Around The Bend

[Powder]

The kernel of truth is that I am not "special." The suffering and cruelty I have been experiencing, the capriciousness, the unfairness and bitter truth that humans lack the compassion they seek, is universal.

I must again acknowledge that my hope that their is a God who will be what I want it to be does not exist. My belief in such a God actually keeps me in more pain because then I cannot see the reason I have had to content with so much evil in my life. If I dispense with a God, then the evil makes more sense. Nobody is watching. I am the one watching. Rather than continue to feel abandoned by God, I must accept there never was a divine parent to abandon me in the first place.

Rather than see my pain as particular and special, I see that my Dean who cut my contract and then cut half my work load for another 3 months does similar things to everyone, which has earned her a reputation. I just didn't see it before. Now I've fallen under her gaze and received the same kind of nasty treatment as others have said they have received. I realize now I missed a chance at empathy with them. I didn't feel what they felt. Now I feel it. Now I sort of understand what they might have felt. There is a shock, then a desire to know who or what has conspired against me, then comes acceptance that knowing doesn't help because there is nothing I can do. She has the power, and I am in a nearly powerless Omega position. She's Alpha and is defending her throne with a vengeance toward everyone.

One thing I can do is decide what I am going to think, feel and do. I've decided that it's okay to feel the sting for a little while. It's normal. But it will pass. I will use the extra freedom of schedule to focus on my physical health and strength. I will also pursue my own research and writing interests if I can (let's see how my energy is first!).

I am also interested in friendship. I want to have a friend who understands me. I'm tired of my inherited friends' lack of questioning and thinking. I need an intelligent and fun friend! :) I'm so tired of pretending. Life should not feel like kindergarten.

As I'm healing the wound of my mother's cruelty and withholding, I'm hopeful that I will also become more aware of others' feelings.

 

[Powder]

A lot of old memories have been popping up.
Mom chopping off my hair a couple times and saying it looks "good" when it clearly is the opposite of her long, gorgeous trademark hair.

Mom bought me a $2 thrift purple down coat. I didn't like purple (and felt a bit like Barney) but it was almost new looking and cozy warm. When our foster sister got cold in late September, my "new-to-me" school coat was taken and given to her. When I asked if we could search for another $2 coat for me to wear, I was told that now it was fall and school started, there weren't any (she supposedly had checked) and so I was going to have to wait until next year. Though we had a new Nissan and a new custom mansion, I needed to understand that I wasn't worth $2 to her.

I went without a coat that winter. I stood outside our 5,000 square foot house in the snow shivering each morning waiting for the bus. I didn't get another coat from them until we returned from the mission field, years later. Instead I wore a thin, denim jacket most notable for the "bedazzler" that had punched painful, scratchy silver metal parts into it. It was a craft made my my loving grandmother.

My grandmother's homemade clothes were gifts wrapped my little sister and in love. But sometimes I wished they also could keep us warm, stylish, and age appropriate. I looked silly in her colorblind creations, as mom was quick to point out. Because I had been given those embarrassing, but gaudy, well-intended gifts that didn't fit right, and were not appropriate for the weather, I was not given actual things that would be appropriate to wear. Thus, I didn't need a winter coat, as grandma had given me a thin cotton shirt that resembled a jacket. And all the $2 coats were gone. I never liked photos, because they displayed so many memories of how ridiculous, cheap, and not worth $2 I was growing up. I had socks for gloves, or nothing. I had hand-me-downs and mom's crooked haircuts. Kids didn't want to be my friend. And yet, I was also "spoiled and ungrateful" for which she randomly shook and screamed at my sister and I. We were "evil." (However, my brother could do no wrong. I have heard of this strange mothering in other incest families with a jealous narcissist mother. They believe the boy was not a "competitor.")

Now, I bought myself a down coat last year. I haven't been able to handle the feelings that this has brought up. Now, every time I put it on, I feel I am in that purple coat that was taken from me, and the feelings of why would my rich parents not provide basic things for me comes us. I buy my kids several coats. I have an issue with this that I know is based on the shock that occurred when my mother was deliberately not interested in being a good mom to me. She enjoyed "taking" things from me in many ways.

