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Structural Dissociation?
- Post starter shimmerz
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I think that this is not so much integration as one part's reaction to the awareness of another. Schwartz wouldn't probably talk about integration as much as he would use the term Self-leadership. In what follows the quote you cited, he writes:
I asked Diane to focus on the voice that was so angry at the pessimist and ask it to stop interfering in her negotiations with it. Again, to my amazement, it agreed to "step back," and Diane immediately shifted out of the anger she had felt so strongly only seconds before. When I asked Diane how she felt toward the pessimist now, it seemed as though a different person answered. In a calm, caring voice, she said she was grateful to it for trying to protect her and felt sorry that it had to work so hard. Her face and posture had also changed, reflecting the soft compassion in her voice. From that point on, negotiations with the pessimist were easy.
The calm, caring, compassionate Diane was Diane's SELF energy. It, when it's strong, can ask parts to step aside and give space. The angry wanting it to go away or die part is a part of Diane that was afraid to let her feel the feelings and get to know the pessimistic part. Both parts could be manager parts...the pessimist part could be protecting her from the pain of an exiled child part who was told she was hopeless and would never amount to anything. All these parts need healing.
:wideeyed: Sorry...I don't want to make you spin. I am the queen of subtleties and I regularly annoy and confuse people with my overthinking.
It's there. I didn't believe I had one for a long time. Argued with my therapist about it many times, then finally agreed to stop thinking about it so much and just take it on faith that it was there, somewhere. Mostly because the concept appealed to me (treasure hunt!) I thought I'd found it a while back. I think my therapist thought so too, but as I mentioned earlier, I finally realized I was wrong...it was yet another part.
Definitely "self" issues. I get stuck identifying with a sick or pained body....like I am a "self" if I am anorexic or am in pain...that's "me". Being healthy is scary because I don't know where I am. I've been doing better taking care of myself though...but really highlights why you don't throw every anorexic in the hospital, force them to eat and assume good nutrition will just fix their brains. Nope. I've really needed extra support through the longer, very gradual process of changing my relationship to myself. Anything drastic is so jarring, I lose myself too easily.
@Eleanor I can dissociate my normal cronic lower pain but that is different. For me it is a different thing I experience with pain I get during the dissociation when I switch.
I can feel when I switch because I lightly dissociate, get a light buzzing sensation, even though I have not been thinking about anything to trigger me. Then I then I start getting intrusions of sharp pain (they were lasting up to ten minutes/ half and hour) and it occurs when I am not moving is probably the best way I can think of to describe them.
I realized when they occur I am slightly spacey, and there is more than just pain going on. Sometimes my heart will race, or I will be breathing faster, or I will get waves of strange pain sensations, or pressure on my body and sexual pain sensations. I would have to say I feel very separated from what is happening, as if I am observing, there is also a sense of "not me." My intrusions can come from out of no where, I can be totally relaxed and about to fall asleep, and all of a sudden my heart is racing, or my breathing is shallow and rapid, and then the pain will start and other wierd sensations. I am assuming the trigger is a fear of falling asleep, because I was abused several times when I was asleep that I recall, waking up being and raped and also waking up being physcially asaulted by my mother.
In therapy when I switch the pain intrusions are all up my legs and pelvis and I am not moving, I was fine when I sat down, pain free and I start talking about my past and they start. I also get a very sharp pain behind my right eye.
When I ground myself, and become aware I am safe, it all stops.
It took me a long time to recognize when I am in self, and to get to that place where I can be in self. I don't think I stay there long alot of the time, as my ANP still runs the show like a robot gone wrong, but I as I feel safer my "self" no longer feels like it needs to be hiding, or that I am wrong.
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I think what is happening with me, here with each of you speaking about pain (which I don't feel at all due to early childhood experiences), is that I am going through a bit of a 'part' crisis. I can feel the shifting, the moving of energy in myself as new memories are coming up. It is throwing me into what seems to be a type of panic every evening over different, but enmeshed issues. I thank you all so much for your support and patience with me on this.
Shimmerz, this is when it is so important to believe in your SELF even if you don't feel it or can't find it, and to also remember and believe that your memories and emotions will not harm you even though your parts are convinced they will and are fundamentally terrified of them. You are here now. You are safe. Sometimes it helps me to imagine I am a huge ancient tree whose roots go deep into the earth and who can withstand massive storms (the memories and emotions). Sometimes that doesn't work so well, and I have to imagine I am a huge boulder that stays whole and solid even as the stormy waves crash against me.
