moments of grace

one of the problems with having DID is that there is only one body, and all of those who want to do something that requires a body have to try to share it. that's a though to preface what may wind up being a really confused/confusing post, because even though i have things i want to write, i'm not 100% certain that i will be able to hear myself think through all the things the *others* are thinking, or that i will be the only one writing things down.

aimlessly finding an entry point to what i was thinking when i decided i wanted to write.... i (we? someone?) have noticed something. the more each of us in this system is able to differentiate ourselves from the others, the more we are able to integrate *ourselves*. which seems kind of backwards--achieving self-knowledge by separating more thoroughly from other parts who live in the same body? but hey, it's all in the name of greater mental health, right?

so, about me. recently, i got a "real" name, as opposed to something the others (or even i) used to refer to myself. my name is grace. i chose it in part because for a while, when i talked to our therapist, and she asked for a name, and i couldn't think of one, and she suggested just naming a color, and i knew for sure the color that fits me, the color pretty much all of us think of when we think of me... gray. anyhow, we were using the color gray to refer to me in therapy, but for a lot of reasons, particularly because of the reasons that i feel surrounded by grayness, i didn't want that to be my name, and the others in the system didn't, either.

so in part, the name "grace" is because it sounds pretty close to the word "gray."

but there's also the thought of moments of grace. i know how they feel, but i don't have words for them, not exactly. moments of grace... those points when because of something or someone or just random chance, when things get better. they don't last long, but i guess they don't need to. it's that feel of a spring wind in the middle of winter, that beam of light that reminds you that maybe the sun really is planning on coming back again. or it's that second when you look up, and there is a gorgeous moon, and you had forgotten how beautiful the world can be. or that morning when you bend over to put on your shoes, and find that for some reason, your back and hands aren't hurting so badly, and you can do this without pain. those moments that come out of nowhere, and then go right back into nowhere.

there's the religious thing, too. you are saved not by works, but by grace. like, no matter how much effort you put in, no matter how good you are, how well you follow the rules, it's something else that saves you. or it doesn't. and there have been a lot of times in my life where it's been pretty clear that i've gone solely by grace. because it's not like anything else was stepping in to save me, some of those times.

i wouldn't say i'm christian, and i know there are parts who are, and i know there are parts who are pretty badly scarred by our particular experience of christianity, and i know there are parts who just happen to have a more... broad sense of religion. but anyhow, christianity is my first language for religious things, so i'll talk about those moments of grace, with the warning that i don't mean it in a precisely christian way. i mean, it was by the grace of god that i was led to all those fantasy books that opened up my mind about what religion could be, and allowed me to reconcile my own experiences with the religion i was raised with.


okay, another transition. i'm not particularly good with transitions. it's one of those writing things i can't really manage.

for years, well before JA was diagnosed with DID, before any of us had even heard of dissociation, the others still had a name for me. that was "the hopeless one." because, well, that's a very noticeable part of who i am. i know it frustrates some of the others, because they find that things work out better when they can behave as though the positive outcome is going to be there. but oh well. sometimes, things can feel pretty darned hopeless.

the other name for me was "the suicidal one." i wasn't suicidal to begin with. heck, i was even pretty hopeful. i had a plan, and it seemed like such a good plan. i was going to put really strong protections around the part of my mind that was my *self*, and stick it out at home until i turned 18, and then i would leave, escape cleanly, and go to college, and live my happy, successful, fulfilled life. i would get therapy and neatly process through all the stuff that i knew had been problematic when i was growing up. and everything was gonna be ok.

maybe my mistake was not starting therapy as soon as i left home, but that didn't seem like the hugely important part, not to anyone who was out, at least. not that we knew about each other, except how we kind of did. i mean, we're all really used to kind of watching ourselves go around in the world, commenting on it, trying to figure out what's happening.