Now that I have a supervisor just like her, who has taken my contracts away for no reason, I am back in that anger and shock at how capricious and cruel these women have been. Men have treated me like a non-person in sexual ways and other ways, but women have knowingly kicked me where it hurts, withdrawing and making me feel desolate in ways that have left me feeling helpless and forlorn.

Another time, I got the beautiful boots I had admired. My Dad bought them for me and made a big show of it. My mom said little. Later, she let me know that I looked ridiculous trying to walk in those boots with heels. Soon, I could not look at them or wear them. I felt ridiculous for wanting them, for thinking I would look good in them. :( I still feel the same. That feeling has never left me. My self esteem was hanging by a thread as it was from the sexual abuse, and she reached over and cut it clean through. She made me unsafe and dependent upon the abusive provider. Then, she thrashed my self image and ground my spirit into the dirt.

Later, as a teen, she would compare herself to me in the mirror. Every time I was in the hall bathroom, she had to come in and compare herself physically to me. She sometimes said things, like I had a nice neck, but I felt taken apart into unrecognizable pieces and inspected, like a car with its tires being kicked. "I" was not considered, just my neck or my hair. I told myself she was trying to be nice, but I never heard anything she said as a compliment. I was a doll made up of parts.

Later, at 21, my bad T. said I didn't say "Thank you" when he complimented me. After a lifetime of faint praise (false praise) I don't hear compliments as compliments. They are just lies from someone comparing oneself to me and feeling forced to say something socially appropriate. Rarely, I hear a compliment and am able to say thanks. It was/is a competitive, bloody world.

I want a cooperative world, so I now have trouble standing ground and forcing boundaries. I am too easy on people. I just don't want my world to have more dog-eat-dog competition when that's what I was raised on. My mother and sister are jealous and competitive. I wanted love and assurance that we are all okay and different. I wanted love. I was Snow White and Cinderella. I wanted to be a me who was seen and loved and approved of.

Obviously, parts of me are still waiting for that approval even though I was always growing in awareness that my family was not capable of offering it. I need to find ways to approve of myself.

I guess I can do the work Louise Hay talks about.

 

[Powder]

Hmm. Ironically, my cruel, step-mother supervisior, Dean "Mean," has the expensive version of my down coat. Same color and everything. She remarked about that and pointed out that hers was of a superior brand. This coat connects my Bitch of an Evil Stepmother "Mother" to my Bitch Dean Mean. I have negative connotations with the coat with both women. One took my coat away; the other gave it faint praise and mentioned how her version was superior. I suppose she wanted me to not wear it. (Been there done that with my sister.)

I gave my mom the ol heave ho, and I am stuck with the damn supervisor. I feel so angry because I don't want to put up with more of my mother's behavior and ideas from anyone. I am considering quitting just because I hate this woman so much for bringing up such pain and cutting my pay unexpectedly twice in two weeks. I feel that if I am going to continue working for this bitch, I can expect her to stab me in the back at any minute. Guess with my issues and PTSD, I'm not sure the extra income is worth it. I need therapy for working for her, but she keeps cutting my wages so that I can't go to therapy!

On the other hand, these are my own feelings and she has no notion of them. Everyone hates this woman, so even without the triggers she trips for me, she manages to put everyone's nose out of joint with her personality disorders and passive aggressive ambush tactics.

So I guess I'm still left with the realization that my feelings are mine. They would be there even without this woman repeating these patterns.

What can I do to address the feeling that I am the ugly duckling and not worthy and ridiculous?

Well, not go to therapy, because my supervisor also cut my contract and then dropped one of my contracts at the last minute for no reason (oh yeah, she made up a reason to smear my good reputation alleging a student complained about me missing two days of work for being ill, yeah right!). So now I can't afford therapy! I guess that makes me angry, too.

 

[Powder]

Woke up at 2 am with a strong dream memory. I've noticed with structural dissociation, a lot of the EPs communicate with me (ANP) while I'm asleep. I have been "listening" and respecting the EPs more, my inner children, and letting them speak to me for better cooperation and understanding of myself.

So what I remembered/learned was that I was back with my parents, and I smelled the strange smell of Dad's funny cigarettes. They were laced with Heroine. In the memory/dream thing I accidentally walked in on my Dad taking a bath for a long time. He had a black band on his arm and he was very slowly injecting a drug into his vein. It had a tar and strange smell to it, like something burning and almost a sulfer/egg but not egg smell that nauseated me.

