Going back to go forward (6)

The first post I ever shared about my mental health echoes in me.

I didn't know then what I have a good idea of now: that my collective physical and mental health problems, complex personality changes, and emptiness were a result of a dissociative disorder. In fact, it wasn't until CandyCan joined the mental health blog that I started to wonder why my experiences were so similar. I didn't have DID. That's impossible.

And then my new therapist started almost immediately into transactional analysis. Integration this, Parent-Child that… psychological babble. Just semantics, really, to help us have a common language. That's all. Right?

She got frustrated when I couldn't answer her questions. Was I being resistant? I had answered honestly: I didn't know. Nothing caused it; No one told me my feelings didn't matter. But they did; she insisted.

I couldn't see it. Couldn't feel it. Why won't my therapist accept this?

And then she lucked out: I got triggered, and she finally pulled something emotional on her fishing line. But neither of us expected how painful my reaction would be, and I left, traumatised.

When I was finally alone, I cried to exhaustion, because I finally realised what my therapist wanted me to reveal and what I was trying so desperately to protect:



They say that people who have experienced abuse or neglect as a child spend a lot of effort trying to convince themselves and others that they are fine, that it was nothing, if they can even recall it in the first place.   I thought that was just dissociative amnesia, but now I realise dissociative disorders are more complex than that. I might have some cognitive memories of the abuse and neglect, but my emotional memories were sliced right out, until I could sit with a straight face and wonder "why am I so unwell?" My life was fine. My day was fine.

But really, I haven't been fine for a long time.
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Therapy last week was different. For one, I was exhausted from the crisis at our previous meeting. I had experienced derealisation, depersonalisation, and a resulting 4-day migraine. I also realised that there was a lifetime of emotion tucked away somewhere inside me that I've never owned up to. To put it simply: I was terrified of me.

But I don't like not having the answers, so I took the most important question from the week before (what was I feeling) and investigated.

At first, I was angry at my therapist for expecting me to answer something I simply had no answers for. Then when my therapist asked me if I was angry with her, I was angry at myself. I battled between these two emotions (Anger at Therapist and Anger at Self) while I struggled to tell her. As I struggled to say it, I had to push through a growing Fear (directed at Self) in response to the Anger at Self. When I finally squeaked out a 'Yes', I panicked because the Anger at Self skyrocketed.

It felt like I was abusing myself. It felt just like I felt when I was being physically abused for the first time. Anger, fear, panic, and finally shame. Shame was the hardest emotion to name; it took me days to recognise it. And when I explained all of this to my therapist, she praised me animatedly...

…and then verified: I said the FIRST time? I paused. Yes, I guess I did say that. And I understood what she noted, unsaid: (1) there were other times I was abused and (2) I must have been dissociating by the time they occurred.

Sometime in the latter half of the session, my therapist pulled out the empty chair. I knew immediately what I would be asked to do and started shaking and crying. Panic. Fear. Something saying no, and something saying yes. "What do you want to say to her?" Her being the Child, of course, and me being the Parent.

I tried desperately to calm me down, the mess of emotions inside. Meanwhile my therapist didn't want a repeat of the week before, so she pulled out the stops trying to calm me down. We don't need to do this. Just say the word, and she'll put the chair back.  A moment, please. I raised my hand. "I just need a moment."

It just got worse. I looked at the chair. I needed to talk to my therapist, not myself. Barely in time, I bubbled out "I have nothing to say to her." The chair was pulled quickly back. And within seconds, everything inside went quiet. Blessed relief.

But let's take a step back, too. You see, while I was fighting myself, my therapist was trying (desperately?) to calm me down, letting something very interesting slip in the process. She asked me which part was present.

Like most of her questions at the time, I didn't reply.  And even in that moment, I thought she had made a mistake. My parts can't be present. They aren't those kind of parts.

She let me interrupt her. I wondered how I was going to admit it. So I didn't admit it. I simply told her what I knew:

"When we first moved, I became very depressed and missed my first home terribly. But most of all, I missed me. You see, ...I did everything I could to protect and preserve that part of me, until it was safe enough to be whole again.

But it never became safe."
Sound familiar? Here is what happened next:
"Sometime after the last move, I gathered together all the photographs of me (my parents were prolific) and split them into piles." I raised my right palm. "Me." I raised my left palm. "and Me." The tears started to flow.

"It was so easy to do. They were two different people." Sadness. Grief. "Why didn't anyone else notice? I wasn't me anymore." I looked forlorn. My voice cracked. "It was only supposed to be for a little while. I.."

"I didn't mean to not listen to her." I'm sorry. "I didn't know I wasn't listening."

"I just want to go back." I weeped. "I just want to be whole again."

My therapist had been quiet, not even writing notes. But I could read her reply all over her face. Pride.

For most of our sessions, I had been either overwhelmed with emotion or numb from dissociation, so this moment of fragile and honest grief manifesting so calmly stood out.  There was more unsaid in the silence before she spoke. It felt like she took my hand, but I know she didn't. She simply looked me in the eye and gave me hope.

A far cry from "Perhaps therapy isn't right for you."

I went home and pulled out the photos. I pulled out my writing. I posted here.
The evidence piled. But I wasn't convinced until this morning, as my husband drove us to the store. I was revisiting the empty chair situation in my head. Play by play. As an outsider. This wasn't out of ordinary; I always playback situations afterwards, chattering with myself about what it all meant, reprocessing every detail.

Oh, my god. I was chattering with myself.

There she was. There we were. There I was. This is how I did it. Isn't it? Decades of neglect and abuse.. this is how I survived. She took on the emotions, I took on the thoughts, and afterwards we got together and shared notes from a safer place. We soothed each other.

Immediately I remembered us, shaking alone in the woods in the middle of winter while everyone else enjoyed dinner inside. Aged 14. I remembered going to bed at 5 pm and talking the day over. Aged 12. I remembered my glands being so swollen I couldn't breathe. We barely got through the night. Aged 20. 

I guess Truth really is a Spectrum.





Read on the NHS Choices blog.