CBT and DID...my experience

[Cammy]

Well, I did four weeks of CBT even though my T expressed her doubts, but I thought I'd try anyway, just to say I did it. What can I say? With so many of us inside of us, each with their own issues, there is so much that would need to be dealt with. No one little CBT course could possibly even hope to even start to work on all of it or with everyone of us.

I started the course from the perspective of my main me, the main host. I thought that benefit to the host would be useful; strengthening. Soon, it got so complicated and exasperating for me that I just started doing the course as my public persona - all the correct responses, working just to please the counsellor, politically correct, that sort of thing. So, I was faking being the perfect subject, star of the show, a total fake. I got tired of that pretty quick.

I also discovered mindful meditation in the middle of all of this. Finally, I found something that brought serenity and healing to my entire system. It was almost immediate and felt like the shackles of a lifetime were falling away. So, compared to this powerful experience, CBT seemed like ancient history - something for the psychological archives. Now I do mindful meditation every day and the benefits grow and grow for me. I feel like I've discovered a bona fide miracle.

I should have listened to my T. She said that CBT doesn't go far enough (for DID), and that it is not "experiential", in other words it isn't felt deeply at the gut level where it needs to be to make an impression on the whole system. So live and learn.

This was not intended to slam CBT as a therapy, it was only to express what my experience with it was. I believe that someone who is mono mind and has a single issue (like a phobia) it probably works just fine. But for this particular multi mind ... there's just too much stuff for one wee CBT course to try and sort out. I'll just stick to the beautiful sea of serenity I've discovered with mindfulness meditation and leave the whole CBT thing behind as a learning experience.