Dear Therapists

[seidigardensystem]

The Fear of Being Too Much

My mother purposely spaced my brother and myself apart by almost eight years because she knew she could not handle having more than one young child at a time. Even so, I received the message that I am too much over and over again while growing up. I was too sensitive. I was too needy. I was too clingy. I was too . . .everything!

This theme continued to show up as I grew and impacted so many of my relationships. Trauma responses and flashbacks were in full force, even though I didn’t understand that my experiences were flashbacks or trauma responses. I also didn’t understand that I was a We and that we had dissociative identity disorder.

This core belief is still haunting for all of us today. We’re terrified of losing relationships, of being abandoned, or creating conflict that is detrimental to our relationships. We just want everything to be perfect, so therefore we must not be too much. We must swallow our words, our emotions, and freeze our behaviors to ensure our own safety.

We thought we were getting so much better about dealing with the belief, and we are. We also had it come crashing down on us again recently. All it took was one of our selves being out in the front too long without the support from our other selves. The spiral of negative thoughts was steep and fast.

Our gatekeeper, yes, four-year old Jenny, took over and locked us in the dark closet for HOURS. She took away our voice and ability to speak because she feared what this other self might say out loud. It took nearly 24 hours before we were able to switch into someone that Jenny trusted enough to communicate what was going on for us. We’ve come a long way in many ways, and even through this, because there were times we never would have been able to communicate what had happened. There were times where it might have been weeks or days. So, it is better. And also, still hard.

We had hours of suffering and fear that we were about to lose everything because of our trauma responses. This is the reality of having dissociative identity disorder. This is just one small peek at some of the darker, messier sides of living with this. We have come a long way in that the people we have in our life now are able to recognize a trauma response when it is happening. They are able to hold space for us in the tougher moments.

We’re not mad at Jenny. While it is frustrating sometimes to have a four year old Gatekeeper, we are grateful for her. She reminds us of who we all want to be and she wasn’t wrong for shutting everything down. It’s what we actually needed. Sometimes we need our off button pushed. And that’s okay.

[seidigardensystem]

Pondering the Therapeutic Relationship

As a trauma survivor who has struggled with relationships and boundaries whether those relationships were family, friends, co-workers, or romantic relationships, entering into a therapeutic relationship was hard and often confusing. Receiving that positive, unconditional regard was so healing in so many ways, and also super confusing. Receiving that kind of attention really makes you like a person! Experiencing that level of trust and forming an attachment can create quite a bit of emotional turmoil.

There were times I really struggled and grappled with the concept of ‘my therapist is not my friend’ or ‘my therapist is not my mom’ and somehow I ended up believing that I needed to build a wall between us to keep our mind from becoming too attached or too close. This ended up enforcing that disorganized attachment of pull in closer and then push away hard. It’s such an exhausting place to be, for me and my therapist!

The thing is, though, that the therapeutic relationship is a very powerful one and an important one to have. It’s not lesser in any way compared to friends, family, co-workers, etc. It’s actually more than. I need my therapist to be my therapist and not just for the unconditional positive regard. I need her to be able to confront me, call me out on my shit sometimes, to help me grow and evolve into the best version of myself.

If she was my friend, she might not be able to confront me in the way that she can now, because it means something different when she does it compared to when a friend does it. She’s doing it because she can see the bigger picture way better than I can and because it is what is best for me, whereas a friendship is a two-way street and they have underlying needs within the relationship. The therapeutic relationship is a one-way street.

Even though the therapeutic relationship is a one-way street, that is absolutely not a license to lash out at a therapist. They are not there to be our punching bag, even if they are the ones that hurt our feelings. Therapists are humans too. Being able to hold space for our anger though, listening to what hurt us, and apologizing to us was a super-healing experience.

As a therapist myself now, I have a much better understanding of this concept. I am there for my client, they are not there for me. And to know I have one person who is my therapist who can hold space for all of my mess is such a relief. I know she’ll tell it to me straight. I know that she cares deeply about me. I know she’s not afraid to point out things I need to see. I know that I can be as mad as I need to be, upset as I need to be, and she will hear me out. I know that if I am upset with her, I can share that with her and at the end of the day she’ll still be my therapist. I know that she knows how to implement, hold, and enforce boundaries for my well-being. And for all of that, I highly respect her.

It is through her that I learn to show up as a better spouse, a better mom, a better friend, and a better colleague. She helps me rise up and to be the best me that all of us can be.

[seidigardensystem]

We Are Not Crazy or Disordered; We are Just a We.

Dear Therapists,

These voices I hear in my head are no delusion, I know that now. I used to worry that I was crazy and did my best to ignore them. I tried to shut them out. The inner critic only grew louder the more I suppressed it. I attempted to drown it out with positive affirmations and speak over its words.

Only the voices we heard were not your typical inner critic. Nor were they hallucinations that could be silenced with drugs. They were actual people. They had their own autonomy inside and only fought harder and harder to be heard. They demanded my attention.

I had no other choice but to face them head on and engage with them. I had to listen and hear them out. They needed validation and compassion and reassurance. They were me and I was them and we all were we. They had their own opinions, beliefs, and experiences and they were stuck in my body. It was our body. There were so many of us all together and we were sharing just one body and one life.

Who was I? I was one of them. I was just the one who carried on for the world to see and interact with. I was the one to show up to fit in and appear normal when everything about our life was abnormal.

Who was the voice? She was more than just a voice. This was Jenny. Jenny was the one inside keeping all the secrets as secret as she could. She knew about the unspeakable things and protected all of us from the knowledge of horrors that would break our spirit and soul. What a burden for one so young and so small! How could we not see her? How could we not hear her? Was she any less important than I?

