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Strange Star

Ah, @Pencil you make me smile with your empathic response! Sorry you have similar experience.

The answer seems always to be...approach "her," or however many of them there are, individually with time and space and an open heart filled with compassion. Ask "her" what she wishes for and provide it. Promise her you will not abandon her, and that you will keep her safe. Invite her to show you and/or tell you what she would like to, and be attentive and supportive and protective. Invite her to let out her feelings.

The above works occasionally for me. It is actually really nice when it does. Somehow I feel as if I'm taking care of myself, which is--I guess--the point. But inevitably the one's I've identified so far either end up hiding, or go massively self-destructive, or both (as with last night). The very first was was already in hideous condition when I discovered her, and still is. Hard for me to even "look" at her.

My T says when this happens, there are other parts/energies getting in the way and those need to be dealt with first. That is very, very hard when the toxic forces are swirling. For me, I think one thing that's getting in the way is that when I get in touch with my inner children, I can't help but relate to them as their mother. I'm a good enough mother to my actual real-life childen, but something is really wrong...desperately wrong...much of the time in terms of my relationship with my inner children. A major part of me is all entangled with my own mother (I am. Have talked elsewhere on forum about how I feel like she hijacked my self). So when my inner children see me, they also see my mother. So it's as if they're me as a little kid encountering my own mother and all the associated mess around that. No wonder they want to beat themselves bloody, claw their skin off and rip out their insides! Actually, I wish they'd try to do it to her instead of themselves (well, not in that extreme, but you know what I mean). But that's not good either, because then they would be doing it to me. Then who knows what I'd do when I get overwhelmed with them. I don't know. I just don't know how to deal with this.

I think somebody else on the forum (was it you?) had posted something about a similar experience with inner children being suicidal and self-destructive. Maybe I'll hunt around and try to find that.

I continue to way overthink all this stuff--what happened to me, why it's all coming out now, how to do this therapy without losing my mind. My thinker part is really extreme...trying to tell me something, but I don't know what. Then, swirled up in the thinker part is the doubter part, constantly undermining all of it.
 
I have real social needs in this way, as well as profound needs for physical contact with people I feel close to. I would never be happy as a hermit. However, I need tremendous amounts of time in silence and alone and just resting to reconnect with myself.
This is me, in a nutshell. 75% of the time I'm content to be by myself, working on my own stuff, reading, or just thinking and meditating. The remainder of the time I want to be around people -- usually people I'm really comfortable with. And, every so often, I like to be around lots of people, with lots of noise, etc. :)

Some of the best social experiences I've had were with people where we all sat in the same room together, but did our own things -- reading, working on projects or puzzles, etc. There's magic in this.

I could see what I wanted to paint. I can always see what I want to paint. I see it everywhere, all the time. I just can't do it. Sketching was hard, but I did it.
I think it's damned wonderful that you tried, and tried so hard. I haven't written a lick of music in many years. But, I can't even find time to get on this site anymore, either. ;)

Trying to catch-up; making me way through your diary entries.
 
A major part of me is all entangled with my own mother (I am. Have talked elsewhere on forum about how I feel like she hijacked my self). So when my inner children see me, they also see my mother. So it's as if they're me as a little kid encountering my own mother and all the associated mess around that.
Never considered this possibility before, that my "inners" might see me as one of my parents, both of whom were problematic when I was a kid.

It's not pleasant to open-up doors that were long-ago locked and sealed against what lay behind them, to relive things you wanted to forget. Those things are far worse than one would imagine if they've never had to deal with it. I'm not looking forward to dealing with this stuff, but I know I have no choice if I want my life to change.
 
Whew intense therapy appointment today. The toxic parts of me are way overactive. I am trying really, really hard to accept that they're just protecting me from a lot of repressed emotion and memory. It is very hard. These are the parts that led me to do some really physically self-destructive and risky stuff in the long past and tormented me with suicidal thoughts. I thought I had managed to shut down that energy a long time ago, but it's back. I guess I'm trusting my therapist a lot more now, because I actually ended up in a very, very vulnerable place during the appointment today. The problem is then, that it's really hard to pull myself together again and function...say goodbye to him, walk to the car, drive, etc. Usually I get to my car and sit there until I feel a little less overwhelmed. Today, I made it to the bathroom in the hall at the building where I saw him and stayed there for a while. Then sat in my car for a while. The toxic stuff calmed down eventually. I'm trying to just "be" with it and choose better options than punching walls etc. Successful so far.

