My Therapist Still Looks Unfamiliar/strange

[Deleted member 35429]

Ive been in therapy for almost 8 months and it seems I've been dissociating pretty severely every time I've been in session. My experience is often that he looks very different and unfamiliar but also his personality and behaviors look foreign. My early appts with him I had nearly complete amnesia and couldn't remember what was said in session for a couple months. Now when I go in there I just feel like I'm floating/buzzing and I can't hear or see as well. And I can't answer questions, my mind is blank. This all goes away when I leave his office.

I'm wondering if anyone else has had such persistent dissociation only in therapy? Or has anyone dissociated so much for so long that they still don't feel like they know their therapist at all after so much time?

I am afraid that I went in there when I was so intensely activated with PTSD and my mind is now always afraid of him/his office. I can't seem to stay on earth when I'm in there. This can't be healthy, right? I've also had tremendous amount of transference with him. He's a predator one day and the next day he's abandoning me, and the next day I want to have sex with him. All kinds of crazy are coming up. I leave there and I go back to my normal life and normal relationships, but in sessions I'm nuts. Completely not even me. I'm starting to feel like my dissociated self is an alter and he only knows her. He doesn't know me...I know I don't have DID, but this dissociation is so disruptive that I feel like I'm two parts.

Can anyone relate to any of this craziness? My therapist appears perplexed when I bring this up. I think I act more normal than I feel.

 

[Sideways]

There have been people in my life that I have habitually switched around. Every time, couldn't stop it. Sometimes through no fault of their own their triggered a particular emotion and poof, I was gone till I was in my car driving home. Don't remember anything. And yeah, it made it pretty damn stresful. Even without DID, if you dissociate as an emotional response, I don't see why this wouldn't apply to people sitting elsewhere on the dissociative scale.

If this T is well versed in trauma (and that's a big if), I think that it would definitely be worth having a try at raising it with your T before you start looking elsewhere. It sounds like someone who knows trauma, and knows the reflex dissociation issue in high-stress situations may be important to making ground.

Since you know in advance that dissociation is likely (probably roughly the same time each session? I often do a switch in thte waiting room before therapy which I can't always stop) I'd be writing the issue down in as much detail as you can muster. Even dot point examples, when you zone out and when you come back, if there's a particular trigger (the time, his receptionist etc), include anything you can. You may need to be pretty organised depending on whether the part is hijacking the appointment to stop you having a chance to talk or (more likely), or more likely, if you just zone when the emotion hits 10. I often have the paper in my hand well before I walk in so that I would have to literally put it away to avoid talking about what I've written.

It's really important that your T can spend some sessions practicing different grounding techniques. They take practice if you want them to work when you're super stressed, and different people find different grounding techniques work for them. There's quite a few threads you could search through for ideas.

The other thing I would mention is that if you're losing time, it's very likeoy that you do this far more often than we realise. We don't tend to remember that we've forgotten something till someone points it out, and odds are that your brain has been using this as a coping strategy for a long time. That's not to freak you out (don't freak out, this stuff is, sadly, very normal). It's just to put the importance of learning to ground into perspective.

If your T has never seen you in any other state, they probably won't realise that this is what you're like when you're dissociated, so it's helpful to make them aware so they can help you ground in appointments.

It still frustrates me having to stop continually and ground when we talk about the triggering stuff, but I get a lot further in appointments these days since I've put the time into just practicing when I'm not stressed and things are ok. It doesn't have to take much time, just do it kinda regularly.

Sorry for the braindump there. This is an issue for me at the moment so your post just inspired a bit of a novel of thoughts. Hopefully something in there is helpful...

 

[Deleted member 35429]

Thank you! I will read this a few times. I really appreciate the insight.

 

[PointlessExistence]

I suppose you've made progress with him, or else you'd have stopped seeing him. But I wonder if choosing a female therapist may've been better for your condition.