Update for July 31st ’13

Well I think I know how to get the recordings off the voice recorder but might take me a little longer to do it and get it done.

The whole thing with the little parts… ugh, yeah they are back in my head a lot of the time. It’s not as bad and finding the “baby monitor” system thing did help I think, the whole nanny thing still helps. I don’t know maybe it’s just really consistently using tools and resources that we have.

Did I mention I wrote a 3 page, front and back, letter to my shrink?! Yeah, I’ve been unconsciously procrastinating putting it in the mail. Today is the day, I swear as soon as I’m done with this, I’m gonna write a quick to do list and then pop that puppy in the mailbox.

I have a bunch of posts I need to work on, I always say that don’t I. I think I need a notebook for my post so I can just hand write if I need too. Sometimes, I don’t like trying to type on my phone and I get restless at the computer (even though I’m faster at typing). I don’t know.  I’m still figuring out how to be a good blogger and do the D.I.D management thing. Is it just me or do they come out more in type. I mean, they come out in my handwriting for sure but…I don’t seem to get as distracted I don’t think. I can’t click away the page anyway. I tend to come up with things when I’m not at a computer too.  I think I need to get better at keeping my daily issues recorded for myself so… I think it’s time for a new journal. Ha, I think I just want a new journal, I always want new journals.

Things I’d like to do more of:

• Thought recordings – yeah for some reason listening to my voice on those recordings didn’t bother me like it usually does. Maybe I wasn’t bothered because I had recorded them like I was speaking to someone?

• Journaling/Diary

• Letter writing.

My first post back on July 26th, 2007 https://insidevoices.wordpress.com/2007/07/26/i-dont-know-i-just-dont-know/

Man, roughly 6 years of my PTSD & D.I.D. diagnosis then too. I switched my living situation, I changed therapists a couple times, I’ve had one of my “worst”/abusive insiders do a complete 180 and he’s now learning to be a good helper part, I’ve learned a lot of symptom management, I’ve learned I can survive if I am in the same space with old abusers, I’ve learned how to set boundaries and stick to them, I’ve learned EMDR is hard but soooo worth it, I’ve learned how to trust friends, I’ve learned to trust and forgive myself, I’ve learned there is someone out there that will love me back even if I’m a little bruised up from my past, I’ve learned that yes I was affected by things that happened to me as a baby even if I don’t have the same kind of memory of those events as I have memory of things that happened when I was verbal, I’ve learned how I can stop self-injuring, I’ve learned I am DEFINITELY NOT CRAZY 🙂

In the Event of an Emergency: Or What If Someone Finds All My “Crazy”?

Whenever I get really sick or, something bad happens to someone I know, or I watch or read something that gets me thinking about making sure I have plans made for myself in the event something happens to me.  In the end I know how I feel about what I would want or how to deal with different situations that might pop up in those times, except for one thing.  What about all this stuff I have collected that relates to  me and my life as a person with D.I.D.?

Seriously, sometimes I sit bolt upright in bed in the middle of the night thinking “Oh my god! What would happen if my family found all this?”  Well, right now given that I live with family for a little while longer it sometimes feels like a pretty real concern.  I may be moving more into a limbo living situation and I’m still not sure what to do with my stuff, take it all with me, see if my T will hold on to it, or leave it here and hope to hell “Ms. Snoopy Pants” doesn’t get into it.  Sometimes I have this vision in my head of something out of “Sybil” where someone stumbles upon all my stuff in a storage locker, an attic, or an apartment.  How bizarre and confusing for someone would that be to find someone’s “crazy” (and by that I mean all our writing, drawings, photos, etc).  More so I think for my family it would be very strange, confusing, upsetting, etc.  I kind of imagine it would probably even enrage them in someway.  Maybe enrage isn’t quite the word but I don’t think they’d be too happy.  I would put them in the camp of “She made up all this weird stuff about having Multiple Personality Disorder, it’s very strange.  It seems she was very obsessed with the idea. I don’t know why? She made up all this stuff about our family…”  I would imagine them thinking that I needed help only not the type of help that I am currently receiving but the kind of help to convince me I was mistaken, or that D.I.D. isn’t real.  (I’m basing that in part on a conversation with my mom about a friend of mine which ended with her saying something like “Don’t trust people like that, people make stuff up all the time”.  Which yes but…no, this was not the case.)