I’m not the only one she needs to talk to. She needs you, our therapist, too! She has her story to tell and she deserves to tell it with her own voice. She deserves to see through the eyes and discover a world with corrective experiences and know that it is 2024, not 1984 or 85 or 86. We will not deny her voice nor abandon her in the same way our perpetrators did.

The more we all talked to each other, the quieter our mind grew. The more we shared our body and our life together, the more we remembered together. We all agreed to be a team and to work together. We negotiated and compromised and included everyone in our decisions and the result is we are now living our best life together.

We’re not crazy or disordered. We are just a we. We are doing it differently. And that’s okay.

Sincerely,

Your client

[seidigardensystem]

Truth About DID

Dear Therapists,

They didn’t bother to teach you about us. They told you dissociative identity disorder is so rare that you would never see a case of it. Dissociation was glossed over or even ignored in your graduate studies, so it is no wonder that you didn’t recognize it in us. It is a specialty, apparently, to work with dissociation and trauma. You have to invest large sums of money to get the trainings that claim to help us, yet they don’t, really.

The trainings were written with multiplicity being the disorder instead of the amnesia, the flashbacks, or the suicidal ideations or self-harm. Then they made the movies. They took victims of childhood trauma and painted us as murderers or assassins with some evil twin personality and now the world is frightened of us. Frightened of victims of abuse whose alternate personalities often make up a multitude of children rather than the terrifying villains they make-up over in Hollywood.

Bad things happened to us. Our ways of being in the present now make complete sense when you think about what happened to us. We are just doing our very best to survive in this world, using what we know. Our bodies remember. Our brain remembers. Maybe not in a nice, cohesive story-like way, but in the way that smell of cologne tells us to hide. We learned that we could trust no one, ever. We learned that sleeping in a bed at night was dangerous. That’s when bad things happen.

You keep trying to use our legal name, but no one identifies with it. You ask to talk to her but she doesn’t exist. We’re trying very hard to figure out what you want from us so the right alter can front to answer your question. Again you insist on talking to the legal name. What don’t you understand? There is no Tiffany! Stop asking for her. You refuse to talk to us now. You tell us to go away and that we can’t sit in on group therapy.

So we stomp our feet and storm off down the hall. No one wants to help us. No one will talk to us. Don’t you know all of us need help? Don’t you realize that we are well aware which one of us is struggling with depression and which is struggling with anxiety? We know which of us needs the most help right now. Why do you refuse to work with us? You keep insisting that we’re just one person. We know we only have one body. Yet, we are more than one.

Do not push us away. Refusing to acknowledge all of us just creates further dissociation as we try to be who you want us to be. I am not playing your game anymore. We are we. We are different. We like different things. We believe different beliefs. We have different values. We are not the same. We have different memories. Talking to all of us brings us closer together. It makes us more aware of each other.

When we talk to each other inside, we learn to trust ourselves. We learn to have compassion for ourselves. We learn to take care of ourselves. We learn to cooperate with ourselves. We learn how to merge our goals and move forward together instead of always fighting and vying for control. And this is how we start healing.

Sincerely,

Your client

[seidigardensystem]

What Does Healthy Look Like?

Dear Therapists,

We sit here in the discharge room, after being in this hospital for eighteen days, and stare sullenly at our checked off treatment plan. The very first goal stated that an adult alter would be present 75% of the time, except you had crossed out 75% and scribbled in 50% instead. Having dissociative identity disorder has its challenges and there is quite a bit of controversy surrounding littles. Our littles have always been very active in our system, and granted, we had zero adults fronting upon admission, yet seeing this goal brought up such sadness.

Our first thought was that you gave up on us. There was just no way an adult could front that much in our system so you settled. We would never be normal enough for the world. We were just so broken and so fragmented and coming together in our adult self was just too far out of reach for us.

We were little when we arrived for our session. We were little at the end of our session. Our littles would block the adults at every turn. You told us an adult needed to arrive and leave and that it was non-negotiable. We resisted you. We refused to comply. If you weren’t talking to her then you weren’t going to talk to anyone!

We learned that they taught you to only engage with adult parts. We learned that they taught you not to indulge the littles - whatever that means. We learned you expected there to be an alter who identified with the legal name and you expected to work with her. You expected us to have an original or a core or even a host. That was who you thought you had to talk to, connect with, and build a therapeutic relationship.

But there is no host. There is no core. There is no one alter that identifies with the body’s legal name. Who you wanted to interact with didn’t exist. We are not one. We are many. To talk to me is to talk to us. All of us, littles included. They are me and I am them. You cannot understand our story without each and every one of us.

I realize that it may be hard to comprehend how we perceive and operate in the world. It is much different from how you see things. The world for you has a single lens with one dimension and you have a single, congruent way that you show up in the world. It is your normal. What is normal? Is there only one way of being that is normal? Shouldn’t the question be, is it healthy? What does healthy even look like?

We were so sad. We were so depressed. Several of us were experiencing flashbacks to trauma. One of us still believed the mind programming that telling the secret would mean loved ones would die and so she tried to punish us when some of us would talk. Others were overwhelmed by the emotions and pain searing through the body and just wanted to find a way to make it stop. Others still were angry and wanted to lash out at everyone and everything.

See, everyone of us needed help. Everyone of us mattered. Everyone of us had a reason to front and talk to you. You had more than one client within all that is me. You can’t just treat part of me; you must treat all of me.

My world is different. It is like a prism collecting light and casting rainbows with its multifaceted surface. You can’t make parts of us disappear by ignoring us. We can learn to work together. We can learn to share, communicate, and take turns in this body. We can be a cooperative collective and lean on each other for strength, wisdom, and power. Every part of us has something to give to the whole. Yes, the littles too. They are not real children. She might be four on the inside, but she has been four for thirty-seven years now. It is different. She has her own wisdom under that high-pitched voice.

