I went to a t for 5 yrs. About 3-4 yrs into it I had parts comig out and taking over executive control. I had parts out before but not quite so dramatic and I was becoming more aware so it all seemed pretty overwhelming. It was quite disturbing. My t kept giving it different names-projection, and I don't know what all but it just kept happening and happening until I had parts coming out in t and t side stepping around the issue. It became like the pink lephant in the living room no one wated to talk about. T would never address it upfront so I got the impression that what I ahd was shamedful and not to be discussed which set in motion a terrible dynamic.

All in all it was a terrible situation and I can see now after not being with this t for several months how he was really afraid to be honest with me and how destructive tht was. I was needing his acceptence of aprts so I coulld accept but he didn't want to accept. He wanted me to have an adult manager which I pleaded with him to tell me HOW to have that! I told him I did not have ONE but many and how do you pick?

It was so frustrating. I don't know why I write this other than to just get it out and tell someone how descrustive his non accpetence of parts has been to me.

Oh dear Im so sorry that you have to be "playing" these games "I wonder if she knows and if not then what can do.
When I was going throudh this in the begining of therapy; after a month or so I finally just started crying and asked my therpist to tell me everything she knows and guess what; she actually found thata was much the wiser than she gave me credit for and ever since then we don't play those games anymore.
I can see why your t would be hesistant to give you a diagnosis (outloud) but may if you tell him what you know is going on in your head that maybe he will understand that you are quite capable and ready for the both of you to get on the same page.
Please keep writting, there are many hellpful survivors on this board who can make you feel so much better just by sharing your thoughts and frustrations.
Now I have just had neck surgery Monday and have not been online but a couple of times this week so please don't get frustrated if I do't get back online anytime soon.
I think you're doing the right thing though, talk talk talk, share share sharel. You are very safe here on my boards an the more you journal/write the more things make sense.
I hope to be back online tomorrow but at this point no promises.
Good luck to you hun!
Have a wonderful evening and a great tomorrow!
Hope to talk to you again soon!
Candy Little
Webmaster
You're also welcomed to write to me directly if that would make yo feel better. Well I better go take a break for a while.
Safe Hugs!
Candy

Candy,

thank you for responding but take care of yoruself. I hope you are feeling okay after your surgery.

I stopped going to this t because he would aknowledge I had a dissociative disorder but did not want to acknowledge that there could be more than one of me. He would just tell me to use my adult manager but I would be in tears asking him 'how do I choose which one???' I would tell him that I understood the words he was saying but not how to apply it to me because what he was saying did not make sense with how it felt inside. I would have these terrible conflicts inside that knocked me off my feet. They would broad side me and thigns would spin out of control. I think it was compounded because t was in essence also rejecting the parts of me he did not want to deal with. I begged him to show me how to be accepeting of these parts because at that point I believed him more than m. t wanted to deal with the part of me that always presented as the 'I am fine' one. I kept telling him that just because I come back to this I am fine does not mean whatever just happened was resolved-- far from it. It got shoved back inside and started the whole cycle up again.

I think looking back now that he did not know how to handle what I was going thru and did not have the expertise but did not want to say so. This whole thing dragged on for many months until I just plain and simple got tired of trying to explain and being told back things that I did not know how to apply to my self and my situation. I stopped going and went to another t for just a short time. I then just simply got tired of trying to explain. Its obviously not resolved but I am trying to just learn how to be accepting of how I am put together and not try to explain anymore. except here I am now! :)

I think it just sucked that I went to this t for 5 yrs and he did not have the guts to deal with me honestly and head on.

Flyaway - sorry you went through that. The question of whether or not you had an adult manager and how you interact with this type of alter is one of those trick questions that are asked to weed out those that are not DID. So Normally the therapist is not supposed to tell the client how to find one or how to appoint an adult manager for the system.

A DID person automatically knows whether or not things get taken care of during the times that they are not aware. A person doesnt wake up one day and find strange writings and so on going on. it happens through out their whole life for example you suddenly look up and see the dishes have been done, the laundry has been done, dinner made, kids taken care of, notes from your work meetings and so on show up. it may be three days later but everything that was supposed to get done got done. these are all things that an adult manager does - keeps things organized and you only end up switching into the alters that do those jobs that have frustrated you to the point where you dissociate.

An Adult manager of your system you dont have to pick choose or assign. It just naturally happens just like alters to hold anger, sadness, traumatic experiences and so on are created to hold those memories, adult managers are automatically created at some point when the person experiences stress and trauma around the issue of having to be perfect and do everything right and so on.

The person with DID under this kind of stress dissociates and the resulting alter that is created under that stress situation is one to manage everything when you cannot do so.

Psychiatrists use this question among others to find out for sure if you are DID or not especially if someone is saying they are DID with no testing results to back it up.. Those that are not DID will embellish into the newly appointed manager characteristics and activities and so on that do not belong to that type of alter. And most DID's that I know of, if they have picked an adult manager out of their known list of alters later on during the therapy sessions it comes out naturally that the adult manager job actually goes with a different alter than the one the person has chosen, or picked out of the hat on their list of alters.

The one thing that is consistant with DID's is that the alters recieve their actual purpose when they are created. otherwise they would not have been created. An angry alter would not have been created if the person did not have any situations that made them so mad that they had to dissociate. An adult manager would not be created if there was no need for an adult manager. and some systems dont have an adult manager. their "managers" may be teen agers or a child alter that during childhood had to do everything right and be very organized.