So am I paranoid? Maybe.

Do other multiples out there worry about their collection of stuff?  How do you keep it all safe?  Do you store it some physical place, or do you have it all digital and destroy originals? Do you not worry/care at all if people/friends/family were to find it? Do you have an emergency plan for your stuff?  What would you want to happen to it if someone found it or if you’ve entrusted it to someone?

When Protectors Attack

Oh, life goes crazy! I hate that feeling of this can’t be real, this can’t be my life right now. It feels like some crazy t.v. show.

My mom and I got into a huge fight. I told her I needed some space, I needed to eat, I’d talk later. She kept pushing.

God, I haven’t felt that angry since I was 12. (The insiders think that line makes for a good joke. I guess it is pretty funny but throwing me off what I want to say.) 12 really hated/hates my mom. Just like back then. Back then there would be pictures and “cartoons” of my mom being hurt. Pictures of me then running away. I might have one still. In it she’s yelling at me, I punch her in the face, and run away from home. That drawing is actually pretty comical.

Something, in hindsight, I think was different this time. Well, maybe two things. One, I was very aware of my body and it’s reaction to anger. Two, I could not for the life of me calm down. It’s taken a couple days. I don’t feel the intense rage but I’m still not really speaking to my mom.

I keep looking for Dth (the big DA/nasty introject) but I keep getting this picture of him hurt or “crippled”or something. A lot of the time when I get pictures instead of the actual person it’s a metaphor of some sort.

I know my DA’s were there working. The other two for sure anyway. I don’t usually get rage attacks like that, where I want to hurt someone. In this case I felt really out of control. Lately over all I think I’ve been more angry and snappish with my mom. I’m not entirely sure why, maybe it came on after she reveled some new info about her brother. (ugh). It was pretty confusing.

Later I thought I heard Dth but it was different than his normal hate speech so I wasn’t sure it really was him or who it was. (I feel someone pressing me on that last bit) Something about hating hurt and her hurting me/us/them?

Don’t remember exactly. I just remember that I was writing a stream of consciousness sort of thing. I was writing about how I had later told my mom how I had felt, you know about hurting her, that I had been that angry and she basically said “Whatever, I would have called the police, had a restraining order, and had you removed!” I kept replaying that over and over (still am). That’s when the voice came in about hating her and her hurting us.

I know we’ve been trying to help Dth see the outside world, maybe it’s working (all of a sudden feeling really upset, like crying but can’t figure out what it’s about. Gone mostly now, slipped away.) We put up t.v. screens in his cell and connected them to the body’s eyes and ears. We decided to let him come and go as he pleased after a while, it took time and I’m still not sure we are entirely trusting of him. Maybe, something did change though…

Maybe, he’s on our side now. Maybe.

Post on hold

Won’t get to that post today. Having a rough day. Not sure when I’ll get to finishing it up.

Went off to my appointment today and while I was looking both ways before crossing the street I thought I saw my grandma (a.k.a grammy – mom’s mom). Which is kinda dumb she’s been dead 17 years this September. I haven’t had an anniversary reaction like this surrounding her in a long time.  All day long I keep thinking I see her but it’s just some other persons grandma.

So that on top of kind of a rough session…I think I just need to go to work and try to get some studying in. Lay off dredging up the news of whats new etc.

Fragments, Rough Nights, & Dreams

The Others as Worry Dolls

Update: There are our worry dolls so far. I kind of like them without the faces but dunno. Usually when doing anything with people we don’t do a face.  On these sometimes it smudges (even though it’s permanent ink, it’s hard to do that small. I might redo the Little One doll wasn’t really sure how to do the dress at first. The one on the right is the stand in for S.

Wow! I haven’t written since June?

