DID Splitting

[Echo]

@seedling - thank you so much for your post. It means so much to me to have you read it like that. I am so sorry though that you, too, are going through this. Maybe we can both find gentle ways to let them speak gradually, so that we older ones don't get devastated by what is said and shown to us. I do appreciate your post.

 

[seedling]

Moved to tears, what can I say.....

 

[Echo]

@seedling - there seems to be something very profound happening between us all on this subject, doesn't there, just at the moment? I hope we all move forward as a result; I feel we will. :hug:

 

[seedling]

My therapist told me some time ago that one of the terrifying things about PTSD is that the emotions start to surface first before there is any logical thing to connect them to. Bits and pieces of sensation and emotion coming up with no clear connection to anything.

That's what this has been like and this time around I was able to recognize it pretty early. I think it helped to realize what was happening but it still has been frightening and has gotten me feeling taken off guard. So wonderful to read here about everyone else experiencing the same sort of thing. I don't feel so alone (and freaky :alien:).

:hug: back to you.

 

[Echo]

From one :alien: to another, we are not alone! Thank goodness. I'm off to see if sleep is possible. You are right; I realise much earlier now that something is on its way. Now there's a talent I could do without.... Though actually it does help.:)

 

[Echo]

Well, it took me days to get over that session with my therapist; I'm not sure if I have. We agreed that I need desperately to work on safety issues before I can deal with the STUFF. So my homework was to try and talk with my younger self and try to hear from her what she wanted. I've been avoiding it, but since I have another session with my therapist on Monday, I thought I'd better make the effort (sigh!).

It took me a while before I felt that what I was connecting to was actually her. There seemed to be other voices/forms distracting me and messing me around, if I'm honest. Anyway, having, I hope, got rid of them, I think my 20-year old self is still separate from me behind her veil of mist.

And she is really angry with me, and I must confess, I don't really understand why. She had some pretty unpleasant things to say, attacking me (which explains some part of my own hatred of myself, I guess), and I found that quite hard. Well, shocking and unbearable actually. She also though, and this is what disturbed me most, seems to still be in denial about the rape. I won't go into all the details, because it is too upsetting to me, and may be very triggering for others, but I wanted to ask if any of you have found your younger selves to be in denial or to be lying, even. I feel like I have found such a confused part of me, perhaps, and therefore, a source of my own inner confusion. And she is treating me like a worthless old boot (old woman - derogatory - in case that is a very UK way of saying things!) - she still seems to see things absolutely from the perspective of a 20-year old who has had no further life experience. When we split like this, do the parts get totally frozen in time and become completely unable to witness any subsequent part of our lives?

 

[maryel42]

Mine don't, but everyone experiences it differently. Who's is to say that yours should not?

Go with your instincts. Keep talking to her. As long as she is willing to talk, it makes everyday life easier.

 

[Echo]

@maryel42 - do you mean that yours don't lie or get frozen in time? Sorry, I asked two questions, I suppose, so a bit confusing of me. My therapist just wanted me to talk with her briefly at this stage. Just to hear what her reason for insisting on attention now is. I am meant to be asking all of my parts to co-operate with me in my urgent need to complete a piece of work for a client and thus ensure 'we' have a roof over 'our' heads. I need to work like stink for the foreseeable future, and I need to express to them that I am doing this for 'all of us'. That I am trying to care for 'us all'. My therapist doesn't think I am safe enough in a variety of ways to open up yet to all the deep trauma. Anyway, it is not going to be easy just to do this, if she is not able, or willing, to be truthful.

 

[maryel42]

Ah. I missed that it was a two part question.

I meant being frozen in time. In the "don't know anything that happened after they got stuck" sense. My parts know everything up to the current moment; though they remain the age they were when frozen.

As far as lying... yes, they lie. If it suits their purposes. As I became more aware of them, got to know them and integrate fairly well, I got better at telling when they are lying. A lot of It seems to be self protective.

Trust became a key. Think of it, if you are walking down a street and see a kitten up a tree on a limb that's about to crack and kill her, you want to reach out and pick her down. She doesn't trust you at first and will claw your hand from selfdefense. It takes time to ease those defenses, and sometimes you still get scratched.

Try making a deal? She doesn't have to trust you, she just has to call a temporary truce. You keep your end of the bargain, she is likely to keep hers. Many truces will produce trust.

Of course it never happens when you have the luxury of time to make this happen. Its a battlefield truce to collect wounded in the middle of a very long war and everybody is boneweary and just wants to go home. But they don't believe that home is real anymore because it has been so long.

