One Single Meaningful Relationship

So, this is the video:

I was sitting there watching this and trying to think of one single meaningful relationship where I really felt that the other person was right there with me.  A relationship where I felt like I was heard and understood, cared about, empathized with, etc.  I suppose I somewhat had that with my Grandmother but I don’t think I had a relationship that really fit the description until High School.  I think I’ve mentioned this relationship before a bit and how much it has impacted the rest of my life.

It’s strange though because I’ve been back in touch with that person and I don’t really feel that way about the relationship anymore.  I’m not entirely sure how I feel but, it’s definitely not the same.  I’ve been really thrown as to what to do about it, if anything at all.  Right now I guess I don’t have much time to worry about it.  I have to many other things going on in my life and I guess thanks to that experience back in High School I know this is not the end of the world if I need to let go.  I think I will always in some way love this person no matter what (and maybe that’s a good thing, maybe a bad thing) but I know this person is not the LAST thing.  I know I am surrounded by people who truly love and care for me & vis versa.

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.

Failing to heed basic needs

* Ugh! I started this Tuesday and have been so tired I didn’t finish.  Don’t quite know why I start a post then don’t finish or feel like it’s not important so it ends up going to the draft monster!

Therapy was really interesting today. Talked about a few things that have been on my mind recently, I realized I meant to add some questions to that list I started.  I think I need a place to keep a sort of running list because questions seem to be popping up all over the place now.  Anyway…

Today I ended up mentioning that I was reading this book called “The Magic Daughter” and I’m planning on buying it to mark the whole thing up because I relate to so much of it.  I’m hoping to get to a blog post about it at some point.  It’s the first book on DID that I have so closely related to, a lot feels like my own story.  My T asked me for some examples of what I related to and one of the things I said I kind of could relate to was the authors inability to recognize body signals, in her case pain and signs of illness.  The author says that she wouldn’t recognize there was a problem until the situation was really bad, an earache for example.  For me I’m not so sure about pain and illness just because of the Fibro stuff I think I experience pain and illness differently but for sure I ignore/have ignored other body signals.

I started to talk some with my therapist about that, that it took me until 2005 or so to learn that I often didn’t eat because I wasn’t in tune with the signal.  Around 2005 I was starting to talk about what had happened in my life and I was starting to make more and more connections.  I started to listen more to what was going on in my head.  One part of it I think is that, I’m just really not in touch with myself like that.  The other part of not listening to the signal of hunger is that there is often a huge battle over food going on in my head.  I realized that because of my dad having 2 major health emergencies by the time he was in his mid – late 40’s, I had picked up really extreme thoughts about food.  I often am in an argument with some part of myself over what is healthy, it gets pretty ridiculous.  I was thinking about this and the fact that up until middle school maybe, I had a lot of trouble recognizing my needs to use the bathroom.  I still struggle sometimes to hear that signal.  I think another one is recognizing hygiene needs, mainly taking a shower (I think for me this translates as bath, I’ll mention it in a bit).

So I was talking about some of this and my T asked me how I was feeling.  I really couldn’t pin down the word, it was sort of similar to angry but not quite.  I could just see someone with their arms folded and wanting to turn away from me.  My therapist threw out the word annoyed and the feeling sort of subsided, it felt like the right word.

We talked a little bit about what about those needs was annoying.  It seemed like the same thought around food popped in to my head and hers at the same time.  I don’t know how long I was in the orphanage being taken care of along side a dozen or more other infants before going to the nun who took care of me before I went to my parents (or if the nun had any other babies she was caring for).  I don’t think there’s too much substitute for one on one interaction, no matter how many nurses there are it just seems difficult to imagine not being confused about where/when the next meal is coming from.  It feels like it would be more ‘convenient’ not to have the need for food, if that makes sense.  It feels like without that need, I don’t NEED anyone.  It feels like “how can you rely on anyone, why bother?!”.

At almost the same moment I thought of the short flashbacks I have about being changed as an infant and being bathed.  I felt the same thing, if I didn’t have those needs then none of that bad stuff (I’m not sure what the “stuff” is it just comes as picture flashes and intense feelings) would have happened.  Those needs felt ‘inconvenient’ (I’m still trying to work out all my wording around this. So I hope it makes some sense). In someways all of those needs feel like this incredible burden not just to me but as far as I can see to others.  “I’d be ok, taken care of, if it wasn’t for ____.”  Before I couldn’t  figure out why or where my tuning out those needs came from, now it makes sense.  I’m still trying to figure out why I’m so afraid to get up in the middle of the night, that’s my main trouble point now.  I’ll hold ‘it’ all night sometimes, I’m better at recognizing the need to go and going during the day. I just won’t take a bath though no matter how much my Fibromyalgia is screaming for one, showering I think I’m ok with though I do sometimes dissociate badly after.