See, the goal isn’t to make certain alters front. The goal should have read: The client will increase internal communication, allowing 50% more parts to front and speak. Bringing everyone together increases our co-consciousness and decreases amnesia. When all of us speak up, we learn to work together. It might look like further fragmentation to you to have so many of us speak up, but it is quite the opposite. Further fragmentation comes when we have to push parts of us aside and hide them and separate them from what we are currently doing in the present.

It is not about how we look to you from the outside. We can mask and pretend - we’ve had to do that our whole lives. It is about what is happening internally, what you cannot see, that truly matters. To know what is happening internally, all of us have to come together and communicate with you. We all have something to share with you.

Sincerely,

Your client

[seidigardensystem]

Behind the Silence

Dear Therapists,

It is our hour again and here we sit on your couch with that wild, deer in the headlights gaze and all you did was ask us how the last week has been. We barely remember this morning, let alone anything that has occurred within the last week. Just trying to recall the events is like standing on the sea shore while watching the tide pull further and further out, knowing that an impending tsunami is on its way.

If only we could run but there is nowhere to go. Our eyes dart from your chair to the door to your desk to the round ottoman centered between our seats. I can already see myself tripping over my own feet if we try to dash away and there is nowhere we can hide. I draw in a deep breath and hold it in because the coming water is alive and will swallow us whole.

Before I can fathom speaking words, it all comes crashing down on me. I am drowning. It is not just one emotion, but a multitude of feelings and thoughts all swirling around in my head. Everyone inside my mind is speaking all at once, leaving my body dazed and frozen.

You cannot see what is happening to me. From your gaze, I am sitting on the couch in silence. My internal struggle is not visible to your eyes. I promise I am not being difficult on purpose! There are too many words all at once and at the same time there are no words at all. I want to scream. I want to run away. I cannot move and I cannot speak. I can sit here quietly and not make a sound because that is what saved me so long ago.

Be still. Be quiet. They won’t see you. They will forget you. Their anger will be taken out on someone else somewhere else. Be still. Don’t fight. I am helpless. Give in. Be compliant. Do as I am told. That is the safest thing we can do.

“It was fine,” I whisper to you.

You continue to inquire but I can’t hear you over the rising voices in my head. If only you could just read my mind and pull me out of the depths of the ocean but wait, no, I don’t want you to read my mind! You cannot know those thoughts that sing the song of doom, dragging us down to drown in our own shame.

We can’t stop the tears swelling up but we refuse to let them fall. Well, she refuses to let them fall. She won’t let anyone see our tears. No one can make us cry. No one! Her anger erupts into a boiling squall. Not a single teardrop falls, but our arms are crossed and we scowl at you as we sink down into the couch. Strands of hair fall over our face, obscuring our wet eyes.

You feel the energy and you stop talking. We sit in silence, staring at each other. The seconds stretch into minutes but you remain present, your chin resting in your hands, as you patiently wait for us.

The voices soften and fade away and we are left with one small voice, trembling, as we utter the words we so desperately need to say to you.

Sincerely,

Your Client

[seidigardensystem]

Dissociation Saved Us When No One Else Could or Would

Dear Therapists,

I know you have heard many terrifying stories about clients like me. You were told we were difficult and complex. You were warned not to use EMDR and to prevent us from dissociating. The so-called experts told you not to talk to us. They said we are not real people and to only address the legal name. You did the best with what you knew.

What is normal anyway? What is healthy? What is healed? Our brain developed differently. It adapted for survival. To know certain things would be a death sentence for us. Too many things were contradictory and our brain could not hold them together because it could not make sense. She loved us and took care of us. She let him hurt us. These two facts could not coexist in our small understanding of the world, so our brain stored them separately.

We were so small. We did not have the ability to fight back, although we tried. We could not run away, although we tried. Our brain found another way to run. We left the room by going deep inside and creating an entire new plane of existence. We could go anywhere. We could be anything. We could be anyone. We became who we wanted to be and who we needed to be. Our brain fired its neurons and created the pathways that led to each and everyone of us.

We are we. We are all of us. We are real despite only having one body. Those are real brain pathways connecting our behaviors and ways of being. It is not pretend. We are not actors on a stage parading a farce for the fun of it. We are all of these pathways and it is painful most days. All of us are me. She is me. He is me. It is me. We are me. I am we. Dissociation saved us when no one else could or would.

You don’t have to make us stop being we. We are stronger together and each of us contributes to the whole. We need your help healing the trauma and we most certainly can do EMDR. Do not be afraid of us. We appreciate that you do not want to cause further harm, but denying us EMDR and turning us away from therapy is a huge disservice. Please, find the proper consultation. Sign up for the appropriate training. We believe you can help us. Believe in yourself as much as you believe in any of your clients!

Sincerely,

Your Client

P.S. Click the link below for EMDRIA approved EMDR courses on dissociation and other topics.

https://www.instituteforcreativemindfulness.com/advanced-topics-courses/

This is us, on the bottom, assisting in an EMDR training on dissociation.

[seidigardensystem]

Silence is Not Your Enemy

Dear Therapists,

I know now that most of your clients show up and talk almost nonstop for the fifty minutes they spend with you each week. They engage with you. They talk to you. They actually respond to your CBT strategies and the two of you are able to dance the steps needed to change thinking and behaviors. It is your normal and their normal, however it is anything but my normal.

