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.

Read More......

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.

Read More......

flashback

trying to process through a particularly intense flashback i had this afternoon. not really sure why it was as intense as it was, but then, who knows about these things?

so i was standing there, washing dishes. this is an activity that is often pretty triggering, and i know perfectly well why (lots of abuse around doing jobs perfectly; also abuse that happened simply because i was there in the kitchen, where someone might notice me.)

as i was washing, almost done with the task, i found myself flinching, braced as someone hit me. i turned slightly, so i'd be able to predict where the next blow was going to fall, and so i wouldn't instinctively try to lift my arm to protect myself. and somehow, i managed to notice that i was in my kitchen now, that this wasn't really happening.

i think part of what made it more intense than usual was the combination of circumstances. i was stressed when i started washing the dishes (although less so than i've been for a lot of this week). there were my hands in the water, washing dishes, checking to make sure the various plastic ones were getting fully cleaned. and i was listening to a song i listened to a *lot* when i was a teenager (Go On, by Russ Taff). so there were a lot of signals that brought up memories.

trying to remember what i was thinking about right before the flashback, and i really can't think what it was. nothing that is out of the ordinary for when i am washing dishes, and not feeling especially trigger-y (because i have learned that if i'm feeling trigger-y, washing dishes is not one of my better options). i hadn't even dropped something, which often brings up a flashback.

my sense of it is that much of what made this flashback as intense as it was, is that several parts experienced it simultaneously.

often, with a flashback, i only get part of the experience. for me, it's often mostly emotional. i know that the little kids, especially, get ones that are mostly physical (a more intense version of body memories, from what i can tell). some parts get ones that are mostly memories, as though they are watching something happen.

i also suspect that part of what made it feel different was the fact that at least one of the adults was nearby as it came. or so i suspect.

afterwards, after i had grounded back into the present, and decided to go ahead and wash the last couple of dishes, even though i was feeling kind of overwhelmed by the flashback... one of the parts who has been out recently commented on something. she was feeling kind of... dismissive of some things. i don't know. but she said something about how one reason the adults haven't been around lately is that for them, they would rather be dead than admit they can't handle things, or that they are not doing a perfect job with everything in their lives. (perfect in their world, which means... not necessarily perfect, but doing all the right things, and trying hard, and overcoming adversity. admirable is maybe a better word?)

i'd like to deny this, that the reason the adults haven't been around is because they can't handle imperfection, that they really would choose suicide over this, and that it's not just their insistence on continuing to function that has made other parts block them out, but *also* the fact that the adults would be more inclined towards suicide, if they were unable to enforce that perfect-ness.

and yet, i do remember a conversation i had with cleo last winter. she was incredibly distressed over me being dropped from my phd program. she was really feeling suicidal, as though this failure was... life-threatening. and i can remember someone (me, another part? i don't remember) pointing out how, we wound up where we are because the choice seemed like we could risk suicide, or we could continue being functional (in the sense of doing a lot of work, and managing without more than minimal help, and doing everything well), but at the time, the two were incompatible. and we asked, "so would you rather be dead than fail to be perfect?" and her response was an unequivocal "YES!"

so i can't deny that it's true, at least about cleo.

it's been hard for me to start to see that, for all they seemed so functional, the adults in this system really aren't perfect. they aren't actually more functional, even. they just appear to be so.

not sure what the point of this post was.

i have been meaning to write a totally different post about the song i linked to above. it's a good song, even if you don't normally like christian rock. the message is pretty simple, and for those who aren't into all the "god stuff," there isn't an overwhelming amount in it.

Read More......

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.

