Justmehere
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This is a long post... I’m frustrated and maybe getting this out will help and maybe someone out there has an idea or thought to get through...
I am wrestling with applying Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy and the idea that all people have parts, or rather, ego states, to the practical reality of my own recovery.
I get the theory. Makes sense. I did internal dialogue work and letters to my younger self a couple of years ago in an intensive PTSD program, and it really helped. Tremdously settling and helpful in a way that’s hard to describe. I could ground out of being super triggered and stay a very grounded adult person by sitting and journaling what I would write or say to me as a 5 year old being triggered by what was going on around me as an adult or about what happened to me as a kid.
When I left the intensive treatment, my therapist suddenly quit, two trusted friends were jerks, my family went back to pretending I didn’t exist, some big losses happened.... it was a bad year.
The walls I worked so hard to bring down went back up. I also lost the ability to do what I did in that intensive treatment.
Over the past few years, I’ve made a lot of decent progress in every area of my battle with PTSD.
But there are a few “stuck places” (as my therapist says. She’s right.)
She keeps pointing to IFS and connection with her while working with certain triggers and trauma as the solution. We both agree I have a not well integrated ego states (or non-DID parts.) One that is developmentally like a feisty teenager and another that is young, like being than 8.
As of the last session with her, just this week, I can now sit in the younger ego state with her.
My experience of it:
In the middle of processing childhood trauma, my tone of voice changed. My guest urges changed. I’m felt very small. I felt regressed. I haaaaated it. I never lost my adult self. I just hated feeling that way.
A few months ago, my therapist asked me once in the past to name my parts. I said no. Just no. Those ego states don’t have names. She said that was more than ok.
But the really young ego state, that holds a lot of anger and fear. It leaks out sideways. Last night, I felt pissed. Not at all like I was in that young place, but when I step back, my anger was more fitting for a kid rather than an adult.
I was close to a relapse in 57 different maladaptive ways of coping and SO tired of fighting myself and my symptoms. So I gave up and tried an IFS approach and remembered a letter I wrote in treatment. I was pretty ok pretty quick, and walked out the door and lead a very adult workshop. No relapse. I later emailed my therapist (I can email knowing she won’t respond but will talk about it in session) that I wanted to call that place my nickname as a kid. Because it’s part of my name. It’s all part of me. That’s what I didn’t like about naming it. It’s me. It’s not someone else.
After a crappy day full of triggers and stressors, I’m back in that place same irritated place again today, and I’m hitting the stuck place. I can’t do it. I can’t find the whatever in me to talk to myself like a good parent would to an upset traumatized child.
Instead I’m just pissed and exhausted and avoidant and isolating.
I feel so frustrated with being so stuck. If I have to stand in my head and call myself a bananna to get better and on to doing more of what I want to do in life, FINE. I’ll do that.
But I don’t have to do that.
All I have to do is find the whatever in me to talk to myself like a good parent would to an upset traumatized child. It may not work but damn it, the current onslaught of frustrated self abusive thoughts isn’t working.
Why am I resisting this?
Yes, I have other ways to cope, but they only go so far. The whole time it’s like I’m limping. When I just deal with this head on, it’s like things settle out so much better.
How do I move forward? I’m so freaking exhausted.
I am wrestling with applying Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy and the idea that all people have parts, or rather, ego states, to the practical reality of my own recovery.
I get the theory. Makes sense. I did internal dialogue work and letters to my younger self a couple of years ago in an intensive PTSD program, and it really helped. Tremdously settling and helpful in a way that’s hard to describe. I could ground out of being super triggered and stay a very grounded adult person by sitting and journaling what I would write or say to me as a 5 year old being triggered by what was going on around me as an adult or about what happened to me as a kid.
When I left the intensive treatment, my therapist suddenly quit, two trusted friends were jerks, my family went back to pretending I didn’t exist, some big losses happened.... it was a bad year.
The walls I worked so hard to bring down went back up. I also lost the ability to do what I did in that intensive treatment.
Over the past few years, I’ve made a lot of decent progress in every area of my battle with PTSD.
But there are a few “stuck places” (as my therapist says. She’s right.)
She keeps pointing to IFS and connection with her while working with certain triggers and trauma as the solution. We both agree I have a not well integrated ego states (or non-DID parts.) One that is developmentally like a feisty teenager and another that is young, like being than 8.
As of the last session with her, just this week, I can now sit in the younger ego state with her.
My experience of it:
In the middle of processing childhood trauma, my tone of voice changed. My guest urges changed. I’m felt very small. I felt regressed. I haaaaated it. I never lost my adult self. I just hated feeling that way.
A few months ago, my therapist asked me once in the past to name my parts. I said no. Just no. Those ego states don’t have names. She said that was more than ok.
But the really young ego state, that holds a lot of anger and fear. It leaks out sideways. Last night, I felt pissed. Not at all like I was in that young place, but when I step back, my anger was more fitting for a kid rather than an adult.
I was close to a relapse in 57 different maladaptive ways of coping and SO tired of fighting myself and my symptoms. So I gave up and tried an IFS approach and remembered a letter I wrote in treatment. I was pretty ok pretty quick, and walked out the door and lead a very adult workshop. No relapse. I later emailed my therapist (I can email knowing she won’t respond but will talk about it in session) that I wanted to call that place my nickname as a kid. Because it’s part of my name. It’s all part of me. That’s what I didn’t like about naming it. It’s me. It’s not someone else.
After a crappy day full of triggers and stressors, I’m back in that place same irritated place again today, and I’m hitting the stuck place. I can’t do it. I can’t find the whatever in me to talk to myself like a good parent would to an upset traumatized child.
Instead I’m just pissed and exhausted and avoidant and isolating.
I feel so frustrated with being so stuck. If I have to stand in my head and call myself a bananna to get better and on to doing more of what I want to do in life, FINE. I’ll do that.
But I don’t have to do that.
All I have to do is find the whatever in me to talk to myself like a good parent would to an upset traumatized child. It may not work but damn it, the current onslaught of frustrated self abusive thoughts isn’t working.
Why am I resisting this?
Yes, I have other ways to cope, but they only go so far. The whole time it’s like I’m limping. When I just deal with this head on, it’s like things settle out so much better.
How do I move forward? I’m so freaking exhausted.