Multiplicity can be a choice

First, I want to say that there is so much I have to talk about, that I collectively have experienced over the past week. I have come to an amazing place in my healing process where I feel absolutely confident that I will never again feel as bad as I did in the past--I will feel bad at times, because that is part of the human condition. But the horrible, hopeless despair is gone, and that degree of pain is unlikely to return. The joy and relief are incredible, and I want to share them with everyone I know. But right now, I'll just share the thing that made everything click for me. Maybe later, I'll write more about how it feels to be where I am.

So. Multiplicity as a choice.

I had inklings of this from the beginning, but I never realized it. Once I realized I was multiple, I knew it was important for me to accept it without shame. I knew that would be a vital part of my healing process, because shame is simply not an emotion that leads to healing. Shame helps to cement unhealthy patterns, and no matter how many healing skills we learn, the shame will undermine them every time. (But be aware that you have to go ahead and learn the healing skills, or else you won't be able to get past the shame. And try not to feel ashamed of being ashamed.)

If multiplicity is something that was imposed on me by abuse, it would make sense to say "well, then, my healing won't be complete until the things caused by the abuse have been healed." It would make sense to focus on "healing" my multiplicity.

That never seemed to work for me. Parts of me were very resistant to the idea of being healed until they couldn't be fully and discretely themselves. They never liked the idea other people described, of integration meaning that all of who the parts were got blended into one single person. Their experience is one of being individuals, having thoughts and feelings that are fully their own.

And when there was a focus on healing the multiplicity, it really got in the way of internal communication. Parts who felt they were more healed--the ones who had more access to healing skills--often felt invested in being the ones who led the rest of us. They did have a point, because everyone did need to heal. They were right about that. But they thought they knew the right way to do it, and on that, they were wrong.

So, awkwardly and uncomfortably, we did our best to accept our multiplicity. There was always some doubt, about whether this was really a path that would lead us to healing. Maybe we were wrong, a lot of us worried. Maybe we were slowing the healing process by defining each part concretely. Maybe we were so warped by our childhood, or so invested in some kind of, I don't know, exhibitionist need to be multiple that we were making the problem worse.

But at the same time, we were also sufficiently self-aware to keep checking on a simple thing: whenever we started to act as though we were all individuals in here, people who share a body and absolutely have to compromise, communicate, and cooperate on our mutual life... things would start to get better. The headaches would go away, we could get more done, there were fewer panic attacks and less lost time. When we started to act as though we were a singleton, we lost cooperation. There was more depression, more fear, we were less able to live the life we want to have.

There was still shame and doubt, though. We kept on ignoring the comments from the little kids inside, who insist that lots of people around us are pretty similar to us. We bought into the idea that multiplicity is caused by abuse, and that that it's fairly uncommon. Our shame led us to think that our sense that lots of people are multiple was simply a desire to feel like we had less to be ashamed about.

Then we realized something: what do we have to be ashamed about, anyways? We didn't cause the abuse. We didn't ask for it. We didn't seek it out. For the entire span of our life that we've had control over, there has been no abuse. When we have had a choice, we have chosen healthy relationships. So if multiplicity is anything, it's a lucky development. Our mind, for whatever reasons, gave us tools that allowed us not only to live through the abuse, but to achieve our goals, and live a healthy adult life.

Honestly, we suspect we were going to be multiple regardless of what happened, in one way or another. We might never have chosen to have our own names, and we certainly wouldn't have had to spend years in therapy to cope with being multiple. The problem isn't the multiplicity, and we've realized that more strongly than ever. What has caused problems in our system is that the parts have spent their lives coping with being abused. Healing has taken so long, because we're going through a bunch of different "people's" healing process, and we didn't understand that for most of the time we were working at this.

I started listening when parts kept saying "trying to become ex-multiple, for us, is like trying to become ex-gay." And we have strong opinions on that one, for ourselves. We *are* queer. We accepted that from the outset. We chose to be who we are, without shame or guilt. We didn't listen to the people saying we were only a lesbian for reasons outside of our control. We chose to embrace it. Even though we believe it was true for us from the beginning, we also actively chose to be who we are.

So why not choose to be multiple? It's gonna be there whether or not you choose it. It doesn't matter where it came from, it's there. And there are so many advantages to just going ahead and treating ourselves as a multiple.

When we accepted that we are different people sharing a body, we're holding opposites in our hands: we are one person, living in a single body; we have to learn to cooperate because what one of us does affects everyone here. But at the same time, we are individuals. We each have our own experiences, memories, opinions, and things we want out of life. We can become more fulfilled as individuals when everyone inside is able to understand that they are not the only one here.

The best example is from those times when things are fairly settled for our system. No one is having anxiety, no one is afraid or upset. And then whoever is at the front, if they haven't learned to accept that they are multiple, feels that they are the only one there, or (if they somewhat accept our multiplicity) they think they are the only one in front. So when deciding what to do, they will assume that their opinion is the most important one. "Do I want to check email or play a game?" they will ask themselves when they are getting on the computer. "Well, I want to check email, but I want to play the game more." So they play the game, not realizing that "check email" was a request put in by another part. It can lead to chronic frustration and lack of satisfaction for parts who are less strong-willed, and less able to claim the front. We've been realizing that this is happening recently, and it was a breakthrough in communication. It's really hard to communicate with yourselves if you don't believe there's more than one of you. It's difficult to communicate with people when you assume you know what they want or believe without asking them.

Somehow, this process led us to the notion that by embracing multiplicity, we were embracing something really joyous. It is as though by working to define each part, and accepting that we are each individuals, we were able to click together and accomplish integration of each of our individual selves. We could find all of the parts of ourselves we had assumed belonged to someone else inside.

And that can lead to an amazing realization. It did for us, anyways. We have a part who has been more suicidal than most of us, and who never lost that desperate sense of needing the pain to end. She would say--and we all often thought it was other parts saying this, but now we know differently--she would say "I need the pain to end; I feel like my choices are to continue in pain, to be dead, or to stop the pain." And her first choice was to stop the pain, but she didn't know how. We have finally realized, for us, that acting to stop the pain is all it takes to ease it. Going to therapy, sure, but also, we realized that we have the right to tell people to stop doing things that hurt us. And we have the right to act for ourselves, to reach out, to be honest and imperfect, and not always in control. We realized that there is more safety in taking risks than in constantly being braced for abuse that is no longer happening.

Growing up, we had no choice. We just lived through it, closed ourselves off to the pain, and did our best to survive. As adults, that pattern was ingrained. We would act to avoid things that were painful, and we would stop obvious hurts. But the hurts of isolation, the hurts of being around people who we care about who are hurting... those, we didn't know what to do about, or we were afraid to act.

I can't quite say which came first, deciding to embrace multiplicity willingly and without shame, or realizing that we can choose that third path: the path that leads to changing the rules so that we can be happy and fulfilled. Honestly, it probably happened simultaneously, along with a lot of other things. When we are able to listen to other parts, they will tell us some very healing things.

Whatever the cause, realizing that multiplicity is a choice, and making the choice to be multiple, somehow caused us to experience what has got to be integration for us. We are still each our individual selves, and we feel fairly confident that we've collected all the lost bits and pieces of who we were. It's been delightful to realize that a part who seemed to do nothing but provoke problems is also the one who finds nothing more satisfying than to fix things. Messing stuff up is part of fixing things, and Petra is dedicated to doing both of those things. Most freeing of all is how Why transformed into Tertia--she has always pushed us, in ways that felt terrifying to everyone involved, to find that third path, the one that requires neither living through abuse nor being dead. Her desire to end the pain was strong, and her desire to live a life without pain motivated the rest of us to keep up with the healing process.

