This morning (at half 10) I had Psychotherapy and it was a really educational session; I'd decided to ask him to explain the voices. I've never had an explanation for them until I came to this Hospital and a Doctor explained it was linked to disassociation. The Psychotherapist explained that you have three parts inside you; the parent, the adult and the child. He told me that it was named the parent since it's normally the parent who is undermining or critical of your behaviour (this is what the parent part does) but that's not the case for me. The child part is eager and irrational; they want everything doing NOW and what they want, they will get. The adult part is the most healthy and tries to control the other two. I told him how I hear three voices and two of them are very critical of me, he asked what they say "I'm useless, I deserve everything that's happened to me, I'm no good, no one likes me and that I don't have a backbone which I don't understand because I stand up to them enough times!" The third voice I always describe as a child because he's easily excited and keen on 'adventures.' I checked if this means the voices are part of me and he said he wasn't sure but I think he might have heard of my frequent slanging matches with Doctors who insist they are and I disagree. It's made me wonder though, whether they are and I just have these personas for them to avoid acknowledging they are because I hate to think that I think what they say. He told me that people who hear voices (not through psychosis) tend to have a lot of anger and hurt inside them and they've turned it inward so that when someone shouts at them or criticises them, they tell themselves they deserve it and, often, self-harm from feelings of guilt and worthlessness. Then he said two things which made me cry. The first, was to think of him as a scaffolder who's going to build scaffolding around me to make me stronger so I can stand up better to the voices. And the second, was that he's been doing this for over thirty years and so, has heard it all before. I've heard this often and always had a reply inside my head but this time I said it out loud "you might've heard this before but it's my first time and it happened to me." And he said "exactly. You have this brand new, scary, horrible thing hurting you and I can help." He explained how he's strong enough to hear about it and that telling him will mean I can half it and he can cope with the burden but I can't. My tears were happy tears and I explained them away with "I've waited three years for someone like you to come along and say things like that." He's my fifth therapist (one as an inpatient, one who 'over-stepped the mark' in the community, my DBT one before I got admitted and one since I've been in here) and I just wish the first one had been like him. It would've ended all of this a long time ago.
