How can you help parts to feel safe enough to talk in therapy sessions?
New Landscape ~ DID/MPD Support Group
New York support group for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) / Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)
How can you help parts to feel safe enough to talk in therapy sessions?
one thing that helped in my system was to take our time. to give parts a chance to kind of observe what was happening before they were out where they could be seen.
also, checking with our therapist beforehand, like a month or so after i was diagnosed or something, whether it was ok for littles to come in. and to have someone who had already been in ask the questions they posed (one of their concerns was that it didn’t seem to them like little kids were welcome, because she didn’t have anything for little kids in the office, and only talked like a grown up).
and then, it has kind of been this slow process. a few parts would come out, and get to know her, and then other parts would feel like maybe it was ok, so they would come out, and so on.
it also helped to change some of our internal rules about this kind of thing. i know that the adults were VERY uncomfortable (and maybe still are, i don’t know) with the younger parts being obviously out. the adults in my system STILL struggle with the fact that they think maybe it’s all imaginary or something. like, yeah, we’re really just faking this really well.
also, they were very uncomfortable with admitting they couldn’t just handle things on their own, and make everything be ok by deciding it was. and they were uncomfortable with the types of things other parts would say (like admitting how we *weren’t* handling things as well as the adults wanted to imply we were).
but it’s taken time, and there are still parts who aren’t comfortable coming out in therapy. our attitude is, when they are ready, they’ll come, and they’re more likely to go if they feel like there isn’t pressure on them.