39. “I Had to Teach My Therapist What Dissociation Is.”

Reader Report – She said, “Try staying present.” I said, “Try staying educated.”

I paid $180 an hour for a woman with a license…
…to ask me why I “drift off sometimes.”

She said it with the same tone you’d use if someone zoned out during a TED Talk.
I told her I wasn’t drifting. I was splitting.
That my body stayed put, but the rest of me?
Gone.
Floated out the window. Slid beneath the couch. Curled into the air vent.
Anywhere but here.

She blinked like I was talking in riddles.
Then suggested mindfulness.

Like I hadn’t already tried grounding myself to the damn floor with every ounce of will I had.

I asked her if she knew what derealization was.
She tilted her head.

I asked if she understood how memory loss isn’t always forgetting—it’s protecting.
She changed the subject.

I asked if she’d ever treated someone with complex trauma.
She said she watched a documentary once.

I don’t need my therapist to be perfect.
I need her to not Google my symptoms in session.
I need her to know I’m not “avoiding responsibility.”
I’m avoiding my own mind because it’s where the horror lives.

She told me to describe what I feel when I dissociate.
I told her I don’t feel.
That’s the point.

Eventually, I asked if she’d ever heard of C-PTSD.
She smiled politely and said,
“Let’s focus on staying present.”

I wanted to scream,
“I’m present. You’re just not prepared.”

But I didn’t.
Because screaming requires embodiment.
And I was halfway through the ceiling tiles by then.

This system isn’t short on therapists.
It’s short on trauma fluency.
Short on curiosity.
Short on humility.

But it’s got plenty of billing codes.

I walked out mid-session.
Still dissociating.

But this time,
on purpose.