Yesterday my therapist told me she'd like to start seeing me three times a week.
Now, I understand that I am doing poorly and could use intensive therapy, and I understand that I should take advantage of the time that I will be forced to have by taking a medical leave from school, but how does she think three sessions will work? I can't even afford one session a week, and manage to see her twice a week because of some help with my mom and some help from my school insurance. Even as it is, seeing her twice a week, she is giving me, for free, about one session every other week. And was giving me one whole session a week, before we got the insurance. So even just financially, I'm supposed to suddenly be able to start paying for sessions and at the same time, pay for more of them?
Sigh. It's much more than just the financial aspect, though. It's a good excuse, but I think I'm afraid of therapy. I'm afraid of believing in it. I'm afraid of committing to therapy. I mean, I've committed to a certain degree. Because I am multiple, and because I was abused, I do think that I need some form of processing, and being suicidal and non-functional certainly seems to call for therapy. But I go to therapy because I don't know what else to do. And I act like I don't have trust issues because I have absolutely no sense of privacy. (Really, I don't. It's scary. My privacy that I exhibit is all for the benefit of the people in my life who need privacy, or for the benefit of my poor wounded self-esteem. Other than that, I could tell you everything. In fact, I do.) But I do have trust issues. How am I supposed to trust therapy enough to commit to *three fucking sessions a week* without seeing how it has helped me?
Because it has only helped me in ways that aren't really help, yet. For instance, it has raised my self-esteem, my ability to take myself seriously, my ability to be gentle with myself. But I don't have a replacement way of making myself functional. I am more gentle with myself because of therapy, and as a result I'm a wreck who can't even muster up the functionality to be a full-time student, let alone work. So the gentleness is not encouraging. If anything, it's a sign of how therapy can be bad in my life.
And yet, there's this other side, this other hand, and I wonder if three sessions a week isn't good for me, what is? It's helped other people like me. It's come to an ending before. I know that. Therapy for MPD is long term, and it's famous that it gets worse before it gets better. And working through the stupid pain, the stupid memories, the stupid ways of thinking that I still have (like that gentleness is not something I deserve, like that forcing myself and being negative towards myself is the only way to get things done), it's got to help somewhat, doesn't it?
I don't know. I only know enough for this to be a hard decision. Should I go thrice a week, or should I try to stay twice a week, or should I even go back to what I might be able to actually afford, which is once a week?
Maybe the problem is that trusting in therapy is like trusting in myself. And I just can't fucking do that.