For 3 weeks, I have been in conflict with my therapist.
Several events and decisions she made reactivated my internal alarms. And my protective dissociative parts, very angry parts have come along and are blocking us right now in therapy.
I try to understand and analyze what is going on between us. To help me, I reread the book "Dealing with Traumatic Dissociation" by Van Der Hart, Steel and Boon. The quotes in quotation marks are taken from this book.
There are 2 kinds of angry parties.
-The warriors
"The first type concerns parties that are held in a state of defensive warfare: ready to protect you. (They have) tendencies to attack and to fight. This is their essential strategy for survival. These fighting parties are very rigid and everywhere see danger and wrong intentions. They often use anger as protection against shame, anguish, pain, despair, helplessness and loss. "
-The imitators of my attackers
"The second type of angry part looks very much like the original abuser (s) there. They mimic those who assaulted them in the past. They often tell you the same things that they say to you. have been said. The consequence of these statements is the gradual appearance of a feeling of worthlessness, shame, anguish or loneliness, as in the past! "
My shrink has reframed the rules surrounding our therapeutic bond and the therapy that I am with her. I experience this as a rejection on his part, a distancing.
Immediately, I have parts that reactivated and thought my shrink was going to abandon me and tell me that she was stopping my follow-up.
Some of my parts are very angry with her and try to provoke her either by writing her emails expressing their anger or by telling me over and over again in my head that I can no longer trust my shrink and that I must stop my follow-up with her. I am very upset!
This upsets me all the more as this "reframing" comes at a time when I was doing a huge good in therapy and when I was advancing in a fast and incredible way. This "reframing" made me feel like a slap in the face, a punishment for these spectacular advances in my therapy.
The situation is therefore very complex internally. All of my dissociative parts reactivated but not all for the same reasons or triggers.
It is therefore very complicated for me to see clearly and to take a step back from the situation.
Some are reactivated because:
- It reminds them of painful situations from the past,
- It awakens feelings or memories that they refuse to face and feel or listen to,
- This jeopardizes our healing since it "cuts" the momentum in which we were where all my parts had agreed to collaborate and learn to listen to and understand each other.
Painful situations from the past:
This situation awakened all the moments in me where I was rejected, abandoned, betrayed, hurt .... I hear crying in my head like when I cried every time I was abandoned . I feel ashamed, I have the feeling that I cannot be loved, that I am not worthy of it, since inevitably people end up rejecting me ... And disaster scenarios revolve in my head. I feel very lonely and abandoned again.
Anger for me is associated with different things:
I hear thoughts like:
"You are worth nothing! Everyone hates you! You are shit! Nobody sees you, you do not exist, you are nothing and nobody! You do not deserve to be loved, you you're too bad for that! If your parents loved you they would protect you, where are they there? you only think someone can protect you but who are you? your parents, the people you love i can do with them what I want! I'm God! I'm almighty and you can't do anything against me! Look down! Look down or I'll hit you! You're just shit! I love you and it's like What do you thank me for? We will have to change our behavior my little one! Where things are going to go badly! I am going to make you pay! " These are the words of my attackers that I hear again as if they were there.
I feel pain in my body:
My sex hurts, I feel the hands tightening my neck and trying to strangle me, my shoulder blades hurt ... I relive in my flesh the violence that my attackers have committed on me ...
Those are my parts that imitate my attackers who try to protect me.
“Their intention is not to do harm, but only to protect you. That is why they sometimes direct their rage and aggression more towards other parts inside rather than towards the outside world. In the past, reacting to the outside world would indeed have caused many more problems. It was probably even dangerous to vent your anger. "
"In their eyes, showing their vulnerability or weakness leads to a new abuse that they want to prevent at all costs. So they don't want you to start hoping, because they think all hope is wrong."
Everything is mixed up in my head. My shrink becomes one of my attackers. She's trying to punish me. So these parties are acting by trying to warn me that trusting my shrink is a bad thing. That if I don't run away from her, she will hurt me, she will take advantage of the situation ... And I feel more and more angry with her because some other parts are blaming my therapist for all this resurgence of suffering that I am currently feeling.