I started graduate school and the first set of counseling tapes we had to watch were the Gloria tapes. We observed Carl Rogers and Albert Ellis conducting sessions with the client called Gloria. She chattered away the entire time with these two men. It totally flabbergasted us, and when we saw you next we told you how the school showed us some fake counseling tapes because no one talks that much in their sessions.

Oh how you laughed.

Us non-talkers really provide a challenge for you. It is a challenge and you have to step outside of the box and outside of your comfort zone. It is easy to personalize our behavior and think that somehow you are doing something wrong. It might touch your ego and wounds in such a way that you feel the need to defend yourself or even blame us for our inability to talk. We are resistant. We are not ready. We are avoidant. We are attention-seeking. We are difficult.

Please, we need you to rise to the challenge. Working with trauma means working with dissociation. Working with trauma and dissociation means working with attachment wounds. We are not just anxious and we are not just avoidant. We are disorganized in our attachment style because part of us had to be attached to our caregiver to survive and could not know about the abuse that the other part of us had to endure. Not all parts live in the present and we replay this out with you.

We push and we pull. We need you and then we hate you. We love you and push all the boundaries by texting and emailing and demanding additional sessions and then we sit here in complete silence as you try not to pull your hair out. You offer us a coloring page and markers, which we take. We spend our fifty minutes in complete silence, coloring a picture of a bird with your colorful sharpie permanent markers. Markers. We were never allowed to have markers as a kid. (To be fair, we once took a black permanent sharpie to the kitchen chairs, table, countertops, and drew a line on the wall all the way down the hall to our bedroom and drew a line on every fancy dress we owned from the waist to the hem.)

The forbidden item in our hands told us that you trusted us not to make a mess. You trusted us to keep the markers on the paper. You even colored with us on our own page. We would pick a color out, hand it to you and point to which part of the picture we wanted you to color and you obliged. Coloring was not your thing. Trying to be creative stressed you out a bit, but you did it with us anyway.

When the fifty minutes was up, you remarked what an expensive coloring session we had. You were convinced we had wasted a session. You thought nothing happened in that little hour and you were down on yourself for not being helpful. You were convinced that talking had to occur in order for the session to be productive. They call it talk therapy for a reason, I suppose. Except, the session was productive. The session was helpful. The session was healing in ways you could not see, because as you like to point out, you have yet to develop the ability to read my mind.

Many of the most helpful therapies, for us at least, are the ones that do not involve talking. Silence can be very powerful and it is not your enemy. There is so much work happening in our brains that you cannot see and your talking CBT interventions won’t be able to touch. It doesn’t mean you are doing anything wrong. Don’t get trapped in your own mind, but stay present with us. Being present with us is the most essential tool you need.

You were present with us for fifty minutes. You were attuned to us for fifty minutes. You were calm. You were engaged without pressuring us to talk before we could. You allowed us to process. You were nonjudgmental and we felt no shame. You made the session about us and not about an agenda. We hope you are able to see how much healing occurs in a small session just like that.

Sincerely,

Your client

[seidigardensystem]

I Am Not Too Much

Dear Therapists,

Here we are yet again, sitting on your couch, with our legs curled up underneath ourselves. You're sitting in your comfy La-Z-Boy chair with your pen poised over your clipboard and we’re staring off into space, refusing to speak to you. What ever made you want to join this profession? Why did you choose to be here, on that side of the coffee table?

You’re our sixth therapist now. The first one, nice as she was, had no idea what was happening with us. The second just got frustrated and threw words out at us like borderline, histrionic, and manipulative. The third terminated after a handful of sessions with little explanation. The fourth only gave us one session. The fifth was nice, but canceled a lot and sometimes forgot to show at the appointed time.

We figured out what was going on all by ourselves while we were tossed about like the hot potato no one wanted to get stuck with. So here we are with you and now we’re terrified you will also have some excuse or reason to not see us anymore too. It was bad enough to have experienced abandonment as a child, but to experience with the very profession that professes to heal trauma was far more traumatic than the childhood event.

I did not believe you, no matter how much reassurance you gave me. I could not allow myself that luxury of belief in order to prevent myself from feeling the pain of being abandoned once again, because surely it was just a matter of time before my neediness would push you beyond your limits. How long before you realized that I was too complex, too disordered, and too far gone to be helped? Yet, I had to try with you just one more time. I cannot keep living this way.

And you were true to your word. You answered every text, every email, and even the accidental phone call. You showed up for every appointment, every single time. Not once did you complain. Not once did you sound annoyed. Not once did you tell us we were too much. You explained your boundaries clearly. You explained your expectations clearly. Every trauma response was met with compassion. You squeezed me in for emergency sessions when I requested them. You took your vacations and did your self-care and had a plan for us to get through those times when you went away. And you always came back. You were true to your word. You saw me through the worst struggles I had and now you get to see me graduate with my Master’s and go on to do the same work.

Here I am now, looking around at others who are not so lucky to have someone like you. We are still denied care under the excuse that dissociative identity disorder is simply too advanced for me to treat. The signs and websites and social media accounts tout their trauma-informed ways and claim to treat all the things except for dissociative identity disorder. I am sorry, I cannot help you, DID is out of my scope. Our friends have been lied to, terminated, and turned away over and over again. They are often forced to drive hours in order to see a therapist willing to work with DID. I had to fly out of state to receive appropriate care. Not everyone is so fortunate to be able to do that. At the time, I knew of four residential trauma treatment centers that specialized in DID. Now there are three, because a new CEO took over where I had received care shortly after I left and he did not believe in DID. Seriously?

