Transcript: Episode 33
33. Healing Together (Part 2)
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[Short piano piece is played, lasting about 20 seconds]
This morning began the second day of the conference. I started out in the Public Education and Advocating Against Stigma session with McLean Hospital and Robert Oxnam, who had graciously agreed to let us interview him for another podcast. I was interested to see what they have to say, because they’ve been talking about having this new mission as outreach to the DID community and to advocate against stigma. And they talk about wanting to work with the community, which I feel like is the first time that survivors, as a community, have been officially recognized.
They say that they’re wanting to fight stigma and trying to do this by showing the humanity of the whole person, and not just the diagnosis of DID, even though it’s also important to clarify the diagnosis and how to provide services. They even said that they want to communicate with people who have DID and understand what they want and what they want researched, so that they can be supportive of the community in this way.
So again, I really thought the things they had to share were helpful and it sounds like that they are really wanting to reach out to the community, which includes acknowledging us as a community of survivors. And I think that that’s really powerful and I appreciate that they are having this statement about wanting to fight stigma and empower survivors.
However, months and months and months before this conference, we reached out to them wanting to interview the people involved in this program and with this mission and they discussed it. Several times, our emails went back and forth and in the end, they declined. Which is fine, they have the right to decline that, but my concern is that the podcast that they mentioned and the other collaborations that they mentioned are all with only professionals. They’re not with survivors, other than the example of Robert Oxnam.
Now, I appreciate that he’s their poster child, because he absolutely was a forerunner for the rest of us as an example of someone who’s highly functional, intelligent, creative, well-known in his own community, and successful. So, I love that they’re using him and his story and that’s really great, but the survivor community now and with the changes in technology and younger generations, the survivor community is often based through the online support groups through YouTube videos and podcasts, like this one.
So my question that I submitted to them was wanting to know what they were going to do to reach out to survivors themselves, either through some of those who are leaders in the YouTube world or this podcast for example, or other examples of survivors themselves, not just telling their story, but who are already doing the work of this mission that they say they want to collaborate on? Because my concern is if they’re not actually collaborating with survivors then it becomes appropriation, because we’re already doing what they say they want to do and if there’s a gap between only using professionals to tell the stories of survivors as opposed to collaborating with survivors who tell their own stories, that’s really a problem. And it’s a bit of oppression and that has me concerned.
I did not feel like this was resolved in that session and I did actually leave that session early, because it was frustrating. So, I did not stay for the entire panel.
I also attended the ‘Attachment Rupture and Repair in Trauma Therapy’ session by Susan Pease Banitt, who I interviewed several weeks ago. What she explains so well and understands as a survivor in her own way herself, is how hard it is just to engage in the therapeutic process, much less build an attachment with that therapist enough to be able to actually begin to do the work of therapy. And so she gave several examples of ruptures to this attachment process that disrupt or interrupt or interfere with the attachment process with the therapist.
Some of these examples that survivors have said are that their therapist did not believe them, their therapist got overwhelmed, their therapist thought that they were too much or their trauma content was too much, the therapist was focused on their own agenda rather than their agenda, or the therapist freaked out because of reaching that threshold of what is too much for them to understand or believe or help with. And then often in these cases, the therapist then either distanced themselves or became remote, such as disengaging from the process instead of remaining present for the client.
This really gave me a lot to think about, because we have been through so many therapist’s. And when I think about our first therapist who was a really good therapist and even diagnosed us with the DID when we were 17 years old. But ultimately what happened in that case is that she became so focused on what her agenda was that we absolutely had a rupture there and left the state even, just to get away. Now, that was a lot of our own issues and I don’t want to go into details right now with that, because it’s not really my story. But, I can see how this played out with her, because she’s a good person, a safe person, and even a good therapist, for sure. However, under all of the layers that are our own stuff that we could have worked out in therapy, it was absolutely because she was distracted by other things and because she wanted it done her way and we were not ready for that. And I think that this is a new thing for us, to be able to say that out loud and to be able to say that as being true to our own experience and not worrying about what her feelings are about that or meaning at all to disrespect her. But just the truth of what our experience...so from our end that’s absolutely what happened in that first case.