He didn't react to my coming in by sending me out, as if he barely took notice of my intrusion. I backed away, in fear of what he was doing. I didn't know he was home, and my mom was gone. I felt afraid being left there with my abuser, and I didn't like what I saw him doing.

Maybe this is why I never wanted to try drugs and have a total fear of them.
Also, that funny smell, I associate with the abuse, so it is possible he was using heroine when he raped me/us.

I also recall going in to another man's home with my Grandma and smelling that stale smoke smell. It really triggered me and bothered me on several levels. I curled into a ball and couldn't talk; I felt like I was going to throw up. My reaction really upset my Grandma, who got mad at the man and got me out of there. She made me feel safe, because she noticed my reaction to the trigger.

 

[Powder]

Actually, I think it was a flashback at night. I could smell the smell and got sick feeling in my stomach. I have been having the stomach sickness stuff/symptoms come back last week and through to the present. Then, I got the flashback that explains a bit of the stomach problem. I remembered feeling sick to my stomach often,

 

[Powder]

Upset about switching into a fight EP and then another alter last night, very unexpectedly, when scared by husband's sudden discipline of 4 year old. Can't type like normal, still not back.

Lately, I've been stuck a lot in an ANP from school age childhood that is a child worker ANP. As her I feel:

Less conscious, able to read and write but limited to short sentences and concrete ideas.
Hungry; this child wants to eat all the time.
Hurt: this child knows it was hurt, but can't or won't look at it; denial.
Isolated: this child knows it has to appear social but doesn't want intimacy with anyone, doesn't want to be touched.
Talkative: this child can go into a "chatty Kathy" mode to nervously cover up (denial) her negative fearful emotions, but she is in a state of extreme tension (attachment confusion) and retraction of consciousness from the trauma and the younger children.

When I'm her, I can't stop eating, I clean a lot to avoid negative punishment from my mother, I crave chocolate, especially, and don't feel very adult like or responsible for others. I can't read long posts on here (last night I noticed) or avoid the site or anything too mentally challenging. I can't focus on much. I stay busy. I don't want sexual feelings or activity of any kind. I feel too young for that. "leave me alone."

This one has taken over lately since the bad stuff at work happened and my husband has been TOO BUSY FOR ME. I don't know what made the switch happen. I know this girl feels neglected and sullen and wishes she could get away to a better home, a better place. She craves the escape.

 

[Powder]

So, I've been able to be her for about a week and do my job and everything. It feels like I have to be her while my H. is so busy. I don't know why.

Last night, when he whisked our 4 year old from the room, I was triggered again. I don't like a man in my house in the ANP anyway, and I have to have my main Adult personality constantly defend him to some other Parts, who can't believe I'd allow a man in my house. So when he scared them, I couldn't defend his actions, and they took over.

A fight EP child took over who is stuck in FIGHT mode that is unfinished. She started fighting him. I'm not sure how or where the fight started because when the switch occurred, a little time was lost, just enough to leave me disoriented. The next thing I know I am engaged in a full on fight with my H. He keeps stopping me from hurting him and I got frustrated. For a while, I felt happy that my body was big enough to actually engage him and every time I made contact with his body, I feel like I might not get hurt and might win. This made this EP feel giddy, almost euphoric on some kind of adrenaline high. My heart was pounding. I felt like I had to fight to live. There was no thinking of verbal thought. It was primitive instincts mostly, fighting. I can't describe it with words.

As soon as I realized that I couldn't win or overpower him, I became a ragdoll. I felt a sudden, total loss of muscle strength, and it felt like I was a doll filled with sand. He had restrained me, and left, so in this state, my body slid to the floor. Also upon feeling this inability to move, I felt a terrible anguish and began to sob. (I think I felt I would be attacked further and felt dread. I had no hope of self-defense now.)

