The topic was “being in therapy less”. Talk about anything that thought means to you.
New Landscape ~ DID/MPD Support Group
New York support group for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) / Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)
The topic was “being in therapy less”. Talk about anything that thought means to you.
With changing health insurance views of medical necessity, even though my therapist thinks I should be there more, I have to go less. It is so unfair and so much of therapy time is spent working on THIS rather than on the therapy stuff.
I feel abandoned when I’m not with my therapist because of insurance issues.
I also get very scared because I don’t want to waste my t’s time when other parts need her more, but I don’t want to miss out on my time with her eitehr.
it’s interesting. i had been in therapy three sessions a week for a while, until health insurance was just too much of a pain for covering it. even though they are supposed to pay for unlimited therapy for DID and a bunch of other disorders through mental health parity (timothy’s law in new york), and even though they did eventually pay up, it was getting to be too much hassle for my therapist to deal with. so she stopped taking that particular insurance (she was having trouble with getting them to pay for other clients, too).
so six or eight months ago, we switched to me going twice a week, and paying out of pocket, but she wasn’t charging me very much per session. and that was a little bit of a challenge, but it was manageable for me.
but then a month or so ago, i was starting to feel like i just really needed more time to do other things, and so i initiated going to just once a week. my plan was that i’d email her about halfway through the week, if anything came up. and i was still paying as much as if i’d been seeing her twice, so that if i did need to come in for an extra session, i would have already paid her for it.
the funny thing is, i’m finding that i really just don’t seem to need as much therapy as i did. it came as a surprise to me, although maybe not as much to her? i don’t know. i just know that most of the fall, i felt like i was stuck in the same place i’d been, like i was never going to be done with therapy. and then i started feeling more stable, and really need it less.
i still kind of poke at it, to make sure that i feel better, and that i’m not just fooling myself. and the past week or so, a bunch of things have come up that i *know* would have thrown me a couple of months ago, and instead, i really was able to cope with them, and things just never got as bad.
so it’s weird, not needing as much therapy any more. i mean, i still need to be in therapy, and i have both individual therapy and couples’ therapy, but i was able finally to cope with just once a week of individual therapy without feeling thrown off.
I have been seeing my therapist 2x/wk. for 6.5 years now. The intensity of my problems has definitely lessened but I do have some other issues to address, mainly re: socialization and self-esteem. I have been paying out-of-pocket for all of this therapy. Recently the money has become a huge issue for me…not because we don’t have it but because I feel guilty spending it on myself when I know that the severity of my reactiions has decreased both in intensity and frequency. Part of me wants to quit altogether and another part panics at the prospect. I do not know how to reconcile this conflict and it is becoming very painful. Am I just too “chicken” to try the 1x/wk or is the fear of not seeing her often enough truely valid?
I don’t know if anyone out there has had the same difficulty…but if you are there please offer me some advice. We are not rich but comfortable. However, my husband is due to retire in 3 yr. and we need to pay off our house before then. The $13,000/yr. would go a long way towards accomplishing this goal.
I go once a week now – sorta. It used to be twice a week. I suppose sometimes it still is. I can’t really give any advice – because we each have to figure things out for ourselves when it comes down to it. But if I were in your situation, I could imagine trying some kind of compromise like every other week having 2 sessions, and every other week having 1. So an alternating kind of thing. Then it wouldn’t be so drastic feeling.
Also – I’ve always known that if I try something – it never has to be “permanent”. I can always try, and then if it doesn’t work, go back to the way thing were.
I often try to think of worse case scenarios and “what do I have to lose?” – when I think of trying something new. Helps give me perspective.
one possibility would be to do something like i did–go to once a week, but save up the money for that second session, so that you’re still budgeting as though you need to pay for it. and then you’ve always got the option of going back to twice a week if you need it.
the weird thing is, just a couple of weeks after i wrote about going down to once a week, a family crisis came up, and i was across the country with my family for a month. i am finally back now, but i still haven’t had a chance to get in to see my therapist. i guess what’s really weird about that is, even though i know it will do me good to talk with her, i was really able to handle things pretty well while i was away.
but what chariots says about nothing being permanent is definitely true. you can go to once a week, and if that’s causing trouble, you can go back to twice a week. or the opposite–you could go up to more sessions for when you need it, and then back down again.
i work for a mental health service, so out of fear of being fired, i never went. it probably would have helped, but self education let me take the steps i needed to in order to increase my “functionability” i believe anyone can become an expert on this very spesific issue. that being said, stumbling onto a web site populated with people who can understand. people who “get me” has been a huge tool in my jouney.