My Monster Has A Name

Trigger Scale: (1/5)

I mentioned in my last Session Splash – May 26, 2009 Part 1* that I often bring notes of what I want to talk about to therapy. I also expressed having a hard time asking and saying what I really want to, as I am at a very vulnerable stage in my therapy. To help with this I am creating the following script, which I brought with me to my last session on June 6, 2009. I will post this session splash within the week so you know how it went.

This script was inspired by “mmaaggnnaa”, or Marie, who writes the blog “Coming Out of the Trees”. She wrote a series of posts about a script she read to her therapist, which starts here if you would like to read it. Here is mine:

Script for Therapy Session

• Brief Discussions: PTSD & In Treatment
• Script Introduction
• Questions About the Blog
• Questions About My Status & Therapy
• Questions About DID

communication. by ~liamu on deviantART

Brief Discussion

Things I would like to discuss briefly today:

• PTSD – purchased the book “The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Sourcebook” and came up with a few questions. I also created a timeline of my PTSD progression.
• How trauma memories are different than normal memories (see Figure 2.1 from PTSD Sourcebook)
• How people with DID might be different at storing memories than just PTSD (see drawing)
• Why memories come into consciousness in parts
• Why did people like Stalin, Castro and Hussien choose their path and not me? What made this difference?
• Feel better that my actions can be described by PTSD, but isn’t this still an excuse?
• TV series “In Treatment” on HBO

Script Introduction

Read to my therapist:

This is going to be very hard for me to today. I am going to be more vulnerable than I am comfortable with. I may shake, I may cry, and I might have multiple panic attacks, which I would like you to ignore unless there is an emergency.

When thinking about this session I have had the following repeated thought or mantra from one of my voices: “I am not allowed to be weak. I am the mountain, that if moved will spew out Satan’s dominion and maybe even Satan himself.” I am trying to say there is a lot of fear associated with this content, I guess.

Here are my questions. You might not have answers to all of them, and I may even have the answers to some of them. I am also comfortable if you want to answer some next session so that you have time to think about the answers. Okay?

Questions About the Blog

Read to my therapist:

I feel like we have gone back and forth about the blog. At first you said you wanted to think about whether or not you would read it, but we never brought that up again. Next you told me that you had read parts and how we should use the blog in therapy only for assistance, that I would need to talk about what I wrote in session. I understood this and was not mad you had read the blog without us discussing it again, because I do want you to read it.

Next time when we discussed the blog you decided that you would not read the blog or bring up topics written there unless I brought them up in session myself. This back and forth is the first real time I have been frustrated with our sessions. However, I think it would help if right now we decide together how we will handle the blog going forward.

Questions:

• Are you going to read the blog?
• What parts of the blog can I expect you will have read?
• What parts are off limits to read, if any? What parts make me uncomfortable for you to read?
• Should we discuss issues on the blog that I did not bring up first?
• Are you comfortable with me posting the session splashes?
• Will you leave comments & register as a user?
• SIDE NOTE: Raising money through Blogging for a Cause for iSurvive

Questions About My Status & Therapy

Read to my therapist:

I wanted to let you know that I am aware I do not often look you in the eye when we are talking. I usually do like to look people in the eye when I talk to them, and consider it rude not to. I am not trying to be rude, but only do this because of how vulnerable I feel here. I hope you have not felt offended. I have been wanting to let you know that for a long time.

Okay, here are my questions about therapy:

Questions:

• Am I going too slow, or maybe too fast? Does the pace seem right for me?
• How could I do better? What am I doing well?
• Am I holding myself back in some way? Do I have habits that are making therapy slower? (such as over intellectualizing concepts)
• What do you feel we should focus on in sessions right now?
• I think you hold back too much on your assessment/comments and offer your opinion/critique more often. How do you feel about this?
• Do you sometimes wonder if my case is too serious for you to handle?
• Do you still think you can help me? I feel like I might be too messed up…

Questions About DID

Read to my therapist:

I trust you, but maybe other parts of me do not. This will be harder to discuss than specific abuse memories because I have spent a lot of time covering it up. This diagnosis was probably also the reason I have not wanted to work on a timeline in the past. I must have sub-consciously known that my missing time would become very apparent. I tried so hard to cover it up, I forgot that I had worked so hard to forget about it…

Answering some questions may help to ease me. Here are my questions:

Questions:

• I had a lot of issues since our last session associated with this topic. Here is a post I wrote on my blog about this. Do these symptoms concern you? What do you think about my DID suspicions written here?
• Do you have other patients with this diagnosis?
• Do you have hope that people with DID can be healed?
• Do you believe in false memories?
• Do you believe my memories are real?
• How can dissociation be different than repression if dissociation leads to repressed memories?
• Discuss best friend’s reaction and if I should discuss it with him at all going forward.
• Afraid of anger – shaky, white vision, uncontrollable urge to get MY point across and have it agreed with. Feels like it is not ‘mine’?