Why do I call it integration, if we have not turned into a single person? Because we've realized that integration doesn't have to be--perhaps should not be--about everyone becoming the same. It's about finding a place for every part, and giving them an equal voice in the running of the system. It means that we take each part's needs into account, and work to make a life where all of us can be happy. We are one system, and we've never doubted that. But we are also a collection of individuals, and choosing to accept that has given us access to more strength and joy than we imagined would ever be possible.

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United States of Jigsaw Analogy

"I pledge allegiance to the fact of the single personhood of Jigsaw Analogy, and to the community for which that stands, one person, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

I've been thinking about a lot of things, lately. Or, more to the point, we have been thinking about a lot of things lately, since there are two parts writing this! Anyhow. One of the many things going on in our collective head is some thinking about what it means to "integrate."

Reading the "healing" literature, (well-intentioned, but sometimes that is some really damned SHAMING literature!). Anyhow. Reading that, you'd get the impression that for a multiple to heal, they have to do something like become part of a Borg collective: "Your emotional and intellectual distinctiveness will be assimilated into our collective. We are Borg, resistance is futile. You WILL be assimilated."

Um, hello? That version of integration would be like telling people of color that in order to be integrated into society, they have to act just like everyone else. It's like saying that an integrated society is one where somehow people retain their "culture," but God forbid they go around acting different from the norm, because that would mean they weren't really integrated. And sure, there are people who believe this. Hell, there are people who think that the way to make society--or, frankly an individual with multiplicity--happy, healthy, and worth living in is to get rid of anything that doesn't fit with their idea of perfection.

That is just about the stupidest idea, when you come to think of it. Sorry, racists and people who can't handle difference. I know that other parts of this system like to act all tolerant and everything, and want to make sure that everyone feels welcome reading this blog. Too bad. If you're a racist, I don't care if I offend you that I think racism is stupid. And if you're someone who is going to tell me that the best way to be integrated is for all of the parts to merge into one, well, I'm gonna go out on a limb here, and risk offending you, too.

When I read or hear about people "integrating" in that fashion, it seems more like they are becoming ex-gay. I mean, yeah. They've learned to repress the parts of themselves that make them different from the norm. And this can make people feel more comfortable, and some people--therapists and psychiatrists included, God help us all--think that feeling more comfortable by avoiding conflict is totally the way to go.

I respectfully disagree. I want to integrate in that fashion just about as much as I want to become ex-gay, or want to integrate racially by pretending my skin color is invisible. Ain't gonna happen, folks.


But what if there were a different way to do this? What if integration as a multiple could be more like becoming a republic, which is to say--a lot of individual parts, recognizing that they are part of a whole while still being individuals. What if instead of focusing on merging into a seamless whole, integration could be something messy and complicated and hard to work through? Something where maybe it isn't easier, but no one has to be assimilated into the collective?

Which isn't to say that I'm against that whole "pulling together the disparate parts of yourself." 'Cause the fact is, multiples DO need to do that, or at least my system did. Or maybe it's just checking in, and recognizing which parts of the whole go with which parts. There are a lot of folks inside of my body who thought that they were just one thing. (Ellis, for example, thought that aside from being resentful, she was pretty much perfect. :P ) But as we've had each part "integrate" their experience, they've discovered, "Oh! look at that! It turns out that I'm not just angry--I am the one who is really good at these things, and I'm the one who does those things that are totally unrelated to being angry!"

Because the complicated thing with sharing a body is, if you're not very in touch with yourself as a part, you can lose touch with parts of yourself-the-part. If you've got shame, or fear, or whatever, maybe you attribute parts of your actions that don't fit with your self-image to other parts of the system.

So let's say you see yourself as absolutely perfect, like Ellis does. You might have a hard time reconciling that with the fact that you're really critical, and judgmental, and just a wee bit controlling. And parts like that (sorry, Ellis, but this is true. Goes for you, too, Cleo.) will think that when they fight to make sure that the entire system acts like one single person, some assimilated Borg collective of "individual parts" who represent to the outside world as a fairly seamless whole, that they are doing this for other peoples' comfort, or that they are doing this to keep the system safe.

Here's an analogy for you: This is like gay people who are so uncomfortable and afraid and ashamed of being different that they "act straight" all the time. Don't get me wrong. There are times that you need to act straight. Or at least, there are times when you need not to call attention to the fact of your difference.

But that doesn't mean it's true ALL the time. I suspect it's not even true MOST of the time. It's all about calculated risks. Look around you. Are these people really going to hurt you if they find out you're different? How can they hurt you? Most of the time, there is absolutely nothing they can do, if it turns out that you're different.

Sure, this isn't true for everyone. There are people who will lose their jobs, or their children, if someone finds out they are gay. There are people who will lose their jobs, or their children, if someone finds out that they are multiple. I say, those of us who don't run that risk have a responsibility to be as out as we possibly can. Because you know what? The only way, the ONLY way to make the world safe is for people to be brave enough to reclaim the different parts of themselves, and be proud of every part of who they are.

I'm not saying that individual parts can go off acting like they own the whole body. Because you are parts of a whole. Call it a jigsaw puzzle, call it a crazy quilt, call it a republic. It doesn't matter what you call it. You're not in this alone, and you can't go off acting like you are. And that includes the parts who try to pretend that the way to integrate is to pretend that everyone is exactly the same, and there is none of that difference that makes people so uncomfortable.

Note: this post started out being written with Ellis, but then she got over her bad self and let me take control. Me being Xan. I'll point out that it's a problem, when someone who is all over the idea of being out as multiple has trouble coping with the idea of some other part showing up in a space that is supposed to be accepting of multiplicity. Like, you know, their own blog.

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NaNoWriMo

I'm participating in NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month. The aim is to write a whole novel in a single month. Notice that I say "write" rather than "complete," since the only way I can make it to the finish line is if I don't stop to edit on the way.

The novel I'm working on might be of interest to people who read this blog, since it's about someone who survived abuse, and now needs to learn to cope with the tools she used--things like dissociation, and shielding herself emotionally. I frame it as a fantasy, and an exploration of fairy tales, so hopefully, it will be interesting even to people who haven't coped with these issues.

I have posted an excerpt at my writing blog, and I may post more, if anything seems ready to share as the month progresses.

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been a while

i haven't posted in a while. partly it's because i've been having bad fibro, and i still don't have a good desk chair, so i get tired pretty fast when i sit at my desk. partly, it's because the parts who have been out lately haven't been as interested in writing, or if one part wants to write something, someone else has another idea of what to write about and then there's conflict, so nothing gets written.

or maybe it's that the parts who have mainly been out aren't ones who have been on the blog much so they don't feel as comfortable writing? not sure.

i miss the things i used to do, and by that i mean things i was doing just a few months ago.

in terms of an update, we wound up thinking about the reasons s. had for not taking our insurance any more, and they made sense. and also, we figured that if she's willing to see us for a copay that is less than half what she was getting from the insurance company, odds are she isn't actually trying to get rid of us. so on the up side, we'll still be seeing her for therapy. on the down side, that's $200 a month we have to spend now that we didn't have to spend before. but there is another positive: i applied for food stamps, and they are giving me... $200 a month. so it works out even, pretty much. so that's good.

one thing happening is that parts have been struggling with memories and being triggered. one thing we've realized is that the triggers from present stuff are especially powerful because we don't actually remember the stuff that made it triggering. not sure if that makes sense. i explained it to w like this: let's say i went to the circus, watched a bunch of clowns, and then got stepped on by an elephant. but i blocked out being stepped on by the elephant, and just remembered how painful it was. so now, every time i see clowns, i'm afraid of the pain of being stepped on by an elephant. so clowns are what's scary. but really, the problem was the elephant.

