# Gauging recovery modalities



## Guest (Aug 20, 2014)

How do you 'feel' about the different treatment modalities you're trying? Do you feel like they're working for you? Do you feel like you're making progress? Do you feel stuck? If you do talk therapy.. How do you feel when you walk out and the next day?

What are your instincts telling you about the different paths you might be using to recover?

There's a huge list of different types of treatment we can pursue to help us recover from DPD and each individual can respond differently to the same treatment. We're all different. But there's a way to gauge how each and every one of them is working for us.

It's about trusting your instincts, and trusting your body and how it feels and of course trusting your intellect. It's important that we use all these 'gifts' we have to help guide us through recovery. Dissociative people are often 'cut off' or detached from how we feel and what our instincts and bodies are telling us. They're there, it's just that we're often not connected. I'm sure everyone here knows what it's like to be stuck in our heads.. thinking, thinking ALL the time. That's our intellect working. Rumination.. our intellects working, thinking, trying to understand, and often at the same time, our bodies are telling us things we don't hear.

I'd encourage everyone to stop occasionally and make an effort to connect with the different feelings and instincts we have about the treatment paths we're following. Trust yourself. Trust what your body is saying. I'm sure we've all had experiences where our instincts told us something (that feeling of, this doesn't feel right), jumped in, and done the things we know we shouldn't have, only to suffer the consequences of a bad decision! Well, that was our instinct trying to warn us, but we didn't pay attention b/c we didn't trust it or we were disconnected from it. It's about learning to pay attention.

It's entirely possible to reconnect with these important aspects of our 'guidance system' that most of us have been disconnected from for a long time. It just takes some effort and understanding.

Trust and honour (follow) your instincts and feelings. Let them have a 'voice'. They're unbelievably clever once you get to know them!


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## Guest (Sep 6, 2014)

It's definitely telling me I need to try harder.


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## aron123 (Oct 14, 2014)

Thanks for share...


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## Guest (Oct 14, 2014)

My pleasure&#8230; Thanks for reading.


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## Guest (Oct 14, 2014)

Selig said:


> It's definitely telling me I need to try harder.


Nick, it's not about trying harder. It's about being open.


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## retep (Mar 19, 2013)

Zed said:


> Nick, it's not about trying harder. It's about being open.


Maybe that is the way his instincts are speaking to him, and he needs to hear more closely at what he needs to try harder at.

I had that sense myself, and it wasn't just a critical voice; it was a sense that I wasn't willing to look at something honestly, and all the effort I was putting into recovery was just frustrating me. But finally following the "try harder" voice, and then the frustration feeling, lead me to see what it was I wasn't willing to look at.

Also, I would have had no idea what it meant to be open in the earlier stages of my DP/DR. It would have been like telling a crippled to run. Isn't that the point of disassociation- that one is not open to themselves and at it's most severe stages does not validate a single thought they have?

So I wouldn't say "it's not about trying harder" if that is what comes up for someone; I would ask "what does that mean for someone who is already trying so hard?" and let them follow that question...


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## Guest (Oct 14, 2014)

retep said:


> Maybe that is the way his instincts are speaking to him, and he needs to hear more closely at what he needs to try harder at.
> 
> I had that sense myself, and it wasn't just a critical voice; it was a sense that I wasn't willing to look at something honestly, and all the effort I was putting into recovery was just frustrating me. But finally following the "try harder" voice, and then the frustration feeling, lead me to see what it was I wasn't willing to look at.
> 
> ...


I get you mean retep..

Nick.. this is not directed at you. Just like the OP, it's to everyone who's disconnected due to dissociation.

Retep.. In the early stages of my recovery I had no idea what 'being open' was either. I wasn't connected to my body at all. It was basically just a vessel, at least that's how I saw 'it'.. And yes, that's what dissociation does huh? It disconnects us from memories, emotions, feelings, our bodies, our sense of self...

My first counsellor started me on the road to reconnecting. It wasn't easy, in fact I hated her sometimes for talking about concepts that were so foreign to me and almost too challenging. A lot of those times during early therapy, I sat there with a blank expression on my face wondering, what the hell is she talking about?! But over a couple of months, I found I could answer the simple question of, "how do you FEEL?" I began see what was happening&#8230; I was reconnecting b/c I was 'listening'.. I was breaking through the dissociation. It was a snowball going down a mountain I tell ya..

I spent the first 3 years, almost every week talking about how I felt, what my gut/instincts were telling me, what my body was telling me, as well as a whole lot of other stuff of course..