i can remember some of college, and most of it, the parts where it wasn't clearly me in charge, were weird. "hm, here i go, acting like a college student. i wonder how i know how to do all these things," i'd think. but i was used to that.

but then i guess collective-i started getting flashbacks. definitely started getting a lot of body memories, which none of us had a name for, but that we knew were... something not about how the body was working, you know? something that felt phsyical, but wasn't, and went along with distinctly uncomfortable emotions.

oh, yeah, and there were a whole darned LOT of emotion-memories coming up. flooding with despair and unhappiness and all of that.

so my clever plan had some flaws, and i had absolutely NO idea what to do next. general advice: college counseling centers are not necessarily the place to go if you're highly functional but suffering from a fairly major nervous breakdown. so the counselor i saw somehow missed the nervous breakdown, and saw just this person who was a "little" unhappy (despite being TOLD by my friends--and i admitted it was true--that i hadn't eaten more than a few bites, if that, for about three or four months). so her advice? "decide to be more cheerful."

which, i admit, is advice i'd given myself in high school. to decide what my moods would be, and cause myself to feel that way. well, looking back, to create a part who had the traits that would let her feel that way. but given that the reason i was in counseling was that that had failed to work any more... i felt like i'd given it my best shot, like i'd done absolutely everything i could think to do, and nothing was helping. so that's around when i got completely suicidal.

not sure where i was going with that, but ok. oh, right, moments of grace, and the grace of god. so, by the grace of god, i do have parts who didn't ever want to die. so they are probably the reason that the majority of my suicide plans are things that would be likely to fail.

and it was sheer unadulterated grace from on high that i suffered no physical ill effects from the one time i overdosed except for a lingering gag reflex when presented with the particular brand of medicine. and maybe it's even grace from on high that no one found out about that particular incident until much later, because it meant that instead of getting stuck in a hospital, the other parts could show up and take over, and go on as though nothing had happened. which, given the results, might have been the best outcome for then.

anyhow. the other thing i meant to write about in this post is how, as we parts grow more distinct from each other, we also find our-individual-part-selves growing more integrated.

because it turns out, i'm not just, or only, despairing or suicidal. i never was *only* suicidal. i'm also one of the ones who loves to read. i like to do puzzles. i like to go for walks, or color. i loved to ride my bike.

a lot of the time i am present, but none of us were aware it was me, until we started working on being aware of who we were. and as each of us is able to say, "oh, that's me" or "oh, that's her" we're all learning that there is more to each of us, and always has been more, than the labels we first had.

not sure what my point is. and i know others had things they wanted to say, but i think by this point, we're all tired, or tired of writing, so that's all.

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Groovy Girls

I am writing about Groovy Girls. They are really super toys. They are not too big and not too little. They have VERY friendly faces. I am getting a whole COLLECTION of Groovy Girls. Mostly that is because we cannot find the clothes for sale, but we can find the dolls.

One good thing about Groovy Girls is they come in almost every single color that a person is colored. And they can all be friends. That is why they are a good toy if somebody might feel bad about what color THEY are, because then they can see that all colors are very good, not just some colors.

Also they are good because they are just the right size to play with.

If you know a girl who needs a present, then maybe she will like to have a Groovy Girl. They are the same age as a girl, and not a grown up like Barbie is. Also, they are not too expensive. They cost only ten dollars or something. So if someone gets an allowance, then they could save that allowance for just a few weeks, and then they could get their OWN Groovy Girl.

That is all.

From Michelle, but also Jewel and Rain like this post too. We are sharing. Kara did not help because she is still very little.

