Knowing, Not Knowing and Therapy
My whole mission in healing has been to find ways to make my life more continuous and safe. The two are intertwined. I spend time in a library before my therapy appointments, I keep a very active private journal, and I pay attention as best I can. As I become more aware and heal, I am beginning to notice issues that just aren't right and I try to work at finding ways to address them.
One specific issue that's come up very recently is what happens after therapy. Up until a year or so ago, I would go to therapy and then often go back to work. That didn't work out so well all the time. Sometimes it became a safety issue.
Eventually I decided to go home after therapy and that helped quite a bit.
Lately I've realized that on my way home, almost every time, I disconnect from everything we've talked about in therapy and it becomes completely lost to me.
So, I addressed it by spending time after therapy to reflect and write.
I think, "Gee, this really sucks all this work I have to put in." But this is my life. I really have no choice.
Sure enough, as I spend the time and make the effort, I slowly begin to make connections and I start to know.
This is from my private journal:
I think part of the solution is about giving myself time. Just sitting here and writing, even though I started in a disconnected state, is about setting intention. I could have acted, just jumped in the car and put on the radio and drove home. I have to realize that I am learning new skills and that I need time to make them work. What I am doing is so difficult because there has been, for my whole life, a very well-defined way of processing information. In many ways, what I'm doing is a complete remodel of inside (if you want to think in carpentry terms). Or, better still, like I'm taking out an old computer and replacing it with a new computer and moving all the files and installing new programs.
I kind of understand that this "know" and "not know" phenomena is pretty much been with me forever and manifests itself in many areas of my life. But I'm more uncomfortable with it now. And now I want to address it head on.
Does this resonate with you? If so, how do you deal with it?
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I do therapy as a day of therapy. I go to therapy twice a week in the morning. I plan my meals, not eating before or after therapy is not good for me. After therapy I swim to make sure I know my way home, come home eat and nap, the length of nap varies, sometimes till the next morning. If it is best I swim at night. I journal.
I may do other things, I try and set it up so nothing needs doing.
Depending on the work in therapy I might need the day after also or I might not need all of the day of therapy. I used to mentally prepare the night before, some times even rehearse. I seem to not benefit from that anymore.
That is how I do most of the work. Combined with journaling to my therapist. Most of my work is done outside of therapy. Pretty much I live outside of therapy. This is about me not my therapist.
I have few responsibilities and set it up to end therapy as soon as possible.
It used to freak me out when I could not remember what happened in therapy. I was afraid I had told her I had done something horrible or said something horrible to my therapist.
One day right before I left therapy I was more than a little upset and said “I have no idea what happened” My therapist smiled and said “It is alright” So I worry about it less. Sometimes I ask if it is still alright.
Sometimes I used to get up to leave therapy and felt like no work had got done at all. Then I would get home and sleep for hours. I thought it must be that I was fighting doing any work. Over time I came to understand that others were doing very hard work that I was not aware of and that was OK. This is about doing something different not what I know how to do better.
I do not experience a host unless you were to define a part that a therapist would see the most often as a host. I experience hosts. Over time with melding and such there is a host that takes care of before and after therapy their job is to get us there and back.
My Therapy is for things that cannot be done alone. I do not need to learn to cope nor about being multiple. Much of it for me is getting out of the way. I have never had trust issues with therapists, it is a trust issue in myself. Taking time for myself can mean taking time for those parts of me that have always had a chance to express. Not helpful.
I use the term ravel. Which can mean as a transitive verb to make clear by separating and as a untransitive verb archaic to become tangled. My symbol for the file for therapy is Microsoft’s symbol for defrag.
Sometimes I don't have very clear recollections of what went on in therapy, either. That used to make me panic. Recently, I have been jotting down a few notes in my journal afterward. It helps. I have also started having a little bit of time to myself before my appointment as well.
Oh, gosh, I haven't thought about this for months!
Often, I felt like a total failure at therapy because I paid for thousands of dollars of sessions and couldn't remember them!
When a session covers stressful or frightening topics, I rarely remember it, though sometimes, I will begin to catch glimpses of it days later. It was upsetting me so badly that my T and I talked about it and he sometimes has me jot things down BEFORE I leave his office. It is the kind of things he thinks I might want to revisit later.
I process things better after I reach home and can kick back and think about what was discussed. Mr. S understands why I email several hours after a session to have something clarified.
Mr. S asked once if I could miss only a few moments here and there, would I get used to it? Could I live with that? No, I will never get used to it and I want to live every day in my own skin, remembering everything I've done.
Great thinker post.
Ivory
If I was able to do so without appearing totally crazy, I'd run from each therapy session as far and as hard as I could. I used to plan each session and attempt to keep a tight control over what occurred. But that ability was overwhelmed as time went on and more parts came forward. On average I lose over half the session to the dissociation and anxiety - sometimes that terrifies me.
I admire your courage and strength Paul...
Take care...