I ended up taking the day off from work. Went to see my new baby nephew and that was really good. He's about 3 1/2 months old and smiling now. I held him the whole time. It did make me think of myself, too, who was just a few weeks younger when I was adopted. That was a long time to be without a mother! After that, I was exhausted. I went home and lay down for more than an hour (until I had to go pick up my daughter from school). The toxic stuff all came back again.

Although it didn't happen on my solo weekend last weekend, it's like every other time I let myself relax a little, and I am by myself, I just get overwhelmed by one thing or another. This week has been by far the worst. My therapist said it is probably because as I am getting "closer" to this one child part I'm working with, a lot of other protective energy comes up. It sure doesn't feel protective to me, but apparently--according to my T--it is. It's just really extreme. This is so hard for me to understand. He is trying to help me manage it, but I've not been having a lot of success.

It is hard for me, sometimes, to tell the difference between "containment" and dissociation.

"Containment" is good. That's when you recognize and feel something, but you don't react, or get overwhelmed by it. What happens to me is that I start to recognize and feel it and then sort of flip the switch, or the switch flips me, and I go somewhere else. Now, though, my switch is less reliable--especially when I am alone, but increasingly often it happens just any old time, and I get totally overwhelmed.

Ugh. I'm boring myself with this post. I do so wish I or someone could/would wave a magic wand and make all of this go away.
 
Very helpful to read about what your therapist says, and how you are dealing with the overwhelm. Making notes for myself. :)

Sorry there's so much toxic stuff. Amazing what gets hidden, and how much, and how incredibly bad it is when it reemerges. I hope the start of your week goes better. :)
 
For good or bad, I'm not sure, but I got slammed with the stomach virus on Saturday night around midnight. Saturday was okay. There was an all-day family funeral, but I knew staying all day and going out that night would be too much, so I did a good thing for myself. We took two cars, and I left after the first reception. Came home and slept for three hours. Then went to a dinner party. Which was okay--a lot of neighborhood people I didn't know, a few I did. (It was a weird party--my husband had met this new neighbor on the street at some point, and he sent the invitation for the dinner party...a welcome spring kind of thing...but we couldn't even picture who he was! I had to find him on the internet so at least we would recognize our host!)

Then got sick badly all night until around 6 am. High fever most of the day yesterday which finally started to go down at night. The good thing about all this is that I was so physically sick that my brain couldn't even organize itself around any coherent thought at all--so all the overwhelm of the week went away. Of course, I realized in the midst of all this that I would rather have the overhwhelm and be the tortured soul I often am, than to be so physically ill. That made me feel helpless and guilty and miserable in a whole new way.

I am going to move very slowly today. Am debating about canceling my therapy appointment because although I want to go and feel better, I don't want to pass this bug on to my T.

It is easy for me to fall into the trap of thinking...every time I have some sort of crisis..."this is it! this will be the turning point! everything will start to get better now!" That's where I am now. This virus has left me feeling scoured out, and beaten brutally--just what I do to myself emotionally on a regular basis. But unlike my response to my own emotional beatings on myself, this time, because it was physical, I rested. Did not get up at all yesterday--slept most of the day and night off-and-on in 1 or 2 hour intervals. And I feel rested. It's that feeling you get after a fever has broken. So I'm telling myself this story that this is the turning point...that everything will start to get better now. I don't know why I do that.

I'm not sure I'm even making sense in this post. So I'm going to stop now.
 
@Hope4Now - I hope you feel much better soon. Whatever it was, your body needed to reach crisis and rest. I expect you were continuing to process somatically even if you were not able to think about it.
 
@Echo thank you. I slept again for a little this morning and am feeling a bit better. Sort of raw physically and emotionally.

I think you're right, actually, about the processing. Although the stomach bug is going around, it is rather coincidental that I have had similar symptoms (without the fever) after really stressful times and exhaustion...the last time a couple of months ago after pushing myself to the outer limits to take my mother out to dinner. And, oddly enough, when my T asks me to ask my inner children if there's anything they want to "get rid of" they either go suicidal on me, or they vomit endlessly. What a lovely metaphor. Sorry. I guess there's a lot of past to get rid of.