This is going to sound sort of crazy, so just ignore it if it doesn't make sense. Everybody has to find their own conceptions of what works. I'm sharing it because I have taken bits and pieces of what others on the forum and my therapist have suggested and experimented and synthesized them into something that seems to work for me. It is always changing, the what works. What I notice though, is that I used to go out of my body to imagine this kind of safety (e.g., I'd project myself somewhere else as the tree or the boulder or in some imaginary safe-ish place), but over the past month or so I have been practicing trying to imagine me...my physical self...as the tree or boulder...and all these memories and emotions and parts energies swirling in and around me, but not harming me. It has been a long process and is still going on, these attempts to be in my body. I'm not good at it and can't manage it for very long, but when I do...that's when I have a sense of SELF and feel some ability to manage all my parts from a place of gentle and compassionate openness as opposed to a place of fear and fighting and denial.
The shifting energy feelings may be signs that your brain is rewiring itself in new ways (which is essentially what processing new information is...making new neural pathways). So it may feel scary or like a crisis...but it also may just be that these new conceptions of yourself that you're gaining through reading about structural dissociation are shifting older ways of thinking.
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- #116
Thank you for the gentle reminder @Hope4Now. I feel like I am losing it today somehow. I think because I am changing 'temporary housing locations' may have something to do with it as well. My 'frightened of moving' part has kicked in big time today. I am noticing a churning of the stomach, a oh, so confused element, making me not think clearly, and so much disorientation. I will have to watch for body signals as they are way more subtle for me than most. Right now I am freezing cold (shivering) with no real reason. So very conflicted today. I am going somewhere safe today for a couple of weeks, allowing me time on my own for the first time since this thing happened, so I should be happy. My ANP keeps trying to click in saying 'when you get there you can do this, and this and this'. My EP's are not buying it. I will look at this posting in a more focused way when I get over whatever this reaction is. I thank you very much. :hug:
My therapist is forever encouraging me to "Be with your parts." I fight him on this. "What do you mean, BE with my parts? I don't know what this means," I say. I'm always in one part or another (or sometimes several at the same time) and they're all fighting with each other or trying to fix things for each other in all the wrong ways until it all gets so chaotic and muddled that I get overwhelmed and shut down, or click into some functional part and...as you so aptly put it..."do this, and this and this."
Your post sounds like you are noticing all this conflict in you and the bodily sensations that go with it and that you are really activated. Just that noticing is a way of being with your parts. If the noticing contains some compassion and caring feelings for the parts, then that's your SELF energy.
I'm so glad to hear that you are going somewhere safe today. Be gentle and patient with all of you, dear Shimmerz, and I hope the reactions quiet some soon.
Your post sounds like you are noticing all this conflict in you and the bodily sensations that go with it and that you are really activated. Just that noticing is a way of being with your parts. If the noticing contains some compassion and caring feelings for the parts, then that's your SELF energy.
I'm so glad to hear that you are going somewhere safe today. Be gentle and patient with all of you, dear Shimmerz, and I hope the reactions quiet some soon.
Some thoughts come to me in trying to catch up in this really good, but challenging conversation.
One is that to be myself, or core self, has been my unconscious goal all along, but I couldn't. My core self felt so rejected, abused, neglected and hated/cursed by my parents that she had to hide/go underground for safekeeping. I don't recall doing it on purpose, but I know I did it prior to pre-school, a young age.
I know my real me is out because people looking at me see a sad face. I don't even notice how much emotional sadness and hurt I feel, until I see the look on others who see me mirrored. In those moments I try to mask the authentic sadness I'm authentically showing.
Since I started to be me, the sad, old me, who now has more access to everything else. I started trying to integrate out of my real, sad self, and be bravely who I actually am. The thing is, people who don't have, or think they have, C-PTSD, mask anyway, as you've likely noticed, to have a "presenting" or "social self." So to be onself in public, at least inside, and then access other ANPs and EPs ideas and opinions from that self, plus continuously run a more integrated presenting self on top of that mountain of integrated system work, is exhausting.