So on our end of things, that’s absolutely where that rupture was, was that she needed it done her way and in her timing and that she was distracted by other things and we were not able to hold that presence enough on our own, that when she let go of it, it felt like it fell apart because we were not strong enough yet to hold onto that.
So, it helps also to give some healing and perspective, because we understand it is a lot. That’s the whole reason we’re this sick, right? This is why we’re so unwell or still struggling with all of these layers of what’s going on, because it was too much for us. So, it makes sense it would be too much for anyone else.
The natural resulting fear from that though is that it means it’s going to be too much for everyone else. And so that’s part of what makes it difficult to re-engage in therapy because if we were too hard for someone already, then why would we expect anyone else to be strong enough to help us? We need someone who is already stronger than we are, because we couldn’t handle it and need help and that’s what getting help is all about. And so who is strong enough to have a presence enough to hold that for us and help us, even while we work it out?
And then when we left the state from that first therapist and tried to get help with another therapist...I don’t think the next therapist was as skilled as the first one. They definitely treated DID and understood a little bit about it. However, that therapist was going through a divorce and then the same thing happened. Their personal issues were so much a distraction and they had a lot of cancelled appointments and we weren't able to do that. So, that’s where that rupture happened.
We then had a period of about five years where we did not even try to get therapy, because it was too much. It was too hard and clearly, no one was able to help us.
When we finally tried again, that new therapist seemed to know a lot about DID and a lot about helping with different kinds of abuse that we needed to work on, even just for our own safety at the time. And so we did push forward more than we had before with that therapist in attempting to try. However, that therapist ended up having an affair with our partner at the time. So, there were so many boundary violations that again, just to feel safe, we literally left the state and we had to move.
Now looking back on this, I see that pattern there as well, because we grew up in a military family and we did a lot of moving. And so because of the military life and moving around a lot, that’s also going to cause some attachment issues and seem like a natural response to things. When we are done here, when we are not comfortable here, when we are not safe here, when this is no longer a safe or functioning place, we move. And I think there are some roots of our runner in that as well and some of the fugue experiences that we’ve had where we even found ourselves outside of the country several years later. And that’s what happened in this case. When we experienced those significant and severe boundary violations with that therapist, we found ourselves living in Europe three years later.
So, this talk that she gave today gave some serious insights that were pretty profound to me about the rupture and attachment in therapy and definitely some more for us to think about and some more for us to talk to our therapist about.
When the parent’s died and we ultimately began to seek out therapy again, it took us almost a year and a half, just to find a therapist who could treat DID in our area. And so it took so long to find someone, that we were so relieved to finally get help, that we engaged with that therapist more quickly than we should have, I think, because we were so glad just to have someone who understood DID. However, that person literally said this piece...which the piece it was is irrelevant… but she literally responded when we began that disclosure, she literally responded with, “That sounds really scary. I don’t want to talk about it.”
And so for us at the time, we thought we had done something wrong, because we know we’re not supposed to talk about some things and yet had worked for over a year with that therapist to build enough safety that we could talk about some things, but that’s how she responded. And there were other violations or ruptures that were also difficult and so we had to break out of that relationship, but it took us about six months to get out. That’s how entangled it was and how uncomfortable we were and how unsafe we felt, that it took about six months to find a way out of that relationship and set our own boundaries.
Ultimately though, that’s what led us to the therapist that we have now. So I’m grateful that it played out the way that it did, but it’s been really, really hard to find a therapist that we feel is safe, who is strong enough to hold that presence, and who provides the level of safety we need, even just to get into therapeutic issues. We’ve now been with her for almost a year and that’s a really big deal for us. At the same time, because of our past experiences that she talked about in this session as ruptures, it makes it really terrifying and it’s a time where we are wanting to leave therapy and to get out of therapy and to stop therapy - not because our therapist has done any wrong, but because this time it feels so good and it feels so right and she is so helpful and we so appreciate her that the level of risk is through the roof, as far as trying to trust her, not to disappear like everyone else has.