During this whole time, my oldest daughter came to the door of my bedroom, where I had to fight him, and was telling me to stop. I recognized her as my daughter, but the one making me fight did not. She was engaged in fighting and didn't want her concentration to be broken. Another Alter came to my verbal ability to let me speak. I yelled at my daughter, who I saw as my Mother who wouldn't defend me from my Dad. I hated her for leaving me to fight for myself and lose. I swore and yelled at her, calling her a bitch, telling her the more she didn't support me, the most I would attack him. This personality felt like Beatrice, who has access and collaboration with much of the traumatic memories and traumatized EPs. She is still angry and cynacle about everyone, deep down, and swears viciously, laughs and "evil sounding" laugh, and feels untrusting of my H. or most anyone. She knows the full measure of the Wounding. She keeps us safe by hiding what we can't handle from the rest of us, and has to manage it all with precision. She was liking that she let the Fight EP out to fight H. as I needed to fight my Dad. She thought it was good fun. She doesn't trust him and always wants him to leave. She wants me to break up with him. But I tell her I can't permanently remove him from our lives, and she thinks about ways to do that. She feels some of the rage and anger of the EPs that sort of "feed into her" their desperation to defend themselves and permanently destroy the abuser.

So she took over just as the fight EP "ran out" as if on an egg timer. It was really weird feeling. She took over for that EP and sent everyone away. She wanted the man to realize what a bad man he really is and to go away forever, taking his badness with him.

After he left, Michelle came back to influence to calm me down and allow me to caretake the children. I calmed them down, and then got on here and comforted other people to keep Michelle here. I feel okay and calmer as this alter. She is very loving and her love makes everyone feel better, very soothing. But she left after that, and I went back to the worker child who binge eats and feels empty and unsettled. Her stomach feels terrible and she eats hoping to settle it. I felt terrible nausea like I would be sick any moment. this lasted for a couple of hours. I felt very unsettled about what had happened. I cried with my older daughter as realization of what happened occurred and I realized that I scared my kids and had no control over the switching. I felt frustrated, very much, because this happened very similarly about two months ago, and I hoped it was a fluke, when my H. wisked my 4 year old away from the oldest during an argument they had and hurt her foot. The switch was more brief and "cleaner" didn't go into full FIGHT EP, just dipped into it. This time it completely took over the control of me and I had almost no power to direct its actions. Last time, I don't remember the heart pounding so strangely and the strange unreal, almost high, feeling of adrenaline type stimulus to fight that felt so irresistable, like this time. But both times, I felt Beatrice wanting him to go away forever.

I am trying to say that I am mad because my H. fully knows what happened. I told him not to trigger me by whisking her like that, that he put her at risk for injury inherently by the too fast action to control collisions and potential injury to her. He agreed. Yet, he did it again, and what's worse, I think he only did it to get at me. I don't know if he was consciously deciding, but since he was angry with me and frustrated with his school work not going well no matter how much he tried, he seemed sullen and resentful toward me. He seemed upset that I was the Worker Child who is not sexual or loving or attached. He seemed to take it personally that as her I am not interested and am really almost repulsed by him. Even though I didn't say that, he seemed to know. I used what I thought were nice words to encourage him, but it didn't work. Only Michele can do the empathy and spoken eloquence for that. This ANP can't tell that its reductive worldview is not palatable to anyone.

I feel like he deliberately triggered me for revenge, and then was surprised at the level of switching that happened. He left saying that I crossed a line that can't be taken back, but I felt the same way because he is triggering me so deliberately that I don't feel safe anymore living with him.

I know I can't have him living her, and to my main personality, I feel extremely sad, like a failure, and helpless. I can't help it when he triggers me by acting what I perceive as suddenly violent or unpredictable and harsh. It terrifies me, and this terrifies all the Child Parts and other personalities that depend on my main personality feeling safe. And since he is the only person I have been able to, as my main self, trust, which is all I am capable of at this point, and now that has failed, like a dam breaking, I feel all hope for a relationship is truly lost. I can't get back into my main self to relate to him when I don't feel safe.

This happened on the trip; I kept feeling like I was on a trip again with my Dad (parents/family) and when my H. said or did anything remotely uncaring, it triggered terrible flashbacks, panic, and suicide, which I found out are called "Pathogenic Kernels" or Hot-spots of traumatic memory that are so disturbing that they often can't be processed like the rest of the traumatic memory. They are non-verbal and require resolution of particularly distressing memories and experiences, usually involving death (threats) or complete helplessness and despairing for one's life.