We are not fake, nor are we rare. We are everywhere and we need care and treatment. We need you to not be afraid of us. To be trauma-informed is to be dissociation-informed. Who else can we turn to if not a trauma therapist or a trauma treatment program? We might arrive with severe attachment wounds, struggle with unsafe behaviors, and a slew of trauma responses, but we are capable of healing. We are capable of learning how to develop a secure attachment. We are capable of turning our distress of dissociation into a superpower to navigate the world. We are successful teachers, lawyers, financial advisors, and therapists ourselves! Include us in your care and treatment.

When a client sits across from me and asks me why I became a therapist, it is because of you. It is because you showed up for me when no one else would. You were a rock in my storm. Our field needs more dissociation-informed rocks. Get the training. Teach others. Stretch and grow beyond your comfort zone. You are desperately needed because we truly want to heal. We are not too much. I am not too much. You are not too much. We hope you get the joy of joining us for our healing journey.

Sincerely,

Your client

[seidigardensystem]

No Talking Allowed

Dear Therapists,

We are sure we must be a conundrum for you. Most people pay you so they can talk to you about their problems, while we sit here, in silence, glaring at you from behind our strands of hair that we have pulled down in front of our face. We don’t exactly trust you just yet. No one else has ever been able to handle us before. What makes you any different?

You sit there, unfazed, with your clipboard and pen, and never let your eyes stray from us. Your unrelenting eyes are uncomfortable so we look anywhere and everywhere but at you. We calculate the quickest route to the front door and to the bathroom. We scrutinize every corner and piece of furniture that we might be able to tuck behind and hide. While one powerful force compels us to run, another compels us to hide, and another keeps our feet rooted on the floor and our behind on the couch.

We hear the steady tick tock of each clock in your office, which you have strategically placed throughout so we can see the time no matter which way we look. We curl our fingers into fists and clench the edge of the couch as if we could stop the ticking of time with the power of our mind. Sometimes we can do that. Sometimes we can make time stand still and sometimes we can skip ahead minutes or even hours at a time.

I cannot remember what you asked us. Answering you felt dangerous. A small voice deep within whispers that we will die if we tell you. It tells us you will die if we tell you. I want to tell you. I want to release this burden we have been carrying, but she won’t let us. Deep in the inner world she sits, with her set of breakers and she’s flipped the switch for talking. There will be no talking happening in this session.

You sigh a heavy sigh and shift uncomfortably in your chair as you arch a single eyebrow at us. How do you do that? You break the silence and ask more questions but we can no longer hear you. Our brain cannot comprehend your words. You set your clipboard down and lean forward as you continue to try and engage us. You tried waiting it out, but you couldn’t handle the silence.

This isn’t your first rodeo though. You hand us another clipboard with blank paper and a pen. We look longingly at it, wondering if we could ever write what we cannot speak. The pristine page stared back at us. The written word was even more shameful than the spoken word, for it would be on that page permanently. The weight of shame was crushing. I snatch up the pen and scribble and scribble until I tear the page.

“I see you’re angry,” you say.

As obvious as the statement was, there was comfort in the recognition. I know now that a reflection of feelings is a very basic counseling skill, yet it is so powerful in moments like these, even with a part that wants to say, “No shit, sherlock. I’m pissed.” Maybe it is the words,”I see” that has the most impact.

Either we were invisible growing up due to neglect, or we made ourselves invisible to lessen the abuse. Being seen is something we most desperately want and what we most desperately try to avoid. What makes it okay to be seen is how you remain nonjudgmental in those moments. You make it okay to be seen. You make it okay to be angry. And you are okay when we can’t talk.

Somehow, when you accept the silence and remain cool as a cucumber, we can find our voice again.

Sincerely,

Your client

[seidigardensystem]

Don’t Look at Me

Dear Therapists,

I do not want you to see me. I slump down and shrink back into the corner of the couch while refusing to make eye contact with you. How can I answer your question? Your soft gaze and attempt to offer a friendly face actually scares me. It shouldn’t, but it does. I want you to like me. I want you to believe me. I do not want you to know that. I do not want to know that.

I throw the shawl that you keep draped over the back of the couch over my head. I can see you through the threads, but you cannot see me underneath it. It is easier to look at you this way. I check to see if you are judging me. I have years of hypervigilant experience reading every nuance on one’s face and how they move their body.

Part of me knows you do not judge. Part of me knows that I am not really in any danger sitting in your office. Yet, here I am, terrified that you will be absolutely mortified to know what she did, that part of me that is not me and could never be me, but you think it is me because we share this body. She is not me!

I want to know and I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know what she knows.

I hear your voice. I hear the lawn care people on their lawn mowers through the window. I hear the clocks ticking away the precious minutes in our coveted hour. My throat is tight and I cannot breathe. I cannot say the words to you. I know you are talking to me, as I hear your voice, but I cannot hear your words. The words are irrelevant. I see you neutralize your face.

I know what you’re trying to do. It works. I pull the shawl down just enough to reveal my eyes. Is it safe enough yet? I want to say something, but we are still too frozen. I cannot feel my stomach or my hands or my feet. All my energy is congealed behind my eyes. It is the only part of my body that currently exists.

I stare at your shoes. I notice your socks. Your outfit is the epitome of professionalism with suit pants and a matching sweater. I stare at your jewelry and your manicured nails. I dare to cast a quick glance at your eyes before averting my gaze to the pictures hanging on the wall. I see the paintings. I see the plants. I see the various crystal obelisks perched carefully on the end tables. I notice the poof of smoke coming from the essential oils diffuser and notice the crisp scent. Had that been on all this time?

I hear you ask another question and my eyes make contact with yours. I see your blue eyes staring directly at me. I see your empathy. I see that you care. I see I have your full attention. It is all too much and I stare at your hair instead. I still have not spoken. Unperturbed, you wait patiently. I know what I want to say to you. I lower the shawl to my shoulders and bring myself to meet your gaze. I gesture and you hand me the paper and pen.

