Another week another place in my personality that needs attention . For what ever reason 'attaching to my therapist' has become a big deal. I think I've been keeping my desire to attach to her pushed under water for months, but in the last few weeks the need, the desire to feel something emotional about her has escaped from the depths and floated audaciously to the surface.
After 12 years of therapy with someone who I readily,desperately attached to and who ultimately left me through dying (a selfish spin on that fact I know but I'm talking about young parts of me here who only see it that way) I have been trying just as desperately to make no attachment at all to my current therapist. It has worked a bit. She's easy to get along with, very reliable, consistent and nonthreatening and not prone to push me into intimacy I can't cope with. All very helpful until 2 weeks ago when this need the size and consistency of a beach ball refused to remain pushed under water any longer and came flying out. It all started when we began talking about shame and i talked about repressed feelings that I had. There's a link I know between shame and my desire to need other people.
But with her it's as though i would only be happy if I was her only client, if I consumed her thoughts, if she found me the most interesting, the most intelligent, the most wonderful survivor she's ever come across. Arrgggh!! It makes me so angry that I feel like that. it's so stupid!! I have spent so much energy on pretending I don't feel those things, trying to hide them from her that actually the connection we have feels to me like we are no more connected than two pieces of paper laid on top of each other. One blast of air and they would separate and fall away. I don't feel safe, I don't feel held even though I'm sure she would like to offer those experiences to me - metaphorically of course. She once told me she wouldn't touch me and even that feels like a betrayal at the moment. Which leads me right back to angry again. When she said it I felt safe, now I feel betrayed by it? Why???
I hate this!! I hate this part of me that wants others to break the rules for me. A part of me that only believes she is worth something if she's treated as 'special'. It disgusts me because I know exactly where it comes from.
fucking hell - this all hurts.
Monday 30 July 2012
Friday 20 July 2012
Apparently Normal Personality (ANP) and Emotional Personality (EP)
I've been reading up on this theory by Nijenhuis over the last few weeks and find it quite fascinating. I expect there are lots of people out there that know more than me about it but for some reason reading about this theory - which as far as I can see is something that can be applied to people who suffer with all forms of dissociation from simple PTSD, through to complex PTSD, DDNOS and DID - has helped to move me forwards. It's another way of looking at things and I've found it helpful.
The main thrust of the theory appears to be (and this explanation is for the more complex conditions such as DID) that what I would refer to as the host personality is the Apparently Normal Personality (ANP) the part that is concerned withs survival particularly in relation to the external world. They suggest that someone can have a number of ANP's rather than just one and this is the part that feels very relevant to me. I do feel as though the face I show to the world and the person I am in relationships at work and with friends can be more than just my 'host' personality. I can be vastly different when reacting to others. Sometimes this feels like an integrated whole but not always. Sometimes it feels as though I am just adjusting to the people I am with and hiding what this theory would call Emotional Personalities (EP's). EP's are parts of the personality responsible for responding to threat and trauma and develop in relation to experiences. Usually the EP is hidden, not the face shown to the outer world, and might be based on a fight, flight, submit or appease instinct - whatever was the best form of self protection at the time of the trauma when the EP was formed. The ANP's are often phobic of the EP's and this resonates deeply for me. Having recently read 'Stranger in the Mirror' I was shocked to see how prevalent depersonalisation was and still is in my life. Life has got better for me generally - far less chaotic and emotionally volatile but one consequence of this is that my ability to dissociate has in some ways become stronger - as though I can hold myself above emotion for longer without it puncturing through. This theory has helped me to make sense of the place I find myself in now which is one where I don't willingly access painful emotions or memories.
One of the reasons I find this theory interesting is that I grew up in a very repressive household, so my experience of DID was almost entirely internal because I had to present an 'Apparantly Normal Personality' to the world in particular my parents who were very controlling and invasive which meant I had almost no 'emotional space' in which to express other parts of my personality. All my reactions to the abuse I was experiencing was hidden away from prying eyes (in case of mother) and threatening eyes (in case of step father). Although I believe my DID formed when I was about 4 through 7in many respects it was hidden until I reached my 20's and I extracted myself from my mothers' control. I've found that hard to accept over the years. I've also often wondered why I've been able to function better in the external world some of the time than at other times. ANP's for me have kept me afloat and have kept me living a fairly normal life. It's come at the expense of the EP's living underground so to speak. As they've surfaced my ANP's have had less of my life in their possession and to the external world I've seemed less well, less together and I've felt deep shame about that.
The theory talks about structural, parallel and tertiary dissociation - something I haven't fully grasped yet but I will keep working on it! But so far I understand that structural dissociation refers to having only two states - the ANP and one EP.
Parallel dissociation is when an ANP and an EP is present at the same time. I know I've often described my DID like being in a car and someone else joining me in the passenger seat. In that scenario I guess I would be the ANP and the passenger would be the EP. Both senses of self are existing at the same time. Again this resonates deeply with me as I can be aware that I am speaking and saying something that is perfectly true to some part of me but some other part is feeling vastly different. I can be aware of both parts at once.
Tertiary dissociation seems to be when there are multiple ANP's and multiple EP's which is probably a good description of DID.
This is all very theoretical but the reason it interests me is that I know my PTSD symptoms are very strong - phobias, avoidance, numbing etc are real issues in my life. I can also flit wildly between a desire to fight and a desire to flee. At other times I suspend myself with long periods spent alone, reading, watching TV that I've seen before, doing anything that is a repetitive task. I'm avoiding interacting with the world. I find it hard to pull out of these behaviours and only recently have seen them as a kind of freezing. Now I can think of them as an EP - a part of my personality that reacts by freezing to protect myself. Somehow that helps me, makes me ask what the threat is? I find freezing to be quite a soul destroying way of living. I want to be fighting and recognising the freezing as an EP helps me to challenge it, to help it and to move forward a little bit. I think it's interesting that different EP's have different systems of responding to stress. I don't know about you but I definitely have parts of me that fight constantly against every little thing - especially with those I'm closest too, but I also have the freezing self and I also have a number of alters that are very submissive and compliant. This seems weird - to have so many different responses - but the theory is suggesting that the EP is developed depending on what was the most sensible response at the time of the trauma. I know that some abuse I suffered demanding compliance /submission and even freezing was unacceptable at those times. I was required to be present, relaxed in my body (like a rag doll) and entirely submitted to the abusers. At others times freezing helped me, as did fleeing through dissociation. All responses and body states that still exist in me.
I guess this theory is a bit clinical - it talks about body states, systems etc and doesn't focus so much on the personalities of the EP's or different alters. I can't completely accept that - I know that alters have personalities and distinct characteristics that are more than just responses to trauma but what I do believe is that - at least in my system - the different characteristics are not the reason those alters developed. Trauma is the reason they developed, trauma is what is central to my alters. I find it helpful to think about my identity in this framework. I don't want to lose long periods of my life because I am triggered to avoid interacting with the world because of experiences I had 35 years ago. I want to be present and in my own life, not in suspended animation. In a rational sense I know the dangers of my childhood are not pressing in on me at every turn and yet my body and my reaction to my environment is still acting as though the abusers are just outside the door, or embodied in work colleagues, or lurking in a lift or in someone I pass on the street. My 'EP's' are still feeling this pain and my 'ANP's' are still trying to fit into a world where they are conditioned to please and accommodate others with little reference to their own needs which are all dissociated into the EP's.
Horrible, clinical language? well yes frankly it is but worth considering? Yes I think so.
This theory links DID and PTSD in a way that makes sense to me right now. I'm not sure it would always have appealed to me as a way of understanding myself but I don't believe one theory has all the answers. Different things help at different times and this has definately got my attention at the moment.
The main thrust of the theory appears to be (and this explanation is for the more complex conditions such as DID) that what I would refer to as the host personality is the Apparently Normal Personality (ANP) the part that is concerned withs survival particularly in relation to the external world. They suggest that someone can have a number of ANP's rather than just one and this is the part that feels very relevant to me. I do feel as though the face I show to the world and the person I am in relationships at work and with friends can be more than just my 'host' personality. I can be vastly different when reacting to others. Sometimes this feels like an integrated whole but not always. Sometimes it feels as though I am just adjusting to the people I am with and hiding what this theory would call Emotional Personalities (EP's). EP's are parts of the personality responsible for responding to threat and trauma and develop in relation to experiences. Usually the EP is hidden, not the face shown to the outer world, and might be based on a fight, flight, submit or appease instinct - whatever was the best form of self protection at the time of the trauma when the EP was formed. The ANP's are often phobic of the EP's and this resonates deeply for me. Having recently read 'Stranger in the Mirror' I was shocked to see how prevalent depersonalisation was and still is in my life. Life has got better for me generally - far less chaotic and emotionally volatile but one consequence of this is that my ability to dissociate has in some ways become stronger - as though I can hold myself above emotion for longer without it puncturing through. This theory has helped me to make sense of the place I find myself in now which is one where I don't willingly access painful emotions or memories.
One of the reasons I find this theory interesting is that I grew up in a very repressive household, so my experience of DID was almost entirely internal because I had to present an 'Apparantly Normal Personality' to the world in particular my parents who were very controlling and invasive which meant I had almost no 'emotional space' in which to express other parts of my personality. All my reactions to the abuse I was experiencing was hidden away from prying eyes (in case of mother) and threatening eyes (in case of step father). Although I believe my DID formed when I was about 4 through 7in many respects it was hidden until I reached my 20's and I extracted myself from my mothers' control. I've found that hard to accept over the years. I've also often wondered why I've been able to function better in the external world some of the time than at other times. ANP's for me have kept me afloat and have kept me living a fairly normal life. It's come at the expense of the EP's living underground so to speak. As they've surfaced my ANP's have had less of my life in their possession and to the external world I've seemed less well, less together and I've felt deep shame about that.