I am so frustrated to not be able to go to therapy and now my marriage has fallen.

I wish I could blame myself for it, but after what happened, my parts all say that he is spending all his time on school work and not caring for me or the children enough, placing too much on me. I have to take them out of the house so he can study for hours, which is exhausting to me. I feel agoraphobic and desperate to come home. I feel ignored. My needs have to be pushed aside, and my problems I am completely alone with, which is triggering. It's just like before.

Then, when I feel dis-attached from all this, he is angry and wants sex and intimacy, when I can't feel that way. Then he provokes something in me that snaps. Then he blames me for switching, even though he made it happen. And then he tells me that I am to blame for the kids' emotions and that he had no role to play in causing any of the conflict. He left and got a hotel, when he tells me not to spend any money! He didn't answer our texts and my daughter needed to know he was okay. So did I.

I haven't been able to rely on any financial support at all from him for several years, but I had his emotional and parental support. Now that is gone as well. He is snapping and acting too rough on my toddler, blaming her for his problems. He resents and is frustrated with having to care for her during the time I work because he needs to have lots of time to work on his school work. Rather than see the situation for what it is, difficult, challenging, and not tenable as is, he is blaming us for it and passive aggressively acting out at us more and more.

Not only is he no longer there for me emotionally, he is triggering me and making me feel totally unsettled, insecure, and unsafe with him brooding in the house, like my Dad.

I am starting to see a connection between my stomach problems and the Parts that go with that and other issues and his moods and the problems I have with him that I don't know if I can resolve. I think that he may be causing as much distress as comfort with my PTSD and life. And when the distress becomes too much, how I this go on? I can't live and function to take care of our family this way.

 

[Powder]

On my own, I'm trying to learn my parts. I will try to lay them down while they are still somewhat clear, which is unusual. (The Firewall is temporarily down.)

There is me, the "Just me" self that seems most continuous and mediator of my parts. This is awareness and main memory.

I have the three main Influential parts that underlie the Main Me: "Michele", is what I use to refer to this part, although I don't go by Michele when I am her. I use the name to communicate this part to my H. She is cooperative and easily merges her will into and collaborates with the Professor, which allows me to be good at my job, balancing thinking/feeling as best I can, and focusing for very long periods of mental work without any breaks. The Professor is a male thinking part who is highly abstract and intellectual. He can become too heady. He is really sort of A-sexual or gender-neutral, but for some reason, I always see this part as male, probably because in my family of origin, only the men had this kind of mental ability. This part is mechanical, scientific, exploratory with ideas, creative, and seems to have intellectual abilities not transferable to other parts. This parts always knew right from wrong, rules, principals, philosophy, and schemas. Usually any mental work that engages him gets done quickly and intensely. This part sometimes shocks people with brilliance or leaves them feeling that I am too cool and logical, without feelings or empathy.

Because that kept happening, Michele and the Intellectual were able to collaborate and work on things together. This has helped me many times in life. I could not do what I do without this.

I have Beatrice, who keeps me cagey all the time and is always aware of whatever people are hiding or if they are up to something (motive). She makes me nervous, highly symptomatic sometimes. I sometimes think that the Professor and Michele DON'T HAVE PTSD, but Beatrice and the fragments and the Early Children Have the PTSD, body memories, NDE, and other issues. Beatrice is highly intuitive and can literally read minds. She can interface with traumatized parts easily, overlapping, managing, and mediating them. Mostly she just hides them, but I think she also strictly controls them. They may be a little afraid of her. She is physically very attractive, but she wants to be alone. She is deceptive because she needs to be to keep us safe. She is angry. She is a warrior woman and controls defense tactics. She mediates Fight EPs, Freeze and other EPs.

These are the three main ANP's who have been "out enough" to grow into adulthood that I am mostly aware of, with Beatrice taking a deliberate back seat and working in the shadows without the knowledge of Michelle/Professor/Me team who are the main ANPs that get the most socializing and thinking done.

Michele is social. She is the only one who can socialize. Sometimes when she takes full control for long periods of time, I feel a very profound sense of Love that makes me feel almost a spiritual high, like God actually loves me (as her). Michele is a believer and has access to faith. Professor and Beatrice are rational and do not.