1. Session Splash – June 6, 2009**
2. Session Splash – May 12, 2009*****
3. Session Splash – May 26, 2009 Part 3**
4. Safety First Checklist Part 2*
5. Session Splash – May 26, 2009 Part 2*

Trigger Warning: (5/5!)

This is Part 2 of a story about one of my earliest physical abuse memories, dealing with a babysitter I had when I was 6 or 7 (read Part 1 here). By earliest I don’t mean first physical abuse in my life, but the first memory that I was able to recall. I think this is because to me, it doesn’t seem that bad. This babysitter was in my life soon after I was out of my body cast (due to an accident with a horse). To read a brief history about me, please read my sorted past.

Continued…

On this particular occasion she employed both tortures, dragging me into the Belt Room first. The Belt Room was a small room with a full or queen size bed in the middle, top against one wall. There was maybe 3 feet of floor space around the other three sides. This room might have had a window at one time (I mean, it must have, right?) but it was covered over, so the only way out was the door, which was covered with locks, most on the inside, with the one on the outside, the sturdiest of them all.

She tied me face down onto the bed without my shirt on (yes, it was already pre-fitted with a restraint system, for her pleasure) and looked around at the walls to choose her weapon. All four walls were completely lined with an assortment of different belts, some being more whips than belts, but all technically belts. All flavors too – ones with spikes, ones with needles, with holes, holes with leather strips… The belts were hung on nails, hammered about four inches from each other, floor to ceiling. It never occurred to me how odd this was when I was a child, but the horror of it is slightly creeping in as I write this.

Lydia liked to beat me from all angles, really moving around the little bit of space that was there, wedging herself around the bed, her hair waving behind her. She would hit and hit, screaming and spitting at me that she was beating the evil out of me and that it was for my own good, getting spittle all over me. She would do this until she was completely exhausted, usually hunching against the wall, with her hands on her porky knees, trying desperately to catch her breath, eyes wildly staring at the ceiling. Once she would catch her breath, she would leave to set up the Standards Desk, only letting me free so that I could start the next punishment.

Lydia then made me write Standards at a school desk that she put outside in the yard. I was forced to write different phrases, at least 1,000 times each, taking up pages and pages with my child’s hand writing. If you don’t know what Standards are, they are when you write a sentence about what you did wrong over and over in the hopes that you will never make that mistake again. I do not remember specifically what Lydia had me write over the months, except this once, which was “Dirty little girls will not put stickers on the walls.”

One day while writing Standards I broke composure and started crying (Lydia was not outside at the time) because I was so frustrated (I still cry today when I am frustrated, now that I think about it). This practice of writing Standards of un-true events and statements, such as “I am the devil’s spawn” encouraged a horrible compulsive lying habit that I did not truly break until I was about 20. I wish I still had these Standard pages today to remind me of how insane the situation was. I have to remember that the things I wrote, the things that she said to me, were not true. Because to be honest, sometimes I think I must be evil, to have been treated so evilly so regularly.

I was glad though that it was me and not my brother. I remember once she tried to touch my tiny little brother in a harmful way. It enraged me to the point that I lunged for her throat, trying to strangle her. I mean I went totally insane, and she really had to work to get me off of her throat, her face started to change color. It got me the worst beating ever that day, but she never did touch my brother again. I think I showed her that I could be unpredictable as well.

That day I was obviously frustrated, and tired of being…

“…badly bruised almost every day. On this particular day though, it was really bad, and I think the skin had broken and was bleeding, in the middle of a huge purple-blue welt that covered nearly a quarter of my back. I was mad. I was hurt, and I was tired of being subjected to her…

I came out that day to show my father, once again, when he picked me up, right there in the parking lot. I pulled my shirt up and looked him squarely in they eye from over my bruised shoulder, and said something like “I’m bleeding this time. I don’t want to come back here. I can watch myself,” almost like a challenge, to see how he would react. He looked at my shoulder, then quickly looked away and said “What do you want me to do about it?, I don’t see anything?” He grabbed me by the same shoulder and shoved me into the passenger seat of the car.

I remember walking around to the car door when I saw a dragonfly…a big, beautiful green and purple one that flew away, to wherever it wanted to…I guess I was already good at dissociation by the age of 6.”

(Quoted portion re-posted from “I Have Been Abused – Please Believe Me!”)

A related article I recently found, about Using God to Abuse, makes some very interesting points. It helped to see another perspective.

1. Lydia – Crazy Abusive Babysitter Part 1*****
2. I Have Been Abused – Please Believe Me!***
3. Why I’m Afraid of Spiders – Arachnophobia Part 1***
4. Why I’m Afraid of Spiders – Arachnophobia Part 2**
5. White Kittens – An Animal Abuse Story*****