so i kind of think if i can get to the point where i remember the elephant, then the clowns won't be nearly as upsetting.

the problem is, it's hard to stop blocking out memories. it's one of those things i have done for so long, and it's such a habit to keep myself from remembering things. and i have a lot of fears about remembering things, too. and i used to get such positive responses from NOT remembering, and it's hard to let go of that. plus, there's the fear that i'm making it up.

i guess that's something to think about. intellectually, i don't really believe the false memory people are right. they just come across as people who are trying to keep things hidden, and who are trying to keep people from finding out about bad things.

but at the same time, i can think of a bunch of things that i used to think were just nightmares i had, and then someone in my family will describe something that happened, and it's like... oh. that wasn't a nightmare. that really *happened* pretty much exactly as it did in the recurring nightmare.

so it seems like i would then be more willing to believe the *other* "nightmares" i have that are like those are also true. but in a lot of ways, i don't want them to be true. but at the same time, maybe realizing they are true is the only way to reduce their power. on the OTHER hand, realizing the things i now know are true are true hasn't reduced their power. those things are still upsetting for me.

so that's part of what's going on, at least right now.

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exhausted

or, as the little kids say "i am EZOSTED!"

partly, it's fibro (and boy, do i resent having my fibro still flaring up in the fall! usually, i get a couple of months of better physical stamina! i WANT that. i NEED that!)

but more of it is that this was an exhausting weekend for me. yesterday was thoroughly aggravating until about 5:20. we were having a meeting of dinner collective--our first since we started a group on meetup.com, so i was anxious to get to the meeting place on time. but the chickens i was roasting turned out to still be frozen, which set me back by about an hour and a half (ever tried to rapid-thaw chickens, and then pry out the giblet packages from half-frozen chickens? not an easy task!)

and at the same time, our internet wasn't working (which turned out to be a router problem, and i need to figure out how to deal with that, since it's still happening sporadically.) so i was trying to fix that, thaw the chickens, get dinner made, keep the kitchen from becoming a *total* disaster, and not getting any down time.

dinner collective went well, although only one new person showed up. but we now have several meals in the fridge for next week, and that is a really good thing.

today was more emotionally exhausting. trying to deal with idiocy on our landlord's part, and doing some tiring processing with w (good, useful, not tense, but tiring never the less.)

last week was also very social, which can be difficult for me, so it's just been a while since i had down time, and there isn't a whole ton of down time coming up, either.

but that wasn't really why i started this post, now that i think of it. what i was *going* to write about is how i sometimes feel like i'm making things up.

case in point: tonight, the ones doing the majority of the processing with w were adults. those who have been reading for a while might be aware that the adult parts haven't been around a lot for the past year and more (not since the end of summer, 2007). they've been coming around more often for the past few months, but still not that often. one thing i, ellis, have noticed is that a lot of times in the past when w. and i both assumed it was adults, it was actually me. i have always operated as a kind of quasi-adult, so that makes sense. at least to me.

but the adults also tend not to announce their presence a lot of the time, at least, not if they aren't doing something specifically "adult." and i get that it can be uncomfortable to say "oh, right, this is who i am" to someone who has known you for a long time, and who you're used to just being "you" with. and the bulk of the time the adults were around, they were kind of the default, you know? i/we were with w for 4 1/2 years before DID was something we'd considered. and then the adults were only around routinely for about the first year post-diagnosis, and then it's been more than a year of us younger ones being the ones who are mostly out.

right. so the point. i went to check in with w before bed, and mentioned that it had been adults. i KNOW it was adults for the bulk of that discussion. it had happened a couple of minutes previously, and i'd gone into my room, and out for a cigarette, and then came back. and it seemed like a good idea to say, "hey, this is one of those times you got adult time." but it felt like i was making things up. not because of w's response, but because i had to say something. it's hard, because neither w nor i is always good, even now, at checking to see who is out. and it's hard, because there's a level where it feels like "if she can't see it herself, then i must just be pretending when i say what's happening."

not sure where i was going with this, but there it is. just some thoughts.

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united states of tara

i just watched the trailer for the united states of tara. it's a program that will be on showtime at the beginning of next year. it's about a woman who is multiple, and how she and her family are coping with it.

i know the program has upset a lot of multiples. i've read people who are offended at the very idea of it being a comedy, and i suspect that no matter how well it's handled, it's not going to be ok with some people. well, i *know* that's true. there's no way to please everyone.

but they did please me. i appreciate the way that it seemed like they addressed the range of her personalities, and how that could cause discomfort with her family. i also liked the husband's interactions--it really seemed as though he'd built up relationships with at least the parts featured on the trailer, which is a nice message to be putting out there. the notion that it's ok for a partner of a multiple to interact with different parts.

probably my response has a lot to do with my own experiences. i know that my partner is uncomfortable with thinking about having a sexual relationship with the parts who aren't adults, or who aren't the parts who started the relationship with her (although, looking back, a *lot* of us started that relationship. it was a team effort, so to speak.)

and i'm comfortable with the idea that sometimes, coping with DID is just plain funny. when i'm with my friends who know that i'm multiple, we do joke about it. we aren't making light of the trauma, or the parts that are hard. we're making light of the fact that, for instance, i can go from having a serious political discussion to being all excited about seeing a lady garbageman back to the political discussion, then on to something entirely different. or we laugh about... just the humor of the situation. and the trailer for this show didn't make me feel like they were making fun of multiples, it made me feel like they were laughing at the way that it's funny, and also being conscious of the fact that it *isn't* always funny.

maybe when someone more coherent is around (or at least when i'm not in the middle of revolving door world!) i'll post something more about this topic. but for now, i feel like it's gonna be nice to get to watch the program, and see how things develop.

the only down side is, will people think i'm making up my multiplicity because i saw it on showtime?

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disability

several people have suggested to me that i should apply for disability. i'm not sure what i think, but i'm leaning towards that right now.

but even as i type this, i am also thinking "how disabled am, i, really?" and it's hard for me to answer that.

i'd say that if w were totally incapacitated, or something like that, sure, i could probably get it together to figure out how to work at a job. but the truth is... there have been times when that seemed like it would be the case, and i couldn't get it together.

it's hard for me to accept that i can't actually do something. i mean, my legs aren't broken. in fact, none of my bones is broken. my body doesn't work the way i would like it to (it often startles me to discover that things i'm so used to are not, in fact, normal. you know, like being physically capable of standing up while a train or bus is moving).

i've tried to get myself to where i can do freelance work from home. i have trouble accepting that there is a good reason i haven't been able to manage this. i mean, i'm smart. i'm willing. and i just can't do it. i can't manage to work on my website, which isn't even something where there is a deadline.

i had to stop working on my dissertation, because i couldn't handle it.

but what "counts" as being really disabled? i keep hearing those voices in my head, saying "if you really HAD to, you could do this." and i can't work out what's true. there are a LOT of things i've felt like i really had to do, things i FEEL like i really have to do, and i can't. i have tried.

i've tried to make an appointment with the ob/gyn to get some health stuff taken care of, and i haven't been able to do it. i spend hours getting myself to dial the number, and then i can't manage to make the appointment. same with the dentist or the gp. there are physical health things that are actually problems. things that are definitely going wrong... and i can't manage to make the appointments.

does that count as disabled?

does it count as disabled that i mostly can't manage to shower, if i *can* manage to change my clothes and use deodorant, so i'm not visibly unbathed? does it count as disabled if it takes me three or four tries to talk myself onto a train if it's crowded? (and for me, "crowded" equals "people sitting on 3/4 of the seats")

i see people who can manage to keep working, even though they have much worse things going on. there are people who manage to work with all kinds of disabilities. so i can't figure out why i'm not managing it.

just because i become intensely suicidal when i push too hard... shouldn't i suck it up, and make myself work, on the theory that there's probably only a 20% chance i'd actually wind up committing suicide? i mean, that indicates that there is an 80% chance i'd live through it. those are good odds.

feels in a lot of ways like i'm just not trying hard enough. but then, there's also the fact that i feel like i'm trying my best, and just not succeeding. and that is... weird. i mean, i was raised to believe that the only reason i would fail at something i am supposed to do is if i haven't tried. and so i keep doubting that i've tried hard enough, because i keep on failing.

just... processing through this. not quite sure what the point of the post was.

