How do you know where you are in therapy? Ie; how far along you are, etc?
New Landscape ~ DID/MPD Support Group
New York support group for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) / Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)
How do you know where you are in therapy? Ie; how far along you are, etc?
Therapy, for me, is like watching a timid child. I take one step forward, 20 steps back.
The fact that I keep showing up for therapy, despite having thought on multiple occasions “This needs to end” is currently the most progress I expect myself to be making right now.
I don’t think that progress can be measured easily, to be honest. Sometimes things happen in leaps and bounds, and sometimes things stall out.
If I’m alive and do not have any active suicidal parts, there is progress.
If I’m actively trying to communicate inside, that is progress.
If I’m actively dealing with my diagnosis, that is progress.
If I’m aware of lost time, or better- not losing time but allowing other parts to share space… That is progress.
At least for me.
Fragmentized – I really like your ideas of progress! I think I have a similar view really. If I am becoming more functional in life and less afraid of who I seem to be, that counts as progress to me.
It seems like one of best things I’ve learned or keep learning, is that I can think about the future, but I have to live right now, today. I want to find ways to live now. I don’t want to wait till I’m “all better” (because who knows when that will be! – and who ever ‘arrives’ in this life anyway?). Finding fun things and joy and life, in the midst of this process when possible – well it really helps. Plus, it makes it so that I’m not so anxious about all this. …… this is my life: there is joy, and there is pain. There is both. That’s how it is. That’s how it is for everyone really. My brand of life just happens to include DID.
w is always reminding me that “it’s all progress.” by which she means, even when something seems like a setback, i can still find myself further ahead than expected, once that thing is dealt with.
she *also* is always reminding me that this process is kind of like doing deep-level organization in our house, or in a room… you pull out all the stuff so that you can put it away again in a more organized, logical, whatever way. but this means things get way messier on their way to being more functional.
it’s hard and frustrating for me to cope with, since it often feels like things have just been getting “worse” ever since i got this diagnosis. for me, the less i dissociate, the more the problems i dissociated away (panic, depression, physical pain) come into my awareness. but the fact is, it’s not that these things weren’t THERE before, it’s just i could often ignore them.
other people in my life assure me that they can see me making progress. i do my best to believe them. i can even sometimes notice things that probably are progress, even though they don’t *feel* like it (like having gained enough trust of my therapist and w that i actually miss them when i can’t see them for a while).
there’s also the issue of meeting treatment goals, or having some kind of concrete, written goals. i’d like more of those, and keep trying to express this to my therapist, but then some other part shows up, and we both get distracted trying to cope with them for a few weeks…. it’s frustrating.