potentially positive

Made some progress in therapy. I guess last week, when I kept saying that I need more ability to communicate internally, she finally got it. So even though I don't know that things are specifically better as of today, at least we spent some time discussing how I'm experiencing things, and I think I was able to articulate why therapy's been feeling so unhelpful. And she seemed to understand, too.

So we discussed having more than one session a week, because one of the problems is I need a larger "container" for the stuff that gets dredged up, and an hour a week isn't really sufficient (and she often does really give me a whole hour, and not that 50 minutes one can usually expect from a therapist).

She was concerned that multiple sessions wouldn't be covered. I called insurance, and they cover 60 sessions in a calendar year, and don't care how many I use in a single week, so long as I don't go over 60 per year. And the good thing about this? I've got 29 sessions left between now and the end of the year. I could concievably even see her daily (not that I plan on doing this, or think I need it, but if it were necessary, I could). So I left a message telling her this, and she called back, and we made plans for an extra session next week. We'll see how it goes.

There's still a lot of internal resistance, and I'm kind of getting a sense of why that is. One part is that my ability to just get through the day is helped by not having to actually believe what's happening; if I don't believe it, then it's easier to not be experiencing the panic attacks that my body is going through.

Another part is guilt and fear. I feel incredibly guilty for thinking that things I remember might have actually happened. I feel disloyal to my mother. And afraid that my family will somehow find out that I believe these things and... it's not really clear what the consequences will be. That all of a sudden no one will believe a word I say? That they won't love me any more? That I will be locked up? Hurt? Punished somehow, for thinking those kinds of things....

Intellectually, I know this won't happen. But emotionally... it's incredibly real. I'm absolutely terrified of admitting what's going on, of allowing myself to believe I have multiple parts inside of me, of acknowledging that those parts exist for a reason, and of confronting what those reasons are. There are moments when I can face it, but more often, I just can't.

I guess, in many ways, even though I'm pretty much completely shut down, it's easier to live with the dissociation than to think about why it exists. But I've also got parts who are desperate to get the problem fixed.

It's like they're battling it out, and what gets lost in the process is my ability to live a normal life. Because either I'm stuck in this whole process of coping with the past, or I'm pretty much paralyzed from the effort of trying to hold off the past. And it really sucks that there isn't some quick, predictable, straightforward way of getting through all of it. I mean, it seems like it should be something where I can say, "Oh, okay, bad things happened. I acknowledge that. Now I can get on with my life and do the things I actually want to do." But I guess it doesn't work like that.

Anyhow, I'm feeling kind of hopeful, right now, in the middle of also being extremely spaced out.