I scrawl my worst fears on the paper before refusing to hand it to you. I clutch the words to my chest, unaware of my racing heart and clenched fists. Again, you wait patiently. The clock continues to tick, reminding me how close we are to the end of our session. Why is it so hard to talk? Our grip slowly loosens and the paper falls in my lap. I let you take it, but I turn my face so I won’t have to watch you read it. I feel the tension wrapped around my whole body and we think, ‘This is it. This is where we get reprimanded.’

You don’t though. Your voice is soft and gentle. The tension melts away and my arms and legs are free to move again. You offer reassurance. You offer insight. You offer a new way of looking at her. She is not so bad. We simply did what we had to in order to survive the unthinkable. You made it okay. The shame is not gone, but it is less. Maybe, just maybe, it is okay that you see me.

Sincerely,

Your client

[seidigardensystem]

Be a Rock

Dear Therapists,

We came to you having never experienced what safety feels like or understanding how secure attachment feels after complex trauma. We didn’t even know how traumatized we were. We had never been allowed to have our own boundaries and so we did not know what it meant to say no to anyone. We also didn’t understand how to respect the boundaries of others. Yet, you were not afraid of us when the other therapists refused to work with us. You were probably the first person who had given us undivided attention and believed our truth which was both reassuring and terrifying all at once.

We had gone from one tumultuous relationship to the next and could not understand the differences between acquaintances, friends, best friends, casual dating, or serious romances. No one could handle us with our emotional meltdowns, our push-and-pull attachment styles, and we found ourselves abandoned over and over again despite all of our efforts to prevent people leaving us. Why should you be any different?

We wanted to push you away because it was less painful for us to reject you. We wanted to pull you closer because you had been a rock in our lives. You were consistent. You were responsive. You showed up each and every week. You somehow managed to hold the belief that we can heal from all of these attachment wounds and that we will start living the life worth living.

We got angry at you in session. We panicked without you in between sessions. We emailed and texted and left frantic voicemails. You taught us what boundaries were and how to respect them. You never ignored our cries for help, yet empowered us without rescuing us. No matter how dysregulated we became, you were unmoving. You were constant. You reassured us when we needed it, pushed us forward when we were ready, and we learned how to repair the inevitable ruptures that occur in relationships. We didn’t know we could repair a relationship before you taught us.

You continue to do this unwavering presence of firmness, love, and empowerment each week year after year. You taught us to trust the process. You taught us that we weren’t too much nor too little, but simply enough. You accepted us just as we were and somehow that was all we needed to start doing it differently.

Sincerely,

Your client

We are so very grateful for the therapists that show up even when we are at our worst. You know the potential we have, and when you trust the process, you get us at our best too!

[seidigardensystem]

I’ve Got Anger Like a River

Anger often gets a bad rap by society’s standards. No one particularly likes anger. It can be frightening when those around us display it and it can be overwhelming when we feel it internally. Yet, the emotion itself is not wrong.

What can be wrong is how we deal with it. Outward expressions of anger such as yelling and violence destroys the recipients of our actions and bottling it up inside can destroy our own soul. Society tends to frown upon the outward expressions but doesn’t teach us what to actually do with it.

We’re told we need to control our anger and we swallow it down and try to contain it deep within ourselves. The unseen anger rots us from the inside out while we tout our ability to remain calm.

We might claim we don’t get angry. We’re lying to ourselves. We all experience anger. We may not scream where others can hear us but we’ve busted our eardrums on the inside. We may not have broken a single dish but the internal tantrums have broken something far more precious: our very self.

So how do we release it or let it go? First we have to be willing. As a trauma survivor, our anger is more than justified. It let us know that our boundaries were violated. It let us know that what happened to us was wrong. That can make it hard to release. But I have every right to be angry! Yes. Yes, you do.

Ultimately, holding on to our anger doesn’t change what happened to us. It might spur us to action to seek out justice, which is what it’s supposed to do. We’re supposed to get angry about the horrific things that some people do to other people so that we will stand up and fight for what is right. Staying angry is what ends up hurting us.

When we stay angry we only hurt ourselves. We’ve been hurt enough. I’ve held so much anger against my grandmother, my mother, my aunt’s ex-husband, my aunt, and my ex-husband. What has it done for me to hold all this anger against them?

Someone recently shared this metaphor with me: Your anger is like a river. Think of the raging rapids that churn around and around and overturn the boats of those trying to cross to the other side. Think of the wide rivers with racing currents and choppy waves. Think of it narrowing and slowing down to a small stream until it runs dry.

It’s another form of an emotional regulation tool like “dial it down” and imagining your anger with a color, shape, and size and you imagine it growing, then shrinking. The river analogy connects it to nature which is also grounding.

We can use our anger to make changes in this world, and then we have to release it before it begins to spoil like those leftovers in your fridge you’ve been neglecting to throw away. Once edible, they are now poisonous and will make you sick.

Letting your anger go doesn’t mean you’ve forgiven your abusers. It doesn’t mean that what happened was okay. Letting your anger go means you are taking back your life.

It takes work, strength, and bravery to give yourself permission to acknowledge, feel, and release your anger. It is not easy, by any means. And if you’re not ready yet, that’s okay. You will know when you are.

[seidigardensystem]

What's The Scoop About IFS for DID?

Helpful or Harmful?

This well written article explains the complications of IFS for DID. As a system with no true host, we relate to the complexities of functioning with more than one self-state. Multiplicity is how we function.