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stupid fibro

not sure why it's been so bad lately. that is, i can't tell if it's that the adults have been a little closer to the surface, and they do have worse fibro, or if it's that i'm fighting off an illness.

all i know is that, pretty much whoever is out, we've been totally exhausted.

it's hard to remember that, let's face it, i'm not a nap person. hardly any of my parts are nap people. according to my mother, i stopped napping around the age of six months. but lately, it's been a couple of naps a day. just sheer exhaustion.

and when it's not the exhaustion, it's the pain. usually, fibro pain just makes me kind of crabby. i can't tell for sure whether this pain is worse, or i'm just more whiny about it. i do know that there have been several times in the past week when i found myself whimpering a little to myself over the discomfort. it feels worse than the time i broke my tailbone (of course, when i broke my tailbone, my body was so kind as to provide me with some endorphins, and those definitely take the edge off the pain).

the main issue i'm coping with is that even though there are a ton of things i want to be able to get done, mostly what i've managed is resting, resting, more resting... and going to therapy, which does take priority over getting the apartment organized, if i'm prioritizing what little energy i have. i'd just rather be able to get a bit more done.

or, if not that, i'd like to stop feeling guilty for not getting more done.

(this is several of us simultaneously, i think. ellis writing, but others concur.)

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Support for Supporters

At the last meeting of my DID/MPD support group, we *finally* managed to get an OK to send out an email to our list announcing the fact that people are starting a support group for supporters. So if you are a supporter of someone who has DID/MPD or another dissociative disorder, and you live within easy traveling distance of NYC, you may want to check this out:

Support for Supporters:

Some partners and friends of people with DID or other dissociative disorders would like to start a peer support group for people who are supporters of those with DID/MPD or another dissociative disorder. People who are welcome include partners, friends and supporters of those with DID.

The group will initially meet in Manhattan, at the same time as New Landscape, but in a different location so as to insure privacy to everyone in both groups. The person you support does NOT have to attend the New Landscape group in order for you to attend the supporters' group. The supporters' group will make its own decisions as to meeting guidelines, etc., once it gets going.


If there is enough interest (and there already is), the 1st Partner's Group meeting can start next month! If you or someone you know might be interested in attending this group, write us back for details.

~New Landscape

contact@new-landscape.com

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sometimes

sometimes i am afraid that if i admit to myself or anyone else how hard this is, then i won't be able to keep on coping. that i will just fall apart and everything will come crashing down around me.

things are hard. i am managing to cope, but they are hard. a lot of memories have been coming up recently. parts who have new information.

some of it is good--being able to figure out why i react with panic in some situations.

and some of it is just hard. hard. hard.

it's easy to go with a level of denial--like, how could i POSSIBLY have not remembered that? that was a BIG thing, not just something small.

and it's even harder, when i have a different version of the memory, something that's easier to cope with. how can i remember part of something, and not the whole? how could i re-write something as it was happening, and erase the parts i couldn't cope with?

but logic intervenes--do i benefit from making this up? not so much. there is no real gain from making up these memories. i don't feel better. i don't get more sympathy from other people, since what i do remember is bad enough to get all the sympathy a person could want.

so what do i get from it? sadness, hurt, remembered pain.

what do i get from looking at the memories? a measure of relief from panic and body memories.

so logic says, probably these things are real. probably these things happened. that doesn't make it easier. even though i know that remembering doesn't make me less of a survivor, it's still hard to allow myself to remember, and to examine the intensity of what happened. i am afraid of becoming one of those people who spends their entire life complaining about how forces outside their control ruined everything.

i was successful in high school and college and afterwards in part because of the denial. if i could make myself believe... not so much that it wasn't happening, but that i could keep it from affecting me, then i could go on with my life, and take control.

if i focused on the things that were under my power, i told myself the things that i couldn't control just didn't matter, they were separate from me.

might get it together later to write some memories, but this is hard. it's just HARD.




my therapist asked yesterday whether i would be interested in doing a double session on tuesdays instead of a single one. i think this is in addition to the sessions we have on thursdays. so three hours a week of therapy. doesn't seem like much, until you consider the degree to which therapy can knock me out. it's exhausting, even when i'm talking about superficial things.

but maybe it's not such a bad idea. it scares me, though. i'm afraid of being too dependent. i'm afraid of being too needy. and i'm really afraid of getting into these memories, and stirring things up.

i know that dealing with memories isn't entirely incompatible with living my life. but it's hard. it's overwhelming. i would rather pretend that everything is okay now, that we can do a few little mental exercises and **poof!** everything will be okay.

i'm afraid that instead, i'll fall apart entirely.