 

[HelenB]

I am sorry to heat that from that part of yourself it is so hard for you to be able to validate the reality of what has happened and that there is so much anger towards yourself. When I think of it for myself, I do not think it is that part of me lying, when I feel so self destructive and cannot accept the reality of what has happened, but have come to learn in myself, that that part in itself is actually just totally terrified, and that total denial and self hatred and anger, in so many ways actually feels safer to her, than really accepting the reality of what has happened. That in many ways is the part I have been finding so hard to deal with myself the last few days, as the more I have connected to the screaming little girl inside me and allowed that to have a voice, the more this massively self destruct and angry side has come up, I suppose to try and protect that little girl inside me, but in reality damaging and hurting me so much more in the process, and really wanting so much to just end it all, as it just feels so hard to contain and deal with any more.

I do not know if that makes much sense to you, but know you are doing so well to be facing and communicationg with those parts of yourself, even when the things which are coming up are so hard, and I really hope that whatever reason that part is acting and feeling as she does, that you really can feed that safety into her, and she can realise there is another way, and begin to feel safe enough with you to be able to deal with and face the real reality of what happened.

God Bless
Helen

 

[Echo]

@HelenB - I think you are absolutely right with what you say. It is so hurtful and difficult to deal with the part we are trying to help and heal screaming at us. I've just tried again to speak to her and all she does is keep screaming at me is that I am not listening to her. She just repeats it and won't tell me what she is saying that I am not hearing. Exasperation. But it does feel like being beaten up from the inside, doesn't it? And very unreliable and unstable. It twists the brain. Actually, I realise that I have been dissociated all day, even when driving (not good).

She did though tell me to think about my feet and legs and the feeling on my arm (as if someone is holding on there). I think she is indicating that the energy of my rapist is around me and that I am dissociating away from it. You felt too yesterday, I think, that your abuser was coming to get you. It does seem that our parts are reacting in similar ways.

I wonder how we move our younger parts to get away from this and into a healthier place. The self-destructive aspect that you were experiencing last night (and I hope has quietened down now) and I experienced not quite so directly the other day (though it was bad enough) seems very dangerous. Almost like a darkened pathway we have to follow before the transformation can happen. I am so confused about all this, since my therapist wants me to get safer before dealing with it, and yet here it all is in technicolour. I do think though that I am not getting it as directly as you as yet. And I do worry about the emotions coming stronger and stronger. It is almost too much to bear. How does your therapist suggest you deal with it? Is it just a question of talking and talking and reassuring and reassuring until they calm down and see that that is all in the past, I wonder?

I was thinking today actually, that if we were abused so young and became numb so young as a consequence, whether we are not used particularly to vivid emotions in the course of normal life. Maybe our experience so far has been an understated one, but I dismissed this, as I feel I always react much more stronger to things than other people. Though when I think about it, the stronger reactions are to abandonment, hurt, betrayal, etc. - all the traumatic elements. And then these heightened ones from trauma are probably amongst the most vivid it is possible to feel. Talk about being thrown in the deep end. Excuse my rambling. It is hard to know what is normal and what is reality anymore, isn't it?

Did this all get precipitated for you with EMDR, do you think? I was wondering if you have not been given enough in the way of grounding and self-soothing techniques prior to doing it, or do you feel it all goes out of the window when the emotions come and they are not sufficient? Though I do see that EMDR is hard to handle and process from listening to people's accounts on here. Please don't answer if that is intrusive as a line of questioning.

Helen, I hope today has been a more peaceful day for you, and I don't want to wear you out with my endless questions and ramblings. Be safe and I hope you get more rest tonight. Hugs, Echo

 

[HelenB]

I do not feel you are being intrusive. I know that when I do not feel safe with writing, that I can say that, and am happy to share my experiences, and feel that I can connect so much with what you are saying too.

For myself a lot of this was going on a long time before I began the EMDR. As a teenager I was in a very hard place, and had learnt so much to shut everything out, and once my mum had died, and there was no way I could shut it all out any more, that teenage part of me fought so hard against feeling anything. I know that was where so much of the eating disorder and massivly self destructive behaviours were coming from, and during my ministry at Ellel, when I finally began to allow those hurting parts to have a voice so much more, I know that this part, really was stopping me being able to access it, and even allow the child part to come up. Every time I began to feel and connect more with so much pain, the massive self desrtuct really would come in, and I just could not get in any way to a place where I could cope with it.