Then, there is the Child Worker A who is stuffing emotions and eating as a substitute action for feeling anything; she is depressed. (Remember being her mostly during 1st grade through 6th grade.) She cannot feel sexual. She feels unloved; and she tries to fill the void with food and domestic "playing house" almost Play action tendencies that are restricted to TV and Books (not social, isolated).

Then, there is another Child Worker B (7th Grade, after we moved to Costa Rica through early adulthood) who tries even harder to avoid people, and has zero appetite. When I am her, I cannot feel hunger or eat. Once I was her for three days, never eating once and not caring about it. She is dissociative and very numb and cold/stiff. She can do housework and act normal, so I think both these Older Children are ANPs. She feels bitterness and empty but doesn't try to fill herself with food. She can feel sexual like an adolescent. She feels unloved and fills the void with sex or exploration action tendencies.

There are 2 Traumatized and Aware Early Child Parts, two girls about 4 and 5. They appear almost identical. They are continually afraid. Going to pre-school was an additional trauma to one of them. They are both scared of the dark! They have woken me up begging me to turn nightlights on when in a strange place (grandma's house) out of deep sleep; I turned on the light and fully expected to see them both there in bed with me, but they were not. They feel totally real, even having a four and a five year old's voices that heard and woke me up.

I have experienced these two and they always seem to be together, like twins. I think they were born during the major rapes that I partially remember and was more aware of.

I have a 2 year old part that was violently molested by Dad and in pain, and lifts her arms and legs up in bed and attachment cries for Mother to come help me. I think this is the one that made me wet the bed after the flashbacks.

And I have infant parts that just cry for my caregivers who never once came to me when I needed them. It was this part that came back to me. I was looking for her for over a year and did a soul retrieval myself to find her. I found her and picked her up and soothed her and promised to always take care of her.

Then, feeling came back into my lower legs/calves, that has been there ever since. Prior to that, I couldn't feel that part of my legs much and got cramps there all the time.

But soon after the other children became more active and EPs started intruding on my ANPs. I started to listen, and they started to enter my dreams and my awareness.

 

[Powder]

I also have more than one Fight EP.

One just pushes/shoves. That one is still trying to push Dad off me. This one is the one responsible for the recurring dream of trying to keep the attacker out of my house, continually locked into pushing the door and unable to close it or keep him out. This one has pushed my H. several times, but that's all she does is push. That's all she wants to be successful at.

One, who I just got awareness of this fall/winter, has been waiting a long time to FIGHT and I mean brawl with my abuser. This one just randomly attacks. She wants to subdue the attacker. Since she never could, she also contains Tonic Immobility when the fight only made things worse. He punched me several times in the back of the head. Then I went "rag doll" and totally limp.

I have read that this Tonic Immobility is traumatic. After experiencing it again last night, I agree that it is a pathogenic kernnel. Just losing the ability to move one's body is traumatic when one is being attacked. It is a hopeless feeling. The adrenaline is pumping but you cannot move at all and feel almost like you are dying. I think this may account for the racing breath and heartbeats that happened during sex.

During sex I have felt the same thing as with the tonic immobility. I can't move but even resting, I feel a surge of adrenaline and panting breath and trapped and hopeless.

One T. said that those who successfully fought do better, but that was likely true with simple Trauma with only one EP.
What about when that Fight EP always leads right into a FREEZE and TONIC IMMOBILITY EP? Then what?

This is what I should be working with in EMDR right now. Instead I'm not sure at all how to process, reframe it, and heal the switching from happening when I don't want it to. What about my family? My husband?

I can't even feel connected to remorse well for what I did. I feel like someone else attacked him, not me. And I feel like he made that happen, not me. I don't feel I have control over the switching. I don't even feel this time as much connection to the experience as the last time this FIGHT EP took over. Then it was brief and I assimilated the actions as "mine." This time, I went through the same "wall of momentary amnesia" when I switched into FIGHT II: Attacking, but I didn't come back through the same gateway bringing the memory back with me. For some reason, this time I was not able to get back through the same gate. I went into another gate with Beatrice and the Tonic Immobility. Then I get confused about it, because I switched to Michele for about half an hour, and then back to Child I and then back to me, freaking out and worried about my H and where he was, wanting him to come home, upset at what happened, and feeling terrible this happened, about 3 am.

