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Re: Proper care for Dissociative Disorder » judy1

Posted by terra miller on June 2, 2002, at 11:09:26

In reply to Re: Proper care for Dissociative Disorder » terra miller, posted by judy1 on June 1, 2002, at 21:00:33

hi. your clarifying helped heaps in knowing what to talk about. now i have all kinds of thoughts which will come out randomly. :-)

you describe a lot of dissociative behavior that is practically speaking, panicking. so, for starters, i'm really sorry that you find yourself in those spots and the out of control feelings that they can create.

i very briefly skimmed the site that you provided and can offer my initial impression: i don't see how that particular approach to therapy would help someone who is dissociating.

rethinking false ways of thinking and other cognitive approaches is beneficial and necessary in therapy with people who dissociate. but my personal opinion is that i would think it would take so much time if that was the only approach being used. after a while, i would think someone who was dissociating would continue to do that (unconsciously) in order to make the therapist happy.

forgive me for any sweeping generalizations that i may be making. :-)

the fact that you are dissociating probably indicates stress on some level. that's how it developed in the first place... dissociating is a creative ability to deal with extreme stress/trauma. so my thoughts are, that if you are finding that you are dissociating MORE often, then there's something going on that needs to be addressed and the dissociating is probably not going to get any better unless you address it.

sometimes SI-ing is "just" a poor coping techniques which can be relearned with some hard work. some times, in someone with strong dissociative tendencies, it can be a form of a part of one's self trying to get the attention of you that there's a problem that's bugging you that you aren't addressing. sometimes if you can get alone and get really honest with yourself, you can find in your mind/heart what that issue is. lots of times if you address the issue, then the SI-ing slows down or may even elimate.

with losing time and stuff, that also is an indicator of stress. something is bugging you.

you probably should be asking yourself if you feel like you can share stuff with your therapist/how much you trust her. does she work with dissociative disorders, or more borderline specific? someone who has experiece with DD should understand about triggering behavior. the other option is that your therapist knows exactly what is going on with you and is working at your pace -sometimes you wonder :-)

i'm in the middle of my second read-thru of a book that i highly recommend. it is written specifically for dissociative identity disorder, but even without that dx, i think you would find it very helpful. it helps to think in terms of, some people are DID but there therapist hasn't given them that dx. because the client hasn't gotten to a comfortable point to where the therapist is made privy to there being another well defined part in there. (not to say that you are or aren't DID.) the therapy approach is basically the same whether you have defined parts of self or lost memory, which helps destygmatize the DID dx for some.

this book is somewhat academic, but not too much (if you read at this site you should be able to handle it fine) The Dissociative Identity Disorder Sourcebook- Deborah Bray Haddock, pub. Contemporary Books 2001 McGraw-Hill. i like her approach. i especially like her approach to BPD. (especially the part where she basically says that clients usually get the BPD dx well before the therapist knows what's really going on. which is exactly what happened to me. i went from PTSD, to PTSD and BPD, to DID/PTSD. "i" clearly do not SI, so my therapist and i would get really argumentative about the BPD dx because it didn't fit me in my eyes. about a year later, my dx. shifted to where my therapist framed it as "part of me is BPD" but that "i" certainly was not. that's when we began to understood the road ahead of us.)

oh, my. i had no idea how long this post was. so sorry. as far as therapy, i would think a more psychodynamic approach would be beneficial. there are times when i benefit from direct rethinking sessions. but the norm is the classic- how are you feeling today thing. the idea is that if you have something to share or reveal, you have to do that so that you can heal. i find much of my healing is all about talking. once i share something i have recalled, often i do not need to process it further; my brain assimilates the previously dissociated material and i begin to cope better. but until i talk about it, the material remains dissociated. and if there are parts of you involved that have become defined enough to develop opinions (like in DID) then if you don't allow those parts time to talk about what they need to talk about, then they'll do what they can to get your attention (and you start losing time, and finding SI-ing, and stuff like that.)

i think to heal from dissociating you have to do the opposite and talk about things, so that what was hidden is no longer hidden and is now associated- you can recall it now.

sorry so long.

~terra


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