I'm beginning to return to my verbal mode after a few weeks of focusing more on non-verbal being. Trying to bring the verbal and non-verbal into better balance. It has been good. Lots of breakthrough realizations about what I need to do to heal. I am starting with trying to learn how to live inside my whole body (hence, the nonverbal). I can go in and out of my head pretty easily, and I spent most of my life outside of my body...I am working on learning how to live inside it. It takes a great deal of focus and energy, but I am able to do it with increasing frequency, and sometimes even when I am standing up with my eyes open :wideeyed:.
My therapist made some comment to me a few months (?) back when I let slip that one of my primary parts is pissed off as hell that it doesn't have a body. He said, "Remind him that you share a body." I thought that was sort of weird. And scary. And I ran away and returned to the idea like a loose tooth. Couldn't get rid of it. Now I am beginning to understand it...not just intellectually, but really--in my heart and body and whole messy self. It isn't weird or scary anymore. It just is. And even though it is devastatingly disappointing to most of my parts to be stuck in this body, all are gradually coming to some realization that it's the truth and real, and that we're all stuck together in it for this ride of this life.
So...this means I am taking the ridiculous amount of time and effort to set up a mindful routine that includes taking care of and staying aware of my physical self. Mr. Famous Psychiatrist tells me that I don't "listen to your parts enough...you have to LISTEN." I'm working on that, working on sorting out who is listening to whom at any given time. It's sort of oddly interesting...but the "voices" are starting to come through the noise more often and more frequently. They're not voices all the time. Sometimes they are body sensations (like pain). Sometimes they are images (most of the time). Sometimes they're connections that come up at surprising times. I am working on not getting lost in the mess of it all. My therapist laughed when I talked about "voices through the noise" and said it would be a good name for my book if I write one. I think he's right. I think I just might call it that.
I have not paid enough care to the non-verbal side of my existence. I think this is why I get so creatively blocked. I am exploring that. Also, I need to be my embodied self in order to actually create something in REALITY as opposed to just entertaining the CONCEPTS. For too long, I've had split up realities...inside ones that nobody sees (often even me) and outside ones. I'm starting to see that increasingly without running away in panic from all of it. The verbal side of me has had lots of attention because mostly one needs to be verbal in this life to get on in relationships and careers. And my verbal side is pretty good. I had my IQ test done one time a while back and I had a verbal IQ up in the 160s range (I forget exactly what it was). What fascinated me about that test, though, was that my non-verbal IQ was only at about 125. This is a HUGE gap to have. It explained a lot then of why I had so much struggle in my non-verbal life (but nobody noticed it except for me because the skills were already above average).
A lot of my parts are terrified of the non-verbal side of myself for a lot of really, really complicated reasons that I am just beginning to untangle. It is very exciting when some of the snarly noise quiets a little. But then parts get scared of it all again and shut me down. I'm learning to be more aware of this, and it happens a LOT. My nice little protector parts are very good at disappearing me and at keeping me in my analytical/verbal head. Because, yikes, when you go to the non-verbal side things get really messy and scary. But I am starting to gain more courage in going there. I do begin to understand why my therapist keeps trying to slow me down. I am very good at overwhelming myself.
So, the "new me" is going more slowly. It is really, really hard. My parts have finally begun to understand that I don't have to go to work, so I'm not panicked about that (I haven't worked since beginning of April...god it takes them a LONG time to learn). That my work right now is getting healthy and pursuing my creative stuff through whatever form I can manage without being self-destructive.
And the first step of getting healthy is to a) remember that I live through this body...I have one, and b) to learn to be nice to it and even like it. :wtf::wtf::wtf:. I did come to the point a few weeks back of deciding that my bones are okay. My therapist, who I am now officially dubbing "Yoda" after watching marathon Star Wars (first time) with my daughter. Anyway, Yoda said liking my bones is a good start. Next step is liking my muscles. So...am starting an exercise program. Very, very slow. Using the Wii so that if I need to collapse I will be right here at home and I can take breaks, etc. My parts hate this mostly (except for the games). They want to go kayak up the river, bike to Maine, etc. This Wii stuff is so MINOR. But I am working on it. It is all I can do now and that's okay. The reason I can do it is that I am on a new medication that is helping to bring the general and constant pain levels down to around a 2-4 for hours at a time instead of the usual 6-8. This is HUGE and I am grateful. Except I have gained back all the weight I lost last year so it's making parts very, very angry and disgusted at the same time. :yuck:.
Along with the baby steps to exercise, comes eating. As I have become more mindful of these basic things I've learned some stuff. One, I don't really notice my body until things get extreme. Like, I'm in debilitating pain, or am about to faint from hunger. I don't notice things until it becomes sort of an emergency in my system. Thankfully, I usually do notice before it becomes an actual emergency. Something kicks in. So, I'm "working with my parts" to develop some sort of system for what to eat and when. I am making a poster to put on the kitchen cabinet so that I remember and I can check it. Sounds ridiculous, but I think it just might work. We'll see. I haven't made it yet. Second, I am realizing that I have HUGE and complicated issues with both food and exercise. Mostly due to my mother (yes, more emerging memories are beginning to consolidate), but also just to the general media and being in a girl/woman body. I have parts that have eating disorders. But only on the inside so nobody knows because they get neutralized by other parts that don't. So I have some parts that overeat and some that refuse to eat because of the control/body thing, and some parts that forget to eat. I suspect that my body weight has basically been determined by other people--because I lost a crapload of weight in graduate school when I was on my own with nobody putting meals in front of me at given times, and a crapload of weight my first year of this exploding insanity because I was too exhausted and too scrambled to eat.
Anyway, enough for now. I don't want to overdue the verbal, and it is time for me to go do some exercise before my meds wear off. I'm tagging you
@shimmerz,
@sunseeker,
@Eleanor,
@Pietro, because I've been sort of invisible for a few weeks...and because I get really frustrated with this website that it does not provide alerts for diaries unless the readers of the diaries are reading and responding regularly. I still haven't figured out what the algorithm for that is, so I miss so many people's diary posts. And I haven't yet figured out how to navigate this new site design. Sigh. Anyway, I have missed connecting with people on the Forum and want to reconnect. Bye for now if anybody is out there :D:coldfeet::alien:
