I can definitely see how this would be helpful for a lot of folks.
For me? Nope! I have DID, and my parts kept interfering and sabotaging the script. So I’d be doing really well, reclaiming a new outcome for myself, feeling really good and liberated, and then one of my parts would jump in and decide to make the outcome even worse than the original trauma.
Some people can use their imaginations really productively for a range of therapies. Like practicing mindfulness: imagine your thoughts are clouds, floating through the sky (for me, the clouds become tornadoes and start ripping the neighbourhood apart). Or art therapy where I was “imagining what life could be like…” inevitably ending in the gates of hell opening up in front of me and swallowing me whole and…
You get the idea!
It’s actually incredibly helpful to know “this isn’t working because…”. Because it’s not a “So I can’t be fixed” situation. You now know dissociation interferes in therapy, that it distracts you, numbs you out (or however you experience dissociation).
It’s very likely to be a recurring theme in any therapy where you take on similar issues (like confronting your trauma head on, or using your imagination, or designing a positive future in your mind). So work on grounding skills, because that will help with your therapy (whichever modality you use). It’s also likely that dissociation isn’t just interfering with your therapy - this is likely a bigger problem.
And now that you know? You can work on fixing it directly.
