Therapist appointment #3
This morning was a very odd therapy session. It started off with Aimee coming forward, which isn’t unusual when we are unsure of what to expect – she’s a very happy and outgoing younger one who often checks out what is happening in a non-threatening way. We talked briefly about the mix-ups with the dates which led to a conversation about the “I beg your pardon” phrase which triggered us from her email. This in turn raised the issue as to why that phrase is a trigger and the rules that were enforced by the parents. This trigger started from an event when we were 6-7 and involved the mother washing the second brothers mouth out with soap and us being punished for ruining the oldest brothers hat by the father. What staggered us all is that these incidents are being held by a young one in The Basement of our internal house. She’s never talked to anyone on the outside as far as we’re aware. She’s very devoid of emotions, and has what I’d consider to be rather disturbing reaction to the soap washing incident – she was fascinated. Not horrified, scared or worried; but fascinated. I find that rather disturbing and scary. She feels no desire to hurt anyone else, but was fascinated by watching it occur.
She’s also a rather stubborn little thing. The hat destruction incident was not caused by us, but we were blamed for it and forced to sit on the bed until we admitted that we had done it – the father was sick of our lies. This little one refused to admit to something that she didn’t do, so just sat on the bed for hours. The brothers and sister taunted her, but she just sat there. It got to the point where the brothers and sister told her to admit to it so that the father would calm down. It was only then that she admitted to something she didn’t do – in other words she had to lie about something in order to let the father know that she wasn’t going to lie about things anymore – nice double bind for a 6-7 year old don’t you think…
The therapist also tried to check out our awareness of the body. I hate this line of questioning… Our awareness of the body alters depending on our level of anxiety, whose present and what sort of physical pain we’re in – we have a spine defect which means there’s always some level of pain. But generally our awareness of the body is pretty minimal. It’s an odd concept to explain to anyone who doesn’t experience it themselves. The therapist seemed to understand that though, so it wasn’t too bad.
Then the really awful part of the session – what diagnosis do we have? She questioned the number of previous therapists we’ve had (3-4 which she’d wrong written down in her notes previously as 34) and questioned about Borderline Personality Disorder. We’d been sent through from the crisis team at one stage with BPD as a diagnosis, but had failed to meet the criteria once tested for the personality disorders.
It was a very odd session which again raised some concerns about her very therapisty approach, but we’re going to see what happens after a few more sessions…
In other news, it looks like it’s all over with Kriss. Not 100% sure, as we haven’t heard back from him after the weekend. We’re just not healed enough to be able to cope with the relationship. We read too much into actions (or lack thereof) and it was too much for us to cope with. It also just isn’t fair on him, he didn’t sign up for this…