So please dont take it personally when you can't answer a therapist questions around what your system is like. some of those questions dont have answers to them and or the answers take years of therapy to uncover.

Also alot of therapists work with DID's as working with the whole person and not focusing on the alters as being separate from you. They use words like your moods, feelings, memories and so on are a part of you. this is so that those that have DID dont feel like they must dissociate on purpose during therapy to please the therapist. The goal for therapy for DID's is to gain more awareness and reduce dissociation by adding appropriate coping tools that will help the person meet their problems head on and take care of them instead of running away from their problems through dissociation. So maybe this is what that therapist was doing by not directly acknowledging your mood switching into alters and so on.

what might help in understanding your future therapists and how they work with DID at intake ask the therapist if they work with survivors of abuse and if they can refer you forpsychological testing. Dont say you think you have DID per se. Dissociation happens on a normal level. so you can just say to them that you and others around you have noticed you space off sometimes. The therapist wont read into that as being someone trying to be a mental disorder because spacing off happens naturally and is a part of many different mental disorders. Go in with the attitude that you dont know whats wrong with you and you just want to know what is wrong with you so that you can fix it. with that type of statements and attitudes you will most likely get your testing and an accurate diagnosis whether or not its DID.

My t was not using the term 'adult manager' in the same way you described. He was using it more as a way to say I can have executive control over these shifts and I should be able to do that. Adult manager as in having good ego strength. My question to him was how do I decide which ONE does that when they are are fighting over who how to look at something? That was what the inner conflicts were about. Each one when out thought their way of doing things WAS the way it needed to be done and to try to push back down or deny their point of view brought on more conflicts and the shifts became more prounced and disruptive. If I could of stopped the shifting I would of. If I could picked 'one' and denied the rest I would have but thats when things spun out of control. My point to him was the more I deny and push back the more it keeps me in the conflicts of how do I resolve all these different ways of being? I went to t feeling like each time I switched I failed somehow because that was what was wrong with me. To not switch was progress but to switch meant failure so the more I tried NOT to switch the worse it got. I ended up on my own working on trying to listen and find a way to cooperate which feels different to me than controling and pushing down. As i do that the switches are not as prounced or as disruptive although they still happen. Just now I know more of what is going on.

I recognize my system has a way in which it functions and in fact can function quite well-- thats part of the problem in trying to talk about this. But it does not function by ONE deciding for all what to do -- at least not in a way that I can recognize. There is some rhythm or reason as to who comes out when and for what reason but it is not ME orchestrating how that happens. At least not in a way I can understand yet. Thats what would of been nice for him to help me learn.

I can see in my past where the parts came from and the roles and functions they had in my childhood. What is hard now is I am not being abused now and I don't need to funtion like that anymore but given the right situation the different parts come up. It is disruptive and unsettling.

I realize systems are complex and how my system functions is not something you can know about me just from a post in a forum so I am not asking for you to tell me what my dx is or isn't or whether I answer the t's 'secret question' correctly in order to get the grand prize of a DID dx! Thats not why I was here. I am not looking for that because I don't see it as any great prize to have. I basically needed a place to spot off because I felt misunderstood and did not recieve the kind of help that I needed.

I wanted to elaborate on my t's use of the term 'adult manager' vs your use of the term.

My t used it as in my 'SELF', the real me, the one in the drivers seat. My understanding of what he wanted was for me to be strong enough to quiet all the others and have them recede and not be involved- to have the 'real me' step forward and be strong and do what 'I' wanted to do. I could not do this because the 'me's' kept changing. I could not pick out which one would be the only me-- and if I did whose to say the others would even listen! I think he was asking me to function like I was intergrated before I WAS which is not very fair.

I see your use of the term 'adult manager' is more like another high functioning part who is in control of every day matters or can be. A part that can function and do what needs to be done while inside other parts may be falling apart. This one can take over and maintain a life. I have that. But this part just takes over-- doesn't make the others go away though. The others still maintain their point of view although they could go deeper or I lose awareness. This would of been okay for me in therapy because I could understand that.

What I couldn't do is only have ONE consistent me. It did not have to do so much with moods (although outwardly it could look like I was moody) but much more about how I felt inside about ME and what me meant- what I thought, what I felt, how I processed things and looked at the world, my general way of perceiving things. Very much all about perception of identity and what felt 'like me' and what felt like 'not me'.

flyaway thanks for clarifying.

here what you are discribing - a theraipist asking the self to be strong enough to control what is going on inside - is called learning and using grounding techniques.

First the therapist explains to the client that they are strong enough to control what is going on in their bodys, and remain in control, that they their self is accountable for their behaviours that go on. And that at first it will be hard and the therapist will help them but eventually they will be able to control what is going on.

Then the therapist teaches the client through various means grounding and relaxation techniques, depending on what type of person the client is. Some of the techniques used to teach this is using workbooks, hand outs, pre-recorded relaxation and grounding CD's and Cassettes, and hands on approach of practicing by doing the grounding and relaxation during therapy sessions.

At first the sessions are just learning the grounding and relaxation techniques then later they are put to use during regular sessions when ever the client gets triggered.

Eventually the client (not the alters) is able to remain in control on their own by using the techniques to remain aware and calm theirself so that they no longer have such chaotic disturbances inside theirself instead of falling into the switiching and other symptoms that they have.