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.