So then the conversation drifted to the attachments involved in having these needs met and the trust that I feel broke or in some cases maybe didn’t exist to begin with.  I talked about being a toddler and being terrified my mom would leave me and not comeback for me, that I’d cry for hours.  I feel like in someways though I’ve disconnected from the idea of her as my mom.  The idea of “mom” is so confusing and conflicted for me.  I feel close and so distant all at once almost.  For a long while as a kid I had this idea of “Drop them before they drop you” with making new friends.  I think that idea got really strong when my best friend since I was maybe 2 or so moved at the end of first grade.  I think I felt like “That’s the last time someone leaves me!” I have gotten a lot better about it over time though.  I’ve learned to recognize how I’m feeling about the relationship, to take a mental time out to realize that’s how I’m feeling, and try and sort it out when I’m feeling a little more ‘rational’ (or ask for help).  My instinct is just to sabotage the relationship when things start to feel funny and I almost did trash 2 relationships that have turned out to be the best relationships (non romantic I mean) I’ve ever had.  The first one is the reason I gave the second friend a long pause before dropping her, they have both taught me there are actually good people in the world.  Sometimes I still think I don’t need other people or life would be better/easier without people, I can be really good at numbing out that need.

I do need all of these things though, I am human after all.  I’m remembering “The Family Inside” where the author talks about how through abuse, neglect, etc. a baby/young child ‘becomes’ an object. The ‘object’ only exists when the outside world (caregivers, abusers, etc.) want it to exist, instead of the way a true one-on-one parent/caregiver sees/treats a baby/child.  I think sometimes when I really think about it, it is really sort of frightening to realize I am the same thing everyone else around me is…human.  It’s scary to realize I have needs and need those needs to live, that feelings and body needs, etc. have a purpose when I’d so much rather push them aside/numb out.  Sometimes I just think somewhere in the back of my head I’m asking “WHY?!”, why have feelings, why have these basic needs?!

So I’m working on learning to recognize my needs and not fear them or numb them out.  The Remeron helps me recognize my hunger, and I’m recognizing I’m hungry right now so I need to wrap this up!

I think a lot of this will end up in my list of questions (which I need to set up a page or something for, totally forgot).  I find myself wondering why no one thought some of this was a maybe a sign of something bigger.  I’ll leave that for my question list though. I have to go eat!

USofT “Snow” episode 11. Heads up!

I been debating for a little while whether to post something or not because I am able to get the episodes a bit earlier (I’m sure other people have seen it too by now).  I don’t want to “spoil” the episodes (though to me I’m not sure that’s really hard, this show is pretty predictable. Yah, I really have nothing good to say about it and that’s not even talking about the DID aspect, just general TV wise.  Funny cause early on I was one of the ones a little excited about it, it’s been a let down a little).  Anyhow, if I had known what was going to go on in this episode I would have skipped it knowing full well it would just get me worked up and angry.  So here are a few reasons why it got under my skin:

1. The use of hypnosis and drugs (sodium pentathol) to ‘aid’ in ‘alters’ ‘appearing’.  A.) I trust my therapist and for the most part my insiders do as well (still feeling things out a bit) and I know many other trauma survivors and people with DID who completely trust their therapists but would never agree to hypnosis or sodium pentathol.  I took a big leap a while ago doing a little guided imagery and I have no plans on doing that again any time soon.  Why?  I have way too hard a time right now in situations like that where I feel like someone outside is ‘in charge’.  That was the first time I have ever closed my eyes in front of someone in a situation like that.  As a little kid I used to use a lot of self hypnosis techniques but I can’t even do those anymore because it creeps the living day lights out of me.  B). I think trauma survivors and people with DID get enough crap from the false memory foundation about this being how therapist ‘brainwash’ people.  So I can see a lot of idiots out there going “See, it’s true! I saw it on T.V and they even have some hot shot therapist they consult with for this show, see!”.   C) The combination of  A) and B) were both reasons why I put off talking to anyone about what was going on in my head.  I would have sought help a lot sooner if someone had explained, no that’s not how it works.  Yes, there are those people out there that believe that’s the only way but it’s not.  Hang in, keep looking.