It doesn't make as much sense. This all took place from 10:30 pm to 3 am. Then, I went to sleep and slept better than usual because i took a whole Clonidine, which felt wonderful when it took effect. I felt like I floated away from myself and all my problems far away into the darkness of nothing. When I was waking, all my alters were aware of each other clearly, more clearly than ever before, and I felt compelled to write about them before I forget and switch back into one that is not as aware of them. Maybe I woke up as Me, who is working to understand and map out the terrain of myself on the journey to assimilation/integration.

 

[Powder]

PS. I think I had a switching thing like this last time (3 weeks ago) when I had to work a 6 day week. On the night of the 6th day working, I feel a kind of exhaustion that leaves me feeling vulnerable to further switching. I felt, right before this happened, dissociated, on the couch barely able to watch TV or be aware of others in the room beyond basic. I almost went to bed because I felt spent, tired, in a physical and emotional way. But I wanted to have family time and finish the "play" watching TV with them. I was in Child I while home this week mostly. She likes to eat and watch TV and space a bit at night to relax or else she cannot sleep.

I should have known I needed more rest, as my 4 year old was not letting me go to bed when I needed to all weekend and week, keeping me exhausted and more and more run down.

Since my H. had homework yet to do, I mostly had to keep reading and talking to her and let him work or take a break and get ready to work on homework.

Me, I would know I was tired and to get rest, but as Child I worker, I have to work on things and cannot self care or be self aware to that level. I just react. All week I just shouted at the kids, like a child. I didn't have access to ideas of what to do or how to strategize parenting.

 

[Candleflames]

Rather than continue to feel abandoned by God, I must accept there never was a divine parent to abandon me in the first place.

There is something to what you are saying here. The truly beautiful thing about deity is that it is multifaceted. We don't have to see him/her/it in an either/or dimension. There are many faces to the divine and you can still hold on to the love of God while exploring the shape of it. For many people, me included, the loving, wise parent or grandparent figure never made any sense. Our concept of deity is much different and even nonhuman. Just because your visualization of what God is has let you down, your belief doesn't need to be abandoned.

I know it's been a while but I just had to comment. While I am not Christian I do think it is a beautiful religion when it flourishes in the heart of the compassionate. Don't lose that, it's part of what makes you very special.

You are really working at healing. Be proud of that, you deserve it.

 

[Powder]

I had a dream and woke up realizing it was a memory. I knew my dad used heroine because he kept talking about it when waking from surgery and asking the nurses for it for his pain. It's all he wanted, not their drugs.

My mom said they "tried pot once" before they were married and that was it. But now I remember walking in on my dad shooting up in the bathroom. I saw the strap on his naked arm, the needle, and it seemed like he was pushing the stopper really slow, like in slow motion. He took a long time to notice me there, and it was like he didn't recognize me or see me. He seemed in a fog, a happier place somewhere else. I backed out of the room. I felt fear. I didn't talk to anyone about what I saw.

In fact, I totally blocked the memory out. I have had this dream of a dark haired young man who looks like my father doing drugs in his office. I didn't realize that this dream was coming to me in various forms or what the memory was. This last time, it was very clear and it was not a "dream" it was a flashback/memory of the event. For some reason, I see as from outside of my body, seeing me standing there in shock of what I've just seen, the needle work bit. That I see from inside my body. But the fear on my face, feeling paralyzed, and then backing away, I see from a position outside my body looking at me as almost someone else.

This is just one way that as a kid I dissociated all memories that bothered me. As an expert dissociator from the sexual abuse and neglect, I was pretty good at instantly dissociating anything unpleasant or troubling. It got put away for good.

My sibs seem similar. They don't recall anything bad or they think it happened to someone else, not them.

My mom's neglect being dealt with now, but why linked with my dad's drug use? I guess it was all dissociated. What got dissociated got stored in hot spots, in EPs, and they are linked by emotions, not logic or chronological order.

What goes "down" must come "up" but in seemingly random patterns. Once something gets processed/assimilated/integrated, there is more, and more, and more.