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RANT!

So, there I was, innocently reading the paper this morning. And there was an article about how Cymbalta was approved for use with fibromyalgia.

But could they just leave well enough alone and talk about how fibromyalgia is finally getting recognized and treated? Oh, no. They had to keep on quoting doctors talking about how it's all in our heads. Especially because the doctor who initially created the diagnosis now regrets it.

Yes, there was some good information mixed in there. And it did make the front page of the New York Times, above the cut even. But it makes me furious that so much of the article was taken up with casting doubts on the reality of fibromyalgia.

The main thread in the denials was this: giving the illness a name means that people focus more on pain others would just tolerate or ignore.

Let me tell you this: yes, I do focus more on it, and stop ignoring it. Does this mean the pain is new, or the attention to it increases it? Well, let's think about that. About two years before I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, my hands and feet started hurting really badly in the mornings when I woke up. I ignored the pain.

About a year later, I noticed that one of my feet continued to be mildly uncomfortable (compared to the morning pain) throughout the day. Also, it was swollen enough to make it difficult to get my shoe on. I finally went to the doctor, who at first dismissed it, and then sent me to an orthopedist, who diagnosed the BROKEN FOOT. So I have it on very good evidence that the pain from fibromyalgia is subjectively greater than the pain of a broken bone.

Fibro pain has distracted me from the pain of a broken tailbone, and from the pain of badly abscessed teeth. The fibro pain is objectively worse than things that are generally objectively deemed quite painful.


I personally think this: saying that diagnosing fibromyalgia makes people feel pain is like saying that me learning about racism is what made my family racist. As though they were perfectly normal before, and now I just see racism everywhere.

Because if I hadn't learned about racism, I wouldn't have thought that telling someone they only got into college and graduate school because they were black (rather than, I don't know, intelligent and hardworking) wouldn't have been racist if I hadn't learned about racism.

Because the pain that kept me from noticing I had broken my foot wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't been diagnosed with fibromyalgia.

Think about it.

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Needs and Wants meme

KatM at Finding the Light in the Darkness tagged me with the "Needs and Wants" meme from Survivors Can Thrive.

Rules of the “Survivor Needs” Meme:

Please link back to the originating meme at Survivors Can Thrive, so people can see its origins, get ideas for their own self-care list, see who’s already been tagged, and maybe we can track how far this meme goes.

=> List 25 needs and 5 wants. Try to restrict your needs list to things that have to do with being a survivor of some sort of abuse, assault, etc. Your wants list can be anything you want!

=> Use this list to remind yourself to get your needs met this holiday season and in the New Year.

=> Pass on this meme and tag five people to play this meme with you.

25 Things I Need

1. Basic subsistence: safe housing, food, shelter, medical care, clothing.

A good support system, which includes:

2. Friends who accept me as I am.

3. A therapist who is competent and ethical.

4. People I can call when I need support, or am lonely, or just because.

5. "Community" in the sense we used when I lived in Portland; people who are working together on activist causes, who also support each other and making sure to have fun in the midst of trying to help the world.

The ability to understand that:

6. My life is in my own hands; whatever happened in the past, my future is what I choose to make of it.

7. Things have changed, and I am no longer in a dangerous situation.

8. Not all people are untrustworthy.

9. It is good, and strong, and right to ask for help when I need it. It is ok to ask for help, even if the person I ask to help me isn't able to help in the way I ask them to.

The courage to:

10. Fail. Yes, the courage to do something even if I don't succeed. The courage to accept that I have not done what I set out to do.