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some thinking

i was thinking a little bit last night about the grown ups. cleo was out for a little bit, for some complicated reasons (there is something stressing her, specifically, out, which is why she showed up; but then she went and talked with w, so they spent some time together).

anyhow, afterwards, i was thinking about the ways having the adults around benefits me, and not just people outside. and i could think of advantages to having some of the adults. like xan is good, because she makes friends and she's brave and fun and outgoing. kind of like an aunt who's not that much older, but enough older that they're a grown up. i like xan. and even the mama, i can theoretically see the advantage to having her around. she does those mama-type things, like nurturing and sewing and baking bread. also, she has been taking care of the really little kids for a while now, and we can see she's not so bad to have around.

or the writer part, or the smart one, or the analyst... they don't come out very often, but they are definitely useful. they take care of situations and then go back inside. they don't block the rest of us out, for one thing.

but cleo... maybe part of it is that i (jamie) don't get along with cleo very well. or maybe it's that she has trouble believing she's really multiple. she's a lot more like ellis, i guess. the two of them are similar, so i have some trouble figuring out why we need both of them. except cleo really is a grown up, and ellis isn't. but from what i can see the main difference in what they do is, cleo has a different relationship with w. and she's less resentful about doing grown up stuff. well, ok, and she's more attracted to w.

but then ellis finally had a really good point last night, when i was thinking about it and trying to figure out what benefit i get from having cleo.

she pointed out that i don't get any real benefit from grace or elysia or the nonnys, not that i can see, but i don't complain about having *them* around. so maybe i should think of cleo in the same way. she IS here, so i guess she has the same right to be around as anyone else.

i guess for me, part of it is that i think of the adults as the parts we made on purpose. i mean, i can remember kind of intentionally creating parts when i was a teenager, not that we knew we were doing that, but it's pretty much what happened. like, the smart one, that was TOTALLY someone the rest of us came up with to cope with school. we *thought* we were just improving our confidence or something. so i guess i think of the adults as more... not really real parts, just pretend. but i guess they are real just like the rest of us, so they should be allowed to be around.

the other weird thing is realizing that they have things they struggle with, just like the rest of us do.

i guess part of what i don't like about the adults is, i'm ANGRY at them, because they didn't have to experience the bad stuff. it seems really unfair. i mean, i can understand why it happened. they were made so there were parts who didn't experience the bad stuff. and since they weren't present for it, ok, sure, they have known for a long time (maybe always?) that it happened, but they really didn't *experience* it.

and even though in my brain, i know the same thing i told w last night, that the older a part is, the less time they've been around (mostly--the mama has been around probably since i was ten or so, but the other adults didn't show up until i was way older than that).

anyhow... the younger parts are the ones who had to go through the worst stuff. that's probably why there are more nonnys who are little than who are teenagers, even though i can think of at least 2 teenaged nonnys.

but when i see the adults, i have a hard time accepting that they would just sit around and let the rest of us get hurt. and i guess a lot of the anger i feel towards them is the anger i have for adults OUTSIDE my body, who didn't do something to make the bad stuff stop. and i guess it's not the fault of the adults inside my body, any more than it's the fault of the grown ups i've met since my body grew up. none of these people had the ability to intervene.

the other thing i don't like about the adults in the system is, they get very sure they are right to be super responsible and take on too much. but i guess i have to trust w and my therapist, that they really will make sure that doesn't happen.

i guess that's all. mostly because my carpal tunnel is acting up, and my fingers are numb from typing!

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Thinking

One of the main things I (Ellis) have been working on in therapy is accepting that there are times when I need to stop working, and be okay with not doing everything I feel ought to be done.

I know this is particularly one of my issues, because coping with too much to be done is why I came to be.

Nineteen years ago, I was fourteen years old. My foot was in a cast, because I had sprained it in gym. I was responsible for babysitting my younger siblings every day after school, while my mother took night classes. I was in charge of making sure they did their homework, got fed, took care of chores (or at least making sure the chores got done, which often enough meant that I was the one doing them), and got into bed on time. I was also responsible for keeping up with my own schoolwork, and doing well in school. (This last, at least, held a personal motivation, because I understood that if I did well in school for four more years, the reward was that I could have an all-expenses paid ticket *out* of my home.)

I was fourteen years old.

None of this was considered too difficult for me. If I couldn't manage to do all of that well, it was because I was lazy.

All my life, growing up, I was taught that I was lazy. In the face of all evidence, I believed I was lazy. Because, lots of times, I really wished I could be responsible for less. I wished I could just curl up somewhere and do absolutely nothing for a little bit.

I believed I was lazy because sometimes, the last thing I wanted to do was get dragged out of bed to hear about how I hadn't done enough that day.

I believed the problem was my laziness.

So, fast forward to my adult life. How can I possibly see anything I do now as difficult, if I was taught to believe that what I coped with at fourteen wasn't difficult?

I think part of my struggle with learning how to stop pushing myself is that it makes me feel like I'm being lazy, self-indulgent, selfish... it makes me feel like I'm weak. It also makes me feel disloyal to my mother, because she taught me that what I coped with at fourteen wasn't too hard for a fourteen year old to cope with.

And it also makes me scared. Because if I really am lazy, maybe if I don't push myself, I won't get anything done. And then I will be a failure, someone who waits for the world to solve all of my problems for me.

Intellectually, I know I do plenty. But emotionally, not so much. I'm working on this. Perhaps, a day hasn't been wasted if I don't spend eighteen hours pushing myself to get things done. Perhaps, it's enough to do just what I can, and to stop when I start to feel panicky. At least, I can consider this possibility.

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DID/MPD/Dissociative Awareness

The conclusion!

So, the voting has ended, and here are the winning designs. I'm pretty proud, since the image on the left is the one I designed.

And, since it's the one I designed, and I had a nice, clean, large version of it on my hard drive, I went ahead and made a Café Press store with a couple of items. I'll probably add more products soon, as I get the chance to spend the time doing it. I can only hope that the process will get easier the more I do it.

So that's the good thing for today.

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i ought to know better

i can't think why i did this. i found one of the lists of "incest aftereffects" and printed it out. then i marked down which ones i or my sisters have. not sure about all of them, because we don't talk about this stuff too much, but of the things i know, between us, we've got all but one of the 35 aftereffects listed.

probably means there was some incest going on.

hard to believe that. i mean, i know i have tons of symptoms. i know i have flashbacks that most likely point to having survived incest. i know there are things that trigger me that, again, most likely point to incest.

but i still can't really grasp that it happened. it's so hard to accept that something like that could happen, and no one would talk about it, and i wouldn't remember. i mean, i may not remember many specific incidents of abuse, but i was always aware that it was going on.

maybe it's that incest is more secretive. more hidden. happened to us separately, and not in front of each other. (well, not the physical side. the emotional incest was right out there in the open. or maybe lots of kids go on dates with their parents....)

i guess a lot of it is protective. it is easier for me to get through a lot of life by not remembering. but then, why do i keep on getting confronted with evidence?

i would say, "something would have shown when we were growing up." but then i look back, and realize the danger signs were loud and clear for anyone who might have been looking for them. but it's still hard to accept.

