Finally I have a therapist who is willing to work with me with my hallucinations and not just be like it’s not real don’t focus on it. We’ve been facing the fact that I am addicted to the physical pleasure I get from them combined with my huge fear and anxiety about when they don’t happen for a long time because I don’t know when I’m going to be hurt and they’ll be mad at me bc I haven’t let anything happen in so long so it’ll be worse when they do hurt me.
She said I have to be patient with myself and flexible and not beat myself up if I do give into them. She said to tell myself I can make a different choice next time and I don’t have to feel ashamed and hate myself if I call them when I’m stressed or something. She’s also been telling me that a lot of the things I thought I was crazy for like calling them/goading them to attack were actually normal and happened in actual abusive relationships! Crazy! And a lot of my behaviors were no different from addiction to something like drugs or alcohol and we could deal with it like that too.
I really feel like therapy has been helping me for the first time in years.
summary: Therapist really helping me work through the trauma of my hallucinations and making me feel a lot better and come up with different feelings & responses to when I’m abused by them rather than just hating myself and feeling like a failure for not being able to fight them off