11. Try again.

12. To face my past.

13. To face the future, and accept that it will come.

14. To speak my truths.

15. To be as open as possible about all of who I am.

16. To trust other people, and to believe what they say, rather than what I fear.

Time to:

17. Play.

18. Do healing work.

19. To learn new things.

From myselves I need:

20. Patience with the healing process.

21. The willingness to go slowly instead of trying to force myself to get "better" on someone else's (or my own imposed) schedule.

22. Cooperation amongst my parts, and a willingness to listen to each other.

23. Patience with each other, remembering that we each have our own issues to deal with. Even when it means continuing for a while to carry burdens we'd rather let go.

24. A commitment to each other, and to keeping the promises we've made to each other.

25. Self-awareness and distinctness for each part, because it really does seem to help us to heal.

Five things I want
1. (More) friends who live nearby; particularly, friends who are coping with some of the same issues.

2. A playgroup for littles, where they could spend time with other kids who are their age, without all the problems connected to someone in an adult body playing with external children.

3. To be able to help others, and share the things that have helped me.

4. A DID/MPD/Dissociative disorders visibility/awareness/activist movement. I want to know I am not alone, and to stop feeling as though I absolutely need to hide who I am. I want to stop feeling ashamed, and seeing others like me feeling as though they need to hide. (Note: I'm not talking about being "out" in every single situation; but, like many visibility movements, I've seen acceptance increase as people are able to be more visible. I want that.)

5. There are a lot of things vying for this last spot, but I'm gonna go with "To win the lottery." Because most of the things vying for this spot require a substantial amount of cash (living in a co-housing community; creating a community space for people to hang out and do projects and have gatherings; having a second-run movie theater that will show good movies even if I miss them when they are in theaters; having a huge playroom with room for all the littles' toys; having the ability to do all the travel I'd like to do; plus all of those crass material wants most people have.)


I want to add here that many of the things on my "needs" list are things I do have, to one degree or another. Not necessarily all the time, but I am exceptionally fortunate in the people who surround me, and in the life I have. It's sometimes hard to believe that these are things I've chosen, and brought into my own life, but they really didn't happen accidentally. And while some of it was luck, some of it was the result of life choices I made when I was in the middle of growing up. I'm grateful to my earlier selves for everything they have done to get me where I am now. And I hope we're able to continue to help each other through this new phase of our lives.

Okay, so let me think of who to tag.

Definitely Fallen Angels, at "A Safe Place"

These others, well, I don't know if you've been tagged yet, but I'd rather post this and get on with my day, I didn't see you tagged in the places I checked, so:

Roses on the Moon.

Village of Many.

Oompaa/hlhshorty.

Ophelia at "Welcome to the Twilight Zone." (I know your blog is friends-locked, but I figure it won't hurt to invite you to do the meme!)

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Christmas

One advantage of external kids would be that, most likely, they would be willing to go amuse themselves with their stocking, and then I could keep sleeping while they did that.

Instead, the internal kids woke me up at seven this morning, bouncing with excitement because they were SURE they heard Santa last night, and wanted to go see what was in the stocking. There is nothing that so confirms I have other people in my head than the way that I kept trying to shut my eyes to get some more sleep, and the littles kept opening them and bouncing to get out of bed.

I hope W. appreciates the fact that I have done everything I can to keep them occupied and distracted this morning, so that at least one of us will get the chance to sleep until a more reasonable hour.

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Santa Claus!!

You can find where santa claus is!


