Christian Counseling
An
old friend of mine came from France to visit for a few days, and Kristin
ended up joining us for much of his visit. I realized that the Kristin who joined us
wasn't the protector alter who suffers from
borderline personality disorder. She
was much more pleasant, shy and feminine. Was this another sweet alter or was my old
Kristin back?
When I asked her after my friend from France left, she said she is just Kristin and even agreed to go to counseling, so I set up an appointment at one of the expat Christian counseling centers in town and eagerly took her there.
After an extensive intake questionnaire, we were assigned an American counselor in his thirties who said he is raising many children, including a troubled local girl whom he and his wife had adopted. A third of the way through the counseling session, the protector alter resurfaced and began to tell lies, so I interjected to point them out. The counselor spent some time trying to assess who is telling the truth. He had never before dealt with borderline personality disorder or dissociative identity disorder or spiritual warfare, and at some point got triggered, as he then spent some time pouring out his frustrations concerning his adopted daughter - the troubled local girl - who was wreaking havoc on his once peaceful family. He seemed to regret having adopted her and I felt sorry for him, as well as everyone else in his family, but we had come to receive counseling, not to provide it.
So the counseling session had its ups and downs, but it was at least a start. The counselor asked Kristin to return on her own in a week's time, scheduled the next session, and her nice alter, who by this time had resurfaced, even confirmed to me in the taxi ride back, "So I'm going back next week."
We got back to our area of the town just before she was to start teaching the children online. She asked me if I could please get her a cup of iced coffee from a local vendor, so I went and got it for her. When I returned, she was already on her laptop teaching a child, but seemed different than just a few minutes earlier. I hoped that the protector alter hadn't resurfaced.
When I met her the next day, the protector alter was fully back in charge. Instead of going to another counseling session, she said she is leaving the country. Where is she going? She said she isn't going to tell me. She had told me that she has no money, so how could she go anywhere with no money? She replied that she has enough money for the flight and will get her next paycheck on the day of her flight.
I told her that that is no way to go anywhere and that if she is going to move somewhere, that is fine, but there is no reason to move there in a hurry, so she should spend another month or two just staying put to save up a financial cushion and then make her move. And in the meantime, she should continue the counseling, which she only just started.
She said no, so I asked her for the whereabouts of the sweet alter who had been up the day before. She replied that she is Kristin and added that she is going to have her Buddhist taxi driver boyfriend drive up from the coastal town to pick her up and drive her to the capital city so that she can fly out.
Was he flying out with her. She said no. So she was leaving him too? She was silent, so I told her that she shouldn't make a poor local taxi driver drive 1,000 miles on bad roads for her to just ditch him at the airport. Instead of making him lose two days of income, spend money on three tanks of gas and put all that mileage on his taxi, and then break his heart, she should just spend $50 to fly to the capital city. But another symptom of borderline personality disorder is the inability to have empathy, and she insisted that she is going to have him come and drive her. She also may have wanted me to meet him to see if that may trigger jealousy that makes me change my mind and marry her.