ninja
Sponsor
This is a weirdly difficult one for me.
I have a skilled and highly observant therapist who I've been working with for a couple of years now. She's the first therapist I've seen who specializes in trauma and also the first therapist I've seen who specializes in eating disorders - it has been a vastly different experience from other therapy because she seems to really know how to handle those things. She is showing me different sides of myself that I either didn't know existed or didn't allow out. It's like when you've only read a word in your head and so the first time saying it aloud comes out weird - the first time seeing these parts of myself, outside of my head, that I didn't really realize I was hiding continues to be uncomfortable. Along that vein, acknowledging the fact that I dissociate during session is still hard. Acknowledging that my T is almost always (if not always) able to catch it happening (or predict and prevent it) before I do is harder. I understand that it is actually her job to help me notice dissociation, especially when I wouldn't otherwise notice, but it's still just hard . ..it causes me to feel as though I don't have control of myself. Then as she tries to get me to ground and come back, my immediate reaction is to feel like a failure.
Anyway, I'm thinking that maybe it would help for me to develop a more solid idea of how normal it actually is for the therapist to be the one to notice dissociation first, and if that is something that bothers others. It makes sense that the therapist would notice first at the beginning because I think it can be difficult to catch when in the midst of it... it also makes sense that eventually it might even out, so that the client might notice first almost as often as the therapist. Largely just curious what everyone's experiences have been like with this.
I have a skilled and highly observant therapist who I've been working with for a couple of years now. She's the first therapist I've seen who specializes in trauma and also the first therapist I've seen who specializes in eating disorders - it has been a vastly different experience from other therapy because she seems to really know how to handle those things. She is showing me different sides of myself that I either didn't know existed or didn't allow out. It's like when you've only read a word in your head and so the first time saying it aloud comes out weird - the first time seeing these parts of myself, outside of my head, that I didn't really realize I was hiding continues to be uncomfortable. Along that vein, acknowledging the fact that I dissociate during session is still hard. Acknowledging that my T is almost always (if not always) able to catch it happening (or predict and prevent it) before I do is harder. I understand that it is actually her job to help me notice dissociation, especially when I wouldn't otherwise notice, but it's still just hard . ..it causes me to feel as though I don't have control of myself. Then as she tries to get me to ground and come back, my immediate reaction is to feel like a failure.
Anyway, I'm thinking that maybe it would help for me to develop a more solid idea of how normal it actually is for the therapist to be the one to notice dissociation first, and if that is something that bothers others. It makes sense that the therapist would notice first at the beginning because I think it can be difficult to catch when in the midst of it... it also makes sense that eventually it might even out, so that the client might notice first almost as often as the therapist. Largely just curious what everyone's experiences have been like with this.