Retep.. I don't know how you feel about some of the 'treatment' people are getting from their doctors here? But from where I'm standing, I see some really basic things completely missing&#8230;

So.. it's not about the amount of effort we're putting in (God knows we ALL try SO HARD with this), it's about where that energy is directed, and I'm absolutely not saying this is easy. Not one bit! I guess I'm saying, one of the main paths to recovery is - connecting and learning how to connect.


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## retep (Mar 19, 2013)

First of all Zed, I really appreciate your post. It's hopeful and connecting. Thanks for sharing those parts of your recovery process.

I agree with you pretty much completely. Only a few months ago I started working with a therapist who specializes in trauma therapy and specifically somatic experiencing as it pertains to disassociation. It has made a world of difference in my recovery to work with someone who understands what I am going through and has tools specifically tailored to help someone like me.

I had used a few therapists before who basically had no idea how to help me. I have had this for quite a while but didn't know I was disassociated until about a year ago. Before that and despite my predicament, I was able to be engaging and fake connection with others because I didn't want to be thrown in a loony bend or some other fear I had like that (but most of the time I used avoidance). I would try to explain to the therapist the extra aspects of torture that I was dealing with (that were clearly the symptoms of DP/DR) and it was just lost on them. I was diagnosed with clinical depression and that's how I was treated. But treatment for depression vs disassociation are very different in my opinion and takes an extra level of sensitivity on the part of the therapist to sense what the patient's needs are. A lot of treatment for depression is about not focusing on what gets you down and simply seeing things from a new perspective- whereas disassociation is about finding the parts of yourself (mentally and physically) that you have banished and reconnecting to them and allowing those feelings of shame, anger and disappointment etc to come to the surface and become regulated.

I think we are in agreement that everyone is trying their best to be done with the DP and it's not about trying harder but where the energy is directed- but I think validating that sense of "I need to work harder" into being a marker on a map of an aspect still ignored in the work of recovery could be connecting for some.


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## Guest (Oct 15, 2014)

Thanks retep for sharing your experiences too. I'm happy for you that you're having such a positive experience with your new therapist. What a difference it makes when someone actually knows what dissociation is and how to help huh? I guess I was lucky that the first person I saw (nearly 5 years ago) respected what I said and started helping me assemble the 'toolbox' of coping and recovery strategies..

I hope plenty of people read your post cuz there's so much wisdom in what you said.


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## Guest (Oct 19, 2014)

retep said:


> I was diagnosed with clinical depression and that's how I was treated. But treatment for depression vs disassociation are very different in my opinion and takes an extra level of sensitivity on the part of the therapist to sense what the patient's needs are. A lot of treatment for depression is about not focusing on what gets you down and simply seeing things from a new perspective- whereas disassociation is about finding the parts of yourself (mentally and physically) that you have banished and reconnecting to them and allowing those feelings of shame, anger and disappointment etc to come to the surface and become regulated.


I totally agree. A lot of therapists use a technique called 'parts work'. That sounds very similar to what you're describing. We've all got 'parts' Trouble is dissociative people have 'parts' holding memories and emotions and whatnot, that are detached from their consciousness. They've probably been like that since they were young but just don't see it. I used to think those parts didn't exist, ie I thought I had no capacity for compassion for a long long time.. until it came back. It reconnected, and now I can experience compassion, and love and anger and hatred and empathy and pain and joy and fear and all those other feelings and emotions I thought i was incapable of experiencing&#8230; It's called 'integrating'. I like integrating. Some people see it as a threat, but I don't...


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## retep (Mar 19, 2013)

Zed said:


> I totally agree. A lot of therapists use a technique called 'parts work'. That sounds very similar to what you're describing. We've all got 'parts' Trouble is dissociative people have 'parts' holding memories and emotions and whatnot, that are detached from their consciousness. They've probably been like that since they were young but just don't see it. I used to think those parts didn't exist, ie I thought I had no capacity for compassion for a long long time.. until it came back. It reconnected, and now I can experience compassion, and love and anger and hatred and empathy and pain and joy and fear and all those other feelings and emotions I thought i was incapable of experiencing&#8230; It's called 'integrating'. I like integrating. Some people see it as a threat, but I don't...


I like integrating too!!! It makes the sun shine and the flowers bloom (and also apparently makes me sound like a hippie poet) 

It definitely feels like a threat at first, at least for me. Every time I have had a step towards integrating it feels like I am being forced out of a very safe place into something that is dangerous and I feel unprepared to be able to defend myself against that danger. But the weird thing is that there is an intelligence beyond me that is in my body that pulls me out of that safety only a little more than what I can handle. Once I adjust to it, I realize I've been liberated a bit and want some more. But when it is happening it never feels right or like a good thing- but then I realize I am more in the present, more in my body.


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