I have more of a problem remembering processing I do outside of therapy, which is one of the reasons why I blog. Generally my primary co-conscious switch is present during therapy, so he always remembers what was said and what happened, even when I don't remember or other parts would rather not remember. He's always around at least as an observer, which is the reason why I have never lost time as a multiple, though there are memory tracks from my childhood that are gone. But in present time, I don't lose much continuity, if any.
Sometimes I wish I actually didn't remember my therapy sessions as well as I do.
Thank you all for your comments. It's comforting to know I'm not alone. While I do have the same problem out of therapy, like you David, it's more pronounced in therapy because of the focus and the high stakes. I don't really know that I'm all present in therapy, so this is what makes it hard. But, taking the time afterwards to reflect does seem to help.
When I was being treated for PTSD, I used to plan time before and after therapy to think, process, meditate, analyze, observe my mind, write, etc. It was structured and linear like my therapy was at the time.
But, since I started in treatment for DID, everything has changed!
Now I find that the more I try to remember and analyze the session, the more difficult it becomes, and I end up doing mindless things in spite of myself, like staying up all night playing games online, going shopping and reading labels for hours and hours or OCD-ing on this or that detail of just about any superficial thing at all; as if some part of my brain needs to put a whole bunch of irrelevant stuff between the session any thought or analysis of it.
It’s like I keep scrambling to get to the part of my brain that wants to remember and analyze the session the way it used to, but the harder I try, the more inaccessible it becomes, like being caught in a Chinese finger trap, the harder you try to escape it, the tighter it gets.
This is a very interesting comment, Jahda. It sort of is opposite of my experience. When I was working so hard in therapy to understand the "why's" of things, this was mainly some part of me, and then afterwards the rest of me couldn't care less. But since I've been working with the new therapist, the point is not really to analyze, but just record what we've felt. The work in therapy is much more about what I'm feeling and experiencing. And afterwards, when I think about it, is when it starts to sink in and then it begins to make some sense.
My T says there are 2 stages of this therapy--the first, recounting the facts and chronology of the events, newspaper reporter-like, the second, feeling, experiencing (or rather re-experiencing) the emotions associated with those events and eventually coming to the realization,
"This happened to me!"
It sounds like we are both in that second stage... (It's difficult, isn't it?)
When I think about it afterward (when my mind doesn't resist or block it) I make all kinds of connections and have insights similar to what you describe, but so many other times, the defensive parts of my mind just make it impossible, I guess because they are completely in the experience of it and so are reacting the same way they used to, or maybe because they just aren't ready yet to look at certain things...?
Studying the mind is just so fascinating, isn't it?
Thanks Jahda. So, I've thought about all of this since I first posted it a few days ago. The main point of my sitting a bit afterwards is not to remember everything that was said. I know that's, most of the time, either not possible and maybe even not helpful. The point of sitting afterwards is to ground and to know on an emotional level. It's almost like what I do when I first come into therapy where I check in and see how all of me is doing. I need to ask that of myself after therapy. To know emotionally is really hard. I never realized how hard this was in part because it is so new to me.
You've described exactly how we react to therapy Jadha, thank you for sharing this as it makes me feel a little less crazy.
We used to actively participate in therapy - we'd think about what we wanted to know and what questions we needed to look at; but now it seems as if we're actively avoiding talking about anything meaningful. One of us noted during our last session that we seem to be distancing and compartmentalising therapy. We're not sure if it's due to the changes in therapists and upheaval this brings, or whether it was because of something occurring internally.
I don't think we're at the second stage that you mention Jadha. But I've just thought that maybe some of us are and some aren't?? Possibly that is what is causing the internal conflict around therapy?
Take care...
So much of what you say I could have written myself. I doubt if anyone who has never experienced DID could understand how frustrating it is not to be included in your own life. I also go to my therapy sessions feeling fully prepared and ready to progress on whatever issue we are supposed to be working on... even if I can't remember what that might have been.
Although my therapist tells me that I don't have to remember in order to process what we work on, it drives me crazy to walk out of her office, get in my car, and then sit there thinking, "what just happened?" And it isn't exactly as if I have dissociated through the session, it's different than that, somehow. It's more like a kind of overload - as if too much of my brain is trying to work at once.
Instead of sitting afterwards as you describe, I often do a drawing. I am surprised by the "visions" that come to me of the images in the drawings I do after therapy. I often see the entire image in my head before I put down the first stroke.
Sometimes this process helps me feel better, and occasionally I even remember some of what was said or accomplished.
Castergirl - you said:
I don't think we're at the second stage that you mention Jadha. But I've just thought that maybe some of us are and some aren't?? Possibly that is what is causing the internal conflict around therapy?
I wonder if that's possible? That's just so interesting to think about... Wow! I think I'm going to ask my T about that next time I go to therapy. Thanks for new idea and perspective--when it's not so horrifying and painful this analysis is just so intriguing isn't it?