Santa claus is going around the world only it is magic or somthing caues we cannot really see him and mostly what santa does is helps people to remember to be nice to someone.

like i was a santa caues we gave presents for the kids who do not have money. we gave a big huge kite and also a book about space and also the super fort. the super fort is a very good present caues it is a fort you can bild any different way. we gave those things to the poor children and then they get them and they will smile when they open their presents caues they are not garbidge presents they are good presents and probly their mommy or daddy will smile to caues they will be happy if they can give a nice present.

that is why i was a santa claus. also i will be a santa claus and fill up w's stocking with good presents. maby we will make a lot more presents for her to. for hanuka, you give presents to but it is just people giving presents and not someone magic except in one or two stories there is something magic and also when the oil lasted for 8 nights insted of one, that was magic or a miracle. a miracle is when god does magic.

santa came to our house already i think but maby he will come again and eat some cookies and fill up our stockings that will be nice. santa is a person who lives at the magic north pole. that is the one you cannot get to unless you are an elf or santa or something. maby tonight we can watch a movie about santa. i would like that very much.

also they have movies about santa. the movies show where he is right now. michelle and mandy and kara and me and everyone are very much excited about christmas. ellis is probly tired or something but she is helping us to make a good present and then we will make another present to but i will not say what they are caues they are suprises.

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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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Tomorrow is the last day to vote!

Help choose a ribbon and/or icon for DID/MPD/Dissociative Awareness!

Vote at this page.

Admittedly, my preferred ribbon is the current frontrunner, but I wanted to make sure everyone who wanted to help decide got a chance to vote. So if you read this blog, and you haven't already heard about this poll, and you want to vote, please do so by December 12 (which is Wednesday, or tomorrow).

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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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Addition to the DID/MPD/Dissociative Awareness poll

Hello, all. Yup, the voting is still going on. But it occurs to me that I didn't make a request of the dozen or so people who read this blog, that you pass on the link to the website for voting. We'd like as many people as possible to have a say in what the image is, because that way, hopefully people will be aware of it, and will want to wear the icon.

Here's the link: http://www.copingincrazyville.com/iconvoting.php

Oh, yeah, and singletons can vote, but preferably will only vote once!

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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?

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DID/MPD/Dissociative Awareness

We've gathered all the submissions, and chosen eleven of them for the final round of voting.

So tell your friends to come and vote. Here is a link to the page where you can register your opinions.

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Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

This isn't up to my usual standard of quality, but we really enjoyed the movie, and wanted to share. We saw Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium last week on Friday and it was a very good movie. The kids liked it because it was in a toy shop and there was lots of cool stuff happening, and nothing scary happened except one little bit that was only a tiny bit scary. No, two little bits, I guess, because two littles are telling me about two different parts they thought were scary, but they weren't scared of the same part.

Mostly, it's just really great. It has a very good message, which is that wonder and magic have to come from you believing you can make them, and you can make friends and make the world a cooler place if you believe in yourself. Plus, there wasn't any stupid love stuff in the movie (even we older parts appreciate it when they don't tack on a romantic subplot just to have one, and this movie stood up without it).

And we weren't the only ones who really enjoyed the movie. We saw it the night it came out, in a theater filled with kids (age range: looked like 3 to about 12). The kids were totally focused on the movie the whole way through. All the adults in the theater seemed to really enjoy the movie too (except one, who was the kind of adult who doesn't turn off their cell phone ringer, and then takes FOUR CALLS while sitting in a movie theater).

One of the things I enjoyed was that they didn't bother to water down the vocabulary, so lots of the characters used big words, and that was nice in a kids' movie, that they didn't expect just because you're a kid, that you're stupid. But at the same time, they also seemed to know which things kids were likely to understand (or, you know, grown ups) so at the credits, which I missed most of, I saw that instead of just putting the Hollywood names for different parts of the crew, they described what they did (like, "People who pointed the cameras at other people" or something).

It was a really good movie, and I'm hoping I can get to see it again sometime very soon, in the theater and everything.

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Therapists

I am feeling accomplished. I spent some time this morning tweaking my search terms, and finally managed to generate a *useful* list of therapists on the Psychology Today therapist locator thing. So I emailed the first sixteen on the list, figuring that I can move on to later ones if none of those people works out for us. I'm talking useful as in, I narrowed it down to people who do couples' therapy, and have some experience with trauma. One of the two who have already called me back even has experience working both with ADD and with people with dissociative disorders.

