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I just saw this post--I hope your CRPS is better by now. My daughter had mild CRPS in her foot. The initial chronic injury was due to very flexible ligaments not supporting her foot. We eventually figured out it was CRPS when the pains started moving around. What helped the initial injury...

Congratulations on being brave about exploring your hardest memories and putting your therapy experiences into words here. Being tired and feeling wiped out is a common side effect of EMDR. For me, I experience exhaustion and a bit of a fog. That usually goes away in a day or so for me...

Yes, I think this is a good thing. If you think of dissociative disorders as a type of fracture of our personality, parts talking to one another is like knitting things back together. It's a big step towards integration. Having the parts come up can be exhausting. It can also be really hard...

I had a CBT therapist before I had a trauma therapist, and we spent a number of months working through a textbook on sexuality. The fact that it was a textbook helped to make it a bit more distant and not as frightening, so it was exposure therapy. That therapist was very calming. It was...

When I have a little meltdown with Mrs. W, what's useful is, first, to acknowledge that I'm uncomfortable and to stop. That helps to break the fight or flight cycle. I find that I can then calm down and just lie still, and let the weird thoughts seep away. For me, then focusing on the...

Hi, @HealingMama . You're experiences sound a lot like mine! It took me a long time to accept the importance of my parts and the fractures in my personality, even though I was highly functional in life and didn't have amnesia/time loss.

Cinnamon graham crackers. I was very quiet so our dog would not hear me and come running down the stairs to get some.

I, too, have found that this forum has been really useful for me to feel less alone. Absolutely a weird and dizzying experience! I've gotten better at describing it, and better (in safe places) at letting the parts have some external affect.

Yes. It has taken me time to learn who is speaking, and sometimes that is still a chore. I think it has helped me to have the different parts come up and speak to my therapist, or to have two parts intentionally conversing with one another in a kind of dialogue. Each needs to find his or her...

I have had the same experience about my parts. The more we sense being a community of voices, the greater our mental health. It's when I don't hear the chatter of different parts that I know I'm slipping into greater dissociation, my stress level goes up, and I feel detached from others.

For a number of months my brain couldn't get straight the difference between the "Alerts" button and the "Change style" button and I randomly changed from dark to light and back again when I was trying to look at my Alerts. I think I'm finally trained and have settled on dark.

You know if you have the flu, life is miserable, but if you rest and have some soup, you'll feel better in a few days. But being trapped in hell in a box is a whole lot more to handle. So I would think that if the 'trapped in hell' sensation is intruding significantly, now would be a good time...

It took me years and years to recognize the degree of dissociation I had because I was outwardly functional. Yes, when the feelings come up (which has happened to me as different parts have emerged and started to talk with the others), it's pure hell for about three months. It feels that...

Hi, @AnD. I am sorry I haven't been able to get back to you--I have been busy at many things recently, and I wasn't quite sure what to say, either. I think an important thing is that we with parts need to manage our energy. We need energy to work with the parts, whether they are in a good...

Welcome to the forum. I'm sorry that you've had some hard experiences, and that you had to keep that under wraps for so long. Good luck on your journey.

Today is a good day because one of my young teen parts gets to listen to Taylor Swift's rerecording of Fearless. Having two chocolate cookies at lunch was also nice. Thanks for starting the thread, @EveHarrington

Today is a good day because I took a walk in the park with my daughter and dog.

I think the process for me was for some of the most comfortable parts to begin to talk to my therapist. With time, I learned to talk to one at a time. The roundtable idea for me came much later, and although I can cycle through my parts now, it's exhausting. I found it useful to make pages in...

I have done extensive EMDR with my parts (I have 13 of them), both in person and by video, and it has been very useful. We did a lot of EMDR lite to get the parts used to the EMDR process, because it was very frightening to begin with. Now, it is not so bad. Sometimes we work on specific...

If the traumas are mild or are not the source of PTSD, then the EMDR course of treatment may be correspondingly short. Maybe the question to ask your therapist is what would EMDR potentially offer you? I have PTSD, but in my own treatment I can see that EMDR can be a tool to promote greater...

I do that, too! Cornbread with a nice brown crust is one of my favorite comfort foods. I like to push in fresh blueberries after I've poured the batter. In the iron skillet, another thing I do with potatoes is to first parboil sliced potatoes, then cook them in the skillet as you would...

When I was learning, I was way too timid about heating up the pan, and the food would stick and not get the luscious brown crispies. Good that you were brave, and adjusted as you went!

When it's cooled a bit, but still hot, I splash a little water in it to loosen up the food. I use the spatula to scrape up the food and toss that out with the water. (Actually, if I've cooked meat, our doggie gets the rinse water with all its browned-meat flavor.) I'm aware that putting...

I cook at least half of our dinners with my cast iron skillet. I've had the same one since 1985! Because they are heavy, they take longer to heat than other pans. It can help to use high heat to get it hot, then turn down the heat. The iron doesn't conduct as well as aluminum. On some...

EMDR was overwhelming to my younger parts initially. Not doing the trauma work--we didn't even get close to that. Just experiencing the alternating taps and sounds brought up terrors of being hit relentlessly. Same experience with doing leg taps at home. Initially, that was fine, but then...