Well, we are still working on that drowning memory.  It changes each time I go in to work with it.  I don’t want to say it gets better or that it gets easier, I’m not sure it really does if you know what I mean. I think it will always be horrible and scary but just…a regular horrible and scary.  Dunno if that makes any sense…  I guess it’s kind of the difference between burning yourself taking cookies out of the oven and just remembering that one time you burnt yourself taking cookies out of the oven.  My brain is slowly learning that I’m not drowning, it’s just a memory.  I’m actually alive and I’m safe, I made it to the surface again. I’m learning I can leave that memory when ever I want, it’s not as much of a struggle to leave and find reality.  I can choose to picture myself drowning and remember that I was scared but at the same time know my feet are on solid ground in the present.  The terror that was once there lasts only a second if it shows up at all.  Pretty dang cool!

Recently I switched from using the tappers (buzzers) to the light bar (following a light with my eyes) and um…wow! I switched because I realized I was kind of dissociating and avoiding things when it got rough.  There seemed to be more interference and walls too.  It seems better with the light bar.  The last couple sessions though have left me with some rough nights.  On one of these nights I ended up finally meeting another of our fragments.  It’s pretty funny, I’ve had an inkling he was real (that sounds funny I know) but now I know for sure.  For a long time I thought maybe it was just 12 or someone horsing around but it didn’t seem right…  Anyway, I’ll call him the Joker here.  He’s the little announcer guy I hear a lot in various situations.  Sometimes he just makes things entertaining by providing my life, television, and movie watching with a bizarre yet often hilarious running commentary.  Other times he provides insight into my inner life in cryptic sing songy rhymes.  I found out that he was one of the Little One’s pocket people and that’s probably why it took forever to learn of him.  It just happened one night when Little One got scared and out popped Joker to try to interpret and alleviate the situation with a little humor.  To clarify a little, Little One has fragments apparently that she carries around with her.  Some are regular sized people like Slly, I call her an umbrella person since sometimes I see Little One’s dress like a giant umbrella that hides people under it.  Some like Joker are tiny, I guess, and live in the pocket of her dress (I sound like a nut job now! lmao!). It was on of my co-conscious moments so I manage to think of trying to take down notes of what he was saying (I’ve also asked the Others in times past to try to record things for me if I’m not able to. Meh, sometimes it works sometimes it’s just better to do a job yourself if you can lol!). I was reading Tempy’s “Crackers & Juiceboxes” blog and she had some pics of her journal writing posted so I thought maybe in my next post I’d share that one and a few others.

The rest of my nights after therapy have been filled with bizarre and often unsettling dreams. Oh, Therapy! What fun! *sarcasm* Last week was super frustrating because there were two that I can’t quite remember but felt really important.  The one I vaguely remember ended with me being pissed at my dad because it turned out that he knew everything that happened to me and never said anything, never tried to protect me.  Probably close to the truth, I don’t know what he knows though in real life.  Unlike my mom…maybe in the dream it was safer to get upset at my dad than my mom?  Dunno.  Then there was this other one that seemed super important, like it solved every one of my life mysteries!  I remember I woke up completely terrified though.  I remember being completely exhausted, trying to concentrate on how good the cool breeze coming through the window felt so that I wouldn’t fall back into that horrible dream world.  At the same time I kept telling myself to remember this, write it down when I get up.  The next thing I know my drunk neighbor is shouting at his brother “Have a good day! I love You!” at six am and while I was pissed about that I cracked up at the same time.  The dream was totally forgotten at that point.

No therapy this week.  Yay! But boo. haha!

I’m going to try to get a shot of the worry doll people we’ve been slowly working on.  I can’t remember, someone did a blog on those …super cute…and I wanted to link to it but I’ve lost it.  Anyway we got some of these from patterns at work and some searching the internet.  I want to put it up on this post so if it’s not there in a bit, keep checking back! All but one of them is one of The Others and the one that is not…is kind of a temporary stand in.  Hah, that was kind of complicated!