Read More......

looking at the pieces

it's easier when i can believe things didn't really happen. or at least i guess that's why i approach it that way. i can accept the individual pieces of the puzzle, to a greater or lesser degree. i can look, and say, "well, okay, yeah, *that* happened. and also *that*." but somehow, my mind shies away from putting the pieces together and dealing with the whole picture.

i can collect all of the pieces, and know that they add up to abuse, but it's so hard to accept that they do. i can look at my siblings and recognize that things probably were "that bad" because they certainly show signs of having gone through abuse; so why is it so hard to accept that perhaps i have DID because of abuse? mostly because i just can't deal with the enormity of what happened, i guess.



some pieces:

i know that my mother believed in spanking babies beginning around when they're six months old.

i know that my mother was more likely to spank, and to spank harder, when she was under stress.

i know that my mother got divorced from my father, and also had an abortion, when i was about six months old.

my mother says i was a "good baby" who could be put into my crib for hours at a time, and i wouldn't cry or fuss, even though i also didn't nap.

i know that my mother (at least some of the time, more when she was stressed) considered crying and fussing to be willfulness on the part of a baby, and would punish them for it.

my mother says that i "didn't like to be cuddled" when i was a baby, and would just hold myself stiff and unresponsive when she tried to cuddle with me.

i know my next-older sister, who was in grade school when i was born, resented me being born. i know her response to resentment was often physical violence.



i have all of those pieces, and yet, my mind shies away from acknowledging that anything bad happened. i can't really bring myself to put together the picture, even though i have some strong suspicions about what it means. and there are different parts of this puzzle. pieces that point to ongoing sexual abuse. pieces that suggest i was more physically abused than i remember.


at the same time, i can't imagine how i would live my life if i had to cope with the enormity of what happened. how could i go through each day, or talk to the people i talk to, or any of that, if i accept that my past was traumatic?

Read More......

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.

Read More......

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.

Read More......

Guilt or fear

I've been having a flare-up of fibromyalgia. It happens every year. For that matter, to a lesser degree, it happens every month. So combining spring and that time of month has knocked me out.

I feel guilty about it. W. was encouraging me to accept it, and to let go of the guilt, and to allow myself time to focus on meeting my body's needs.

Thinking about it, though, here's the thing. I think that the guilt helps me to stave off the fear of what this means. I mean, if I'm lazy, that means everything is under my control. If the problem is not trying hard enough, not committing myself to doing what I need to do, what I should do, what I want to do... then, conceivably, I can decide to do differently.

But if the problem is a physical disability, it's not under my control. If I'm not faking the fibromyalgia, if I'm not making up the DID, then I can't just decide to be better.

And it's even harder to accept that with the DID, I actually am doing everything I am "supposed" to be doing to get better. With the fibro, yes, I could be taking meds (none of them actually worked when I tried them, but I could keep trying different ones). I could be getting massage (which did reduce the pain and fatigue, but only when I had a massage therapist who was experienced with both fibro and survivor issues, and which didn't actually do away with the fatigue and pain to the extent that I could manage a full-time job year-round). And that's about it.

I am not good at accepting what I can't control. I am good at controlling myself, at forcing myself to do things that, on cooler reflection, I can't really handle. This is hard.

And there's the sheer boredom of being too exhausted to sit up for more than half an hour, or to hold up a book for more than an hour at a time. There's only so much a person can do, flat on her back (and despite having hundreds of TV channels to choose from, there's very little to watch).

Read More......

Faking it

I guess one of the things is, for lots of the parts, our entire job has been to fake normal. And with me, a lot of that is, acting like there's nothing wrong, or at least, not letting people get close enough to see.

I've been around more, since the little kids "locked up" most of the adult parts. But I kind of operate stealth-fashion. And I guess part of the problem is, I don't know for sure who I am. I mean, obviously, the default answer is, we're all the same person. But it's not exactly like that. And I'm not one of the ones who got acknowledged or named.

Mostly, that's ok with me. I feel very uncomfortable admitting that I'm a separate part. I don't like people to notice when I come in and out, because that's not what's supposed to happen. But in therapy we're talking about stuff, and, I don't know, I have been feeling a little awkward about the fact that when my therapist thinks she's just seeing one person, the adult, the "host" or whatever, she's actually had a conversation with two or three parts, not all of whom have a clear idea of what we've been talking about.

It's easier with the little kids. They're more sure it's okay to be out, or at least they've been learning. And it's easier to tell a little kid from an adult, you know? Particularly since even though I guess I'm more of a teenager, it's really hard for me to understand or explain how it is that I'm not really grown up.