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Camping and general update

I haven't been writing for a few days, it seems. In part, it's because we were away for the weekend. We went camping with friends, and it was good. In part, that is because camping is fun (at least for some of us parts!). Jamie and Ellis both got to make fires, which they enjoy. Mandy and Teller got to play with a dog and get attention from a bunch of different people. And since W. was doing a lot of the driving (she needs to practice for her driver's exam), it meant the adults got a good break.

But the thing that made this weekend really special was that the friends we were camping with all knew about me having DID, and were very happy to meet and interact with my different parts. It was pretty casual--not so much formal introductions as different parts coming in and out, and all of them being welcome to be there. So that was quite nice. It really makes me appreciate my friends even more.

Then, after coming back, I spent several days wiped out, either by allergies or by a cold (it can be difficult to tell the difference). So Tuesday and yesterday were both spent pretty much napping and wiped out in bed. Today is a little better, but only because I've been able to breathe through my nose 90% of the time.


I (Cleo) had today's therapy session almost entirely to myself. I think Rynn was there in the beginning, but that's just a guess. We were talking mostly about the difficulties the adult parts (perhaps me in particular, but I think I'm not the only one of the adult parts who has trouble with this) have in identifying ourselves, and being self-aware.

There are a lot of things that go into it. For one, it's just that we're not really in the habit of thinking, "Hm. Who am I?" So we operate within the general framework, as though we are interchangeable. This would be fine if we were interchangeable, but it doesn't quite work that way. It's become more of a problem lately (as in, over the past three years or so) because the things that used to trigger a switch to the "right" part for a job aren't there so much any more. So without deadlines or other pressures, things are a little more chaotic. But I guess that without deadlines or other pressures, we might never have noticed the DID in the first place, so I can't exactly say I regret that.

Another problem is that we don't like to have to acknowledge we're different parts. At least, I don't. And since the other parts are less inclined to be self-aware, and don't even really have names they can be called as though they were people, I think it's a pretty general issue.

Tied into that is the fact that we (I) feel guilty for not being able to do things that the other parts can do. The Mama can cook, clean, sew, do all the things that make a house into a really pleasant place. She lives in my body and shares my brain, so it seems like I should be able to do these things as easily as she can. The Smart One is, well, smart. She can answer questions and has a lot of factual information; she is good at being academic; she is pretty social (within academic settings, anyhow). So I should be able to do all of that, too. And so on, through the parts.

Add to that the fact that the teenagers don't have the fatigue, or even a lot of the pain of fibromyalgia, and that they have a great deal of stamina. So I should be able to do that, and not spend all of this time sitting around feeling exhausted and aching.

It's frustrating enough for me when other people (outside) don't put as much importance on being efficient and orderly as I do. It's incredibly aggravating for me that there are people inside of me who also don't place as much importance on this as I do. I like to be efficient, organized, responsible. I like to take care of things, to get things done. And I have parts who are not allowing it to happen.

Okay, so my therapist thinks it's okay to not be efficient and responsible. So W. thinks this, too. So do most of my friends. It still drives me crazy. I feel guilty about all of the things I'm not doing. I feel guilty about not being responsible, not having a job, not getting my dissertation written.

And yet, I also am realizing that I, the part, am not the one who is really able to do most of these things. I guess I'm mostly the one who keeps on top of other parts to get the things done. Or something like that. I can kind of accept that this is a long process, and I'm only at the beginning of it. But it's annoying that, given that I know what should be happening, that I can't just decide it's going to happen, when I want it to, as quickly as I would like it to happen.

One example is co-consciousness and all of the parts working together. Using a little bit of insight, I can see that some of the resistance is coming because, deep down, I don't want to really listen to what the other parts have to say. I want them to do things my way, because I feel like I know what's best. Certainly, my way would get more things done, and make me happier. But I guess that isn't what the other parts want.

And if it's hard to accept that other people won't do that, just imagine how difficult it is to cope with the fact that other parts can take over my body and keep things from happening on my terms.

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Made it through another day

Pretty much, that's the best that can be said for it. Really need to remember to take the rent downstairs and drop it off... have it right here, and just keep not synching with the neighbors to do it.

Finally recognized the source of about 10% of the angst and aggravation I'm feeling when I checked in with myself about what I wanted for lunch. Specifically, I was visualizing Doritos, a milkshake, twinkies, and fries. Perhaps a greasy hamburger.

The burger fries and shake, that's something that comes up more often than just that 10 days a month. Doritos and twinkies? It's a sure clue-in. So in about a week and a half, I may feel a little less emotionally overwhelmed. Or if the little kids take over for a while, but they're dealing with their own stuff, so perhaps not.


TMI ALERT

It's one of those weird DID things... recently noticed that my period has been longer, with a strange (for me) interspersal of the usual heavy flow and really light-to-nonexistent period days. Right there in the middle, when it's usually heavy flow gradually tapering off. Then I started paying attention. Somehow, if the littles are strongly present, no flow. When a teen or adult shows up, it's like the plug gets let out. Too bad I can't just have littles out for the duration. Of course, then my period drags on for quite a while, so perhaps it's not worth that.

So, in light of the really clear, distinct physical evidence, you'd think we'd all line up and say, "Okay, this is real." Nope. Still a long process in here.


/TMI (safe for anyone squickable to read from here out)

The other thing I'm paying attention to, being aware of, whatever, is this: the "problem" is not that I have littles. I've coped pretty well with my enjoyment of play, or whatever the parts all enjoy, for pretty much all of my life. There was the regrettable three days in 10th grade when I tried to fit in, but I got past that. :)

No, what the "problem" is, is that these are kids who behave developmentally appropriately, AND who went through abuse. So they have, shall we say, "issues." And they all play out differently, and they use my body to express those issues. So the bursting into tears, the counting steps, the wanting to hit things for no discernible reason.... gah. And you blend that in with the normal raging hormones of PMS, it just becomes rather frustrating.

Gonna be glad to get through the next couple of days. Maybe I'll find a restaurant that will serve me fries dipped in a milkshake.

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Lessons I need to unlearn.

First lesson: I could shield myself from the horrors of what went on, on a daily basis, by believing they were not actually that bad. I was constantly taught this simple thing: "You are not strong; if you can survive something, it isn't bad." I survived, so it wasn't bad.

Second lesson: We still hear, so often, that abuse is done by "Abusers," capital A. They are evil, or sick, or somehow different from you or me. So if there are good aspects to the people who treated me badly, if they did things for their own reasons, then it wasn't Abusive, it was just, I don't know, "hard." The things were done by people I loved, and who loved me. So it wasn't abuse.

Third lesson: If someone else survived with different, apparently more "functional" coping skills, and if other people survived things that were "worse," then I should be able to make myself be more functional, or not feel so badly about the things that happened to me. If someone else lived through something worse, I am exaggerating if I speak honestly about how my experience affected me.

Fourth lesson: If something is done with good intentions, then any negative effects I carry from that action are due to my own "over-sensitivity." The same thing goes for statements that are called "jokes," or any other form of emotional abuse. It is "over-sensitive" to object to racist, homophobic, or otherwise oppressive comments made to me, if the person making them is smiling as they speak.


I learned these lessons, among others, quite well. And I struggle constantly to acknowledge that, yes, what happened was more than just "a hard childhood." More than that, I really, really struggle to accept that I had a childhood that was "bad enough" to result in DID.