Within my ministry a massive breakthrough with me, was when I really realised that that teenage part was just so terrified. I was trying so hard to protect that little girl, but in the process was destroying her more, and know I could never hold her in that part any more. The breakthrough only came as they began to minister more into me, and I finally was able in that part to believe that there actually was another way, and that Jesus really was safe, and that He could come and hold those other parts and that I could not any more, but that I had to let Him. In that teenage part, I know I still find it very hard, but am in a very different place,and know I can no longer say it is not real, which is what I had so much done before, but the more I have let myself go deeper, and more I have connected more with those other broken and hurting parts, the more this anger and destruction has come up in other parts too, and I know that these are much deeper younger parts of me, which are also just so terrified, and also cannot accept it as reality, and I think my exerience with that teenage part, has helped me a lot more to be able to recognise them and that actually they are just so so terrified, and finding it so hard when everything is coming up. The contact I know I have had with my abuser, and amount I want in those parts for everything to just be OK, I know is what is fueling this massive massive self destruct, as in that little girl place, it just feels as if my entire world and existance would have fallen apart to really be able to accept anything different, and still I feel so so scared of all the emotions, and so scared to feel any anger towards anyone else other than myself. Rationally I know this is not the case. I know I do not deserve the anger, but just feel so so scared, and as I said I know it is the fear from those child places. I feel my abuser is coming, and feel so so terrified of him, and when I feel it so much I feel it so much in my body too, and as with you one of those places I feel it is in my arns as if I am being held and pinned down, yet in that place where it just feels too much, I know I just cannot deal with it at all, and end again in that self destruct place so much, and so shut down to everything, and just wanting to end it all, as it feels so hard to even accept it as reality, and though I know I cannot any more say it is not real, that place just wants to scream that so much, and inside myself I just feel so much massive turmoil, that I just do not feel like I can cope with it any more, and just want so much to kill myself again when I feel like that.

That is a very very scary place to be, and I am really trying so hard to continually feed that safety into those places. There is another way, and I know with the anger in my teenage part, when I fianally began to realise that there really was another way, and there was another way I could be safe, but really safe, that is when I was able to have that breakthrough, and was able to come to a place, of no longer hating myself so much for feeling it, and allowing it to come more and more to the surface.

This child part, which still feels so scared, I know it is so much harder to build trust with. She has been so abused and broken and is so scared to let it matter and to feel or connect at all. That place is very hard, as I also end up so disassiciated, and in such a hard place when I am trying so hard to function and be OK, and driving for me is also very hard, and I know not very safe at all when I am feeling as I do.

With my therapist, she really does encourage me to use ways to build up that safety. I use music a lot, and have also written a few songs and at times that does help me, but as my safe place, she also always brings me back to the picture I had the day I had the massive breakthrough when I was at Ellel, with my teenage part, where I know Jesus is safe and really is coming in, and though she is not a Christian and was not with me then, I know it has helped to be able to share that with her, and that finding and connecting with that safe place, has been such an important part of my therapy, as I know in those places, where I do just feel so so terrified, I could never have faced it if there was no-where safe I could now find to run to, and though so many of those places do still feel so scared and not able to run to any other safety now, I know that the massive darkness and shut down place where I just want to destroy and kill myself is not really safe and is not an escape, and really am trying in the parts where I have found saety, to reach out and feed more into those other places that it is now safe, and know that the massive amount of things I have now, and my children, who need so much from me and are also such a massive blessing, really help me connect more with the fact that there really can be a hope, and that there really is another way out and that I do have to somehow learn to trust and walk through this.

I don't know if you wanted me to go on quite so much about where I have been at and if I have even been able to very clearly say it, but I just feel at the moment that that self destruct part, is just a little girl, who is hurting so much, and knows no other way to keep safe, and I know that like my teenage part, if I can really reassure her, and finally be able to demonstrate the safety to her too, she will finally be able to feel that there is another way, and am really hoping that that will be able to happen for that bit too.

Thank you also for your asking how today has been for me. It has still been very miixed, but I do feel that that part where I feel so angry with myself, is a bit more contained for now, and though the pain of everything else hurts so much when that massive anger is not there to shut it all down, I am trying really hard to allow myelf to comfort myself when I need it in those parts, and do know that that little girl who is so terrified and hurting so much still does just need that so much.

I hope you also are able to find some peace within all of the different parts of you and that you are able to find enough safety and hope you sleep well tonight.

God Bless
Helen