So, it’s a hard thing. But I didn’t know that there were words for this. And so Susan Pease Banitt talked about it today in this session. And she said the seven deadly sins of a trauma therapist are number one, sexual boundary violations, number two, incongruence, number three, inappropriate self disclosure, number four, inadequate horror tolerance, which is what we had with the therapist who referred her to us, a lack of belief in the client, a failure to protect, and despair.
She also said that client’s will only tell you what you’re ready and available to hear. When you’re ready, they will tell you. I am not entirely sure I understand all of that yet. I also think I lost some time in there, so it may just be fuzzy for me.
She also talked in that time about thresholds of belief, like how the abuse stories that survivors have to tell are so difficult that it’s hard to listen to them and how it can be hard to believe them - not that it’s not true, but because your own...the therapist has their own layer of dissociation to separate from what is so horrible out in the world. But that the reasons to believe survivors are because it was real to them and their experience. Even distorted information has coded truth and disbelief increases stress and destroys attachment with the therapist.
She said that strange sounding things, and she gave several examples, that clients may say to the therapist are often coded information - that they’re not lying or what they’re saying...it’s not that it isn’t true, but that the truth is hidden in a way of what they’re trying to say, because they can’t communicate directly. And I know this is a hard thing. We often think that we have a plan of this is what we need to tell the therapist and what we want to talk about, but when we get there, that’s not what happens at all. Not because the therapist has her own agenda, but because there’s so many layers of protection that go up and so many things that need to come out at once and there’s so much feeling that happens, that it’s no longer about following a list. And it’s really hard to stick to any kind of plan. We’re just not in that space yet.
She then said some other thing...she went into talking about some ritual abuse and different things and it was just too much for us and we had to leave the session. So our morning was not very successful as far as staying in sessions, but at least we tried two days in a row. And it also really brought up a lot, because she talked about how before you will be able to totally reengage in therapy with a new therapist, you’re going to have to address some of the ruptures in attachment with other therapist’s that have happened. And we have touched on that in different ways and talked to a therapist about that, like she knows very broadly the stories, but I don’t know how much they processed...maybe they have, I really don’t know. But, I don’t know how much we’ve processed actually sort of some of the experiences we went through and why therapy itself is so hard. And I never thought about that as being an important piece of the puzzle. So, maybe that’s something we should talk to our therapist about a little more.
Regardless, it was a really hard morning and I really struggled with staying present and participating in the sessions this morning. I don’t know if the content was just too close to home or if the layers of insight that was bringing things up was the trigger or what exactly happened but it was definitely a struggle today.
When I left that session, I lost about two hours, but I was able to return to her session when she had the follow up master class that was about Best Practices of Advanced Trauma Therapists Through The Lens of Attachment. Again, by Susan Pease Banitt.
She talked in this session about how book learning, which is left brain, is not bad, but it’s not wisdom, which is right brain. She spoke about how science is information, but wisdom is the right application of information. She said it’s not what you do, but who you are and that the quality of the therapist-client relationship matters most, more than techniques or skills.
Then she talked about the evidence-based therapy stuff that she spoke about on our podcast a couple weeks ago. She talked about how evidence-based therapy comes from research and studies that are only three to six months in duration. And the problem with that is that it completely leaves out trauma clients altogether, that there cannot by definition, be evidence-based therapy for trauma. It does not take into account the months that it takes for trust building, even before attachment happens. It doesn’t take into account how long it takes for trauma clients to build attachment with a therapist, which could be from one to three years and she even gave an example that was nine years.
And it doesn’t take into account how long it takes to actually start disclosing things. And then it doesn’t take into account things that follow the whole calendar year and so she was saying that with trauma clients, there are significant anniversaries and dates that are important to process in therapy as they come up, but that you may not know about them until a whole calendar year after that attachment is built. And so it may be a year or two or three or four or five before you even get to that point. And so there’s no way those kinds of issues can show up in a study that’s three to six months.