I can only hope that at least one of the people on this list works out well as a couples' therapist for me and W.

And I can only hope that by setting up multiple appointments, W and I will be able to keep clear heads, and decide on a therapist based on whether or not she's a good match, and not just on our willingess to give her a month of our lives as we try to decide.

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miscellany

Several things going on. Lots of parts are very depressed because of a lot of different things (mostly boiling down to being lonely and not having good prospects of getting friends our own age, and also that there are some things in day-to-day life that can be really discouraging and frustrating to deal with. Oh, yeah, and all that "childhood trauma" stuff that we so often discount as a cause.)

And for a few days last week, a severely suicidal part was out; the main problem with that is, she's not sufficiently self-aware to recognize that she's a separate part... so she thinks she's one (or several) of the other parts. It's all very confusing. It would help if we could get her to start to recognize herself, and that she's separate from the rest of us, because then it would be easier for us to help her. Also, it would be easier to convince her that the rest of us are NOT as severely depressed as she is, and we'd rather not have her acting on her suicidal urges, thank you. Even if she does experience the rest of us as just being her, "faking being happy." It's a real downer, let me tell you.


On a somewhat related note, in the sense that I remain convinced that there is SOMETHING we can do to ease a lot of the pain and frustration we're experiencing, I've realized a couple of the reasons I find it so difficult to access the ideas in books like "Getting Through the Day" by Nancy Napier. One is that they are totally focused on dealing with trauma, and don't actually give good strategies for figuring out day-to-day life stuff. You know, like how to you work through a system meeting, if you can't figure out how to get everyone to come to the same spot and speak one at a time? Or how do you figure out a schedule that will actually meet everyone's needs? I swear, as soon as I come up with some good ways of doing this, I am going to put them up on a website, because I cannot be the only person who needs this.

Also, I desperately wish I could find some simple worksheets, with short fill-in-the-blanks kinds of questions, just for parts to practice communicating (I mean, things like, "My name is _________ and my favorite flavor of ice cream is ________." I can't be the only person who experiences immediate chaos if I push certain parts to talk about why they exist, but who also needs to figure out how to get to know them. And we're all better at responding to questions than at coming up with something useful by journaling to a blank page.)

But the other thing I've realized is that most of the books, at least all that I've read so far, are written as though there is a singular "you" who happens to have some parts. And I think that's why I have such a hard time translating how to work within my own system. There just isn't one part who is consistently present. Some parts may be out more than others, but none of us feels like, or is accepted by the others as, the "main one" or the "host" or even the "shell." It's kind of like people who live in a house together, presuming they moved into the house at the same time. No one really has seniority, and they all share the house equally (more or less... some people monopolize different parts of the house, just like some housemates take over the phone and no one else gets a chance to make a call. That doesn't make it their phone!) (And now I'm thinking of youth in this cell phone age wondering why people don't just use their own phones. I'm talking about land lines here, folks.)

So anyhow, even the stuff written for multiples doesn't seem to take into account that there isn't a singular "you" who is the one in therapy, and the one who can coordinate everything. And I haven't seen anything explaining how to figure out who is coordinating things, or in charge, or how to have a consensus based organization inside your own head.

Sorry this is so totally scattered. On top of my own brain being wonky today, I've been getting phone calls and text messages off and on while I'm writing this, so my attention keeps wandering away from the point.


Not quite sure who this is. I'm not the same part as the last one who used the "who?" label, but I figure the label is there, and "who?" is not a name.

