Integrating Alters
The
first three days of the
intensive counseling were just the regular
dissociative identity disorder work of
integrating alters one by one. An alter was
invited to
present herself, talked to for a while, asked to express what she has
been holding in, invited to forgive her Satanist father and then to integrate. A few
did but integrating each alter
took hours. When was the counselor going to start the approach of integrating
alters in groups?
The fourth day was the same. When the fifth day was more of the same work of integrating alters one by one, I finally asked the counselor when she was going to start the approach we had discussed over the phone: integrating alters in large groups by focusing on identifying and integrating the lead alters so that all alters associated with them integrate as well?
The counselor replied that while she had learned that approach from the lady who had referred her to me, she didn't feel proficient at it and has no experience at it, so she just does the usual dissociative identity disorder work of integrating alters one by one.
A part of me wanted to confront her and ask her why then she had told me over the phone, before I flew 7,000 miles and Kristin flew 1,000 miles to come to see her, that she was well-versed in the lady's approach of identifying and integrating the lead alters so that all of the alters attached to them integrate as well?
But posing that question would have ended the counseling sessions. Since some more counseling was still better for Kristin than no more counseling, I held my tongue and continued to pay the counselor well, but knew then that we had been lied to and that the trip would fall short of its objective.
Perhaps feeling guilty for having lied to us, the counselor invited us to dinner at her place with her husband the next day. The dinner at her place was appreciated, especially as we saw why the counselor would have felt the need to get us to come and pay her for her services.
When we returned to our Airbnb after the dinner, Kristin, who had said almost nothing during dinner, exploded at me. While the counselor's husband had taken me outside to show me their chicken coop for about 20 minutes before the dinner started, the counselor apparently had shown Kristin her wedding photo album.
Why did the counselor get to be married but not her? Kristin demanded that I marry her immediately. Instead of spending the only twenty minutes that she would have alone with a struggling younger Christian woman to ask her in private how she is doing and to comfort her, why had a middle-aged woman pulled out her old wedding photos? She knew that we were engaged but did not yet have a wedding date. She also knew that Kristin had unclean spirits and alters. Was she not able to put those two facts together and understand that we couldn't marry until the demons were cast out and the alters integrate? Or did she understand that and actually tried to rub salt into Kristin's wounds? Irrespective of her motivation, I really really wished she had not shown her wedding photos to Kristin.
The first three days of the second week were more of the same dissociative identity disorder work of integrating alters one by one, but unlike the first week, Kristin seemed demoralized and emotionally out of it.
Because Kristin had demanded that we not sleep in the same room, I had paid to rent an entire house on Airbnb. On Wednesday night, she came into my room, stripped and tried to climb on top of me. When I held her off and told her to go back to her room, she cried, and then became furious, and then cried again. She said I reject her as a woman.
She had stripped before to try to get me to sleep with her, but had never actually tried to climb on top of me like this. This was the fruit on her of spending a semester at that Baptist college?
The next day, I told the counselor that since we only had two days left, we would like her to shift her focus to help us with our relationship. In the midst of the ensuing conversation, she told Kristin, "You can't try to just rape him," to which neither Kristin nor I replied.
After the session, however, Kristin again became angry and reproached me for not defending her when the counselor accused her of trying to rape me. I told her that her comment had surprised me too but for a different reason. She had no idea that Kristin had stripped and tried to climb on top of me the night before, so it may have been the Lord rebuking her through the counselor. That made Kristin just cry more.
After lunch the next day, the last day of counseling, I invited the counselor and Kristin to have a private chat. Perhaps there are things that they can discuss woman to woman, away from a man. I didn't say but also hoped that they would clear up any negative sentiments and establish a bond so that Kristin has the option of calling her in the future if the need arises. I excused myself, stepped outside, and was surprised a few minutes later when Kristin came out, smiling and said, "She said it's over." The counselor followed after her and looked upset.
After I left them on their own, when the counselor began speaking to Kristin, Kristin had pulled out her Bible, opened it and started to read it by herself. When the counselor asked her what she was doing, Kristin had replied that she is reading her Bible. When the counselor told her that it is disrespectful to suddenly do that when someone is speaking to her, Kristin had asked her if she was saying that reading her Bible is disrespectful, at which point the counselor became exasperated and declared, "This session is over," which in turn gave Kristin the green light to leave the room and tell me that the counselor had ended the session.
Kristin then walked toward a mural that covered the building across the street, so I calmed the counselor down. As we both looked at Kristin across the street, I shared with her my concern that Kristin seems to be deteriorating as the alters integrate, not improve as I have read people claim. The counselor replied, "Alters have integrated during your visit, so I've done my job."
I was concerned about the effect that integrating alters was having on Kristin's well-being. For the counselor, integrating alters sounded like the means to justify her income.