The theory talks about structural, parallel and tertiary dissociation - something I haven't fully grasped yet but I will keep working on it! But so far I understand that structural dissociation refers to having only two states - the ANP and one EP.
Parallel dissociation is when an ANP and an EP is present at the same time. I know I've often described my DID like being in a car and someone else joining me in the passenger seat. In that scenario I guess I would be the ANP and the passenger would be the EP. Both senses of self are existing at the same time. Again this resonates deeply with me as I can be aware that I am speaking and saying something that is perfectly true to some part of me but some other part is feeling vastly different. I can be aware of both parts at once.
Tertiary dissociation seems to be when there are multiple ANP's and multiple EP's which is probably a good description of DID.
This is all very theoretical but the reason it interests me is that I know my PTSD symptoms are very strong - phobias, avoidance, numbing etc are real issues in my life. I can also flit wildly between a desire to fight and a desire to flee. At other times I suspend myself with long periods spent alone, reading, watching TV that I've seen before, doing anything that is a repetitive task. I'm avoiding interacting with the world. I find it hard to pull out of these behaviours and only recently have seen them as a kind of freezing. Now I can think of them as an EP - a part of my personality that reacts by freezing to protect myself. Somehow that helps me, makes me ask what the threat is? I find freezing to be quite a soul destroying way of living. I want to be fighting and recognising the freezing as an EP helps me to challenge it, to help it and to move forward a little bit. I think it's interesting that different EP's have different systems of responding to stress. I don't know about you but I definitely have parts of me that fight constantly against every little thing - especially with those I'm closest too, but I also have the freezing self and I also have a number of alters that are very submissive and compliant. This seems weird - to have so many different responses - but the theory is suggesting that the EP is developed depending on what was the most sensible response at the time of the trauma. I know that some abuse I suffered demanding compliance /submission and even freezing was unacceptable at those times. I was required to be present, relaxed in my body (like a rag doll) and entirely submitted to the abusers. At others times freezing helped me, as did fleeing through dissociation. All responses and body states that still exist in me.
I guess this theory is a bit clinical - it talks about body states, systems etc and doesn't focus so much on the personalities of the EP's or different alters. I can't completely accept that - I know that alters have personalities and distinct characteristics that are more than just responses to trauma but what I do believe is that - at least in my system - the different characteristics are not the reason those alters developed. Trauma is the reason they developed, trauma is what is central to my alters. I find it helpful to think about my identity in this framework. I don't want to lose long periods of my life because I am triggered to avoid interacting with the world because of experiences I had 35 years ago. I want to be present and in my own life, not in suspended animation. In a rational sense I know the dangers of my childhood are not pressing in on me at every turn and yet my body and my reaction to my environment is still acting as though the abusers are just outside the door, or embodied in work colleagues, or lurking in a lift or in someone I pass on the street. My 'EP's' are still feeling this pain and my 'ANP's' are still trying to fit into a world where they are conditioned to please and accommodate others with little reference to their own needs which are all dissociated into the EP's.
Horrible, clinical language? well yes frankly it is but worth considering? Yes I think so.
This theory links DID and PTSD in a way that makes sense to me right now. I'm not sure it would always have appealed to me as a way of understanding myself but I don't believe one theory has all the answers. Different things help at different times and this has definately got my attention at the moment.
Monday 16 July 2012
dealing with criticism
I don't know how other people cope but something I have found almost impossible to cope with through my life is criticism. Even if it's delivered in a whisper I experience a foghorn and all the associated fear and dread that something as loud as a foghorn would bring. I literally tremble whilst feeling a white hot shame and begin to run through the circumstances that led to the criticism in minute detail, searching for a way out, a way for what they have said to me not to be true. It's as though someone else's bad opinion of me only confirms what I already know - that I am bad.
Yet I watch as my partner (who has her own problems with criticism) flies at anyone who criticises her, or reminds her in any way of a childhood that was filled with a sneering, jeering father and I'm jealous. She seems further evolved in dealing with it than I am. I don't particularly think her ways are ideal but at least she mounts a defence, an attack against the attacker. Her fight instinct kicks in.
I on the other hand have always submitted. If I was a castle under siege my drawbridge would be down and any old bugger let inside to castigate me to their hearts content whilst I make excuses for them or worse join in with them. It doesn't matter how much I deplore them; how little I respect them their criticism still cuts sharp enough to make me bleed. Sometimes quite literally as a part called CC surfaces to self harm.
I've had some difficulties at work lately with a colleague who feels 'dangerous' to me. I think she is jealous of the redeployment process I have been through - although why the hell anyone is jealous of me nearly loosing my job; being without any pay for 3 months due to extended sick leave and a new job with half the hours and half the pay remains impossible for me to understand- but there you have it. Her dissatisfaction with my position has led to her questioning me when ever she can about really quite personal things and going directly against any decisions or new processes I implement which are necessary in my new role. I know (from other people) that this also leads to her criticising me in meetings when I'm not there and unable to defend myself and I just generally feel anxious when I think about her - as I do about anyone who harbours hostility towards me.
Lately I've felt some changes inside me. More measured responses to situations that would usually have me spinning and it's fair to say that this work situ whilst sill affecting me isn't bothering me as much as it might once have. Internally I'm not beating myself up and agreeing with her. It's as though I can access enough of my history, can remember how bad it felt to have to admit I could no longer cope with my job as it was because of PTSD and DID and how terrifying it was to ask for help from my bosses.
Being able to remember my history is a big step forward. Amnesia has always been an issue in my life. I'm always co conscious, but can forget long passages of my past and particularly feelings that I've had. I can find it impossible to remember what I felt say 1 month ago even though at the time it was intense and consuming. The memory of the feelings is literally missing. A wall goes up and I can't get past it. People talk about alters having amnesic barriers and I relate to that idea. I can remember sometimes that something happened but the emotion is completely absent where as at another time is consumes me like a bush fire and for me this is one aspect of what it is like to have different alters present.
A good example of this was talking to my partner recently about my father. Earlier posts (hurricane reality) describe some of what has happened with my father and there are times when I'm swamped with hurt and rage about him. But as my partner talked about him her rage was immediately accessible, she was so angry with him and I sat there just listening to something that seemed to have nothing whatsoever to do with me.
I think this ability to dissociate from alters or sometimes just emotions is part of why I can't defend myself against criticism very well. With this incident at work it has taken me approximately 5 days to really feel my rage at the injustice of this colleague being jealous of me. The problem with a 5 day delay in feeling something is that if faced with direct confrontation it takes too long for me to find someone inside who can deal with it well. My first stance is to roll over and play dead and then try to forget it ever happened. This time I didn't exactly roll over and play dead, nor did I fight against her but I did manage to keep my drawbridge up and defend myself - not to her as there has been no direct confrontation - but within myself which at the end of the day is probably the most important thing.
It's taken me 3 days to write this - trying to capture how it is I actually feel but this is the best I can do for now.
Safe thoughts to anyone who is reading. Be great to hear from any of you.
Yet I watch as my partner (who has her own problems with criticism) flies at anyone who criticises her, or reminds her in any way of a childhood that was filled with a sneering, jeering father and I'm jealous. She seems further evolved in dealing with it than I am. I don't particularly think her ways are ideal but at least she mounts a defence, an attack against the attacker. Her fight instinct kicks in.
I on the other hand have always submitted. If I was a castle under siege my drawbridge would be down and any old bugger let inside to castigate me to their hearts content whilst I make excuses for them or worse join in with them. It doesn't matter how much I deplore them; how little I respect them their criticism still cuts sharp enough to make me bleed. Sometimes quite literally as a part called CC surfaces to self harm.
I've had some difficulties at work lately with a colleague who feels 'dangerous' to me. I think she is jealous of the redeployment process I have been through - although why the hell anyone is jealous of me nearly loosing my job; being without any pay for 3 months due to extended sick leave and a new job with half the hours and half the pay remains impossible for me to understand- but there you have it. Her dissatisfaction with my position has led to her questioning me when ever she can about really quite personal things and going directly against any decisions or new processes I implement which are necessary in my new role. I know (from other people) that this also leads to her criticising me in meetings when I'm not there and unable to defend myself and I just generally feel anxious when I think about her - as I do about anyone who harbours hostility towards me.
Lately I've felt some changes inside me. More measured responses to situations that would usually have me spinning and it's fair to say that this work situ whilst sill affecting me isn't bothering me as much as it might once have. Internally I'm not beating myself up and agreeing with her. It's as though I can access enough of my history, can remember how bad it felt to have to admit I could no longer cope with my job as it was because of PTSD and DID and how terrifying it was to ask for help from my bosses.
Being able to remember my history is a big step forward. Amnesia has always been an issue in my life. I'm always co conscious, but can forget long passages of my past and particularly feelings that I've had. I can find it impossible to remember what I felt say 1 month ago even though at the time it was intense and consuming. The memory of the feelings is literally missing. A wall goes up and I can't get past it. People talk about alters having amnesic barriers and I relate to that idea. I can remember sometimes that something happened but the emotion is completely absent where as at another time is consumes me like a bush fire and for me this is one aspect of what it is like to have different alters present.