Then she talked a lot about the shame issues that I’ve been studying, except she didn’t talk about it from a shame perspective, but how judgment and compassion cannot exist in the same space. And there was a quote from Carl Rogers about “When I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” And then she gave a whole outline of history from the inquisition through modern psychology about how it is soul care and it’s the study of the soul and it’s about compassion and connection, not the kind of science that people are trying to do it now for solution-focused and short-term therapies.
She said trauma is a direct assault on the interconnectedness of each other and time, that it’s an impairment of neural integration, like in the brain. And that when you block linkage, the system results in chaos or rigidity. And so talking about the impact of trauma on the brain and how that impacts relationships and that you can’t bring healing for trauma without also bringing healing to those pieces. Or rather, healing comes through those pieces.
So a therapist style needs to be empathic, interoceptive, attunement, feeling, and active face, not a flat face or dismissive face, and that the challenges for the therapist are to be that present and to hold that presence and to maintain that attachment when the client is not able to do that or help with that. That it can be very overwhelming and draining. And I think that goes back to what she talked about earlier, because I think most of us who are survivors already know that we overwhelm others and that we drain others and that’s one more layer, at least a really big one for us that makes it difficult to reach out and ask for help.
So, for example, we do have the ability to, and the permission, to text our therapist when we need that support, but it’s more of a touching base and making sure that connection is still there. We don’t have long text conversations with her. She doesn’t respond if she’s with someone else or doing something with her family, like it’s more about a way...a tool. It’s more like a tool that helps maintain that connection. It’s not like we do therapy through texting. And yet maintaining the connection is very therapeutic for us. Does that make sense?
So there are times that we need to say here’s what’s going on, here’s what’s hard, or here’s what’s happening right now...and we may or may not get a reply depending on what’s going on in her real life. But for us it’s a way to reach out, connect, and she often does reply in a reassuring way that maintains that connection. But we do the work of it through the notebooks and in therapy. Does that make sense?
But knowing that we’re overwhelming then sometimes when it feels really big, it’s hard to even send that text or if we do send it then we feel really badly about it and it actually escalates things, because we feel so bad about it and we know it’s so much. And there’s so many of us and so if I think I’m just sending this because I want you to be aware this is going on, but I don’t know that 20 other people have already texted, like it’s just embarrassing. Or there’s some shame there or some of my needs are not being met kind of feelings, not that the therapist is failing. I don’t mean that. But I mean, there’s some kind of awareness that we already know is too much and that we’re too much and so it makes it hard to let down those walls.
I could cry about this right now. It’s hard to go to therapy and let down those walls and pour anything out when working this hard to restrain things so much is already too much. Maybe that’s what I’ve been trying to say.
So there are things that we need to work on in therapy, that’s true. But when we are going to therapy and just the existence of us there or just being at her office...when that is already so much and so big and too much without us even adding any of the actual problem to it...do you see what I mean? It’s already...like I don’t know how to let go enough to add any of that to the pile or to put more on her plate when already it’s too hard and too much and we haven’t even done anything yet.
She has worked so hard and given so much and been so present for us and worked...gone above and beyond for us to have a safe environment, a safe space, protected our time with her. She does not reschedule our appointments or move things around. She makes sure that we’re scheduled enough in advance that we know what the schedule...like these things that protect us just to get us there...I so appreciate it, because we’ve never had that before. It’s making a huge difference in our level of functioning and so this last year of us not doing anything in therapy, actually we’ve done a lot in therapy, even though you can’t just measure it. Or in some way that checks things off lists on a treatment plan. But what we have done is committed to therapy again for the first time in 20 years.
What we have done is started to trust someone for the first time in our entire life and those are really big things. But when you’re aware of how hard she’s had to work just to get us there and how hard we worked just to get there, it’s hard to do. It’s terrifying, terrifying to do anything to upset that apple cart.
So everything becomes a battle about that - of let’s go to therapy but not say anything that’s too much or too hard or will make her go away. Let’s send a text so that she knows we’re struggling so that we can let the pressure off enough that we’re not in crisis, but not actually say anything about what the crisis is, because that would be too much. Let’s not send a text because we don’t want to be too much and then actually the crisis is worse than it was because we didn’t ask for help. It’s a really hard thing. That’s where our system is right now.
