Scattered pieces

We’ve just realised we have NO idea how to end relationships of any kind – but in particular any professional relationship.  Whenever we’ve resigned from a job, stopped seeing a doctor and so on – we panic.  The first time this was abundantly obvious was when we left the garden centre job we had after finishing our undergraduate degree.  There were probably more earlier than this, but I have no awareness of it.  All we had to do was hand in our resignation letter, but we put it off for over a week and jeopardised our notice period.  We had a good excuse for leaving – we were going back to university.  I have a sneaking suspicion it was just an excuse and not the real reason for moving on.

This is potentially part of the reason why we kept within the relationship with the husband so long – but it would have been level pegging with us being a “typical battered wife” (don’t you just love that label).

But what is odd is that we find it harder to end the professional relationships than we do the personal relationships.  I wonder if it’s to do with the fierce sense some of us have to be working in order to be invisible?  We were unemployed while we studied via distance learning when we started our undergraduate degree and we had to go through job placement interviews with government agencies as part of their attempt to get the unemployed back into work.  We found that incredibly stressful.  This is also possibly part of the reason why we have resisted going onto any form of disability which we qualify for with room to spare.  Anything to stay invisible.

We’ve never stayed in one job for any length of time, up until the marriage when part of us realised we needed more stability in one aspect of our life.

All of this leads in a rather convoluted way to why we’re finding it hard to stop seeing the clinical psychologist and move on.  We had therapy today and told her that while integration is potentially an end goal, there need to be smaller goals that lead up to it – like developing more communication internally to reduce the time loss.  It looked like it was all going well with her understanding and agreeing with us.  Then I’m not sure if we were misinterpreting her, but it appeared like she was playing word games again by saying things about staying the same was safer and that we knew so many coping strategies as it was that there seemed little use in developing more.  We asked how it was safe to continue living as we were considering that being sectioned wasn’t all that safe, neither was the suicidal ideation.

We’re not sure if she’s playing games, we’re being too sensitive or whether we just need to bug outta there.  Cos you know, life living with dissociation just ain’t hard enough by itself, we thought we’d throw in some other complications as well just for fun.

Recently we’ve been having “issues” with our current therapist.  As part of trying to find a new therapist, we contacted one in our home town who is listed on the ISST-D site.  With no real idea who we were or our background, she took time out of her day to recommend another therapist closer to where we currently live to see if she knew of anyone.

We contacted the therapist closer to us, and again she took time out of her day to ask if we could travel to Auckland (where there are a few therapists with experience in helping those with dissociation) and saying she’d get back to us.  Those who have read of our adventures about travelling to Auckland for a conference will know this isn’t really a possibility. Today we heard back from her, she apologised for not getting back to us sooner as she’d been on holiday – good grief we were just thrilled she replied at all!  She’s given us two people to try – both are registered with ACC so we can see them at reduced rates.  One is the supervisor of our previous therapist (who is nice, but just doesn’t have the skills to cope with the dissociation); so we’re going to try the other therapist first to see if she is taking on any new clients.

Thank you to all the therapists out there that go above and beyond to help a total stranger in need.  We’ve been stunned with the assistance that we’ve received and are grateful.  Some would say “that is their job” – but for helping us there was no financial reward, it was purely working from an ethical and moral standpoint of helping someone in need.

So a big Thank You to the therapists out there!  Yes, some should be on the other end of the therapy relationship, but some are excellent and help restore/maintain faith and belief in the profession.

The mother has been staying with us since the 24th of December. We asked her to come and stay with us because we knew this was going to be a rough time and we needed some external checks on our safety. We protect ourselves more while she is around, so the switching is less obvious and the self injurious behaviour doesn’t occur.

In this respect the visit has been a success.

But in many respects it’s failed miserably… Some of us need and desire her approval and love. This is never going to happen. We’re sure on some level she is proud that we got our degrees and have a job. But she is still the mother that told us we were ugly, noisy and the mistake at the end.

At times the rage inside towards her that is held by different parts has nearly spilled out.  Showing her that emotion would serve no real purpose besides hurting us further.

She is a nurse, she approaches our mental health from a medical setting – take a pill… do you need that pill… but you’re much more stable since seeing the clinical psychologist… I don’t understand why people self injure…

It also doesn’t help that her memory isn’t as good as it was – or it never is particularly good when it comes to us.  Not sure which is the more accurate statement.

It’s hard to explain that we seem more stable because we’re hiding more.  The clinical psychologist wants all communication to be approved or come from Management.  It’s hard for us to do this and we just don’t trust the clinical psychologist, so we’re hiding more as a general rule.  In the past this hasn’t been a problem, but the coping mechanisms that we used to use to ensure the hiding have gone.  So the internal chaos increases…

We can see how this would make us appear more stable, but then we always hid around the mother anyway…

Tomorrow she goes…  It sounds awful, but bring on tomorrow…  We’ve withdrawn from so many things with her here – friends, creative things that Sophie can do…

We’re seeing a new clinical psychologist at the moment to try and move forward in the therapy and healing process. It’s an interesting time as we all hide more so that she doesn’t see the craziness that is our life. Part of the reason for seeing her is to try to learn more skills to cope with the anxiety and triggers. I’m not sure that this is going to happen as it’s mainly been a concentration on breathing exercises which we already know. We’ve got another 6 sessions with her, so will see what happens…

Awhile ago we mentioned that the mother was going to come up to see us sometime, so she asked that if she does that we arrange it around one of the sessions so she can see how we interact with the mother and find out a little bit more about the past. We had that session yesterday and it was not fun! It was all going OK as she asked the general questions and asked to talk to the mother alone for awhile. But then she asked to talk to us alone and asked us to tell the mother how she could help us. Well it was a good way to check whether we could put the breathing exercises into practice! We’ve never wanted anything from anyone, especially from the mother. So we just fumbled around, and because we had to say something said that what she was doing was fine.

Then the mother had to tell us what she wanted so that she could help us. She talked about not blocking her out. That’s all we do with everyone, even those that haven’t hurt us, so why would we change that pattern and let her in when she’s hurt us so much?

Just keep breathing…