I kind of use the things the Analyst did, and figure things out. I know where most of my memories come from--high school, mostly, although some in middle school, kind of, I don't know, fading in.

There are things I feel uncomfortable that I did, but I still can't think of better ways. I mean, maybe things would have gone easier if I hadn't been working so hard to hide everything. But I still can't see how that would have worked. And it's hard for me still to realize that maybe even if people did know about what happened, they wouldn't think there was something wrong with me because of it.

Some of it is because my family is poor. Trashy. I feel guilty about that, like I should be doing something differently, I don't know. Like if people find out about that, then they'll think I'm like that too. Hard to talk to people about that, but there are parts that have, and I guess it's ok. Except it's not.

It feels like something to be ashamed of, like the other bad stuff was because of the trashiness. And even though I know it wasn't something I could change, there's still a feeling of being ashamed of it. And wanting to hide. I don't like people to know about all of that. I don't like to think about the reasons that I'm all split up and divided inside, like that makes me dirty and disgusting.

I'm kind of working on that. It's hard, and part of what's hard is, I feel like I should already know this. I guess I even knew it a little back then, not that it did any good. I wasn't especially good at passing, except that people don't really look, you know? I guess partly because other people had a lot more going on in their own lives, and partly that I didn't fit the picture of someone with "problems at home." Didn't cut. Didn't skip school. Looked like I was different by choice, and not just because I couldn't manage to be like the other kids.

Mostly, I spent my time alone. Read a lot. Had superficial friendships, although maybe they just felt superficial to me. I didn't let myself out, or get close to people. Really, mostly, none of my parts have. It's kind of lonely, but better that than being found out.

Not sure what the point of this post is, but I may as well post it anyhow. Kind of working on that, letting people in some more. Of course, I'm also terrified of what will happen if someone in my family reads this, but I guess with what's already there, I've got nothing to lose.

I'd sign this, but I have to admit I'm not exactly sure who I am.

Read More......

Silences

I've been paying attention to my silences lately--the things I don't say, the ways I don't speak.

Part of it has been realizing that some of the overwhelming panic I feel sometimes when asked my opinion, or what I want to do, is that I get altogether too much information from different parts. The information is not consistent--different parts believe or want very different things at any given moment. So the question "What do you want to do today?" brings up far more confusion than I think the asker intends.

And I don't yet know how to manage the negotiation required--figuring out how to let each part have their say and behave honestly, without feeling shut out and silenced. And, at the same time, I don't want to threaten the parts who feel intensely uncomfortable with perceptible inconsistencies, or looking like there's something different about me (as in me-the-group). We are/I am still working on letting go of the old "rules," and "don't answer to different names or in any way indicate that there are different parts working here" is one of the biggies.


Another part is simply the fear of behaving as though I think my problems merit consideration, care, concern, attention. I was raised to believe that because worse things had happened to someone else at some point in time or space, then I should not allow myself to be upset. And because other people had needs, mine could not be considered. And, besides, it is weak, lazy, inconsiderate, selfish, etc. to say that there is something wrong.

And then there's the covering up. I feel guilty and ashamed that I am not managing to overcome my "issues" with the apparent ease that allowed me to deal with things in my life for the first thirty or so years.


Beyond all of that, there is the fact that I just don't know where to start. When people I haven't spoken to in a while ask, "How have you been?" Well... even if they would be perfectly happy to listen, even if they are compassionate and caring, there's more to say than I can figure out how to get out.

So in a lot of ways, I just kind of avoid it. I don't speak, I don't reach out, I pretty much shut down. I've made a commitment to avoid denying things, but I'm not really skilled at it yet. Denial used to be my main job (as in me-the-part). And figuring out how to cope without it is kind of confusing, because I just don't know what to say.




Oh, and some internal thinking has gotten me to the point where I think maybe I should say right here that this blog is for all the parts, and we can each write whatever we want because no one has to read it if they don't want to, and maybe we'll try to get comfortable with signing our own names, too. Just fyi.

This post was mostly written by Cleo but the Teller reminded me to add that last paragraph.

Read More......

High Functioning

Someone recently got me thinking about how "high functioning" is defined.