[seidigardensystem]

The Truth About Resistance

Dear Therapists,

Many years ago, I volunteered at a camp for youth that had a zipline that ran right over a large pond. It was everyone’s favorite! Under my charge was a sweet but fiery young girl who wanted to try it but was also a little afraid. I agreed to go tandem with her and her eyes just lit up with excitement. We harnessed ourselves up and got in line. We climbed the wooden stairs and waited for our turn. One by one kids leaped off the platform and zipped straight across the lake and screamed with joy. Then it was our turn.

Fear and panic took over and the little girl burst into tears as we stood on the ledge. She did not want to go. I knew that as soon as we stepped off the ledge she would realize that it wasn’t as scary as it looks. I knew we were safe and that she could do it. But she didn’t. We were all hooked up and the gentlemen in charge gave us a pat on the back to go. For a brief moment, I reconsidered as the tears rapidly swam down her cheeks and she screamed and hollered “no.”

It reminded me of myself, sitting across the way from my inpatient therapist. I wanted help. I didn’t want to be suicidal and full of shame and everything else, but now that I was here, faced with the actual work, fear and panic took over. She had asked me a question and it felt as if shame had filled me up from my toes to my head. According to my therapist, we sat in silence for a full ten minutes before I finally whispered the answer to her question. She said she had never allowed silence to last that long in a session before, but she knew that I was switching between my dissociative identities and she said, “I knew you would say something profound. And you did.”

For my ethics class, we had to watch a movie and critique the therapist. I chose to watch Good Will Hunting and was highly intrigued by the scene where the therapist, Sean, becomes angry with his client Will, for giving “bullshit” answers. He even goes so far as to kick him out of his office.

Then I think of one of my littles (a dissociative identity that is considered a child) who glares at my outpatient therapist when she doesn’t like what she’s hearing. Our arms fold across our chest, we scowl and turn away from her when we don’t want to do what she says or when we disagree with what she’s saying. Another little just says no constantly.

A fellow student recounted a therapy session she experienced during her internship where she felt so flustered and didn’t know what to do. This teenage girl had requested therapy and her grandmother brought her, but now the girl wouldn’t say a peep during her therapy session. She didn’t know how to get her to talk.

All of these scenarios deal with resistance. This is where we, your client, don’t want to go where you, our therapist, want us to go. I don’t need to change. There’s nothing wrong. I don’t want to talk about that. I don’t want to talk at all. No. Nope. Nada. Never. Maybe it makes you want to throw in the towel or kick us out of your office, but that would be a big mistake. Understand, if you’ve come head to head with resistance, then you’ve struck gold. You’ve waded your way through the muck and the mire of all the superficial things we’ve been using to avoid what really matters and found the very thing we need help with the most.

Resistance is your friend, not your enemy. I might be pushing you away with all my might, but in reality I want to pull you in and spill the shameful things hidden inside my heart. That little girl who was afraid to go on the zipline screamed and hollered that she didn’t want to go, but that wasn’t true. She needed me to take the plunge with her. As soon as we leaped off the ledge, her screams and tears ceased. She immediately began laughing and squealing. 

That ten minutes of silence with my inpatient therapist might have dragged on for her, but for me it passed by in a matter of seconds. We were switching and arguing inside about what we would say and what we could reveal. We wrestled with that shame and processed our thoughts and feelings until we finally had the words that could come out. Once the words left our lips in that small little whisper, the shame was able to dissipate. If my therapist had broken the silence or changed the subject, we wouldn’t have had to work through our resistance.

When we give you less than authentic answers it means we’re skirting away from the truth that we don’t want to face. We’re used to being abandoned and given up on, so what makes you any different? Therapy is a game you play to stay out of jail or stay out of the hospital and we know the answers that you need to hear or maybe even want to hear. If you accept anything less than our full authentic self, then why should we be honest with you? Stay with us. Be present with us. Be patient with the process. If we have to trust the process of healing, then you have to trust it too!

So please don’t throw your hands up in frustration. Dig deep with us. Be patient with us. Be a rock as we work through our resistance. Change is scary. Facing the hard things about ourselves is scary. We might kick and scream and holler “no” or dig our heels in and refuse to talk at all. It doesn’t mean that we don’t want to; it means we need you to take the plunge with us.

Sincerely,

A DID client & future therapist

[seidigardensystem]

Behavior is Communication

Your Words Matter - 2

Dear Therapists,

For more than a year and a half now, I have been looking forward to the semester in my graduate program for clinical mental health counseling when I would actually start seeing real clients. I’ve completed all the main coursework. I’ve done three of the four required residencies and completed countless roleplays. It was time to apply all that I had learned. I had carefully researched multiple counseling sites and interviewed with multiple potential supervisors. I found myself in a place with a certified trauma therapist that wanted me to help co-facilitate a female trauma group. Finally, I was here to learn and do exactly what I had been hoping for as a survivor myself.

Recently, a new client came on my caseload, but it turns out this person had been to the center before and saw other student interns previously. I was able to see the previous clinical notes, but when I talked to the person who had provided therapy before, they refused to tell me what they had given as a diagnosis and said that I needed to figure it out for myself as my learning opportunity. A lot of negative judgment with phrases like, “attention-seeking” were used to describe this client. When I met with my supervisor, all he told me was, “Have fun with that one.”

Are you kidding me? We are talking about a real person here. A real person, with real difficulties in their life that requires therapy. Their problems are not a joke. Therapy is not a game. People are truly hurting in this world and they come to therapy for help. They come to heal and get better and have a more fulfilling life. Using phrases such as “attention-seeking” and “manipulative” and being frustrated with a client who has poor boundaries is a huge disservice to the people coming and seeking help.