First EMDR Processing Session, “Birth” of an Other & Update

So, long time, no write. Yeah, it’s been busy for me working, planning out my life, therapy, life drama, etc.  I’m looking through my drafts box here and WHOA! There are several things I’m not sure I posted but look like I should have.  I’ll have to sort that out some other time though.  I have another post I started on my damn phone lol and I need to finish but I’m in such a different place now it’s hard to finish my thoughts on that subject again.

What I really came here to do was to share my first EMDR processing session a little bit.  I don’t want to go into it too much because it’s just too fresh for me and it’s not really finished.  However, if anyone reading this has any questions I really don’t mind so feel free to ask.

We started with something that was “smaller” but ugh after doing it, it doesn’t seem so “small” if you know what I mean.  I guess what I mean is it’s still “small” but reliving it (in a safe way) made it …not so “small”.  I realize a little more that it was a big deal, all the minimizing of it had a big impact on me.  Ok, so what we started with was my memory of my camp swim instructor throwing me off the end of the dock into the deep part of the lake for BEGINNER swim class.  Basically, I nearly drowned and my best guess is that when I resigned myself to death, I floated to the surface instead. I was around 7 years old, first time at sleep away camp.  Never told a soul until a few years ago.

So basically we set up a little plan of action for safety and self-care first before the actual session. Then the actual session came and I almost didn’t want to go (all parts were in agreement that we were going to go through with this all, though) so I made myself/selves a promise that after the session there would be a trip to the bakery just up the road. We settled on using the tappers and the headphones.  Went through a brief recap of the event, brief statements about how it made me feel and how I saw myself because of the event (i.e. I felt I should have died, I felt no one cared, I felt terrified), where in my body I feel anything and what it feels like (mostly my upper body, feels tense, my chest hurts and I have a hard time breathing). My T would have me focus on these things and then stop and have me report what I experienced.

It was pretty damn intense.  I thought I could put on my tough face and not cry (this memory actually turned out to be a big source for that “don’t be a baby” thing) but, I totally broke down.  I won’t lie and say it wasn’t scary…it was but at the same time I felt safe…my parts I don’t think did really but that ended up with some light shed on it. It was because this memory had a lot of the secret keeping elements to it without being the heavy-duty trauma.  The memory also seemed to hold a lot of metaphor for the rest of my journey in all this.  The thought that doing this EMDR is scary and so much is sunk under the surface that we need to let go and let ourselves sink to the bottom so we can reach the top again. I think one of the majorly scary parts was hearing from my “system’s operation” part/s that there’s more than likely going to be what my T calls Blockers popping up.  They showed me a maze with walls popping up right in front of me, making me walk into them.  One of these parts is of course Dth. I was too scared to bring that up then but I’m going to try to mention it next time, I know it is important to get him on our side.  Ultimately, I think he’s the one who can get past the other blockers.  It’s just scary to think there are all these minor/fragment parts I don’t know about. They make me think of little ghoulies and goblins.

We were just wrapping things up when I got one last ‘fright’.  All of a sudden I had a flash of a girl underwater, struggling, thrashing about and then letting out a loud scream that was soon suffocated by the sound proofness of the water.  Almost loud as day I heard a voice say something like this is when Scr was born/first came about.  I guess it scares me some because I’m still just not used to and/or ok with this all being real.  That this is who I am, who we are.  That these things happened and there were ‘consequences’ (not a good word really but…blah) for them.  For just a moment we got Scr to stop and listen to everyone, I tried to give her a candle for her dark ‘cave’, then we put a sound proof booth around the cave and place a microphone with a two-way switch in.  We check in with her, we let her know we aren’t leaving her or ignoring her but, it’s just a little too loud for us…it’s a little too painful to hear sometimes, to sad to see her like that.  We’ll keep working on this and maybe someday we can help her better.

