System disorganized after seeing our psychiatrist
We just came home after our appointment with the psychiatrist and we're in a bit of a chaos. Things were going well with him. He believes we're multiple alters and he could witness some himself. We have a good level of communication in the system and lately we've been sharing about our inner workings so he suggested I'd do system mapping and show him.
Finally we figured out a way that would feel secure: rather than showing our current organization, showing him a timeline of our life and when and in which general circumstances alters appeared, as well as their names and ages. We did this for context so when we'd speak about someone or someone is expressing themselves he would know. So we gave him this timeline map today.
He's not specialized in DID and maybe even inexperienced, since he jumped at the map not quite knowing what to do. I mentioned being recently stuck with a little for 10 days and losing some of my skills like cooking or hairdressing my husband, and that it was difficult to switch from a little to an adult part. He began to talk about different alters and how my littles should be connecting to adult parts for us to reunite, like he thought he would figure the entire system out in 30 min? This threw us into internal chaos since outer controlling behaviour triggers us. This was mild on his part but still, he wasn't going from what is our actual experience and why but how he thought things were or should be.
So at one point, as we were dissociating and panicking at the same time, one of my protectors took over and blatantly told him that this was not the way he was going to solve this puzzle (because that's what it felt like for us, like our psychiatrist thought "how do I match these parts so they put themselves back into a whole"). I guess it took my psychiatrists aback since he realized what he was doing. So my protector told him it was making us feel heavily disorganized and that it was better we focus on who's actually present during each session and what they have to say and that the map was for him, for context. He agreed.
I felt quite dissociated afterwards and still am now, but as I'm writing this I realize we did what was right and it's probably just a hiccup and that everything will be okay, even though it feels chaotic in the moment.
My husband told me that at least my psychiatrist could see it was not a joke that we're a system and also he could witness how easily and quickly we could get distressed and dissociating.
Also it made me realize that in actuality there is a reason why my littles are not linked to most adult parts. That's because it allows adults to function without interference, otherwise it would be truly difficult.
I guess we just needed to vent to get some support since we felt really misunderstood today.