frustrated

[orek]

Oh, Tangled, I wish I could wave a wand and make this go away for you. My past T and this one both "normalize" our feelings or reactions for us, but always in context of the dissociation and abuse, etc, and always when I seem to need to hear I'm not some hopeless freak or something. It sounds as if maybe your T properly learned that normalizing things for her patients is important, so she's shooting that out there, but not when it's needed, not listening to what is needed. Now, it's not always easy to tell, but in this case, I think you couldn't be any clearer that some huge shifts are happening and that you need her to validate that fear and help you stabilize your system or understand how to process these shifts more than you need to hear how it's normal to grieve. I mean, really!

Also, she shouldn't keep pushing this meeting of the insiders, if that's what she's doing. It's totally legit to talk to you about how to make the space safer for them or what strategies to use to make it easier for insiders to come. For example., with our last T, in order to prevent upfronters from just taking up the session with chatter because they were always nervous about insiders coming and were compulsively avoiding it (stalling, for sure!), our T asked how we felt about having insider "appointment times" within the session, like at some point after the session starts, like top of the hour, whichever insider signed up inside for a slot gets some time. We tried two 15-minute slots. It worked! There was an agreed-upon point in therapy where upfronters knew they had agreed to step back, and insiders didn't have to scramble for who would come forward because someone already signed up for it. After a while, we didn't need to do that anymore. They could come forward and upfronters move back (for the most part) more easily without needing that structure. To clarify, she didn't even bring up the idea of the appointment times until insiders had started to come forward already, and it was obvious we were ready but having struggles around who, how, when, as well as with upfronter discomfort.

All that to say, our T never pushed for insiders to come, even though they didn't show themselves to her until after 3 years with her or more. It'll happen when it can happen, when your system feels there's enough trust and safety to risk it. And absolutely not a moment before. Wise! I wish I had great insight into how you could resolve this with your T, but you know more and best. You'll find your way. You have all along and will in this situation. Be kind to yourselves, trust your guts, listen to insider feedback if possible, and try not to add to your suffering by thinking that somehow you're doing something wrong or that you need to hop to it and fix something. It's a process, all this shite. Part of the long process. Hang in there!