A good example of this was talking to my partner recently about my father. Earlier posts (hurricane reality) describe some of what has happened with my father and there are times when I'm swamped with hurt and rage about him. But as my partner talked about him her rage was immediately accessible, she was so angry with him and I sat there just listening to something that seemed to have nothing whatsoever to do with me.
I think this ability to dissociate from alters or sometimes just emotions is part of why I can't defend myself against criticism very well. With this incident at work it has taken me approximately 5 days to really feel my rage at the injustice of this colleague being jealous of me. The problem with a 5 day delay in feeling something is that if faced with direct confrontation it takes too long for me to find someone inside who can deal with it well. My first stance is to roll over and play dead and then try to forget it ever happened. This time I didn't exactly roll over and play dead, nor did I fight against her but I did manage to keep my drawbridge up and defend myself - not to her as there has been no direct confrontation - but within myself which at the end of the day is probably the most important thing.
It's taken me 3 days to write this - trying to capture how it is I actually feel but this is the best I can do for now.
Safe thoughts to anyone who is reading. Be great to hear from any of you.
Wednesday 11 July 2012
Integration. A dirty word?
I’ve been struggling with this subject for months now. Maybe it’s part of why I’ve been quiet on her lately. I feel caught between the security and comfort of recognising I have DID and the chilly internal acknowledgement that years of therapy are leading me slowly towards a more 'integrated' self.
On one hand it makes me feel happy – I’ve been in therapy for 17 years now. 12 years with a therapist who didn’t fully recognise my DID although still helped me enormously, followed by 2 years of trying to survive alone, followed by 3 years of therapy with someone who has consistently affirmed my DID and worked with many of my different alters who had been badly neglected. Never, in those 3 years has she pressed the idea of integration onto me. She made it clear from the beginning that she wasn’t interested in changing the structure of my identity and I appreciated the chance to go at my own pace.
What has happened seems somewhat remarkable to me. Quietly and without anything being said certain alters who have needed and appreciated acknowledgement validation have moved closer and closer to my host personality. They haven’t disappeared but the gaps – by which I mean amnesia and oceans of emotional pain and conflict between me and them - have closed. Their experiences are fully in my consciousness. The way I live gives (mostly) full reference to their needs and experiences and they are not separate in the way that they once were. I have moved from a state of ‘co-cosciousness’ to something more like ‘co-habiting’. Not only are we conscious of each other but we share a life, a space. There’s arguments, struggles sometimes but mostly we are simply one. I notice it most by the absence of internal dialogue. We are sharing our consciousness.
The downside of this is that I feel dislocated from the DID community. Unable on the whole to share this part of my story, my existence for fear of upsetting others who are quite legitimately fighting to be acknowledged as having alters. I don't want to cause extra pain to anybody but I find it hard to say ' this is what's going on for me' though I long for affirmation too. I can relate no better to others who don’t have DID now than i could before. My history is still wildly different to theirs and on the whole I would still identify with having DID. It is part of my identity and one of the most affecting and fundamental part of me (or my selves). I can only quantify that by saying I feel less DID than I did. Less fragmented, less in crisis whilst diametrically opposed alters fight for space. Less dislocated and more on an even keel. More stitched together than separate. I'm journeying through it and the space I'm in now is different to the place i was in 3 years ago.
There are still alters – I don’t mean to paint a sugary picture of niceness. I have alters that are in pain and that hold memories I find hard to bear, alters that are obsessive and afraid to death of dirt and disorder, alters who are rammed full of rage. It would be disingenuous to say that is not the case but for 17 years I've been striving to move forward - not always that sure of where I was going but knowing that once I got there I'd recognise it. Finally it's happening. Life is a little bit easier, switches occur a lot less often, I'm less afraid of the world, less likely to hurt myself, more able to plan and less tormented with nightmares. How can I help but be happy about that?
But I’m sad that I can’t easily share it with those who I feel are my community, who I will no doubt need many times in the future and who I want to be there for too.
Wednesday 23 May 2012
Is anybody there?
Is anybody there? I don't know if I'm asking that question to the outside world or to my internal world. I've entered one of my 'vacant' phases; where I'm watching everything from behind a glass wall.
Reaching out to others feels unreal as though it's something I used to do but don't do anymore.
I dreamed last night of 'losing time'. It's not something that happens much with me but in the dream I lost about 15 minutes of time and couldn't recall what I had done. It had consequences that affected a lot of people and I had to put up with their judgement of my behaviour and I could find no way of defending myself that made sense.
Maybe it's significant. Right now I am fighting to keep control, to hold on to my co-consciousness but I feel stretched and ready to snap. What's happening at one end of my personality is not the same as what is happening on the surface.
I don't know if I'm making sense or not. Feel like I am babbling - but maybe that's better than being silence.
To update on the last post: I didn't get an interview for the job which was really disappointing. I think I've got over it quite well though (helped greatly by a week off work!) and feel pleased that I asserted myself. Criticism is still so difficult for me to cope with but maybe there are little, small changes on that front.
Anyway that's it for now. Just relieved I've managed to speak!!
Reaching out to others feels unreal as though it's something I used to do but don't do anymore.
I dreamed last night of 'losing time'. It's not something that happens much with me but in the dream I lost about 15 minutes of time and couldn't recall what I had done. It had consequences that affected a lot of people and I had to put up with their judgement of my behaviour and I could find no way of defending myself that made sense.
Maybe it's significant. Right now I am fighting to keep control, to hold on to my co-consciousness but I feel stretched and ready to snap. What's happening at one end of my personality is not the same as what is happening on the surface.
I don't know if I'm making sense or not. Feel like I am babbling - but maybe that's better than being silence.
To update on the last post: I didn't get an interview for the job which was really disappointing. I think I've got over it quite well though (helped greatly by a week off work!) and feel pleased that I asserted myself. Criticism is still so difficult for me to cope with but maybe there are little, small changes on that front.
Anyway that's it for now. Just relieved I've managed to speak!!
Wednesday 16 May 2012
Work & DID
I'm locked inside my silent prison again. Comments and events experienced in the last fortnight are swirling around me like dead leaves in a gale until they turn into tiny knives that cut through freshly healed scars.
I had just begun to feel okay about work again, after going back after sick leave to diminished hours and (I think) responsibilities. I'd found some peace , but then a job opportunity raises it's head; a promotion, a chance to show them that I'm capable of more than the 'diminished role' I currently have. Only my manager immediately says I'm not suitable.
She's wrong. I know she's wrong because she hasn't taken the time to know my full work history, instead has looked at my time with the company and come to her conclusions. At first I slinked back to my place, tail between my legs, chastened and embarrassed. I was going to let it go by but then I changed my mind. They had asked someone else to apply for it -someone I know has less experience than me - and that gave me the courage to fight back to put myself on the table. And it worked! She listened and put me forward to be shortlisted.
Now I'm waiting to see if they will interview me, give me a chance and the discussions, the events of the last fortnight are swirling with ever increasing force inside me cutting me down to size, reminding me that the world is no friend of people with DID, so why would this job opportunity come my way. Sometimes i think I'm paranoid, assuming everyone is against me, but just as often I have alters to the fore that have an inflated view of our abilities and expect everyone to agree that I am very capable and skilled. The abilities exist sure enough but so do the other alters, the ones that go into melt down because my IBS is so bad and it triggers memories they'd rather forget. That's the other half of my fortnight, a week of pain and fear because my body is failing to cope with the emotional stress of therapy and raking through the past. Can those alters cope with a more demanding job? More hours? More pressure? And how the hell do i make the decision???
I don't know. But I do know that I want that job. I'm laying my heart on the line. Is this what 'normal' life is like? Sometimes i seem to feel so much less than other people but at other times I feel so much more. It's exhausting.
I should find out on Friday if I have an interview and I don't know how I'm going to stand it if i don't - so fingers and toes are crossed, everything is crossed!
I had just begun to feel okay about work again, after going back after sick leave to diminished hours and (I think) responsibilities. I'd found some peace , but then a job opportunity raises it's head; a promotion, a chance to show them that I'm capable of more than the 'diminished role' I currently have. Only my manager immediately says I'm not suitable.
She's wrong. I know she's wrong because she hasn't taken the time to know my full work history, instead has looked at my time with the company and come to her conclusions. At first I slinked back to my place, tail between my legs, chastened and embarrassed. I was going to let it go by but then I changed my mind. They had asked someone else to apply for it -someone I know has less experience than me - and that gave me the courage to fight back to put myself on the table. And it worked! She listened and put me forward to be shortlisted.
Now I'm waiting to see if they will interview me, give me a chance and the discussions, the events of the last fortnight are swirling with ever increasing force inside me cutting me down to size, reminding me that the world is no friend of people with DID, so why would this job opportunity come my way. Sometimes i think I'm paranoid, assuming everyone is against me, but just as often I have alters to the fore that have an inflated view of our abilities and expect everyone to agree that I am very capable and skilled. The abilities exist sure enough but so do the other alters, the ones that go into melt down because my IBS is so bad and it triggers memories they'd rather forget. That's the other half of my fortnight, a week of pain and fear because my body is failing to cope with the emotional stress of therapy and raking through the past. Can those alters cope with a more demanding job? More hours? More pressure? And how the hell do i make the decision???
I don't know. But I do know that I want that job. I'm laying my heart on the line. Is this what 'normal' life is like? Sometimes i seem to feel so much less than other people but at other times I feel so much more. It's exhausting.
I should find out on Friday if I have an interview and I don't know how I'm going to stand it if i don't - so fingers and toes are crossed, everything is crossed!
