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.