Being a trauma survivor myself, I grew up without any secure, healthy attachments. People accused me of being manipulative, creating drama, being selfish, and just looking for attention. It was in therapy that I experienced my first ever secure,  healthy attachment and it was with a therapist. I remember having multiple discussions where I revealed my fears of being too much, asking too much of her, and asking if there even was such a thing as secure, healthy attachments. Her response was, “Behavior is communication.”

It’s surely a challenge when other people cross our boundaries and seem to create a lot of drama but we are supposed to be their therapist, which means having a genuine, caring approach to people who are hurting. As a therapist, our clients are not supposed to meet our needs. We’re supposed to meet theirs! We can provide psychoeducation on boundaries and attachment styles. We can model how to implement and enforce boundaries. We can do the work with clients so that no other person on the planet will accuse them of being manipulative or attention-seeking.

Feeling manipulated is not the same as being manipulated. As a therapist, we need to recognize the difference between somebody being vulnerable and sharing some of their deepest feelings and someone who is intentionally trying to manipulate us.

I remember feeling very insecure about my relationship with my therapist in the first few months of therapy. I ended up texting her something that I don’t exactly remember, but I remember her response. She texted back, “Do you need reassurance?” I remember feeling completely panicked. I did need it, I didn’t know I needed it until she said it, and I was terrified that she knew I needed it, and I felt shame for needing it, and my whole body just froze as I stared at that question on my phone. While I don’t remember exactly what I had texted her in the first place, I have a strong suspicion it may have appeared manipulative or attention-seeking in some way. It was not my intention to be any of those things. Somehow, I was able to get my body moving again and I typed back yes to her. I don’t remember exactly how she responded after I admitted needing reassurance, but I know that she gave it to me unconditionally, no strings attached, and no shame for needing it.

It’s been five years since that moment. She’s still my therapist to this day. What I have experienced is that I now know what a secure, healthy attachment looks like and feels like. I’ve experienced it with her and with other people now. She was consistent, met my needs, and always met me where I was at. Her consistency in her responses to me built trust and secureness.

If clients come to you and challenge you, then consultation and supervision is in order. If their behaviors are challenging to you and you find yourself feeling frustrated, seek out a colleague to help you deal with your own emotions.

Instead of my supervisor saying, “Have fun with that one,” he should have said, “Let’s research this client’’s diagnosis together and come up with some appropriate interventions and treatment plans. This client is going to require a little more expert care than the others you have worked with so far.”

For all the cognitive restructuring that we ask our clients to do, we need to do the same ourselves!

Sincerely,

A DID Client & future therapist

[seidigardensystem]

Your Words Matter

Dear Therapists,

I had just logged into a Zoom session for my Diagnosing Pathology class and my cohort was in deep discussion with one particular student as we all waited for our professor. This student in particular was already working in some sort of clinical setting, not yet giving therapy, but a new client profile had come across her desk with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. She didn’t know much about the diagnosis herself, but she was concerned because her boss said, “Whoa, good luck with that one. Borderlines are very difficult to work with.”

Difficult. It’s not the first time I’ve heard that word. Every time I hear a professional utter the word, “difficult” when referencing a client it stings. Is that how you really see us? As patients/clients that are stuck in a downward spiral whose struggles are too much for you to handle? Don’t you believe in what you do and that there is hope for us?

My heart breaks for whoever this person is that has borderline personality disorder because the cards have been stacked against them before they’ve even gotten started. One of my school assignments required me to write about working with a difficult population and this was my response:

“If we get the idea that a particular diagnosis or population is difficult to work with it feels like we are setting ourselves up for failure. Maybe we will treat them differently or have lower expectations or refuse to work with them because we have a negative perception.”

In 2022, I attended the Healing Together conference hosted by An Infinite Mind in Orlando, Florida. I was sitting in a session where I could hear and learn about lived experiences with dissociation and an excerpt from a book was read aloud as an example of how some clinicians view dissociative identity disorder. The presenter who read the excerpt was sad, the audience was sad, and I felt infuriated. The gist of the excerpt talked about how a clinician should be wary because clients with dissociative identity disorder are difficult to work with and that they bring unsolvable problems to therapy.

Unsolvable problems? Listen, if a client’s problem was easy to solve, they wouldn’t need therapy! Of course we are bringing our unsolvable problems to you. We believe in your ability to help us. We were trusting you enough to share our struggles. When we hear you call us difficult, challenging, resistant, and a myriad of other words, you break our trust and confidence.

My ask of you is that you reframe your perspective of difficult clients. My therapist always says that behavior is communication, so when you find a client’s behavior particularly difficult, ask yourself, “What is my client trying to tell me?” “What does my client need right now?” Seek out peer consultation or supervision without passing judgment on how difficult a client is for you.

I’ve always carried around my own judgment about myself as a client in therapy. I used to tell my therapist, “Thank you for putting up with me” and her response was, “There’s nothing to put up with.” When I had the opportunity to watch her present at a conference once, I went up to her just before it started to tell her she’d do a great job. She just smiled and said, “Everything I’m presenting today, I learned from you.” I thought about that for a long time. Not once, in our years of therapy had she ever shown any indication of frustration, feeling challenged, or felt I was difficult. She simply adapted her interventions as needed.

The NICABM posted back on June 11, 2022 on their Facebook page a quote from Pat Ogden, PhD; “When we call clients resistant or difficult, it’s because our interventions are not working and we feel incompetent.” As clients, we don’t think you’re incompetent. We think there’s something wrong with us and we believe you when we hear you say we’re difficult. So, please, choose carefully. Your words matter.

Sincerely,

A DID Client

References

NICABM. (2022, June 11). What may at first seem like opposition or resistance can often signal a client’s deepest struggles. [Status Update]. [Image attached]. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/NICABM/photos/10159170676011314