By my own standards, I'm definitely not there. I'm able to do only the barest minimum of the things I used to do, or the things I would like to be doing, or the things I should be capable of doing.

On a good day, I can eat three times, and do a couple of routine tasks. On a bad day, I focus on making it from one end of the day to the other.

And yet, I know that in a psychological sense, I count as "high functioning." I'm not sure how this works, although I've seen people who don't count as "high functioning," and I can see that I'm different from them.

I suspect that for psychologists, it comes down to whether I am capable of living independently. And since I'm capable of maintaining a relationship with someone who is willing to support me financially, that counts.

In some ways, this is good, because I definitely don't want to be in a psychiatric facility. But in some ways, it's immensely frustrating, because it's hard for me to understand how I am unable to do so much, and yet, it looks like I'm ok.

So there's still that struggle to accept that there's really something wrong. I think a large part of my identity has been wrapped up in being high functioning. In being competent, and able to just overcome the things that should have held me back.

I mean, coming from a family where half of my siblings dropped out of high school, I not only went to a prestigious four year liberal arts college, but I also made it into an Ivy League graduate school.

And here I am, unable to jump that last hurdle. And whether or not I finish my dissertation, right now, I can't conceive of getting even a low-end retail job, let alone the kind of job my education should have prepared me for. There are just too many days when the absolute extent of what I can cope with extends only as far as feeding the cats.

But I still count as high functioning. And, what's more, I'm still at the upper end of functioning for people in my family. I remind myself of this, on the days when I start to believe that I must be making up the trauma.

It's still hard. Hard to believe that things I could successfully block out of my memory were that bad (because, yeah, people only block out happy memories). Hard to believe that the things I do know happened were bad enough to be causing the effects I'm coping with. Hard to believe that the people I know now would have done the kinds of things I remember. Hard to recognize that the things I remember happened to me when I was small--that I didn't have the resources and strength I do now, that my body was half, or a third, or less the size it is now.

And it's hard, on the days when I remember not to push past what I can cope with, to remember why it is that I have to be so careful.

Read More......

Flashbacks

The angle of a shadow, the brief touch against my body, the quality of light, a smell.

And all of a sudden, I want to run away, hide, lock doors, sob, throw up, lash out.

I don't remember anything, in the sense where "remember" means "know of specific events that cause me to feel like that when something happens." I hear the voices of parts, chiming in to say, "This happened to me, that happened, it was bad, it was hard." But it's so separate from my self, the me that is writing. I don't remember these things, I have no conscious knowledge. I know of some things that happened, and I can use reason and logic to determine that it's likely other things happened. But it's separate from me.

I tell myself, "You wouldn't have flashbacks if nothing happened." "You wouldn't feel like this, if there were no reason." But it's so hard to believe. My mind leaps and contorts, trying to figure out a way that I could just be imagining, could just be misinterpreting the past. Because it seems so unbelievable that it could have happened to me. It's so hard to accept that my family could contain such a large secret as that. Things that happened over and over, year after year.

There was no predicting what would make it happen. When I was little, I thought that saying my prayers every night would keep away the nightmares--the breathing, the weight, the feeling of pressure, the sense that everything was out of control.

Often, after flashbacks, my mind shows me image after image of violated locks. Locks that were broken and destroyed, over and over as I was growing up. There was no way I could consistently keep a door locked, keep a space where I was the only one on my side of a door. I can understand this, because I remember those locks, and I remember the despair I felt when they were broken. But the lingering echoes of why those locks were so very important, that's harder to accept.

But what advantage would I gain, from making this up? Nightmares? Wanting to throw up when I'm touched? Distance from my partner? Inability to just get on with my life and do the things I really want to do? I can't see any reason for making it up, but it's so hard to accept that it's real.

Read More......

One of the hard things

One of the difficult things about DID is maintaining a consistent belief that that's what's going on. This makes sense, of course, if not all of my parts are willing to accept it.

The hardest part of this is that, so often, I have these nagging fears that I'm just making it all up, for reasons that I can't discern. No matter how often I tell myself, or other people tell me, that it's really happening, I worry about this.