Thursday 3 May 2012
Depersonalisation
I keep so silent behind this wall. Hoping it will all go away, that risks won’t be necessary again as they were in my 20’s. Feeling so wise and mature as I head for 40 – in control of the past and how I let it touch me. I graze the truths that make up my reality from time to time, let the power and stench of those memories subsume me. My girls of 6 and 7 ride in to my body with horror on their backs and they nail their experiences into my psyche. And then I take my ability for dissociation and I douse them away, flush them back to the dungeons until weeks pass and I feel so ‘unreal’, so ghost like that I welcome them back again to remind me I am alive.
Two extremes, one oscillation between them and I have myself a life that is dull and lifeless but spiked occasionally with horror – the flashing images of giant spiders dangled above me to make me perform sexual acts, the flash of young flesh belonging to my brother, hovering above me. This is my reality. I feel Nothing, absolutely. Nothing at all for these events. Maybe the echo of fear for the spiders but nothing about my brother. Absolutely nothing.
I need my life back. I know it’s going to hurt but I need to be in it to heal it. I’m a spectator behind smoky glass. I sit in dark rooms and numb everything just in case something bad jumps out to swamp me and destroy the fragile hold I have on my own collection of events and functions that make up my life. I fear that not only the bad painful stuff is trapped but the good things – childish freedoms and playfulness, impulsiveness, the ability to inhabit a moment without thought for the future. Something is wrong because I can’t find those things. IsaBell has been so marvellous, trudging with a relentless determination through the destruction of my childhood and adolescent. she stands resolute hands over ears telling me that ‘it didn’t happen to me. I can cope, this didn’t happen to me, it’s not happening to me.’ She saved us from crumbling away into self destruction and rage. You are amazing.
But there was a price . All the natural stuff that should have been ours was locked away too. Child parts need to be let out without being censored at all time. They want to be free to make a mess, a mistake, an embarrassing gaffe. To cry when they hurt, laugh when they are happy, play when they are bored, be creative when they are inspired and affectionate when they feel warmth. They have many and varied impulses. Not all of them will feel good. Experience, feelings, emotion have been the enemy.
Hold it all in, resist the instinct to lean and give into emotions, to reach out to the mother for comfort or help. IsaBell almost always stopped us from going for help and she was right to do that. 'Mother' didn’t help us – she hurt us, damaged us and made things worse. She demanded the wrong things-attunement to her needs (not ours), scaffolding for her life not scaffolding for ours, anger on her behalf, not for us, comfort for her needs, not ours. Safety for herself not for me. She demanded our affection, our creativity, our love when she needed it, when she needed to feel she was a good mother. We were a performer and and to do it we kept our emotions hidden, our temper tamed, our passions drowned, our interests never even developed to be hidden, they just were absent.
And to cope with the lack of 'mother' an alter developed and looked after us. It's taken me a long time to accept this alter, to see her, to not just look past her but she is here and I do see her and I do accept her. I want to help her to become a free child, not one fettered with responsibility.
Saturday 7 April 2012
Everything ends
It's been ages since I've written on here and the fact that I'm here now validates a decision I've had to make this week.
Last October I started a Creative Writing course with the OU. This weekend I decided it was time for me to stop - even though the course hasn't finished yet. I was doing the course for leisure - not towards a qualification- and whilst I've really enjoyed working through the workbook and learning all sorts of great new things the assignments that have to be regularly submitted are absolutely torturous.
I've done well enough on it (not as well as many of my alters would like of course) but if I continued with the last 3 assignments I'd probably come out with a good grade but for reasons that are all about DID I have finally decided to stop. The parts of me that want to do the course are not present enough of the time for me to keep up. I've fallen further and further behind because I just can't make myself write when some alters are around.
The other problem is the subject matter. The constant back and forth about whether I write about my own life (which is really want I want to do) or whether - to ensure I don't feel overly exposed - I write about something that I feel nothing about. I haven't been able to do this seeing it as a compromise of my selves but to be authentic is to write about subjects that don't easily cope with a random man, who knows nothing about me, commenting and criticising on what I write. I know criticism is the way to learn and all that, but really that is just blah, blah, blah to me. Cricitism destroys me. I feel like a hand grenade is going off inside me and I decimate. I want to sob or scream or both when I'm criticised, or at least I do once I've stopped being frozen in terror (as you can see I cope really well with it!!)
It's taken 4 weeks to decide to stop - which is progress. I didn't rush at it and just duck out whilst the pressure was at it's greatest. I did the last assignment amidst much crying, therapy and general misery but the thought of going through it 3 further times has finally defeated me. Writing that last assignment was liking climbing through treacle, every word I wrote was forced out and I've stopped understanding why I am doing it.
I haven't told them yet. I'm really looking forward to that! Maybe nobody will be bothered but I'm sure it will be like when i have gone sick at work in the past and not been able to return to certain jobs. 'But why are can't you come back?' they say 'you're so good at what you do!' The irony is I am good at things but that's the point of DID isn't it? It separates the personality into strands - some of which can be almost pure in their abilities and focus. I have done jobs that I have been exceptional at doing ( that sounds really big headed but i don't mean it to). I feel like a cardboard cutout that is full of life and colour at the front but if you view it from another angle there's no substance, no colour and nothing keeping it up. I can be exceptional at any number of things but the range includes things that other value, like work, getting along with others etc, but it also includes an exceptional ability to be frightened or depressed or angry. I am these things too and they are not so acceptable in the wider world.
I feel sometimes like I am all the ingredients of a cake lined up in little bowls waiting to be blended together. Each bowl holds something necessary, something complete in it's own right and often something that others value but to live like the majority of others, to be able to sustain life I need blend everything together, let feelings in to join the 'ability'.
I love writing. I've realised that it's one of my closest friends. It talks back to me, is a world I can escape into and yes, sometimes i want other people in there with me, I want to share something of what goes on in my head but I don't think I can ever hold it up on a regular basis for others to critique again. Not yet anyway.
So the upshot is that i am looking forward to writing more on here and finding other venues for my musings. But this course will have to join the pile of other 'unfinished projects' in my life that have not been completed because I find it so hard to manage the needs of multiple selves all at once.
And I need to learn to accept it.
Last October I started a Creative Writing course with the OU. This weekend I decided it was time for me to stop - even though the course hasn't finished yet. I was doing the course for leisure - not towards a qualification- and whilst I've really enjoyed working through the workbook and learning all sorts of great new things the assignments that have to be regularly submitted are absolutely torturous.
I've done well enough on it (not as well as many of my alters would like of course) but if I continued with the last 3 assignments I'd probably come out with a good grade but for reasons that are all about DID I have finally decided to stop. The parts of me that want to do the course are not present enough of the time for me to keep up. I've fallen further and further behind because I just can't make myself write when some alters are around.
The other problem is the subject matter. The constant back and forth about whether I write about my own life (which is really want I want to do) or whether - to ensure I don't feel overly exposed - I write about something that I feel nothing about. I haven't been able to do this seeing it as a compromise of my selves but to be authentic is to write about subjects that don't easily cope with a random man, who knows nothing about me, commenting and criticising on what I write. I know criticism is the way to learn and all that, but really that is just blah, blah, blah to me. Cricitism destroys me. I feel like a hand grenade is going off inside me and I decimate. I want to sob or scream or both when I'm criticised, or at least I do once I've stopped being frozen in terror (as you can see I cope really well with it!!)
It's taken 4 weeks to decide to stop - which is progress. I didn't rush at it and just duck out whilst the pressure was at it's greatest. I did the last assignment amidst much crying, therapy and general misery but the thought of going through it 3 further times has finally defeated me. Writing that last assignment was liking climbing through treacle, every word I wrote was forced out and I've stopped understanding why I am doing it.
I haven't told them yet. I'm really looking forward to that! Maybe nobody will be bothered but I'm sure it will be like when i have gone sick at work in the past and not been able to return to certain jobs. 'But why are can't you come back?' they say 'you're so good at what you do!' The irony is I am good at things but that's the point of DID isn't it? It separates the personality into strands - some of which can be almost pure in their abilities and focus. I have done jobs that I have been exceptional at doing ( that sounds really big headed but i don't mean it to). I feel like a cardboard cutout that is full of life and colour at the front but if you view it from another angle there's no substance, no colour and nothing keeping it up. I can be exceptional at any number of things but the range includes things that other value, like work, getting along with others etc, but it also includes an exceptional ability to be frightened or depressed or angry. I am these things too and they are not so acceptable in the wider world.
I feel sometimes like I am all the ingredients of a cake lined up in little bowls waiting to be blended together. Each bowl holds something necessary, something complete in it's own right and often something that others value but to live like the majority of others, to be able to sustain life I need blend everything together, let feelings in to join the 'ability'.
I love writing. I've realised that it's one of my closest friends. It talks back to me, is a world I can escape into and yes, sometimes i want other people in there with me, I want to share something of what goes on in my head but I don't think I can ever hold it up on a regular basis for others to critique again. Not yet anyway.
So the upshot is that i am looking forward to writing more on here and finding other venues for my musings. But this course will have to join the pile of other 'unfinished projects' in my life that have not been completed because I find it so hard to manage the needs of multiple selves all at once.
And I need to learn to accept it.
Sunday 18 March 2012
IsaBell
So, I've had a pretty grim week. I've been studying with the OU now for about 6 months completing a Creative Writing Module. I was excited to begin with although realistic enough to know that I was going to find it difficult. I've previously had two attempts at a local course and managed to complete it the second time around but this is much more intense- more demanding.