Nearly all of the things I have read about DID that make sense to me overall, also say that it's the result of "overwhelming" or "traumatic" childhood abuse. How could my childhood be "traumatic" if I lived through it? How could I forget something "traumatic"?

There is only so much trauma one mind can hold. Everything else has to go somewhere. People are lucky when they are able to process trauma as it occurs, able to speak of what happened to a listening ear. More often, and especially with children, no one is willing to hear. And so the trauma gets buried, until it can be dealt with. But the habit of burying emotions and experiences becomes ingrained, and continues long past the point where it is necessary.

I am no longer beaten for crying, but it is difficult to cry.

I am no longer beaten for asking for help, but the habit of self-sufficiency remains.

No one comes into my room at night any more, but I still sleep on guard.

These lessons were vital to my survival. If I had not learned them, I would not be here, writing. My family are not, and were not, evil, but they were not able to face their own demons. Should something extreme have happened to me, it would have been a tragedy, they would have been sorry, but it would have happened.

I have been in therapy pretty constantly since I reached adulthood. My adult parts are, on the whole, pretty healthy, normal people. They are the face I show to most of the world. But the lessons they learned, in adulthood, have a hard time passing through the barriers between parts.

I have been learning to accept that my younger parts really are whole people, separate from me. The fact that we live in the same body makes it very confusing, as much to me as to anyone else. And yet, it explains so much. It explains how the differences between parts are not just about mood states--each part feels the full range of emotion; each part has their own goals in life, which don't always correlate with my own (Mandy was saying just the other day that she wants to be a garbage man when she grows up, to ride on the back of the truck. Um, yeah. Sorry, kid. You're out of luck!)

It is difficult for me to accept that my "quirkiness" has an explanation that points to something more difficult than just being "moody." But the more I acknowledge it, the more I tell people who have known me for years what is happening, the more we all understand things that otherwise made no sense.

But it's a process, and while I started down this road more than ten years ago, I'm really only taking the first real steps now.

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This week: Lists

Just recapping this past week, so I can have a sense of, I don't know, recognizing what's been happening. Recording it for posterity.

Things I/we have accomplished:

• Ellis figured out how to draw better.


• Got two rooms to a better state of organization.


• Washed dishes consistently.


• Made several meals, actually cooking.


• Did grocery shopping.


• Figured out a way to have "system meetings," and have done it several times in a row.

Things I/we have been discovering/acknowledging:

• There are more parts, and we're working on being ok with that.


• It really is important for parts to have a name, and not just an identity. A couple of parts have chosen names who hadn't before.


• The adults and the teens have been trying to communicate better.


• I/we need to do a lot of work on sorting out the difference between past and present

Things that have been going on inside:

• Several of the little kids have been getting a lot of abuse memories.


• The teens have been facing their own abuse stuff.


• The adults and teens have been working on accepting that even stuff that seemed normal was actually pretty hard.


• The adults and little kids have been working on accepting stuff about a certain person.

How I/we have been feeling:

• Tired
• Sad
• Angry
• Scared
• Accomplished
• Accepted
• Wiped out

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Shadow Monsters and Fairy Gifts

The difference between stories and history may sometimes be narrow, but the chasm can be inpenetrably deep.

My earliest career goal, once I had one that was my own, and not an answer to fob off on adults who asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, was to be a writer. I had other goals too, sometimes because I lacked confidence in my ability to support myself by telling stories, and sometimes because I was terrified of what I might write, were I to tell the stories I found inside.

I kept finding myself unable to face the truth that is inherent in good fiction. The stories deep within me were overwhelming. I could not tell them and feel safe. So instead, I wrote shallow stories, stories designed to do nothing more than quiet the people and worlds that swelled within me. And then, frustrated by my shallow, meaningless stories, I decided instead to focus on my other goals.

If I were not a writer, I would be a teacher. If I could not tell my own stories, perhaps I could give other people the power to discover their own. And, as is true with most people whether or not they have DID, I have more than one passion. So I turned, in my professional mind, from stories to histories.

My past would not let me go, so I chose to evade it by embracing a broader past. How better to separate myself from the pain and fear than to brace up my walls with intellect? Occasionally, I noticed the irony. I studied the history of childhood, and had no memory of my own.

History is a discipline that requires concrete evidence. The focus on proof allowed me to deny my own past, because I had no documents, I heard no oral histories; if the flashes of memory were unverifiable, I could behave as though they did not exist in fact. What is more, by reading about the problems other children have faced, I could minimize the terrors of my own experience. There is always something worse than what happened to one person. There is always something worse that might have happened.

I channeled the remainder of my past into activism. If I could not face my own childhood, at least I could honor the children inside me by doing what I could to protect other people and help them to heal. I taught mothers at a domestic violence shelter better ways to cope with their children. I taught their children ways to find safety in threatening situations. And I helped women to heal and keep themselves safe in self-defense classes.

But no matter how much I wanted to avoid it, I could not escape my past. Dissociation is a separation of parts, but that separation is (only) internal. No matter how stark the boundaries I had created, the different parts remained inside the body I use. And every so often, they would rear their heads, desperate, terrified, furious.

A little more than a year ago, I had to make a choice. I could hope that my self-protective parts would continue to pull me back from the brink of death, or I could stop denying the existence of my other parts. I had come far too close, once again, to not surviving the emergence of some of my parts. I was terrified, and I finally allowed myself to face the divisions I had shied away from acknowledging, time and time again. Whatever my doubts, and however difficult it has been, it probably was the right choice.

But I find myself once again at a point of decision. My training as a historian blocks me from telling my own story. I hedge myself about with demands for evidence, and dismiss my truths as speculation. But my parts will not allow me to write history, and have not allowed me to do so for the last year.

So if I cannot write my dissertation, perhaps instead I will write the other books that are inside me. I will embrace my fears, and write stories that are less factual but far more true.

To that end, I am starting yet another blog, where I will post the elements of what may or may not eventually become my books. A writer has to start somewhere, and that is where I will begin.

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Trying

It is very hard for me to accept that, just because I want to do something, choose to do something, it doesn't mean that I can do something.

I would say that I have come to this level of acceptance with fibromyalgia. I would say that, but on reflection, it's not really true. I've managed to ingrain some habits--rest more often, be aware of what I eat, don't try to do some of the things that are far more difficult with fibro--but, on the whole, my main feeling is that I'm just being lazy, if I could just find the willpower, then the pain and fatigue wouldn't keep me from doing the things I know I should do. I suppose it's for the best that I'm not the only adult part, since I would probably manage to push well past the point of collapse.

Perhaps because it's "all in my head" or perhaps just because I've been trying to cope with it for less time, this whole struggle with DID is seeming even more difficult. There isn't something about it that can easily be seen by other people. From the outside, I am just one person. So why, then, do I find it so difficult to get these different parts to just do what I would prefer to be doing?

For a lot of reasons (self-respect, financial security) I really would like to be working. Even though I am dimly aware of the fact that my body won't do it, even if it weren't for the difficulty of coping with where I am in my mental health process, it still feels like I'm being self-indulgent, lazy, selfish. W. has enough on her plate without having to support me financially.

And yet, realistically, I know it's something I can't do. If I can't manage to do routine household tasks, there really isn't any way I could currently pull of working outside the house. But I still feel very guilty about it.

Maybe it's because I used to be able to push myself to do things that, on rational reflection, I shouldn't have been able to do. And if I could pull something off at, say, fourteen, then why can't I do something that's objectively easier at thirty-two?

