Tag Archives: DID

therapist casting call

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12

The need for a new therapist leads to the inevitable therapist auditions. You start out with the false notion that you’re Broadway, and you can snag an Idina Menzel or Sutton Foster. It does not take long for reality to reveal itself to you. You are, indeed, not the Great White Way. Heck, you are not even a LORT theatre on the regional theatre circuit. You’re more akin to a summer stock theatre in the backwoods of northern Vermont, far from any amenities that A list or even B list actors are accustomed to having.

Such is the quest for a therapist when one has dissociative identity disorder (DID). You need an Idina Menzel or a Sutton Foster, but you’re summer stock in the far reaches of Vermont, and you are not going to find such a person. You look at your options, and think, shit, I should move. But let’s be real. You’re ensconced where you live with your career, apartment, gym, tea shop, etc. Plus, you know you’re not up for a geographical move. It’s not an option. Instead, your therapist options are limited.

Like all good theatre directors that make the most of their meager options, you choose the one with the most positive energy. That’s the only distinguishing factor since all 3 are equally credentialed. If this was Broadway, off-Broadway or even a LORT theatre she wouldn’t get a call back. But these are the dregs of summer stock, so you make the most of it, and she gets the part of Therapist. She’s thrilled, and you’re shamefully resigned.

It’s clear to you that you’re the jerk in this situation. No doubt. And the saddest part is that you don’t care. You’ve run out of patience with therapists that you have to manage. You should not have to be the one with the consistent wise mind time and time again.

But then you see that all out effort she’s putting forth, and you know she’s trying her best, and putting her best foot forward. But it is what it is, and a best fit it is not. You have to make the most of the situation. You’ve seen the gamut of DID therapists out there. This is the best of the lot. You are not going to find Idina or Sutton. This is it, so make the most of it.

To the dude from last summer and the summer before that

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We have to stop meeting this way. I am putting a stop to it, against my addictive urges.

We are not going to meet tomorrow night.

I want to see you, but I can’t.

I never told you that I’m a sex and love addict in recovery, and that I have dissociative identity disorder. Previously, I told you that I have PTSD and a severe dissociative disorder. That was my way of downplaying my DID. I know I did this because DID is most definitely unsexy. It’s so not sexy that it’s unsexy.

I rationalized getting intimate with you too soon two summers ago because I liked you. I told myself it was okay because it wasn’t casual sex as casual sex is my bottom line behavior. But then we went our separate ways, and we’ve just had false starts since then.

Out of nowhere I hear from you the same day that I learn of a loss that I’m grappling with. I can’t trust myself to go out with you when I am feeling this way. I have to sit with this loss, feel it, and not try to numb it away by being with you.

I can see myself going to bed with you, and regretting it when I don’t hear from you for another 6 months.

I am no longer interested in playing out this script. I am throwing it away. I truly hope you have a good life.

Be well,

Beatriz

a hard thing

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18

The day before yesterday I learned that Sara, a WordPress blogger, took her own life. I’ve been bereft since then, mainly because I feel I have no right to feel this way. For a period of time, Sara and I corresponded after she posted about her experience at Sheppard Pratt. In that particular posting she ranted in that brilliant and funny way of hers about Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). I resonated with her rant because I also find it exhausting that too many of these places that treat PTSD and DID put all their eggs in the DBT basket. DBT is not a bad concept, it certainly has its’ good points … but please it is not the be all and end all cure for PTSD. I had completed a stay at Mclean Hosptial’s residential program for traumatic and dissociative disorders, and it was interesting for both of us to hear about each other’s experiences in what many consider the top two psychiatric programs for PTSD in the country. From our correspondence you could see that we both found our programs acceptable, but way too ballyhooed for their own britches.

Sara was much more articulate than I was in ranting about it. I wish I could recall the specifics of what she wrote.

I am most disappointed in myself because I fell out of contact with her. It’s one of those things that happens when life gets in the way.

I will further admit that I became aware that Sara lived less than a 3 hour drive from me. In the back of my mind I planned to tell Sara that I lived close enough to drive to her, and I would ask if she would like to meet. But, it never came to pass. My own life struggles take center stage far too often, and that plan never got off the back burner. Now it will never be.

I sit here stuck now in front of my laptop computer, immobilized from disappointment and undeserved grief.