knowing them all, any part of me can come to the sessions and it's ok for me to be/behave however I am feeling at the time.

I would say my therapy has been fairly nontraditional. We sit on the floor almost exclusively. We play with toys, games, puzzles for all age groups 1yr old - Adult. I am allowed to use her 'as if' she is mommy in our discussions and communications (touch is limited to handshakes). We have open between session communications in that I can email as much as I want and she'll "always" reply when she gets to them. She doesn't reply to every one if I've sent several, just one (usually the last one). She does not do therapy through them, her replies are fairly short and formulaic while still acknowledging something in what I wrote.

Feel free to PM me if you want to talk more about any of this.

[sophiebunny]

I was diagnosed with DID in 1990. I was completely integrate in 2012. There is a difference between DID and having parts. Everyone has "parts". There's a "mom" part. a "wife" part, a "daughter" part, "a stubborn teenage" part, a "hurt little girl" part. I could go on. Some therapists think its useful to get people in touch with all these aspects of themselves. That's not DID though.

The chief diagnostic symptom of DID is the conscious loss of time. Not just for a minute but sometimes for days or even months. Having a total loss of recall of huge chunks of your daily life is a concerning and typical symptom of DID. There are others, but the amnesia and complete loss of time is the major one. A typical DID experience might be you are heading to the grocery store and you "wake up" three days later in a completely different state and city with no recollection of how you got there or what you did while you were there. It's terrifying, life disrupting, and destructive.

Dissociation is on a spectrum. Everyone can dissociate to a certain degree. Day dreaming is a mild form of dissociation. Dissociation is actually a skill rather than a disease. It is also has a genetic component. For instance, some people are better at being hypnotized than others. Hypnotic states are a form of dissociation. When the natural ability to dissociate becomes an extreme coping mechanism, that's when there's a psychological problem. Dissociative disorders are a continuum in the overuse of dissociation as a coping skill. DID is at the extreme end of that continuum. There are less extreme forms along the way.

People who have DID are both gifted dissociaters and use the skill as a coping method very early in life to survive horrific trauma. In very young children who are natural dissociaters, DID is a masterful coping mechanism to endure what an undeveloped mind can't survive alone. DID can save someone's life. It can also ruin it when the trauma passes but the coping skill remains.

I hope some of this information helps.

[MissUdy]

Zoiecat - Thank you, I can definitely see how hearing one of your others could be a strange experience. I might ask him about recording, although I do have episodes where my phone becomes my enemy so will see how it goes.

Sophiebunny - I agree dissociation is a kind of skill, it happens usually to protect us from something awful happening when we are children and I am thankful for that in the past. Now I am relatively safe in the world I would like to be present as much as possible.

Elio - I am glad to hear you have found a lovely sounding T. Sitting on the floor playing games sounds safe and grounding to me. It’s interesting to hear how some of your parts over lap as well. When I said about the soul, I think I meant my core, where my person is, my passion, my centre, my light? I often feel like this was taken from me when I was a baby. I think you are right too about taking our time, as much as we need. Maybe this anxiety has come from that, as I turned 33 recently and still don’t feel like I have a plan. Great to read your experience, thank you.

[Fuzzybear]

A therapist tried to talk to my cub...
He wasn't much good and I did not trust him.
I could say more but not sure it would be helpful.