Misuse of Therapy Continued....

Building on yesterdays' post which you can find here: Misuse of Therapy

Trauma Resolution Therapy had the effect of making me worse overall. Each time I would do the journal homework, I'd find myself asking questions about the memories. For instance, I'd realize a memory was incomplete and start asking myself questions. My mind was more than willing to provide the answer and open up brand new cans of emotional worms that impacted my mood to the point I could no longer focus on resolving the trauma of the preceding fragment. Just a chain reaction of spinning and flooding. 

I lasted about 6 months trying to give this the old college try and finally determined that I was correct in my assessment of the harm of the process. I terminated with that therapist and decided to take some time off before trying to find a new one. It gets very old going from one therapist to the next and having to tell one's story all over again. I will say that there are some benefits to that, though. It did force me to self-edit and streamline the way I presented in session as time progressed.

And that was a good thing because it wasn't long until I found myself desperate for help again. The increased memory flooding continued despite leaving treatment. I ended up in yet another traditional talk therapy situation with a therapist I really liked but I felt like our sessions weren't doing enough to get at what I really wanted: a way to stop the flooding. She'd suggested I try to be more socially active and I tried to explain to her that it was difficult because every place I'd gone lately seemed to trigger me and because I also didn't know how to put on a happy face and hang out with complete strangers and actually get anything out of it. 

But I suspect that was an attitude I'd been driven towards up to the time I started working with her and she was actually right about it even if I was also right in assuming that any new social group I tried would be chosen by an alter that would not allow me awareness of what triggers would be present. But she just didn't know how to address my awareness of encountering past perpetrators and bad memories at literally every single place I tried to go. My whole town and beyond is contaminated in this way and I was just too exhausted to deal with disappointment of having yet another attempt at getting some relief turn into another recovery of a memory fragment. 

I explained this to her and suggested that maybe I should try a different treatment approach like EMDR. Maybe something like that would help me just not worry as much about it? Maybe I could get past feeling too sensitized to the stimulus?  She said she had been thinking about that as well but that she wasn't certified to practice it and it would take her several months to get certified. However, there was a colleague at the practice who was already doing it and I was welcome to see her if I "didn't mind switching".  Famous last words! 

Not just switching from one therapist to another but switching control from one alter to another. I think all of my therapists are DID themselves and don't realize what they're doing, but if I'd paid attention to that possibility at the time, I might have just stayed with her and worked on getting out more and processing my frustrations with programmed social experiences. 

But I didn't. And I know why now. It's my 16 year old again. It didn't take long once I started with her to start to recover the road hypnosis statements made about her. We barely made it through the first few EMDR sessions before we had to stop. I had started to recover the memory of one of my handlers using EMDR techniques to program me at one point and said something about it to her. To her credit, she stopped that approach and consulted a colleague. She decided we should talk more and for her to learn more about me. We've been doing that ever since. Maybe EMDR would've been fine after that first memory or maybe it would've had the same effect as TRT. Who knows? 

The point of all this, I hope, is just to share how bad things can get for some of us in terms of how we're controlled. I haven't even touched yet on the fact that all of these therapists, including the one I used to see when I was still amnesic, had been forced to be involved in compromising situations with me in the past, and I also had to deal with my memory fragments about them while in session. That may end up being a topic for another post. I hope this and the previous post shed some light on some things for people. Once I've had time to think about it I will try to write a post that summarizes what I believe are important steps to take and questions to ask when searching for a therapist and evaluating how the therapeutic relationship is or isn't working for you. Peace.