I registered with enthusiasm, wanting to take my writing to another level. I knew it was homespun, instinctive and chaotic. It pours out of me most of the time and I don't stop to correct, edit or shape what I write. There are also dry periods when I have nothing to say. I shut myself away behind iron curtains and nothing gets in or out. But just before the course began my father wrote to me (see earlier post: Hurricane Reality) and my enthusiasm faltered then stalled. I wanted to hide away and lick my wounds, not complete a course that demands so much honesty, but it had been paid for and I couldn't bear my life to be curtailed any more by his actions so I pressed on.
Now, 6 months into the course I am struggling but determined to make it to the end despite all my dreams hanging from me in tatters. I am average so far and sometimes above average - but not brilliant, not by any stretch and my inability to handle criticism has led me to one of my alters - IsaBell. We are busy trying to get to know each other and to change.
I don't know if IsaBell is entirely happy about the focus she is getting, preferring to keep her defences and ways of managing separate from the rest of us - after all we've relied on her often enough and she wants to be ready for action. I've been happy in the past to throw her cheap promises and vague assurances that one day everything will be fine, that we will in some cosmic way be compensated for the shit life we've endured (which is just a way of avoiding grief actually) and that one day her strength and brilliance will be noticed by the world.
She in turn has kept her feelings secret, ploughing through difficult situations when everybody else inside has lost hope and survival is looking doubtful. IsaBell is brilliant to me, she is strong and has endured some of the most degrading moments of our life; physical abuse, sexual abuse and in teenage years, emotional abuse, when without her all sense of self would have been annihilated. I don't say that lightly or to be dramatic. She has helped us to feel as though we had a sense of agency when actually we were powerless. She became the 'best' abused child she could be, did things just the way 'they' wanted. She comforted my mother who was threatening to kill herself. IsaBell with her intelligence and quick thinking kept us and my mother safe (and alive). I want to acknowledge her here because there is so few places she can be appreciated.
Unfortunately though IsaBell functions on adrenalin, by shutting out everything emotional and functioning like a robot. This it turns out is not the road to creative brilliance! If (or when) IsaBell takes over I start to write as if floating above real life. I refuse to let myself feel anything gritty or painful and our pieces become trite and abstract even though they start out as . Then they get criticised and IsaBell is distraught. She only turns up in the first place because she wants us to get through the course, to survive it, to cope with the exposure. And then because I let her take control we end up with writing that is trite. But my life is not TRITE! It's shitty and dirty, gruelling and raw. It's not Trite! If it was trite I wouldn't have needed IsaBell in the first place.
My partner has suggested- more than once - that I write about less emotive subjects, something that isn't motivated by my past but I wonder 'what is the point of that?' I expect it would stop the need for IsaBell to appear but at what cost? My past is my goldmine, the place I can unearth something unique, something infused with emotion. To write about something else is like using a butter knife to carve a chicken when I have in my possession a sharp, glittering knife. It's confusing and each step seems to be a battle between different parts of me.
There is a strong desire to be seen. To write about my life - just as it is but then when I do IsaBell is needed. That's the rub I suppose, the ambivalence that keeps me trudging forwards despite the day schools and the forums fullof perky students all enjoying themselves and making me feel alien, like I'm some thick dullard who can't keep up with normal folk. They seem to write for pleasure. seem able to draw on their memories of childhood without becoming soaked in shame.
I suppose I write to know I am alive. To hear one voice, on paper, telling me the truth. It turns the stagnant and blocked bog of my life experiences into running water. It filters out the debris and allows energy to run through my body.
I can't stop writing, I can't give up. When I float away from my body that is slumped over a computer crying in frustration because the brain has frozen in fear of someone reading my description of my life I know it would be justified. But nobody broke out of chains without pain. It takes time and whilst I have to stop and unravel metres of cold, heavy chains to unblock my writing I think ultimately it is worth it because I am not only learning to write, I am learning to be all of me.
I registered with enthusiasm, wanting to take my writing to another level. I knew it was homespun, instinctive and chaotic. It pours out of me most of the time and I don't stop to correct, edit or shape what I write. There are also dry periods when I have nothing to say. I shut myself away behind iron curtains and nothing gets in or out. But just before the course began my father wrote to me (see earlier post: Hurricane Reality) and my enthusiasm faltered then stalled. I wanted to hide away and lick my wounds, not complete a course that demands so much honesty, but it had been paid for and I couldn't bear my life to be curtailed any more by his actions so I pressed on.
Now, 6 months into the course I am struggling but determined to make it to the end despite all my dreams hanging from me in tatters. I am average so far and sometimes above average - but not brilliant, not by any stretch and my inability to handle criticism has led me to one of my alters - IsaBell. We are busy trying to get to know each other and to change.
I don't know if IsaBell is entirely happy about the focus she is getting, preferring to keep her defences and ways of managing separate from the rest of us - after all we've relied on her often enough and she wants to be ready for action. I've been happy in the past to throw her cheap promises and vague assurances that one day everything will be fine, that we will in some cosmic way be compensated for the shit life we've endured (which is just a way of avoiding grief actually) and that one day her strength and brilliance will be noticed by the world.
She in turn has kept her feelings secret, ploughing through difficult situations when everybody else inside has lost hope and survival is looking doubtful. IsaBell is brilliant to me, she is strong and has endured some of the most degrading moments of our life; physical abuse, sexual abuse and in teenage years, emotional abuse, when without her all sense of self would have been annihilated. I don't say that lightly or to be dramatic. She has helped us to feel as though we had a sense of agency when actually we were powerless. She became the 'best' abused child she could be, did things just the way 'they' wanted. She comforted my mother who was threatening to kill herself. IsaBell with her intelligence and quick thinking kept us and my mother safe (and alive). I want to acknowledge her here because there is so few places she can be appreciated.
Unfortunately though IsaBell functions on adrenalin, by shutting out everything emotional and functioning like a robot. This it turns out is not the road to creative brilliance! If (or when) IsaBell takes over I start to write as if floating above real life. I refuse to let myself feel anything gritty or painful and our pieces become trite and abstract even though they start out as . Then they get criticised and IsaBell is distraught. She only turns up in the first place because she wants us to get through the course, to survive it, to cope with the exposure. And then because I let her take control we end up with writing that is trite. But my life is not TRITE! It's shitty and dirty, gruelling and raw. It's not Trite! If it was trite I wouldn't have needed IsaBell in the first place.
My partner has suggested- more than once - that I write about less emotive subjects, something that isn't motivated by my past but I wonder 'what is the point of that?' I expect it would stop the need for IsaBell to appear but at what cost? My past is my goldmine, the place I can unearth something unique, something infused with emotion. To write about something else is like using a butter knife to carve a chicken when I have in my possession a sharp, glittering knife. It's confusing and each step seems to be a battle between different parts of me.
There is a strong desire to be seen. To write about my life - just as it is but then when I do IsaBell is needed. That's the rub I suppose, the ambivalence that keeps me trudging forwards despite the day schools and the forums fullof perky students all enjoying themselves and making me feel alien, like I'm some thick dullard who can't keep up with normal folk. They seem to write for pleasure. seem able to draw on their memories of childhood without becoming soaked in shame.
I suppose I write to know I am alive. To hear one voice, on paper, telling me the truth. It turns the stagnant and blocked bog of my life experiences into running water. It filters out the debris and allows energy to run through my body.
I can't stop writing, I can't give up. When I float away from my body that is slumped over a computer crying in frustration because the brain has frozen in fear of someone reading my description of my life I know it would be justified. But nobody broke out of chains without pain. It takes time and whilst I have to stop and unravel metres of cold, heavy chains to unblock my writing I think ultimately it is worth it because I am not only learning to write, I am learning to be all of me.
Tuesday 21 February 2012
Selves Expression
Last week in therapy I had to run to the bathroom to be sick. Nothing came up but the urge to retch was overwhelming. This doesn't sound like an amazing event or even something to be pleased about but actually it was amazing for two really big reasons.
Firstly I have lived my full four decades of live terrified of being sick. From about the age of 10 and until maybe 3 years ago I always, always faint if I am sick. As a teenager I once fell off the toilet and badly damaged my foot when I began to feel sick. When I was 18 I had to go to hospital in an ambulance because I fainted on a bus (due to feeling sick/diarrhoea and having stomach pains) and the doctors were convinced I was having an ectopic pregnancy. As an adult I've become more and more afraid of being sick because I know it will trigger feelings that I can't bear and that I will then dissociate from by fainting. So.... when I was in my session and my body wanted to retch and yet didn't want to faint some part of me watched on in wonder.
The other reason I think it was amazing is that I am excessively inhibited when it comes to expressing my young selves - or in fact any of my other selves - in therapy. The angry ones and the good ones come out fairly easily but that's about it. I've read blogs, books and posts where people describe switching in therapy that leads to them expressing extreme emotions, such as curling up on the floor, screaming, being sick etc and I've always felt there was something wrong with me that I am so contained and silent in therapy. Why am I so still, so repressed? Does it mean I don't really have DID? I torment myself with these thoughts but of course that's not the reason. I DO have DID. I know that I do, and last week when Someone ( I will get to a real name for her soon) and Petra showed their pain and horror through my body, and that it was visible to my therapist I knew something was changing inside me.
The session had started with me dissociating and losing some time - this too rarely happens to me, I am hyper, hyper vigilant and it keeps me very present most of the time. I've been trying for months, years even to try and make sense of how I can be so present due to hyper vigilance as well as being dissociated and finally it's beginning to make sense to me.