After doing that daily for 2 hours, I felt completely drained and needed time alone afterward. Meanwhile, I developed a bit of asthma, or bronchial irritation, which made it feel a challenge to speak. I was doing so much inside, I couldn't put much into the act of speaking. I was working so hard just to be "being" I couldn't handle much "doing." I allowed this to happen, for once in my life, because I'm tired of being a wreck, so compartmentalized inside, in order to appear so high-functioning on the outside, plus I'm not sure it's fooling people in their 30s and older anymore anyway. ;)
When particularly run down and seemingly having lost access to my core self, again as Chava said, my back get strained as I let my core go in "freeze" mode and use my back to tense up. I have to activate the core even though it feels all wrong during dissociation. This has gotten worse with age, and I'm more selectively "armoured" in certain places, tense in some areas, mushy in others. Same as others said above. This does lead to pain, but I can work on it.
The main worker ANP's are very armoured. They stand perfectly straight, almost military. I notice posture. When I saw a man yesterday whose back and shoulders were a perfect perpendicular and his wife seemed distant from him and unhappy, I felt that I was seeing an armoured ANP.
My writing: I teach. I never know what my writing will look like on the board. This is just something to accept.
One is that to be myself, or core self, has been my unconscious goal all along, but I couldn't. My core self felt so rejected, abused, neglected and hated/cursed by my parents that she had to hide/go underground for safekeeping. I don't recall doing it on purpose, but I know I did it prior to pre-school, a young age.
I know my real me is out because people looking at me see a sad face. I don't even notice how much emotional sadness and hurt I feel, until I see the look on others who see me mirrored. In those moments I try to mask the authentic sadness I'm authentically showing.
Since I started to be me, the sad, old me, who now has more access to everything else. I started trying to integrate out of my real, sad self, and be bravely who I actually am. The thing is, people who don't have, or think they have, C-PTSD, mask anyway, as you've likely noticed, to have a "presenting" or "social self." So to be onself in public, at least inside, and then access other ANPs and EPs ideas and opinions from that self, plus continuously run a more integrated presenting self on top of that mountain of integrated system work, is exhausting.
After doing that daily for 2 hours, I felt completely drained and needed time alone afterward. Meanwhile, I developed a bit of asthma, or bronchial irritation, which made it feel a challenge to speak. I was doing so much inside, I couldn't put much into the act of speaking. I was working so hard just to be "being" I couldn't handle much "doing." I allowed this to happen, for once in my life, because I'm tired of being a wreck, so compartmentalized inside, in order to appear so high-functioning on the outside, plus I'm not sure it's fooling people in their 30s and older anymore anyway. ;)
When particularly run down and seemingly having lost access to my core self, again as Chava said, my back get strained as I let my core go in "freeze" mode and use my back to tense up. I have to activate the core even though it feels all wrong during dissociation. This has gotten worse with age, and I'm more selectively "armoured" in certain places, tense in some areas, mushy in others. Same as others said above. This does lead to pain, but I can work on it.
The main worker ANP's are very armoured. They stand perfectly straight, almost military. I notice posture. When I saw a man yesterday whose back and shoulders were a perfect perpendicular and his wife seemed distant from him and unhappy, I felt that I was seeing an armoured ANP.
My writing: I teach. I never know what my writing will look like on the board. This is just something to accept.
I find one difficulty with a lot of parts theory everything... it can't cut the crap for the life of it. You're thinking, enough to be comprehensible to a bunch of strangers, right? Congratz, you have a self. Aka I don't think what's seen as a problem in most of those theories is one. But then, I also had a habit of arguing with quite a few of health professionals about this, and it may be cultural wall. Having different parts to the self wasn't seen as pathological where I'm from, acting it out in certain ways and situations was.
I tend to take that approach, and the helpful therapy I've been in always focused on not getting in trouble/worse trouble than I was in because of things, not on labeling parts and assigning tasks... hello, I'm alive, my brain obviously did that well enough without pretty descriptors. Vexing.
I tend to take that approach, and the helpful therapy I've been in always focused on not getting in trouble/worse trouble than I was in because of things, not on labeling parts and assigning tasks... hello, I'm alive, my brain obviously did that well enough without pretty descriptors. Vexing.
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Can you explain that further? ... Esp as hyperfocus is an ADHD symptom. It's the flip side of the hypofocus the disorder is more widely known for, but is always present. One of the differentials used for diagnosing ADHD is that if hyperfocus is not present (either physically or mentally) it's going to be a different disorder. Or condition.
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