It feels so far away, that session.  I remember bits and pieces, right now I feel like I’m avoiding remembering it.  Afterward we all went to are various safe places, it took some time (with the help of a walk) but in the end I was able to go about my day without much trouble or distress.  I’m not looking forward to my next session lol! I should find some sort of reward for myself again.  I know good stuff is coming out of this, I know to a degree I felt a little ‘lighter’ or something but, ugh! *sigh* I think it’s worth it…just gotta figure out how to keep going at it.

Off the Radar

I’m struggling pretty badly as of late. I’m being bombarded by to many new things and am not used to that anymore.  I mean I don’t know how to handle that kind of thing, maybe I didn’t the last time though either.

I’m not sure when this stuff got kicked up but at one point while reading a certain book (well around the time I was reading it not while reading it) I was semi aware of some memory coming from one of the kids.  It involved something with my uncle but I couldn’t quite “see” what it was.  I thought it was just about the piano incident (basically I was uncomfortable and terrified for some reason wanted out of his lap but was too small to get down by myself and for whatever reason my mom just sat there.) but not too sure.  I felt as though I was being strangled, trying to scream but couldn’t.

Then earlier in the month (had forgotten I had that flashback) I was going through my photo albums looking for a picture and found myself having some sort of flashback around a picture of my aunt, uncle, and cousins at one of their houses.  I had this quick flash of being placed in a room to take a nap and being terrified.

Lately I hear a lot of “loud thoughts” about things my uncle did.  I am just struggling with really believing that happened or not.  It’s that crazy feeling of “I’m just making shit up!”.  I hate these thoughts and feelings not just because they are awful but because the make me feel physically ill.

Last night it got way too intense and in the end I did end up getting sick.  The thing is this was all happening in front of a friend and I felt really sorta dumb for not being more careful, for not recognizing earlier what was maybe happening.  They weren’t really flashbacks more like a body memory or something.  I was trying to explain about my history but every time I tried to start venturing beyond D this feeling would start up and I’d be bombarded by the “loud thoughts” from everyone.  I was totally freaked out because I started to realize there was no way out of explaining the DID (something I was hoping to explain later down the road).  The thought of having to explain that just made everything worse.

I think in someway I unconsciously stuck myself in a situation of self sabotage.  I don’t know I guess only time will tell what happens with this friend.

I’m feeling slightly better now.  Feels like whatever those memories are or if they are real…they have (literally I guess) purged themselves a little.  I don’t know if I can yet directly talk to my T about it, but I think I can maybe get the gist across.

I’m still very much debating when I’m going to try to have that conversation with my mom about what she knows.  Hard.

Where I went “wrong”

I think I figured it out today, where I went “wrong” (see the clip).  The one “wrong” thing I did.

I trusted.

I think I’m slowly learning to live with that. It feels so horribly slow though sometimes, I get so frustrated with my trust issues. It hurts and it’s scary but slowly I’m learning trust is ok to do.  Learning to trust is something we have to do.  I’m slowly learning to communicate with the emotional parts of my brain, slowly I’m learning to calm those parts.  Slowly I gain the trust of those emotional parts. Slowly those emotional parts are learning to hear the logic parts and understand those logic centers.

I wish I could just let go and trust when the situation shows that it’s more than likely safe to do so.  It’s not that easy though.  Lately I’m just so sick of the issues that come with my past and DID.  Lately I’ve been wishing that there was some way I could make it so none of those traumatic experiences ever happened, I’ve been wishing there was some way I could just be over it, “normal”…  Lately I’ve felt like pushing myself harder to change, to try and heal, to go faster than what I get done in therapy, to risk doing things that might re-traumatize or trigger memories I’m not ready for.  I’m NOT going to do that but it’s a struggle to deal with those thoughts and not give in.

Everything will happen in time.  Maybe someday I’ll have more manageable  trust issues.  I can start to see that trust can be a good thing though.  I think I can!  I know I can!  I am…slowly.