My mother I think is the key to understanding it. I was abused by my step father, other family members and a group of men who ritually abused me. Most of the ritual stuff happened when I was 5-7 years old. After that we moved and I was abused mostly in the home until my step father died when i was a teenager. But my mother was always there, watching me, invading me, controlling me, and I felt she actually lived inside my head until i reached my mid 20's. The abuse I experienced was kept entirely away from my conscious mind. I had tried to tell my mother some things as a child but she didn't want to know and I knew with every ounce of my selves that I could not speak of it. In fact she insisted that I love and revere my step father.
She controlled every aspect of my life, how I expressed my feelings, how I dressed, when I cried, who my boyfriend was - everything. She read my mail, prevented me from having friends and used me as a surrogate husband. Somehow ( and I still wonder about how) she managed to silence me and keep me silent until I was 24. Living with her was like being brainwashed. Only certain thoughts and feelings were acceptable.
It's taken me a long time to realise I have DID and to accept that I always had it but that it was on the inside of me. I switched internally frequently as a child and a teenager but what was visible on the outside was constant- it had to be. Two maybe three alters lived alongside me and presented a face to the world, they were the good ones, the ones who tried to love her and my step father, who believed what they were told and who tried to be what they wanted. If they failed and I veered from the family script then she began to emotionally abuse me, to castigate me for having needs, to tell me over and over how selfish and self absorbed i was, how unloving i was, how self indulgent I was.
When alone some others would surface but never with other people. I had to survive living with a woman who constantly threatened suicide and who hated my brother. The house was full of violence and misery and it was my job to mop it all up and make it okay. My selves (all buried deep inside) had no self expression at all. Self harming would have been a step up for us, rebellion, anger would have been a freedom we couldn't risk without fear of annihilation.
Inside I have parts that want to cut, that want to throw up everything we eat, that want to be violent, aggressive and reckless. But they are all inside and not outside. To express such emotion still feels to be self -indulgence. Logically I know it isn't but any self expression feels so wrong. As a child if any memories or feelings I couldn't cope with were triggered we fainted and left that way. It was the only way we could leave the place we were in. The only self expression we had.
So retching without fainting? I'm pleased in a strange way. Something that happened to me makes me want to be sick. I've always known that on some level. I want to get something outside of me. Someone is telling me this and finally I can try to listen and finally I can stay to hear it.
Firstly I have lived my full four decades of live terrified of being sick. From about the age of 10 and until maybe 3 years ago I always, always faint if I am sick. As a teenager I once fell off the toilet and badly damaged my foot when I began to feel sick. When I was 18 I had to go to hospital in an ambulance because I fainted on a bus (due to feeling sick/diarrhoea and having stomach pains) and the doctors were convinced I was having an ectopic pregnancy. As an adult I've become more and more afraid of being sick because I know it will trigger feelings that I can't bear and that I will then dissociate from by fainting. So.... when I was in my session and my body wanted to retch and yet didn't want to faint some part of me watched on in wonder.
The other reason I think it was amazing is that I am excessively inhibited when it comes to expressing my young selves - or in fact any of my other selves - in therapy. The angry ones and the good ones come out fairly easily but that's about it. I've read blogs, books and posts where people describe switching in therapy that leads to them expressing extreme emotions, such as curling up on the floor, screaming, being sick etc and I've always felt there was something wrong with me that I am so contained and silent in therapy. Why am I so still, so repressed? Does it mean I don't really have DID? I torment myself with these thoughts but of course that's not the reason. I DO have DID. I know that I do, and last week when Someone ( I will get to a real name for her soon) and Petra showed their pain and horror through my body, and that it was visible to my therapist I knew something was changing inside me.
The session had started with me dissociating and losing some time - this too rarely happens to me, I am hyper, hyper vigilant and it keeps me very present most of the time. I've been trying for months, years even to try and make sense of how I can be so present due to hyper vigilance as well as being dissociated and finally it's beginning to make sense to me.
My mother I think is the key to understanding it. I was abused by my step father, other family members and a group of men who ritually abused me. Most of the ritual stuff happened when I was 5-7 years old. After that we moved and I was abused mostly in the home until my step father died when i was a teenager. But my mother was always there, watching me, invading me, controlling me, and I felt she actually lived inside my head until i reached my mid 20's. The abuse I experienced was kept entirely away from my conscious mind. I had tried to tell my mother some things as a child but she didn't want to know and I knew with every ounce of my selves that I could not speak of it. In fact she insisted that I love and revere my step father.
She controlled every aspect of my life, how I expressed my feelings, how I dressed, when I cried, who my boyfriend was - everything. She read my mail, prevented me from having friends and used me as a surrogate husband. Somehow ( and I still wonder about how) she managed to silence me and keep me silent until I was 24. Living with her was like being brainwashed. Only certain thoughts and feelings were acceptable.
It's taken me a long time to realise I have DID and to accept that I always had it but that it was on the inside of me. I switched internally frequently as a child and a teenager but what was visible on the outside was constant- it had to be. Two maybe three alters lived alongside me and presented a face to the world, they were the good ones, the ones who tried to love her and my step father, who believed what they were told and who tried to be what they wanted. If they failed and I veered from the family script then she began to emotionally abuse me, to castigate me for having needs, to tell me over and over how selfish and self absorbed i was, how unloving i was, how self indulgent I was.
When alone some others would surface but never with other people. I had to survive living with a woman who constantly threatened suicide and who hated my brother. The house was full of violence and misery and it was my job to mop it all up and make it okay. My selves (all buried deep inside) had no self expression at all. Self harming would have been a step up for us, rebellion, anger would have been a freedom we couldn't risk without fear of annihilation.
Inside I have parts that want to cut, that want to throw up everything we eat, that want to be violent, aggressive and reckless. But they are all inside and not outside. To express such emotion still feels to be self -indulgence. Logically I know it isn't but any self expression feels so wrong. As a child if any memories or feelings I couldn't cope with were triggered we fainted and left that way. It was the only way we could leave the place we were in. The only self expression we had.
So retching without fainting? I'm pleased in a strange way. Something that happened to me makes me want to be sick. I've always known that on some level. I want to get something outside of me. Someone is telling me this and finally I can try to listen and finally I can stay to hear it.
Wednesday 15 February 2012
Being Silenced
I don't know if this is just me or if most people with DID and a history of sexual abuse feel like this but I have days, weeks even when I feel unable to move and unable to speak. It's as though any movement at all feels too risky. I don't want to talk to anyone, don't want to blog, don't want to interact on any level, I just want to sit and do predictable things like eating the same food, watching repeats on the telly, reading the same books. I just want to escape the world and stop it from moving because I can't keep up and if I can't keep up I can't stay safe.
I'm sure some of it is to do with Someone and other very young parts of me who's senses were overloaded and overwhelmed. She shuts me down, prevents me from speaking or causing any ripples at all just in case there is a bad reaction from others, just in case she reactivates the abuse. It all went so horribly wrong for her. She did things she thought were right and they weren't. She did what they wanted her to do (the abusers) because she thought it would keep her safe but it wasn't safe, it was terrible.
In a way blogging is anonymous - just a voice into a big space which might be empty or might not be. I worry of course about the people who might read it and discredit me for daring to assert that I have DID but I also fear the people who might read it and hear me, who might connect in some way with my reality.
It is as hard to be heard as it is not to be heard. I'm living with these two extremes and when i write I feel like I'm doing it through a fog but when i don't write I feel alone and silenced.
I can't bear to be silenced anymore - to be apologetic about myselves and who i am. But oh my god the pain of pushing on and writing when i feel so dead inside is really, really hard as well.
None of it's easy - life with DID can be really, really shit!!
I'm sure some of it is to do with Someone and other very young parts of me who's senses were overloaded and overwhelmed. She shuts me down, prevents me from speaking or causing any ripples at all just in case there is a bad reaction from others, just in case she reactivates the abuse. It all went so horribly wrong for her. She did things she thought were right and they weren't. She did what they wanted her to do (the abusers) because she thought it would keep her safe but it wasn't safe, it was terrible.
In a way blogging is anonymous - just a voice into a big space which might be empty or might not be. I worry of course about the people who might read it and discredit me for daring to assert that I have DID but I also fear the people who might read it and hear me, who might connect in some way with my reality.
It is as hard to be heard as it is not to be heard. I'm living with these two extremes and when i write I feel like I'm doing it through a fog but when i don't write I feel alone and silenced.
I can't bear to be silenced anymore - to be apologetic about myselves and who i am. But oh my god the pain of pushing on and writing when i feel so dead inside is really, really hard as well.
None of it's easy - life with DID can be really, really shit!!
Tuesday 14 February 2012
Eating, Crying and Quietly Dying
Eating : It's all I do. it numbs the pain that is too big to stand.
Crying: Mostly I don't. Then when I do it rips out my insides.
Quietly Dying: She can't stand it. Someone can't stand it where she is. She wants to be snuffed out.
Crying: Mostly I don't. Then when I do it rips out my insides.
Quietly Dying: She can't stand it. Someone can't stand it where she is. She wants to be snuffed out.
Sunday 12 February 2012
Trying to Move
The last week has been horrible and what I'm going to write is definitely triggering so please don't read on if you're feeling shaky or vulnerable.
The memories that have been rearing up at me are horrifying to my conscious mind. I keep them pushed down and away from me all the time but everyday they are there wanting to be heard, to be felt and accepted.
