quote:Hi Soulfuldaze
Welcome to the Forum, i am so glad you posted and just to reassure you there really are no ropes you need to learn. We all kind of take it as it comes, good days, bad days and everything in between are all welcome here.
I really don't know what to reply to you, 18 years is a lifetime with a therapist and i can understand how frustrating and confusing knowing nothing about her must be.
As i am typing i thought that maybe the real learning for you is happening right now. From what you said it sounds as if you have lost your self in the process of looking for her. Maybe the solution lies in respecting some part of yourself that seems to really need to be heard.
It is hard to know the difference between changing to a new reality and running away but the fact that there is so much pain for you in this situation makes me suspect running away is inching ahead here. Maybe it is you that no longer wants to hide and withdraw which is why her boundaries are so frustrating? If so, just being part of this forum will help you find your voice.
One of my problems is that I do tend to lose myself in relationships. I don't have a clear vision of what "normal" is. I've never been able to adequately absorb what a societal "norm" is. My way of coping with that deficit has been to be chameleon-like and try to blend in as well as I can. So yes...you were right....I was losing myself in the process of looking for her. Trying to match her "tone"....looking for better attunement through oneness or sameness.
Many people with DID/MPD do this. It is one of the primary ways we get through life and appear "normal" even though we know we are not quite like most people, and we feel like "something" is terribly wrong.
I know this...and yet at the time...it didn't feel like that was what I was doing. Now...looking back I can see how this was playing out in my therapy. My inability to see it at that time, was hindered by an overbearing alter that had too much control and was angry at my T for not being the friend/partner in therapy, that she kept saying she was. She didn't know I was being so strongly influenced by this alter. This alter has a much different view of what a "friend" is supposed to be...and does not understand the constraints of therapy.
You were also right about my not wanting to hide and withdraw anymore. I'm just so sick of having so many secret lives and selves....they all need to "be heard" and I need to let that happen.
My T's boundaries...ie: "her secrets" sometimes just scream at me and I have a difficult time overcoming my desire to equalize the relationship...it may always be this way, and we still need to find a way through this. But, right now...I have more control over how I choose to react.
I'm still struggling with finding myself again...but I am no longer trying to "be" through her. I have also regained some sense of her "realness" and/or separateness.
So...again...thank you so much for contributing. It did get through...and it did help.
Sincerely,
SD
This BIG THANK YOU...applies to all of you here.
You've all been very supportive and helpful. I have reconsidered my relationship with my T and have re-dedicated myself to seeing this through to a mutual termination. It may be a long time before I get there, but I am much more settled with my decision to work through it all. It's very important to me to finish this. Finding a good end to relationships has been the bane of my existence. This script has to change and starting over or quitting, will not get me there.
SO....paraphrasing Holly's Freud signature quote.....
The aim of psychoanalysis is to relieve people of their neurotic unhappiness so that they can be normally unhappy. ~S.F~
I am no longer...TOTALLY confused. Now...I'm just normally confused....I think...hmmmm... *chuckling*
"Light thinks it travels faster than anything....but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always gotten there first....and is waiting for it."
~terry pratchett~