Having a problem with saying the wrong thing

I almost always feel like I’m saying the wrong things in my outside life but now I realize I often find myself saying the wrong things in my inner world as well.  It makes me feel awful and I don’t know how to change it at the moment.  I’m not sure how to describe it except to give an outside life example of the a similar situation:

Have you ever had one of those moments with a friend where they are really down depressed and emo because say they broke up with someone, their cat is sick, they messed up at work….I don’t know.  Anyhow, no matter what you do or what you say they just keep beating themselves up.  Outwardly though you pat them on the back and say they are a great person with lots to offer blah blah blah but after awhile you inwardly start thinking “Good God, you are getting so annoying with this ‘I suck’ BS! Shut the F*ck up already!”.

Well, obviously that’s a real problem with DID and the friend is instead an internal part.  I don’t really get my own private thoughts and I end up hurting that part of me even more.  I think in the past I’ve sometimes been able to be more tactful etc, etc all that good stuff and say something better than “I understand your hurting but shut the hell up about it already”.  Right now though I guess I’m just not having one of those moments.  So there ends up being this long session of massive apologies and well…I think maybe I’m getting the silent treatment or something.  Totally deserved, I think I probably lost some trust with those parts too.  Sucks.  Things had been going pretty well, certain part that had “runaway” came back and WAY TO GO ME! I totally f*cked that up.

I’m just not good at being nice/good to “me” yet.  I keep stumbling along.  I think my fear is though that somehow they might “leave” me for good (wall me back out maybe).  *sigh* I dunno, I gotta take a break from this one…

Negative introjects and censors

Gah, I opened this window to post like an hour ago…forgot why I even wanted to type this (I knew what I wanted to say I just didn’t know what the point was or anything like that. Although most times I don’t know what the point is so…bah…anyway)…then I started reading other peoples blogs and came back.  I should probably get to bed soon, huh?

I guess negative introjects and censors are (or are kind of) the same thing.  I never really know what to call Dth.  I used to refer to him as a Dark Alter after all he is the sibling of the other 2 DA’s.  Just the other 2 DA’s aren’t out to hurt us, they are DA’s because they are well…non-human extreme protectors.  Dth is …an extreme, extreme protector (extreme beyond what’s reasonable).  So the Negative Introject or internal persecutor title (negative voice that is a continuation of all my abusers) works for me.

Censors are introjects too since they keep me doing or thinking certain things.  Just…for me my censors are not people/personalities.  The censors for me are just a background function as far as I can tell.  It’s like trying to talk to a GPS most times, just end up yelling at something that can’t respond.  Only thing is I don’t yet know how to permanently shut them off.

This week though I found myself all of a sudden wondering if these two are really connected more than I realize.

Two of my censors are in effect these days.  One is what I mentioned earlier, that is a censor on communication with outsiders.  The other is a food censor, it basically tells me “If you eat that you’ll die of  _____. You’ve had way to much fat and cholesterol today.”  Or sugar, or supposed cancer causing thing, whatever…pretty much everything.   Bleh, don’t wanna talk about it anymore than that right now.

I don’t think it had been a struggle with these censors for sometime.  I thought it was just out of the blue but then I for some reason thought about Dth.  See, Dth has been out for a while now.  I’m pretty sure he’s out anyway.  Every time I go to the safe where he was I always see it empty.  First it was empty with just half the block of ice, now it’s just a puddle that’s slowly drying.  Sometimes I think maybe that’s not real, that I’m just so worried about him being out that I’m just sort of projecting and can’t see past that illusion I’m creating.  I think that the Others know/think he’s really out too though.  The very young insiders haven’t been around as much it seems either (another “good” indicator he’s back), not sure if it’s really related though or if I’m maybe just not aware.  It just seems thought that maybe the censors are active only/more when Dth is around.

I knew we couldn’t keep him on ice forever, that we’d have to deal with him at some point.  I guess I was just hoping we’d have more time to get our plan together.  Hopefully, he stays away for a while longer (not sure where he is exactly and no one wants to go looking). Hopefully, he’ll understand at some point and maybe forgive us for what we had to do.  Hopefully, we can someday get through to him (it was going ok, slow, but ok before this.)  Hopefully, maybe there is some sort of connection with the censors and that maybe if we really can get Dth switched to our side the censors will go or let up too!