Lunch and a Movie

Saturday, I'm supposed to go to lunch and to a movie with two of the women who were in the survivor's of childhood sexual abuse group that I was in so many years ago. Also, on the card to go with us is our former therapist. This will be the second time we have gotten together for a reunion. We had dinner once last year.

As much as I'm looking forward to seeing all three of them, it's awkward as well. The therapy didn't end on a good note and I almost ended up dead. It wasn't any of these three people's fault. But I still feel like I was abandoned by them as well.

To give you a chance to understand a bit better what the issues are here, it's probably best if I start at the beginning and explain what happened.

After having been in group with these people for nearly three years, out of the blue, during a group session, we were all informed that I was being removed from the group. The director had decided that this agency was no longer going to treat cult or ritualistic abuse survivors in the same group as their (what?? normal) survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

How the distinction was made between me and them, I haven't a clue. But it was. My support system was pulled right out from underneath me. And then in almost an equal blink of an eye, my therapist was removed as well. My treatment was taken over by the director of the agency. I had no input. Well, I could go somewhere else but if I stayed there, I was required to change therapists, no if's, and's or but's.

My system at the time was functioning with an internal therapist. She figured out what the "rules" for good mental health were and helped everyone inside to understand these new rules as they emerged. It was her job to keep my system in balance. She understood all of the issues like who was at fault and recognizing abuse etc. She also was responsible for knowing when we needed help and getting it. She managed the flashbacks, recognized new alters and identified what they needed and decided when they could come forward and do their work.

She had a plan. Even though she didn't know the secrets before they were exposed, she could recognize the layers. She was peeling the onion one layer at a time. Everything to the outside of the onion was the easy stuff. As each layer went deeper, the issues and memories got more complicated. With the final layer being the key that kept me trapped by my programming.

Everyone inside respected and trusted this inner therapist. They listened to her until we was removed from group. Because the rules of good mental health seemed to be that people were most important over everything else, this decision made no sense to us or our inner therapist. How could a counseling agency make a business decision that was not good for a patient and it was still OK?

Of course, the director insisted that the two were not related. My therapist personality to this day still believes that that just doesn't make any sense. She believes it is against how therapists are trained to divorce a patient's needs from business decisions. The end result of this conflict was the parts who had not come forth and some of the newly exposed ones, got frightened, lost their faith in our therapist personality and while they still tried to listen to her found themselves unable to follow her direction.The end result is my system spun out of control.

To be continued............

Part 2

multiple personality disorder MPD dissociative Identity disorder did therapist misconduct