I think some of this comes from a simple fact. DID, more than anything else, is designed to let me cope with my life, despite anything that might be going on. And it worked surprisingly well for years. There have been times when my ability to cope has stumbled, but it's really only been over the past year that my coping skills have fractured so badly that I can't maintain a convincing façade of being all right.

And it's also hard, because I remember, fairly clearly, making a decision after I was in the hospital last February. I decided to stop blocking out all of the things that have been making it difficult to cope for the past months. I can't say it was a bad decision. I made it because the alternative was to know that I would definitely go through other periods of feeling suicidal, and doing so without the resources to break away. And the parts of me that watched that particular suicidal depression, doing everything it could to keep it from happening... they pretty much decided it was time to stop blocking everything out.

I spend a lot of time trying to sort out whether my perceptions of the world come through the lens of DID, or whether I'm just exaggerating things that happen to everyone. And even though I'm mostly confident that this isn't caused by my therapist (for instance, I was thinking this was what was going on even before I first saw her), I do worry that the way I present myself misled her into thinking I have DID.

I can rationally say, "There's absolutely nothing I gain from faking." This is true. But I still have those voices in my head that accuse me of lying, of making things up, of just being too lazy to maintain the ability to keep all of the voices and impulses under sufficient control to do the things that have to be done, to be the person I need to be at any given moment.

=======

In a related note: sometimes, I wish I were able to trust members of my family if I were to talk about all of this. I came very close to saying something to my next-older sister the other day. She's the one who, ten years ago, told me her therapist had diagnosed her with DID. I doubted her at the time, but the further I move through my own process, the more I'm starting to wonder.

Anyhow, she was mentioning headaches, and said something about getting bad migraines several times a week. I know that my own headaches, which have been diagnosed as migraines, are closely related to doing a lot of switching. And I've found that as I establish better internal communication, the headaches have reduced in frequency and severity. So I nearly mentioned this to her... but I stopped myself, and I think it's for the best.

Despite the fact that, clearly, my family has taken the philosophy of not talking about things to a high art, somehow, none of my family seems able to keep a secret. And I know my sister would inevitably talk about me saying anything about DID, and all that implies. And it would be unsafe. If I were at a point in my life when I was willing to give up contact with my family, I might go ahead and talk about it. But I'm not.

Read More......

So, about me

The whole purpose of this blog is to come to terms with being DID. I commented in my journal the other day that if one of my big issues is denial of having been abused as a kid, then this diagnosis is like a very meta dialogue.

I say, "It didn't happen."
My brain says (by having parts, in big letters): DID
And I then added that this makes my partner's line: DID-SO. Which is funny, because she is often the one who has to face the parts of me who really, really don't want to believe that anything really happened, not something bad enough for there to be parts inside of me.

Over the past day or two, I've been following the advice in the books I've been reading about coping with DID, and getting to know my parts. A lot of them I already knew, because even though I wasn't willing to admit they were parts, I'm often co-conscious (meaning, I often am at least somewhat aware while they're active, although I often can't change what they're doing).

And for a few weeks, I'd go and ask parts that kept pushing to come out, "What's your name?" or "How old are you?" The part would invariably respond with "I'm not allowed to have any name but Julia; I'm not allowed to be any age but yours."

After therapy this week, I decided that one of the things I need to do in order to stop being quite so stuck at a stage of being crazy (in the sense of fragmented, fragile, cracked, which is the first definition in our big dictionary), I needed to create a sense of safety. And to create a sense of safety, I had to get to know my parts. And this requires breaking one of the big rules: not allowing the parts to admit they exist.

So I've been getting to know the parts. I'd think I was making it all up, except... well, one part of me is saying that I definitely AM making it up, and another is explaining why the diagnosis makes sense, and there are several kids in the background jumping and skipping and shouting with joy, "I have a NAME!! Of my OWN!!! Hello, what's your name? MY name, all my very OWN name is...." I think it's the kids who are convincing me. (The kids are good at convincing me of things, which is probably why I own as many toys as I do.)

In theory, I'll let this be a place where my various parts can write for themselves. I don't know if that will happen, but right now we're getting at least some things past the internal censors, so there's a chance it could work.

Read More......