I am back to living in two time streams, both bleeding into one another to disastrous effect. Driving is hazardous, being in groups (which I had to be at work this week) makes me shaky and disoriented, so I'm tripping over chairs and spilling my coffee. It's embarrassing - probably not bad enough for others to notice but bad enough for me to feel as though I am trying to hold down a hot air balloon with no ropes. I float out of my body almost entirely. I don't want to be in it, because Someone is there ( a 5 year old girl) and in her time stream we are locked in a box with a bloody, mutilated child , trying not to breathe, trying not to move, trying to be dead.
I've known this for a long time. But since my father wrote and called me a liar, discredited me in every way he could I've disowned this memory just as thoroughly as he has disowned me. I don't completely understand why but I think I'm trying to protect myself.
He knew the majority of what happened to me. He saw some of my journals, my paintings, my writing, he heard me telling him and through all these things he Believed Me. Now he doesn't and i don't know why he's stopped. I think because I've made him angry, because I've not been grateful for his occasional interest and care because he can't make it better and I'm not interested in letting him try. Because I've dared to be angry with him for leaving me to grow up with a paedophile. for expecting him to love me as i am and not expecting me to be the woman i would have been without the abuse.
I hate him, with every fibre of my being for what he's done to me and yet I've been denying my own truth in much the way he has denied me.
But I have to stop. And Petra is helping me.
The memories that have been rearing up at me are horrifying to my conscious mind. I keep them pushed down and away from me all the time but everyday they are there wanting to be heard, to be felt and accepted.
I am back to living in two time streams, both bleeding into one another to disastrous effect. Driving is hazardous, being in groups (which I had to be at work this week) makes me shaky and disoriented, so I'm tripping over chairs and spilling my coffee. It's embarrassing - probably not bad enough for others to notice but bad enough for me to feel as though I am trying to hold down a hot air balloon with no ropes. I float out of my body almost entirely. I don't want to be in it, because Someone is there ( a 5 year old girl) and in her time stream we are locked in a box with a bloody, mutilated child , trying not to breathe, trying not to move, trying to be dead.
I've known this for a long time. But since my father wrote and called me a liar, discredited me in every way he could I've disowned this memory just as thoroughly as he has disowned me. I don't completely understand why but I think I'm trying to protect myself.
He knew the majority of what happened to me. He saw some of my journals, my paintings, my writing, he heard me telling him and through all these things he Believed Me. Now he doesn't and i don't know why he's stopped. I think because I've made him angry, because I've not been grateful for his occasional interest and care because he can't make it better and I'm not interested in letting him try. Because I've dared to be angry with him for leaving me to grow up with a paedophile. for expecting him to love me as i am and not expecting me to be the woman i would have been without the abuse.
I hate him, with every fibre of my being for what he's done to me and yet I've been denying my own truth in much the way he has denied me.
But I have to stop. And Petra is helping me.
Wednesday 8 February 2012
Sunday 5 February 2012
The Snake and the Jailor
Today I want to write about the thinks that I turn away from. It’s so easy to kid myself that I’m together and sorted; in fact the longer I live with DID the better I become at showing only one face to the world. When I was younger all was chaos, flashbacks, triggers and terror. Now my older alters are mostly in control. They’re not daft, in fact they range from smart, logical and driven to accommodating, caring and diligent and between them they rustle up a life.
But that’s as long as younger parts aren’t around.
And right now what I’m turning away from is a part of me that is in the shadows. I don’t know who she is but I’ve lived with her for as long as I can remember. She is full of bleak, black thoughts that drag on the body making it hard sometimes to even lift up my head. She doesn’t want to get up in the morning, or wash her hair, clean her teeth. She stops me doing good things for myself and even getting dressed is an ordeal.
I feel her as a burden but that seems so harsh. I know she is hurting, sometimes she sinks to the floor and just cries when faced with anything dirty, like unwashed worktops and dirty pots. Today as I washed up someone started yelling at her, demanding that she stop preventing me from keeping the house clean and tidy. That she just get over herself and stop being such a pain. As soon as I shouted at her I felt better and then immediately ashamed. It brought me back to something I was wrestling with in therapy last year that I described as the Jailor and Snake.
I don’t think of either as alters although I really don’t know if that’s right.
The snake is viscous, scathing and critical, ready to pull me down on every single thing I do. The Jailor wants me to stay silent, to be boxed up and without a voice.
I suppose that’s why I’m writing a blog in the first place; to challenge the Jailor and to start existing outside of my box. Trying to bypass the constant stream of criticism in my head is almost impossible though.
But are they alters or just my internalised parents? My mother was a snake – a venomous woman who controlled my every move and my step father was the consummate jailor – silencing me, making me endure the most hideous things without moving or uttering a sound.
But how do I shut them up? And what do they have to do with the girl in the shadows? Is she just the girl who put up with them? Accepted the criticism and abuse without uttering a sound, who tried to cope with no outlet for her emotions and no-one to help her feel better? I just don’t know….
Friday 3 February 2012
Edie's View
Edie is not too impressed with the last post - far too adult. So I'm going to post something she wrote last year before my father landed a nail bomb on us! Edie was just coming out at that time and is just feeling now that she is able to come out again. this is how she came into being. I've had to use initials for lots of the parts as they don't feel comfy sharing their names here.
Edie’s story:
I remember that it was cold in the bedroom after they dropped us off. It was late and very, very dark. They felt cold, the others, their skin that had burned before was shivery now, huddled under the covers, slightly wet from the hosing down. There was nobody around. He had gone to the big, dark bedroom next door and fallen asleep. We were awake. R and S were laid out before me, there eyes dark, sunken in their white bone faces. What they’d gone through was wordless, it sat in their eyes like a black hole, turbulent and raging. By morning it would have mellowed to a stagnant pool of blackness. Well, that’s how Archi describes it anyway - to me they just seemed nearly dead.
I know it must seem weird, me talking about them as if they are not me and I am not them but that’s how it feels. I was floating above them, rising up and away from them so that somebody was on the outside. What they felt was unbearable, I didn’t want to be in it, I wanted to be on the other side of their skin. I had to be on the other side of it to help them. I wanted to help them but I didn’t want to be them.
Eventually they fell asleep. There are others who help us in these sorts of situations. Shush is great at getting us to sleep- she shuts her eyes and it’s like a blanket of anaesthetic settling right around us. Only Nightowl can resist Shush and sometimes she does it with a dogged determination and we sit awake until 4 or 5am refusing to forget. But I don’t think she knows why she is doing it and we just get very upset and tired. Maybe she just wants us to remember that there are other feelings even if they are unbearable. This night Shush was still finding her strength and it was a while before we did get to sleep. It was in the time after S and R were laid on the bed, shivering and before sleep that I realised I was needed. We needed a skin, not the skin we all shared but another skin, on the outside of that. I would live in the space between the first skin and the second skin filtering what came from outside and I would send all the good things inward.
There was no one to comfort R and S. I could see that; no adult was going to be there to hold them and make it better. J (mother) was worse than useless. All she wanted to hear was that we loved him. She didn’t want to know anything else. He did hug us sometimes, soothe us and make us feel safe again, but he also made us take the blame. I didn’t like him and I didn’t want R and S or any of the others relying on him.
I don’t think I planned how it would all work – at least not then. All that I’ve told you was like instinct, the gut instinct of a 5 or 6 year old girl. It’s not a choice splitting away from the main body. It doesn’t work like that. It’s more a survival thing – a child can’t cope without love, without comfort or without a way to change bad feelings into good feelings. Archi knows more about these things than me. All I know is how it feels.
I didn’t know what was going to work to help them but then the next morning as we sat opposite him in our school uniform befuddled and cold on the inside, I saw the toast sitting on the table. He kept looking at us and S and R were trying their very best to be invisible to stay behind their skin. The toast was warm and sweet. I knew it would taste nice. The tension of sitting opposite him was getting too much for S and R- they began to be visible, not just in the eyes but on the outside. Tears were coming, they might even begin to tremble or worse still one day they might shout. I grabbed the toast and sunk in my teeth. The sweetest sensation came over us as it filled my mouth and slid gently down my throat. It landed like a pool of heat in my cold tummy. I took another bite and another bite – as many as it took to prolong that feeling of being embraced on the inside where R and S were huddled in their broken selves. They were grateful, so grateful for the sweet, buttery lifeline and like a full well fed baby they finally sank quietly away. They stayed on the inside of our skin and we were safe again.
It didn’t take long for me to be relied upon. It wasn’t only S and R that needed me, the others began to seek my help as well. I was really useful for the ones that felt angry – like P and M, S too. There was nowhere for them to ‘be’. Nowhere at all and somehow we had to make all that angry bearable. The same with CC and GGJ – it wasn’t so simple with them. They had to be good and accepting of things that really were unbearable.
I think of our insides like a rope. GGJ, D and CC for instance are at the end of the rope, very near the surface, the outside. They are a long way from anger. They are concerned with staying safe – very safe and they don’t rock the boat. They have to swallow lots and lots of things, they have to pretend they have no feelings of their own. They have to do what others want, they have to submit. But if you stand behind them with your back to their back and look deep down inside us you will see the others – A, M, P, S, raging away like mini tornados. They are a problem, they are all a problem I suppose. Children aren’t meant to be the way we are. All split up into pieces, with different jobs and no way of talking to each other. Living without adults. I’m everywhere, plugging holes, soothing hurts, giving purpose and hope. I’m a nurse with no bandages but I do my best.