So, maybe this bug was another way of processing my overwhelm and forcing me to just stop my too-fast paced life in its tracks. I managed the funeral and the dinner party on Saturday, but had to skip the event at church and the big political event we hosted on Sunday (thankfully it was at somebody else's house that is much bigger than ours, and thankfully my husband was on-hand to cover!).
***
I know I need to cut way back in my life. It is really hard to figure out how. I feel like I have slowed down a lot--have backed out of all traveling for work, and even all consulting with schools. Am just writing and doing administrative stuff. Have backed out of most social events, and even church for the most part. But it just isn't enough. Can't back out on my kids or my husband or my mother. And can't back out of some social obligations...sigh...another big political fundraiser at our house on Saturday. I was really excited about hosting it when I said yes, because it is a great progressive group doing outstanding social justice work. But, now I'm regretting it and can't back out.

Wishing I could go bilocate. Wishing the part of me that needs healing could go away somewhere for a month, and the parts of me that are functional could stay here and do it all until such time that all the parts can come together.
 
I went to my T appointment today. I was in a weird place. Just sort of weirdly relaxed I guess, after having a fever yesterday and a night of being sick to my stomach. The calm-ish after the storm, if you will. Maybe this is what let me make a little progress today.

Friday's appointment had been really, really intense. I was totally overwhelmed by toxic stuff, just as I was getting to a certain point with my little 3-year old self with whom I've been trying to work with only little bits of success. Friday in my session I was just a quivering mess. Literally. Like backed my chair into a corner, flinching away from this energy, eyes squeezed shut. Think the only thing that kept me from running out of the room was a)I can't run because of the pain and b) my therapist is miraculously skilled in using this calm, gentle voice that keeps me from getting too freaked out because he makes me feel safe-ish. Somehow in that appointment, a piece of the toxic tornado energy emerged as a separate part...the wall. It is what has been preventing me from being with the little 3-yo part of me. I was able to describe the wall to my T and we sort of left things at that and he asked me to try to just "be" with that energy to learn from it what it is so afraid of for me.

Then I got so sick over the weekend I couldn't even think coherently for any length of time. Today, I wrote a bit in my journal about these toxic energies and got to a place that I know what they're protecting me from...anger, rejection, abandonment, and being made to feel that the real me wasn't real or worthy. I couldn't go any further than that in my journal.

In my appointment today, though, I managed a few things that were good. I realized that a lot of this energy started when I was really, really young. That in order to save myself from anger, rejection, abandonment and being made to feel unreal and unworthy, I learned to shut off the truly "real" self and let the "acceptable" parts stand in for my real self. (@Echo thank you for your suggestion about the false self...I haven't read it totally yet, but I think this is goes a long way toward explaining my dual consciousness).

I also had insights into other things about this stuff that I haven't shared yet with my T...spent most of the session trying to get to know the toxic energy a little more...but it makes so much sense. And it explains why I could very consciously re-make "myself" at 12 and 14 years old, then again after things slid and got mucked up at 18, then again after the same thing at 24 and 32 and at 34...then the 34 year old self is the one that has served me reasonably well until 48 when everything started to come apart again--though this time with physical pain instead of emotional.

On all those re-makes, I figured out the kind of person I wanted to be to the outside world and set about basically shutting down all the stuff I didn't want anyone else to see, including myself. So my toxic energies...the tornado and the wall...have been superpower protectors for me until now. Allowed me to accomplish a lot in my life. Spur me on to do socially nice and acceptable things. Etx. Maybe this time because I'm working with a good therapist, I will be able to get through to my true self more consistently, not have to re-make myself into yet something else. I'm working on this really hard.

My T tells me that when I fight to shut down these toxic energies, they just get more intense and make my inner children feel ever more intensely all the things the protector energy is trying to protect them against. He has been working with me for weeks on trying to get close to my 3 year old child...I did for long enough for her to show me a lot of painful stuff, but as soon as it was time for me to comfort her, these toxic energies came in between us. That's when she and the other child parts started self-destructing in very awful ways. Somehow, today, I managed to get the toxic energies to step aside for long enough that my 3-year old not only could see me, but came close without blending completely with me (well she did briefly).