What that looks like from this perspective, she talked about in that session, or what that means for where we are in therapy, I don’t know and that’s part of why I’m trying to stay out of it. Because it’s so much bigger than what I can process and I can’t get in the way of what’s happening internally. But what she talked about today, even though I can’t fully grasp it, is this, that’s where we are.
But what I know is that we do at least finally have a therapist and we have a therapist who is not just good as in skilled, but who is wise and real and worth attaching to. And we maybe haven’t made a lot of progress on paper by some standards, but we’ve made more progress than we’ve ever made before and there’s both relief in that and fear in that. Because we are so vulnerable and so exposed and there’s such heaviness in the weight of being too much and too hard and too difficult and all of these things that go back to the shame stuff that I’ve been reading about this winter.
So, the session with Susan Pease Banitt was really good and I very much appreciated it. I think I will appreciate it again more in hindsight where I’m not so much in the middle of the rupture piece. I think our therapist that we have now is very good at repair and repairing attachment the way we talked about it in the session and that that’s where some of our healing is happening, which is making it possible for other issues to come to the surface and that’s part of the anxiety about therapy that we have now. But understanding this helped me have the insight and the courage to at least help us keep trying. Does that make sense? So even though I don’t have the answers and I can’t make us less work or less difficult or less hard to deal with, it does increase our level of being able to commit and keep trying anyway, because she is good at the repair and she is good at attachment and she is wise - not just skilled. Although she’s definitely that as well.
So, I appreciated about this session, not just the clinical perspective of why repairing these are so important and avoiding ruptures, obviously also important, but I also appreciated insight into my own process, which was not expected in this context. I didn’t know that’s where it was going.
And then the last layer of it is just feeling relief, because these were things that we should of had from the beginning. And so that means, we didn’t just fail therapy over and over and over again. These were really further violations that happened to us and we actually did good and right and safe things by leaving those situations. It wasn’t only avoidance. It wasn’t only acting out. It wasn’t only running away. It wasn’t only failing therapy. Those were not good, safe, wise places for us to be and it was okay to leave them. And there’s something empowering in that and something that reinforces our choice now, which I needed, because it’s a big deal. We have to drive so far. Our therapist is four hours away. And that’s a lot of gas money. That’s a lot of time and energy. It’s very difficult physically. It’s more expensive on the nights we try to stay at a hotel, just to rest, because therapy is so intense.
But at the same time, this shows the value of it, the value in her, and in some strange, new way, even in the value of us and even in that struggle, our therapist meets us there. Because she has changed our appointment since we moved to two hours. So, we’re not driving four hours for a 45 minute appointment. We drive four hours and we get a full two hour block.
And I feel like for the first time, we have a therapist who’s working as hard as we are. And that’s why we keep going.
These layers were intense enough, as well as some other triggers that came up, that we again took our lunch back to our room and this afternoon have just stayed here. We were not able to return to afternoon sessions and the session that I had chosen turned out to be an interactive session, which we were not in the place for at all. So, we were not able to participate in afternoon sessions and so I have no other information from the conference to share.
I do again want to send my appreciation and gratitude to our friends who were here at the conference and to listeners who were here at the conference that also respected our space and our privacy while we were here. There are several issues, which we can talk about later, that really caused us to need or confirm to us our need to protect ourselves, which was good opportunity for some self care and some boundaries. And in this case, our boundaries were pretty strict because we needed to not meet people in real life and just lay low this conference for a variety of reasons. And we can talk about that more later.
But right now, what was a big deal for us, was that we were able to travel here and we were able to attend the conference, at least a few sessions, and able to see people and connect with them, even if not entirely, directly in person.
I know for all the survivors who came that it was a really intense experience and there were lots of triggers and lots of difficult issues and I just want to say that I’m really proud of you too and you did a good job with self care. You did a good job of caring for eachother and you did a good job of learning and listening and asking questions and speaking up and advocating and also just your own reflections. And I’ve appreciated the things that you’ve shared, that you learned.
We are leaving early, leaving to go home after all of these layers and what we’ve learned and maybe we’ll see you next year.
[Break]
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