therapists, yet *again*

[JigsawAnalogy]

so yesterday, my therapist let me know that she thought w and i should end the discipline arrangement.

i'm having a little trouble remembering all the various details, because a different part was coming out at that point, and things got kind of fuzzy. but the gist of it was, she felt that by having the disciplinary arrangement, it put w in the position of being my parent, and that this made me focus a lot of the anger that i have towards my mother on w, which isn't healthy for either of us. she said that i need to focus on being in an adult relationship, whether or not the parts who are out *are* adults.

and as i was writing this, i realized something. the rage-about-my-mother doesn't come from w treating me as a child. honestly, when w treats the younger parts as the ages we are, it really differentiates her from our mother. my mother pretty much never treated me as a child.

the problem comes when parts who aren't adults feel pressure to behave as adults in the relationship. because that was what happened all through my actual childhood: the expectation that i would behave as an adult. that i would essentially be my mother's partner (from the time i was 12 or 13). what's more, we're afraid of being abused--physically, emotionally, verbally, sexually--when we behave as adults. because that is what happened when we acted as adults in a relationship before.

i admit that it's possible that i'm deluded about what is right for me, and what is healthy. i don't think so, but i guess if i were delusional, i wouldn't think i was, if that makes any sense.

and certainly i agree that it's an important goal to get to the point where the adult parts can come back. but i don't think that the disciplinary arrangement is going to keep that from happening. in fact, i think it's quite the opposite. i know that when the discipline has been working, it's felt safer to have the adult parts around part of the time.

now, i know that the psychiatric literature would say that the adults should be made to come back, and to stay, and that w shouldn't have anything but a fairly superficial relationship with the younger parts--the kind of thing where she might spend a little bit of time with them, but they mostly look inside to other parts for support, structure, and nurturing.

that's all well and good in theory. and certainly, i should be working to get to a point where the parts inside can rely on each other quite a bit more, and where we are able to support each other far more than we do.

but i think that part of what has been happening is that most of us need to know that someone loves us enough to help us be safe, and that we aren't actually expected to hold ourselves together, and focus all of our attention on taking care of ourselves and not asking anyone outside to help.

but i'm still feeling anxious and over-wrought about the whole situation with my therapist. it's hard enough for me/us to trust her, and it's gonna be hard to trust her enough to bring this conversation up again, because there was a lot of hurt that came out of it. we don't trust her to care about how we feel, or to really listen to what we say. we don't trust her to be willing to continue working with us if we don't do things the way she says we should, or at least *seem* to do things the way she says we should. we don't trust her not to push w to drop the disciplinary arrangement, and although we *mostly* trust w to stand her ground, we don't entirely trust that, if people she respects tell her it's a bad idea, that she won't wind up believing that they are right.

and, honestly, we don't entirely trust our own perceptions of what is working, and what does or doesn't make us feel better, or what is true for us, despite what someone in authority says. there is this fear that we *are* just deluding ourselves, that we *should* just do the right thing, and ignore what we feel inside, or force ourselves to change what we feel inside.

[Sara'sGirl(SG)]

That has got to be hard to swallow, coming from your therapist, when you and w have had such a hard week, and are both struggling to hold onto the idea that this WILL work, or at least help, despite the difficulties you've had of late. I know if my therapist said that to me and/or S, we'd be pretty...concerned. Because we DO tend to respect therapists, and I know that I, at least, still struggle with thinking it's *wrong* for me to need DD anyway.

However, whether or not your therapist will really *listen* to you, I'm quite sure W will, and she'll take into account your fear, any potential delusion that exists (of which I really doubt there is any, or at least not much--it's possible you WANT something that isn't really good for you, but I don't think you're actually delusional in any way--at least from my perspective of half a country and the internet away from you), and what you have voiced to her that you need.

[DaddysLucy]