Well I’ve got a new therapist. I am very happy with her. I have seen her five times now. It is a short-term kind of therapy, so I might only be able to see her for six months or so, so I am trying to be very happy and grateful for what I have right now and to use my time with her wisely.
I am trying to work on the things that I want to work on in therapy and stay focused on that. I especially want to spend some time in therapy dealing with being a mother-daughter sexual abuse survivor, including all the ways that she abused me and it’s impact in my life, the blockages that has created in my functioning, and how it continues to trigger me still.
It has been over ten years since I first started remembering the mother-daughter sexual abuse, and I have seen three other therapists in that time. But none of them helped me to heal from mother-daughter sexual abuse, and in fact, they actually all made things much much worse by the ways that they treated me.
The first therapist expressed feelings and words of compassion towards my mother. I did not want to sit through that. I hated that, especially since she did not ever express feelings or words of admiration or compassion towards me. I thought that it just wasn’t her thing, until I tried to deal with mother-daughter sexual abuse in therapy sessions with her and she started saying compassionate things about the person who I have always considered a monster. I had seen her for over a year before I started talking about the MDSA, so I had thought that I knew what kind of therapist that she was. It really hurt me to see that she felt and expressed that about her and not me, not ever me. I felt very betrayed and after several more sessions, told her that I needed to try to see someone who know about this type of abuse.
The second therapist was the first DBT therapist that I saw. Although she knew about the mother-daughter sexual abuse and although I had said it was important to me to deal with that and to try to work on that in therapy. Every time that I would start trying to mention my mother she would interrupt me and change the topic immediately. This happened every time. She always had a look of fear in her eyes when she did this. Since there were so many issues with her as a therapist, a DBT therapist, and her severe lacking as a human being I did not stay long in therapy with her. Doing DBT with her shut me down emotionally for several years.
The third and last therapist was also a DBT therapist. She announced to me during session one day that we had already agreed that during the year of DBT therapy I would not be doing any memory healing work, at all. Except I had never agreed to that. This was very problematic, especially since it was against my understanding of DBT therapy and I was still having flashbacks every day and was having a huge amount of trouble in my daily functioning, none of which DBT was helping.
My new therapist is very knowledgeable, caring, communicates caring, and interacts in a way that assists me in healing and learning and coping. I really really like her, a lot.