Some parts are phobic about anger and believe it to mean loss of control and pain:
"They think anger makes them more vulnerable to more pain and suffering." "The sensations that accompany anger can be extremely intense and overwhelming." "Sometimes this emotion can be really so powerful it becomes scary."
I made a lot of progress on accepting my anger.
At the beginning I was very scared and I was totally phobic! I thought that accepting to listen to that part of me, that feeling would be like drowning in it and dying.
"It is therefore important to remember that anger is an emotion that directs behavior without itself being behavior. A feeling of anger is neither dangerous nor bad. Being angry is therefore a part of life and cannot be be avoided. The question that really arises is, how do you deal with anger and how do you learn to externalize it in an acceptable way? "
I have always rejected the expression of this feeling in me because in the sect I was forbidden to express it and that for some parts of me to act and to be angry is to be an aggressor, to be like my tormentors. . My anger-carrying parts therefore feel unwanted inside of me. It happened to me to wish that these parts of me disappear, die so that I am finally free of them.
"These parts most often have a very isolated position and feel excluded, hated or little respected by other dissociative parts."
Painful situations from the past:
This situation awakened all the moments in me where I was rejected, abandoned, betrayed, hurt .... I hear crying in my head like when I cried every time I was abandoned. I feel ashamed, I have the feeling that I cannot be loved, that I am not worthy of it, since inevitably people end up rejecting me ... And disaster scenarios revolve in my head. I feel very lonely and abandoned again.
Anger for me is associated with different things:
I hear thoughts like:
"You are worth nothing! Everyone hates you! You are shit! Nobody sees you, you do not exist, you are nothing and nobody! You do not deserve to be loved, you you're too bad for that! If your parents loved you they would protect you, where are they there? you only think someone can protect you but who are you? your parents, the people you love i can do with them what I want! I'm God! I'm almighty and you can't do anything against me! Look down! Look down or I'll hit you! You're just shit! I love you and it's like What do you thank me for? We will have to change our behavior my little one! Where things are going to go badly! I am going to make you pay! "These are the words of my attackers that I hear again as if they were there.
I feel pain in my body:
My sex hurts, I feel the hands tightening my neck and trying to strangle me, my shoulder blades hurt ... I relive in my flesh the violence that my attackers have committed on me ...
Those are my parts that imitate my attackers who try to protect me.
“Their intention is not to do harm, but only to protect you. That is why they sometimes direct their rage and aggression more towards other parts inside rather than towards the outside world. In the past, reacting to the outside world would indeed have caused many more problems. It was probably even dangerous to vent your anger. "
"In their eyes, showing their vulnerability or weakness leads to a new abuse that they want to prevent at all costs. So they don't want you to start hoping, because they think all hope is wrong."
Everything is mixed up in my head. My shrink becomes one of my attackers. She's trying to punish me. So these parties are acting by trying to warn me that trusting my shrink is a bad thing. That if I don't run away from her, she will hurt me, she will take advantage of the situation ... And I feel more and more angry with her because some other parts are blaming my therapist for all this resurgence of suffering that I am currently feeling.
Some parties are phobic about anger and believe it to mean loss of control and pain:
"They think anger makes them more vulnerable to more pain and suffering." "The sensations that accompany anger can be extremely intense and overwhelming." "Sometimes this emotion can be really so powerful it becomes scary."
I made a lot of progress on accepting my anger.
At the beginning I was very scared and I was totally phobic! I thought that accepting to listen to that part of me, that feeling would be like drowning in it and dying.
"It is therefore important to remember that anger is an emotion that direct behavior without itself being behavior. A feeling of anger is neither dangerous nor bad. Being angry is therefore a part of life and cannot be avoided. The question that really arises is , how do you deal with anger and how do you learn to externalize it in an acceptable way? "
I have always rejected the expression of this feeling in me because in the sect I was forbidden to express it and that for some parts of me to act and to be angry is to be an aggressor, to be like my tormentors. . My anger-carrying parts therefore feel unwanted inside of me. It happened to me to wish that these parts of me disappear, die so that I am finally free of them.
"These parties most often have a very isolated position and feel excluded, hated or little respected by other dissociative parts."
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