2.  Prying ‘alters’.  For myself and many other friends with DID, never a good idea to try and get someone to come out.  There are many things that can happen and none of them are good (especially for us).  For me and myselves that would be a major break of trust, only worse would be as in this situation with Tara, if I were to ‘agree’ to let someone ‘poke around’.  If insiders can’t trust each other we are SOL! I don’t even want to think about that, we go to great lengths sometimes to try and keep ourselves protected from being ‘called out’.  When I see people doing this to multiples in movies or T.V. I just want to punch the person doing the provoking!

3. The great (or not so great) ‘I’ word.  This word almost became a reason to stop therapy.  I understand everyone has their own opinion and decision about this word but, I think other people need to understand that too.  When this word comes up in some conversations with other multiples, some are not very respectful.  For some of us the word integration is just a scary word and not something we want.  A lot of time it feels forced upon us, like this is the only option, like there is something horrible about us if we don’t integrate into one person.  Personally, that’s not my choice and I’m not going to knock another persons choice.  When the walls around us first started to crumble I thought for sure that was what I wanted, I just wanted “them” to be gone.  I pretty much thought that was the only option anyway.  (Lost my train of thought some neighbor kid throwing a fit or something  outside…)   Anyway, there are those out there who put off getting help because they feel like there maybe more hospitals and therapist pushing this idea.  Certainly one reason why I did this last time around.  After I had decided that I didn’t want to go that route I felt like my previous therapist was (well at least flip-flopping at first) pushing me into that decision.

4.  People get all up in a tizzy about this one too, digging for the background story.  I have to bring up the damn false memory thing but you know they are eating this up!  I’m trying to cut some slack on this because I know every multiple is different and entitled to their choice.  Maybe that’s my beef with it here though, is that it doesn’t seem like a choice given to the character.  I know you only have so many years and so many episodes to do a T.V. show but, it all just seems very rushed.  I know Tara has her family, work, and the insurance thing but trauma therapy is not something to race to be done with (although most days I wish I could speed through, trust me if your not going through this).  It took a long period of time working before the haze stared to clear around my past and it’s still not all there, I don’t expect to get it all (and I don’t really want to, my therapist says that’s totally fine maybe even better at least for me.  Other people may need to get it all).  In the years before that I was likely to tell you my growing up was ok.  Now I’d probably say growing up was kind of shitty not all bad though (as I slowly am adding some good memories to that all blank space) and I know people who had it way worse (multiples or not).  I still don’t know much just that the weird ‘feelings’ I used to ignore and shove into the background are now more toward the foreground.  They don’t make a lot of sense, it’s sometimes like an audio visual flip book of random images, sounds, and feelings/body memories, it makes enough sense though to what I do remember to work with those ‘memories’ in therapy.  I have tried to dig in the past on my own (triggering myself, trying to cling onto an image flash, body memory, in hopes there would be more revealed if I just hung on and rode with it) but that just made things worse because my brain became like Fort Knox and I pretty much just shut down.  20 steps back, none forward.  It does suck that when you try to just go about life the crap just comes flying out of Pandora’s box and knocks you on your ass but that’s just how it goes!  “Things I wish I had known about surviving trauma”!

I don’t know I’m kind of hoping this will somehow, in someways turn into a what not to do type of thing.  I’m hoping at some point when Tara gets to know all her ‘alters’ that she maybe has a struggle with deciding to integrate or not.  I’m just at the moment very tired of this one narrow view of DID and the treatment/therapy.  It’s hard with a T.V. show because that’s what people ‘take home’ in the moment and they may drop out (which honestly for that reason I’m tempted to drop out) and not see that the show ‘evolves’ to show a different point of view.  I know someone will say it’s been good for a discussion (I know it’s got a lot of us with first hand experience talking about some good things.  I try to stay away from the arm chair psychologist discussions because they just don’t care to hear/ learn anything that’s not on T.V. and often you can’t say too much in situations like that with out feeling like someones pet lab rat or something )but, I’m not sure it’s worth it.  I am hoping anyone concerned about themself and their thought pattern will go get help (it will probably take trial and error, do some research and there are many who have been through it out here to make some suggestions) and not be like me and put it off because of seeing some show/movie/book.