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friends and support group

the problem with not being able to find what you want, or feel like you need, is that you start to think maybe you shouldn't have it. maybe it's wrong to want something, if the world seems designed to keep you from having it, if people you meet act like it's not something healthy.

it's not that the people who actually know me say this. my friends, my therapist: they all say the things i want are perfectly reasonable.

what am i talking about? i, ellis, want to have friends my own age. mandy wants this. jamie wants this. teller wants this. probably the others do too.

i, and lots of the adults in the system, want a really good support group, where we can talk with other people with DID/dissociative disorders about practical, day-to-day coping skills. where we can learn how to manage communication, learn tips for negotiating each of our needs, figure out how to cope.

on friends: we accept that it's totally creepy for someone in an adult body to be hanging out with kids our own ages, so that's not really an option. the ideal thing would be to know other people who are multiple, and be able to have time hanging out with them as friends, so that the younger parts can spend time with people their own ages. finding other multiples is part of why i wanted to go to a support group.


so why am i thinking about this today?

i went to my DID support group, and once again, it was really frustrating and annoying.

i understand that the guidelines they have are meant to make people safe. the problem is, the guidelines do more, in my mind, to keep people from being able to connect with each other, which i guess is a kind of safety, in the way that locking yourself into a cave millions of miles away from everyone else is a kind of safety.

the guidelines that i have a problem with are the ones that say you're not allowed to comment on what others say, and that you're not allowed to offer advice (which implies you're not allowed to ask for advice). they're very explicit about how you're not required to speak, or to answer questions... this is good, except it comes across in a way that makes me feel like it's not okay to *ask* personal questions, or to have any level of contact outside of the group.

and then there's the fact that people come from all kinds of different perspectives. and several of the people, particularly one who often leads off the talking, really are more focused on their "parts" being separate from them. as though *they* are real, but their parts are just these fragments they (the "real person") have to "absorb" so they can be whole.

this means i wind up feeling really uncomfortable bringing my own experience, of being a bunch of different people sharing a body, into discussion. like i'm deluded, or not focused on the "right" method of healing, or something like that.

the one thing that all of the parts in my body agree on is that there IS no single right way to do things. yeah, even the ones who are bossy know-it-alls can accept that. we all recognize that just because something works for one person doesn't mean it works for everyone. kinda like religion--even the christian ones inside here don't think it's the only way to live. they think there are all kinds of ways to approach the divine, and christianity is only one path (i'm hearing a great deal of shrieking from my childhood church services about how clearly this is evidence that i'm listening to the devil or something. i don't care. even michelle, who is probably the most goody-two-shoes, following all the rules, among us... even she sees there isn't just one path!)

and i think lots of people see therapy or healing from abuse the way other people see religion. as though, if something works for one person, then everyone else has to do things exactly their way, or else they're not doing it right. sinning against the therapy gods or something.

i am lucky that my therapist isn't like that, and my friends aren't like that. but it's still hard when it feels like the rest of the world thinks we're wrong.

like, in trying to find friends. there's a lot of stuff out there, kinda the therapy doctrine for DID, that says parts SHOULDN'T have friends of their own. that multiples SHOULDN'T get together for play-dates. they say it's dangerous. they say it's going to stop us from healing. they say that if parts feel something, that just means the host (the "real person") is denying their feelings, and that if the host ("real person") gets *their* needs met, then the parts will be satisfied.

i think that is a load of hooey. i don't think i, or any of the adults, have a frustrated desire to be lady garbagemen. i think mandy is a little kid who likes the idea of hanging off the back of a truck. i don't think the adult parts are just denying that they enjoy candy corn. i think they genuinely don't like eating it.


but the therapeutic doctrine implies that there's this slippery slope. that if you start acting like parts are real, then you're going to do all kinds of stupid things. i may rant further about this article at some other point. i just haven't gotten around to it yet.

so the point is, i end up feeling like maybe i shouldn't want the things i want--friends, support. i feel like there's something wrong with me, that i want to hang out with people who AREN'T inside my body (and, let's face it... the other teenage parts are more like siblings than anything else. would YOU want to spend all of your time hanging out with your siblings? when the only thing that connects you is living in the same house--or body, as the case may be.)

yeah. so i'm feeling discouraged, and also a little angry.

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