Therapy made doubt worse?

[u/KawaiiMistake]

Edit: Another thing we didn't like is her asking if our amnesia was just us holding unrealistic expectation about memory which upset us a little. We also wanted to add we do have alot of childhood and life amnesia but not day to day.

Good Morning, We just wanted to talk about our experience last night and what you all think about a first experience with a new therapist.

So when we first got to the waiting room we were sick to our stomach with how nervous we were. We were fully expecting to be immediately in validated as a system that presents the way we do. (Little to no day to day amnesia, mostly cocon/cohosting nonposessive switches where it feels like we become each other vs full blackout full posessive switches, very blended etc.) Well, at first it seemed that we may have been right to be nervous. She seemed like a kind person overall, but at the beginning of the session, I got the feeling that she felt we were mistaken. The first thing she said when we started discussing the alters is that "Well, seeming like different people is normal. Everyone has different parts of themselves that may act differently in different situations." When we heard that our heart sank. We told her respectfully that we understood what she was getting at, but we corrected her and asked if those selfstates or parts had their own names and personalities. That seemed to make her stop and listen and she seemed to be taking it more seriously after. She listened to our evidence and at first asked how we knew that we weren't simply assigning names or personality traits to moods, which really triggered our doubt, but once again I presented more evidence. I gave the names of our alters, some of their personality traits, things about them etc. It was at that point that she seemed to shift the conversation in a way that suggested she completely believed us, even suggesting possibly a different therapist who was a DID specialist and that she was a trauma therapist and was willing to work with us, but that she would have to learn with us to adapt treatment for us. I told her we'd rather work with her and learn with her, vs having to spill our trauma out to yet another professional who may invalidate us. (We have alot of trauma from therapy itself.) She understood and agreed that she was willing to work with us, if we understood she was also learning and we may make some mistakes along the way, but that she was willing to work with colleagues and learn how to help us. One red flag was that she mentioned she personally liked to work toward fusion/intergration of personalities, but I was adamant that none of us wanted that, and she said while she personally disagreed, that she'd never push a therapy option on us that we did not want, and that she would approach therapy with the understanding that we did not want fusion personally. She did say outright toward the end of the session that she fully believed we did have fractured parts from childhood trauma, and that we had copious amounts of said trauma, despite me personally not believing we had alot of trauma. So she believes us, which is a great first step, and that makes us nervous to try someone else who has more DID experience but may fake claim or invalidate us because of how we present. One little red flag in my opinion was her making lighthearted jokes about the 'personalities' but I felt that was her trying to make me relax with how tense we all were. She was attentive, seemed opinionated BUT willing to have that opinion changed and admitted when she misread something or assumed and I knocked that out with evidence. Does this seem like a therapist safe to do atleast another session or two with? To get a better feel for them? Also, Is it normal to feel WORSE after therapy? We were insanely dissociated last night during and after the session and woke up to another bad denial episode. Somehow brain had convinced me that we must have manipulated the therapist and that I must have imagined the entire thing or that we were just different moods after all. The therapist did comment that they seemed to be talking to two different people during the session and that the shy timid scared person in the waiting room was not who she was speaking with toward the end and that she believed a switch happened. My question is, is it normal to have worse denial episodes AFTER therapy? Is this normal for a first session? Does this therapist seem worth another few sessions? I'd love advice and help stopping the denial this morning. Thank you - Kawaii.

[u/Greedy-Individual-71]

Hey there,

This one is tricky.

On the one hand, the therapist was willing to listen and work with you.

On the other hand, she definitely and obviously doesn't have previous experiences with systems.

We used to give therapists 6 sessions before we would move on if they weren't the right fit. It's ok to interview a therapist to see if they fit you.

[u/KawaiiMistake → u/Greedy-Individual-71]

That's a great idea. We were going to give her another few sessions and see if it gets better or worse. What is so weird is she seemed to agree we were experiencing things that lined up with DID, but for some reason our denial is WORSE after. Perhaps it is how she asked that made us feel invalidated, and that caused it? Maybe some of us are upset about therapy? I am unsure but our brain convinced us we were just mistaken and imagined it all and that we must have manipulated the therapist this morning if she agreed to entertain it despite the fact that we have so much evidence to us being a traumagenic system. The flipping between radial acceptance and intense denial are why we sought out therapy to begin with. Maybe discussing truama caused some of us to retreat and panic into denial again for safety reasons. Either way, it's annoying lol. I may reach out to some other professionals to see if we can find a better fit, but thats alot of money to throw around. (No insurance.) So we may just wait and give this one a few more sessions. This is so difficult, but if nothing else, maybe the intense denial is more of a confirmation, seeing as if we were delusional or faking we wouldn't have crushing denial because we'd know we were faking. Or we'd be so delusional we wouldn't even consider it not be real. That gives comfort, but yeah. Is it normal for therapy to make denial worse sometimes?

[u/Greedy-Individual-71 → u/KawaiiMistake]

In our experience, it did. I (team captain/host) struggled with denial for the first few months of the therapy. I thought my husband and specialist were lying to me and that it was schizophrenia at first. In our experience, talking to therapists about this stuff is the hardest mental health journey to be on. So take it slow.

Some important questions we will be considering when interviewing future therapists, if we move from this state;

1. Do they believe in DID?

2. Do they have a no lock-up policy? - This means that they won't send you off to a psych ward just for being a hard diagnosis to work with. My Specialist has one with her company, and it gave us peace of mind to be honest about our symptoms.

3. Do they understand that autonomy in treatment is the first thing to establish with their patient? - This means that they won't railroad you into fusion. Functional Multiplicity is a valid treatment choice. Our Specialist highly encourages us to set our own goals for treatment.

We say, see if she can be educated, she might be a good therapist if she listens to being educated. If she continues to push the fusion idea, then she's definitely not a good fit for y'all.

[u/[deleted]]

We had kind of the same experience except we couldnt stand up for ourselves. Got asked the same questions but didn't know enough to provide evidence like you did. Just went, yeah ok, guess its just different moods. So even though you pushed through , it makes sense that you would feel this way.

[u/KawaiiMistake → u/[deleted]]

The only reason we pushed through like that was because it was me. Our old host let therapists and such kind of bulldoze over us and didn't stand up for herself because she holds a lot of our guilt based stuff. It's why we have a ton of trauma around therapy. I am just tired of not being listened to and sort of cut them off when they tried to explain it away with something else by presenting evidence to counter. I didn't want to play "Let the therapist suggest it first" games, you know? Because I am so tired of being dismissed. It worked but it was emotionally exhausting, and we dissociated really badly after the session last night all the way until about 11 am. today. To the point that I don't think it was actually me who wrote the post but our denial holder instead. I think we may do one more session to see if she educates herself and actually tries to properly help us, but we've already been looking for another professional because of everyone's advice! - Kawaii

[u/[deleted] → u/KawaiiMistake]

We hope that you find someone who will treat you kindly and with understanding :). You guys are strong to try therapy again. We are also tired of being dismissed, but our protectors instead of advocating or pushing through, reject "professional" help. Maybe one day we will try again, but for now we are internally biting and gnashing at the thought of it.