The hardest thing is that so many of them hate me. They give me their anger and their shame; their needs and their despair and I give them some warm, familiar comfort; a bar of chocolate, a routine of food a chance to forget for a while the pain they feel. I refuse to be starved – I get very angry if food is taken away from us. It helps them because it gives some order to the chaos, it gives N something to hold on to, to look forward to, it fills up A’s gaping stomach that longs to be touched and accepted. I give GGJ fuel so she can keep meeting the needs of others which makes her feel safer and I offer the angry ones a chance to change their anger into hunger. If they take the exchange I can give them food and they feel full and forget they are angry.
It’s just that those feelings have not really gone away. I am still holding them, carrying them on my back like an overburdened donkey. Nobody wants me because I am covered in dirty sticky feelings that they all want to disown. I am fat and the body I use is failing. It seems impossible for the others to accept the body; they rage at me for what I have done to it, but really it wasn’t just me. It was them too. If I’m not going to hurt the body then they will have to feel some of their own feelings.
Hurricane Reality
It's now February and still I'm reeling from the onslaught of reality I had to face in 2011.
This time last year I was off sick with - well I don't know what with really. Depression never seemed the right word, anxiety; whilst a reasonable description of what I was feeling whilst at work didn't adequately describe what it is like for work to be causing flashbacks and terror in child parts who were ill equipped to cope with the adult demands of my job. In the end my sick notes ranged from depression to anxiety to PTSD, but whatever the label what I was actually facing was that I could no longer deal with Safeguarding issues in my job and if i couldn't do that was there even a job for me?
In the end there was half a job - I was redeployed at about the time my partner lost her contract and we went into financial meltdown. It hasn't really turned a corner yet and I'm faced with the reality that what happened to me in the first 18 years of my life may never stop effecting my work life, or my capacity to earn money and enjoy a secure life. I hate the constant worry, the constant reminder that I was abused to such a degree that it stops me from working as much as I really feel I should. The loss I felt was so severe when I learnt they would only employ me for half a week that I still haven't got over it. I don't know what the future holds for me but I do know that I'm living with my eyes open to the truth of my life and I really don't like it. I just feel bereft, a victim who can't fight back hard enough to save herself. It feels like they ( my abusers) have won a victory over me and I can't stand it!
Then later in the year my Father ( who I didn't live with as a child) wrote to tell me that I was hurting everybody in the family because I won't pretend i wasn't abused, that I was terrible at my job, mentally ill and that my accusations against my abusers were a manifestation of my illness (DID). He also threatened to go to the police and tell them all the things I had told him about my experiences unless I agreed to go in the next 2 weeks and do it myself to prove to the family that I wasn't just making it all up. He did all this - as far as I can see- because my step brother (who is the son of my step father/ abuser) was upset by my allegations and how I had branded his father ,who is now dead, as a paedophile. The worst thing was that I haven't had contact with any of my family (except him) for probably 3,4 years. I wasn't doing anything except trying to get by on my own, to survive.
As i write that I feel quite adult and see it as almost ludicrous but in reality it was a bit like having my head rammed against a wall repeatedly. It's 4 months now since he did it and some days the pain of it is unbearable. I (or someone much younger than me) sits on the floor and cries wondering why he wants to be so cruel to me. For about a year he was with me, on my side but when he turned he included all my family in listing how I had hurt them, let them down in ways he could only have known by talking to them about me. With that one letter I felt I had become a true orphan. In reality I already was one but now I have it in black and white.
2011 was a shit, shit year in my life and now in February 2012 I'm still trying to accept it all, to stop fighting battles I can't win and it hurts, everyday it hurts.
This time last year I was off sick with - well I don't know what with really. Depression never seemed the right word, anxiety; whilst a reasonable description of what I was feeling whilst at work didn't adequately describe what it is like for work to be causing flashbacks and terror in child parts who were ill equipped to cope with the adult demands of my job. In the end my sick notes ranged from depression to anxiety to PTSD, but whatever the label what I was actually facing was that I could no longer deal with Safeguarding issues in my job and if i couldn't do that was there even a job for me?
In the end there was half a job - I was redeployed at about the time my partner lost her contract and we went into financial meltdown. It hasn't really turned a corner yet and I'm faced with the reality that what happened to me in the first 18 years of my life may never stop effecting my work life, or my capacity to earn money and enjoy a secure life. I hate the constant worry, the constant reminder that I was abused to such a degree that it stops me from working as much as I really feel I should. The loss I felt was so severe when I learnt they would only employ me for half a week that I still haven't got over it. I don't know what the future holds for me but I do know that I'm living with my eyes open to the truth of my life and I really don't like it. I just feel bereft, a victim who can't fight back hard enough to save herself. It feels like they ( my abusers) have won a victory over me and I can't stand it!
Then later in the year my Father ( who I didn't live with as a child) wrote to tell me that I was hurting everybody in the family because I won't pretend i wasn't abused, that I was terrible at my job, mentally ill and that my accusations against my abusers were a manifestation of my illness (DID). He also threatened to go to the police and tell them all the things I had told him about my experiences unless I agreed to go in the next 2 weeks and do it myself to prove to the family that I wasn't just making it all up. He did all this - as far as I can see- because my step brother (who is the son of my step father/ abuser) was upset by my allegations and how I had branded his father ,who is now dead, as a paedophile. The worst thing was that I haven't had contact with any of my family (except him) for probably 3,4 years. I wasn't doing anything except trying to get by on my own, to survive.
As i write that I feel quite adult and see it as almost ludicrous but in reality it was a bit like having my head rammed against a wall repeatedly. It's 4 months now since he did it and some days the pain of it is unbearable. I (or someone much younger than me) sits on the floor and cries wondering why he wants to be so cruel to me. For about a year he was with me, on my side but when he turned he included all my family in listing how I had hurt them, let them down in ways he could only have known by talking to them about me. With that one letter I felt I had become a true orphan. In reality I already was one but now I have it in black and white.
2011 was a shit, shit year in my life and now in February 2012 I'm still trying to accept it all, to stop fighting battles I can't win and it hurts, everyday it hurts.
Wednesday 1 February 2012
Getting Started
I’ve always loved poppies. Their ability to produce such a fragile and beautiful flower whilst living on inhospitable waste land helps me to hope. For anyone who’s known trauma in childhood life can feel like a fight against the odds. Dissociative identity disorder can feel like part of the problem rather than the ingenious solution that it is to horrors too extreme for a child to bear. In the last 3 to 4 years I have crept towards accepting that I have DID. Previously I have been far more comfortable with saying I had complex PTSD. But that was only part of the story. In reality it is one body, a plethora of others, or parts as I mostly call them, rising and retreating within me.
I love to write and have reams and reams of journals stuffed in my cupboard crammed with my thoughts, feelings and memories. They document my life as a survivor of what I would call extreme sexual abuse (sometimes I use the term Ritual abuse too but it seems to make what was basically depraved men ruining my life sound posh) and when I prefer to forget the journals remind me that it did happen to me and that one of the consequences of that is that I am a person with a dissociative identity.
It’s impossible to have the experiences I have had and be unaffected (believe me I’ve tried!). At the darkest times of my life I could probably not have countenanced writing a blog. Healing of the worst injuries is best done in a quiet protected space, but life is a little different now. I’m beginning to look outwards again and make sense of why my life feels so often to be a life interrupted. For me that one phrase describes how my life as a survivor with DID feels. I set off in one direction confident that I am doing what I want to do only to find hours or days later that someone else comes up to join me and the world changes colour and shape and I set off in another direction. Obviously direction is a metaphor for just about anything, going to the gym, starting a hobby, changing my job, having my hair cut, reading a newspaper. I set out sure that this time exercise will become a habit, that I definitely want my hair short, that my weekend subscription to the newspaper is not a waste of money only to find a week later I can’t remember the feelings or the drive that accompanied any of those actions or decisions. I don’t want to go to the gym (I hate exercise), I wish my hair was longer (it makes my face look fat when it’s short) and I don’t want to read the paper (who can escape into a newspaper?!). Hence, a life interrupted as someone else comes up from the dark and needs time, attention and space to breathe, who knows what is needed to feel better and it’s not the same as everyone else.
That’s mostly what DID is like for me – I’m usually around- hardly anyone would know, or does know that I have it, and one or more others come and share life with me taking over to varying degrees but never to the degree that I lose time. Each wants to direct, enjoy or hate life on their own terms with their own pain and hurt, with me trying to remember the views and feelings of the parts that were there the day before and who I know will be back again. Like a complicated maths equation I try to make decisions that benefit everybody but so rarely make anybody that happy.
Will writing this blog be like that? A good idea today but not so good next week. The truth is I don’t know. So this was written a month ago to test the idea out, let any objections be registered. The desire to write is one constant in my life. Most of us like doing it but a few don’t and when they are uppermost I am likely to withdraw. Best to be honest about that I think! But I’m also pretty sure I (or someone) will come back ready to talk again. Already I can feel the pull between those who want to talk about DID and those who want to talk about sexual abuse. Both matter, because both are my reality and I hope to make room for both.
Anyway that’s a start I think. I haven’t said much concrete about myself have I? Well a few facts then to finish off:
- I’m in my very late 30’s and live with my partner J (who is female, like me)
- I work for a charity as a social worker. (More part time than I would like but more about that another time.)
- I have pets, two adorable dogs, Little L and Big L and a lovely cat who wishes she didn’t live with 2 dogs!
- I’ve been seeing my current psychotherapist for about 2 ½ years now after my previous therapist, who I saw for 14 years, died of cancer.
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