Different parts

This week has been calm at work. I haven’t had many client conversations, but one of them has been very much on my mind. Usually I don’t think too much about my clients between sessions, but when I get worried about a client it’s hard not to. The client has dissociative identify disorder, and one of the parts is suicidal. The part is young and doesn’t trust other humans, understandably so. Life has been unsafe and unpredictable, so the part has done what everyone would do in a similar situation: keeping its guard up. I asked this part if he is familiar with the people in my clients life today, and my client told me he knows about them, but he doesn’t connect with them emotionally. My client has been in therapy for many years, and even if things are somewhat better, my client still suffers every day. Nightmares, lack of sleep, daily dissociative episodes, and at the moment, a feeling of hopelessness.

I wonder, how can I help this part to recognize that his circumstances are different now? That he has people in his life who care and would be shattered if he disappeared for good? How can we work together on ways to regulate the intense pain he lives with everyday, when he has no experience with coping when things gets too much?