More than that, there's the struggle of figuring out how to cope with the different parts inside of me. I mean, it's my brain (although, here, I get a chorus of voices insisting that, no, it's their brain too, and I'm not allowed to act like I'm the only one, and so on). But I did always think I was the only one, and felt really guilty or surprised or confused when one of the other parts would show up.

Perhaps because the adults in the system have a pretty good degree of co-consciousness, our experience is more, "This is odd. Why am I doing this when what I thought I wanted to do was that? Why do I enjoy doing this thing, as though it is something I always enjoy, when just yesterday, I couldn't stand to do it at all?"

We, in the system, have always been careful about stating strong opinions. And we've been even more cautious about doing things that indicate there are different people inside. A lot of that, probably, is me. If my job is to pretend everything is normal, then we have to present a united front to the rest of the world.

This makes some things easier. My closet doesn't look "different," because we simply came up with clothing compromises so that the majority of parts would be happy willing to wear the same clothes. I have practiced acting as though it's perfectly normal to have a bunch of different toys, or to have a range of books to read (although several parts have been short-changed in that category, because they like books the others are embarrassed to carry).

But this united front has made it more challenging to cope with the problems (I reluctantly admit) we have. Just because the Analyst can explain why something is happening, just because the adults in the system decide that the goal is to feel better, be responsible, take care of the things we need to take care of.... Just because I know something intellectually doesn't mean it's got a path to carry over to any of the other parts.

And I guess it's not reasonable of me to expect to do all of this "right" the first time I try. That said, it has been my experience in the past. I could decide I would keep working even though I was tired. I could decide I would get into a good college even though I had no idea what I was doing. I would decide I could get sufficient rest from three or four hours of sleep, and convince my body to go along with me.

And because I used to be able to do that, the guilt from not being able to do it now is kind of crushing. It's hard to convince myself that my failure to do the things I feel like I "should" do is not because I am lazy, or selfish, or not trying hard enough. It is because, in fact, I can't do these things right now. I can't stand that. And I can't understand that that's true. And then, I think: If I can't get that, then what must people think of me, when they're not inside and can see how hard I'm trying? Because it doesn't look like I'm trying from the outside, or else I would be succeeding.


I guess trying is not the same as succeeding. But I've had a long experience of, if I just try to do something with my full will behind it, then I will succeed, to one degree or another. And so this repeated failure feels not so much like failure, as failure to try. Because if I tried, I would succeed. I guess that's not really true. But it's still, deep down inside, what feels true.

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Teamwork

Last week, Jamie kept saying something (thinking it loudly, that is) over and over. "I'm 14. What's your excuse?"

At the time, when I overheard it, I figured she was having a mental conversation with W. But this weekend, I realized something. She was probably also talking to us older parts.

And she is right. We are adults, and as such, need to be working with W. to help take care of the younger ones. We are adults, and while our position is somewhat complicated, in that we're inside the same head as Jamie and the other kids, we still have to figure out how we can take on some of the task of setting and maintaining limits.

One hard part has been this: not all of the adults are really ready to completely accept that the DID exists. And so we often feel kind of powerless and overwhelmed when one of the younger parts is fully present. And we (I) have trouble accepting that things are much better when I/we behave as though we really are different people who just happen to share a body.

I mean, how on EARTH could that be something that will lead me to be mentally healthy? It really just seems like it's going to make things worse, acting as though I am separate from Jamie in ways that make it possible for me to do more than shout, over and over, "Don't do what you're doing. Do something ELSE."

And yet... yesterday, the adults in the system decided to behave as though we are separate from each other, and need to work together as a team. We found that it was possible to support W. in coping with Jamie without Jamie participating in that conversation. I think W. felt less alone in coping, and we all felt much better with the results.

When I accept that I have different parts, with their own needs and opinions, things get calmer. It's that simple. Things are better when I act as though there are different parts. But that doesn't make it any easier to accept. I still feel more comfortable with the methods I've used for the rest of my life: choosing how I ought to be, and forcing myself to act that way regardless of other impulses I might have. But that doesn't seem to have worked as a long-term plan.

And I'm thinking perhaps the risks of accepting that we really are separate parts are outweighed by the gains we'll get from doing that. Perhaps I really am better off accepting who I am than trying to force myself to become who I think I should be.

--Cleo

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Who have you met?

Yeah, two long posts, within minutes of each other. Sometimes that happens. Heck, it even happens when the same part is operating.

Lately, as I've come out to more people about having DID, they've been asking, "So, who are you?" or "Who have I met?" As the post I just wrote shows, this is a complicated question to answer. Much of the time, we're not quite certain ourselves.

So, if you know me, who are you likely to have met?

Well, first, the younger kids rarely come out by themselves around other people. It's hard to pretend you're an adult when you behave and talk like a little kid. They do show up in flashes, but they are not the ones fully in control. But Mandy (who is five or six) and Michelle (who is eight) and Amanda (who is eleven) have spent time around many of my friends, kind of in the background. Mandy is more likely, because Michelle and Amanda are a lot more shy.

The Teller (who is seven) doesn't tend to come out around people other than W. or my therapist, because she was created pretty much to tell someone about what had gone on to cause the DID in the first place. So a combination of long-time habit and general reticence keeps her hidden. More of the younger parts simply don't come out at all unless they're alone or with W. They're the ones who hold more of the direct experience that got me to the point of having DID, and given a choice, they hide pretty much all the time.

You may have seen the Story Girl, but she doesn't really talk much. She reads books and makes up stories of her own. Either her age varies, or there's more than one of her. Sometimes, rarely, she might talk about a book she's read, but she's really shy. Strangely, she's not the only one who reads. However, she is the one who, given a choice, would spend all of her time reading, to the exclusion of anything else. So if you've been around me at a time when I pretty much ignore you to read a book, that's probably her.

Of the teenagers, most of you have had the delight (hrm.) of seeing Jamie's effects on W. Mostly, you haven't met her personally, because as much as possible, we other parts try to keep her from ruining our relationships with other people. If you've been around me pretty recently, since the kids made the decision to "lock up" the grown-ups, you've possibly met Rynn. She's 17, and had previously been known as "the oldest runaway." It's been interesting getting to know her, and watching her make the decision to come out and participate in life. You've probably also met "Somebody," who is fifteen or sixteen, but takes over when there isn't an adult in the system who is capable of coping with something we have to do. She's also not an especially pleasant person, since her primary experience of the world is coping with things that are beyond her abilitities and doing things she'd rather not have to do. She's good at it, that's why she exists, but she's not nice about it.

You're most likely to have spent time interacting with the adults.

If you knew me in college, or in an academic setting, you've spent time with "the smart one." Basically, what she does is show up for discussions about intellectual things. As her name says, she's smart. That's what she does. She's actually pretty outgoing, so long as the topics of conversation are either intellectual or related to being in a classroom. If the discussion moves to something else, she's likely to stop being the one in front, because she doesn't have the information to deal with other parts of life.

You've probably also met the Hip Chyck. She's the outgoing, activist one. People who knew me in my early 20s spent a lot more time with her. She's very political, and spends most of her energy thinking of ways to change the world through social activism. Unlike the smart one, she is more impressed with knowledge for the sake of change than knowledge for its own sake. Plus, she likes to have fun while doing it.

You're perhaps even more likely to have met Cleo. She chose her name as a nod to what the system had been calling her before she was willing to accept that a system existed. That was, "Cleopatra, queen of denial." She chose the name because, in a certain sense, denial isn't always a bad thing, or at least, her role was not always bad. She is the adult who can behave as though everything is all right and under control. She has been learning that it can help to improve my/our situation situation to admit everything is not okay. However, there are times when it's handy to be able to act normally. Life is easier to get through when, sometimes, you function as though everything is fine, even though it isn't. It's sometimes okay to not be holding the knowledge of the abuse, simply because it's far easier to do something else when all of that isn't right there. So another of Cleo's tasks lately has been to figure out how to balance her initial role (denial at all costs) with her new role (holding things together, accepting what's going on, but also living regular life). It's kind of like she abdicated as queen of denial, and is now, I don't know, prime minister of denial. (Okay, I'm vague on the specific political terms, but you know what I mean.)