My T asked again if I could "ask her" if there is anything she wants to unburden now that she has shown me so much. I asked. The answer was no. She doesn't trust me. And I'm not sure exactly how I feel about accepting that unburdening...it feels so close to where I am now. So now, my work until the next appointment is to try to get back as often as I can to the point where my three year old can see me and be close to me and know that I am there with her in compassion. This is RIDICULOUSLY DIFFICULT.

It seems to stir up so much stuff, though, that I know how important it is. I don't know what will happen if she actually unburdens anything to me. Or if she's going to show me more stuff. I so dislike uncertainty when I feel like my life is at stake. I keep reminding myself that I have grown to trust and depend upon my T (so much so that it makes me wildly uncomfortable and feel like I want to run away too). I know I can call him if I get overwhelmed. I have been practising doing this. He says it is good that I do...that it is part of the healing process. I'm starting to believe that's true. And the bonus is, he can usually bring me back to some semblance of self, even if a lot of the miserable feelings are there.

He says that I need to do this work with my child parts. That it is part of the healing. Yes...the cognitive part of me knows that. But wow, other parts are just terrified of that. Why in the world would I be so terrified of my 3-year old self in yellow footie pajamas? So big deal, she cries a lot and I hold her? Or she gets suicidal and I help her? Or she shares something that is so shameful and horrible that I get overwhelmed and reject and abandon her...again (ah...that may be the fear...doing to my inner 3-year old what was done to her and what I did to her by shutting down the feelings and the memories?).

This parts work is very, very difficult and confusing. Moreso, because such a huge part of me is a doubter/cynic part that keeps undermining all this visualization and inner child work and other parts that insist it isn't real and I am making everything up and other parts that are urging me to just get over it all and move on...what I have been trying to do my whole life. I don't much like to look back...I am a look forward kind of person...yet I know now that I need to look back and find a way to make inner peace for myself with a past that is so entangled in my psyche.

I'm feeling calm but afraid at the same time right now. Wishing to find the courage to just let go and relax knowing that emotions themselves will not kill me. Not dealing with them will in one way or another. Either through self-abuse, or unasked for physical illness. I know my system is running on empty.

So...10 minutes with my inner child. Trying to relax the protector energies. We'll see what happens.
 
Okay...typical...my 10 minutes will have to wait. My daughter just arrived home from practice. I think I'll take the 10 minutes anyway.

This was interesting...came through my email today. I signed up for the enneagram daily email. It is incredibly creepy but also sort of cool how dead-on they are about 80%+ of the time. They're geared to your type. This one said:
What would it be like if you let someone else be an expert today? Would it be possible for you to learn something new and unexpected?

I'll take this as a sign that I should go on and be willing to trust my therapist and do what he is telling me to do even if it sounds crazy to me sometimes. He is the one that has been doing this for 15 years. Until October, I didn't even count anything that happened to me in childhood as "traumatic." So I'm not the expert here. And usually when I can let down my "expert" defenses, I do learn new things not only from others, but also about myself.
 
Or she shares something that is so shameful and horrible that I get overwhelmed and reject and abandon her...again (ah...that may be the fear...doing to my inner 3-year old what was done to her and what I did to her by shutting down the feelings and the memories?).
This is perhaps what your 3 yo would be afraid of -- the abandonment. Because, if whatever is hidden is awful enough, your first inclination will be to avoid it. It could be something that, cognitively, as an adult, you'd find tolerable to face, possibly even innocuous. But what's stored within memory, emotionally, for such things is often all of the terror that went along with traumatic events, such that you could end-up reliving the terror in the present, with all of the intensity that it had originally.

My therapist has suggested that our minds try to release these emotions very slowly and gradually, in order to prevent overload and overwhelm from them. Flashbacks of all kinds can be part of this, as well as dreams. It's sort-of a process of acclimation to whatever is buried. And, as your "inners" trust you more, as you demonstrate that your "adult" will protect them and not abandon them, they will be more inclined to release more information. It's quite cyclical I think -- releasing stored emotions makes your adult more capable of functioning, which makes you more capable of releasing more emotions, and possibly at a greater intensity. :)

Your therapist sounds a lot like mine, with regard to approach. Yours is more active, however, in trying to isolate and make contact with your "parts". I need to talk to my therapist about this, to see what she thinks.
 
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