You're a little less likely to have met the Analyst (that's me), but if you read this blog, many of the posts are mine. My job? I analyze things, obviously. Specifically, I figure out why I or other people do things the way they do, and decide on a course of action that will give the best possible outcome. I try to figure out what does and doesn't work for me, and how to make myself get to the point of being mentally healthy. I tend to intellectualize things, so that I can understand them without feeling the emotional pain that goes along with the knowledge. I'm the one who started therapy, and who generally tended to go to therapy until last fall. This caused a certain amount of confusion, since I'm not exactly good at conveying emotions, and many therapists don't quite grasp that someone who can calmly say, "This thing is going on, and I'm upset about it," really means that they are upset, even if their body language says otherwise. In a lot of ways, I think I'm the grown up version of the Teller. And, like the Teller, mostly what I do is talk (endlessly) about the things I'm observing and trying to understand. It helps all of us that the internal censor has been increasingly less effective, so that we can actually talk about things a little more.

Another of the main adult parts is the Mama. She's pretty much like her name (although not as effective as one might expect in parenting my own internal parts). She does a lot of the nurturing, crafty kinds of things. She's the one who actually gets a lot of pleasure out of doing grocery shopping, housework, and crafty things. She is really good and patient with kids. She's the most pagan of us, and the one who enjoys keeping up with spiritual rituals. She's really grounded and calm. She tends to be a little introverted, but she does come out with people she/we know.

I guess how I will conclude this post is to say this. You may be wondering, "Which one is the real or original J.?" And, so far as I (or any of us) can tell, it's best to think of "J" as a collective term. We are all the real and original J. We'll all answer to that name, and it is still sometimes rather frightening to know for certain 1, who we are in the moment, 2, that other people know who we are, and 3, that someone might call us by a name other than the pre-approved collective name. It's a process. Stay tuned for further updates.

And don't worry. We're not going to get (much) stranger than the person you already know.

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Self-Analysis

Perhaps you would think that, having recognized that I have DID, and that I have different parts, I could then go on to solve the problem, and everything would be okay. All right, if you are me, you might think that way.

One thing I've been grappling with recently is this reality: my various parts really are separate. More than that, my younger parts really are younger. Jamie, for instance. Despite living in my body, we are talking about a fourteen year old. She has all of the reasoning skills and logic that are apparently normal for fourteen year olds. And when she is strongly present, my own adult logic and analysis of what will happen as a consequence of behavior just isn't going to carry over.

In theory, I was aware of this. I have known for some time that the reason I have such a hard time, despite knowing perfectly well what is causing me problems and how to cope with it, is that this information has not carried over to my various parts.

Pretty much, if only my adult parts were around, we'd be doing all right. Aside from all of us being rather type A and perfectionist, we're pretty mentally healthy. We are capable of trust, we understand how our actions impact our life (lives?). We are able to cope with our feelings, and to move on from mistakes (well, okay, that's an area that even some of the adult parts could use some help with).

But. The younger parts are not there. They are developmentally their own ages. And a normal fourteen year old just isn't going to use the same logic that an adult will. More than that, she cannot be held to the same standards as an adult, or expected to be able to have the same reasoning capacity as an adult. The same, obviously, holds true for the younger parts as well.

Part of why this is difficult for me to grasp is that, due to having these parts separated from me while I was growing up, when I was their age, I was far more adult. I constantly analyzed what was going on, and calmly and rationally made my decisions based on what would have the outcome I wanted. I was good at predicting the appropriate action for each situation. This had a whole lot of benefits. I fought less with my family, I rarely got in trouble, I did quite well in school, and I got to go to well and truly escape the frustrations and pitfalls of being a teenager, particularly of being a teenager in my specific family.

Last week has really brought home a huge part of what it means to have DID. Each part is pretty much like a separate person (not exactly, but, well, I can't put it into words). And each of us really does respond to the world in different ways.

More than that, I've been realizing that it's real. Yeah, this comes up a lot for me, but I guess that's just how I am. And this part of realizing it's real comes with realizing how important it is to get to know each of my parts, and for us to understand both ourselves and each other. It seems simple, but it's harder than you might think.

For one thing, for 32 years, we trained ourselves not to admit to anyone (including ourselves) that we were separate from each other. We never allowed even the merest thought of having different names to enter in, because if we had different names, it would be harder to deny that something had happened. If we were to recognize that there were different parts, we might start poking around inside the brain, and asking questions that were going to cause problems.

For the system to do its job, most of us had to be largely unaware of the full extent of what had happened. And if we knew about each other, we might start to talk. And things slip out when people talk to each other, particularly when they're trying to find out why other people are sharing their brain.

And if we were allowed to behave differently from each other, we might do something that would call attention to the massive secrets we were all carrying. Outsideople might notice that there were different people inside, and start wondering why. So even in matters of clothing and style, pretty much, we decided on one that no one inside had any huge objections to, and stuck with that. Whether or not every part especially likes the clothes, since we spend so much time unaware of our body even when we are in it, clothes we just don't think about were an easier solution. Plus, it saved a great deal of time when getting dressed, because otherwise, different parts would be arguing about what to wear or how to present ourselves to others.

We are only just beginning to accept how just because something happens with our body, it doesn't mean that a particular part was the one who was in charge. And, a lesson that's harder to understand is, it's actually a little important for us to recognize who we are.

I'm not sure why this is difficult. It's harder for the parts whose names are descriptions, rather than names. Like for me. I often don't realize who I am. It would be far easier if we had separate bodies, but we don't. And it would probably be easier if we hadn't spent so long trying to convince the world and ourselves that we are the same person. We're not good liars, so the only way to convincingly tell that particular lie was to believe it ourselves.

So one of our jobs at this point is to start recognizing ourselves and each other. Rationally, I know we'll be much steadier, calmer, happier once this happens. The people who are close to us will be able to recognize who we are, and we'll get to do more of the things we (as individual parts) enjoy. More than that, it will help the less assertive parts to sometimes get some of their needs met, if we're paying attention to who is getting things and who is not.

And it will help to keep parts from behaving unilaterally. Rather than getting to behave like they are the only one, and can make decisions for everyone without consultation, we'll have to accept that we're only part of the system, and can't decide some things without consensus. On the flip side, if we acknowledge to ourselves that we're separate, we can have the opportunity to make choices of our own, and express our own, individual preferences. When asked to make a choice or share our opinions, we won't be too paralyzed with conflicting information to give an answer, and we won't have to stick with the standard system answers, either.

And it will make relationships with outside people less confusing. Mainly, I'm thinking about my/our relationship with W. Within my system, we're not always good at passing on information, so W might have a conversation with a part, who doesn't realize it's important enough to pass on to the others. More often, I think, because we don't identify ourselves individually, if the parts are of a similar age, it can be hard for us to notice when we've switched, and if we don't notice, then there's a tendency for information to get lost. And, sometimes, a part will come in forcefully and disruptively, which will also hinder communication about things the last part present had discussed.

So it's a goal. We're working on it, and I, myself, am working on accepting that just understanding things intellectually doesn't mean I'm magically able to make something true. There is work that has to go on in the space between knowing the answer and making it work for me. Or something like that.

--the Analyst

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