3 Weeks On Grey Carpet

[sun seeker]

Hmm... so, when the carpet makes you dissociate, do you go into a resentful alter because you are resenting the obvious injuries? I wonder if the alter needs a new job/can be updated that grey carpet is now safe and there is something else you need it to do. Alters won't just disappear, but they can find new jobs that benefit the system.

I think. Maybe. I don't have DID and am a little out of my depth here, just brainstorming.

 

[sun seeker]

And while I'm brainstorming, I don't suppose it would work to wear tinted glasses that make the carpet appear some other colour while you are in the building, would it? (You did say you won't be driving or going anywhere during the program, right? That would be my only concern. I'm a mother hen that way.)

 

[Sideways]

@sun seeker - it's the 12 year old abused little that comes out. Long term, the goal is to make her feel like she's safe and she can trust the rest of us to take care of her now.

Short term, the goal is to try and get her to stop flipping out at stupid things like grey friggin carpet!

Other than making me look like a flower child hippie-wannabe, I'm not sure the tinted glasses would work. They'd have to be pretty dark to alter the colour enough, because it's not a pale grey, and I think spending 3 weeks living in a blue world would flip me out a bit, possibly send me hypermanic (which is fun, but not appropriate for therapy time! I spent a week wearing giant novelty glasses in hospital once...fun, but not a lot of progress made on the therapy front!).

 

[sun seeker]

Hm... all I can think of is a marathon session prior to the treatment, with all the participants and helpers busy installing new carpet in some untriggering colour. It would look good on a movie set, but not sure how easy it would be to pull off.

 

[Sighs]

Any chance of being able to BYO floor mat or colourful quilt or something that you can keep underneath you so you're never touching the grey carpet? Not sure if that would help or if looking at is enough to trigger you. I second talking to the hospital about it to see if they can come up with any ideas. Fingers crossed you manage to find a way to access the course.

 

[shimmerz]

I used to almost drive off the road when I saw a truck with a 'Back-Rack' attached to it. It was really dangerous.

Recognizing that I did want to continue driving, I came up with a solution as Scout and Sun were speaking of. A positive reframe. I recalled the times where 'he' would leave the house in his truck. The last thing I would see was this stupid Back Rack contraption. And then I thought about it. Back Rack could be a symbol of my having driven him out of the house and my asserting myself. So, with time, it became a symbol of my own strength and power. Yes, I could choose to look at it as a symbol of my insanely pumped up states after he left.. but I won in those moments. And I had to be able to see that I had won at least something.

As far as the carpet goes, I am assuming that there would be a whole heck of a lot of worse alternatives. Cold cement, splintery boards, desert sands, cold wet mud. But no, the carpet was there to at least protect you from the elements. Thank you carpet.... :hug: And keep repeating something like that (when you don't see the carpet). Then, when you do see it, you have created yourself a script that empowers you. Jeez, the doctor will be coming TO YOU to see how you straightened your trigger up so well! :cool: That's cool.

 

[The Albatross]

Have the discussion with your T... consider the longer term goal and some difficulty and uncomfortableness is worth the effort to achieve treatment... try to frame the grey carpet as an opportunity for exposures instead of a stressor/trigger.... and consider some cheap sunglasses with a tint that will alter the color just enough to ease (possibly) some of the reactivity?

 

[scout86]

But, by all means, mention the carpet deal to the folks at the hospital, just in CASE there's a problem. At least you'll spare them the effort it would take to sort out what the problem is, on the off chance that anything goes wrong..

I've been thinking about @sun seeker 's idea of role playing. Somehow it "feels" like that wouldn't have worked for me. I'm not sure why. All I really needed to do what see that I'd assigned a value, of a sort, to something that was tangential to the situation and that the value was based on assumptions that I hadn't thought through and were inaccurate. Somehow the role playing would have turned it into more of a "thing" than it actually was. But, I didn't perceive the trees as "dangerous". They were just part of the landscape of a bad situation. But that's what the carpet is too, right? And, I kind of like the observation that the carpet protected you from the floor, which was all it could do at the time, even though it might have wanted to do more. Poor carpet! It may have been really distressed that it couldn't do more to help you out than it could! You know how painful it is to want very much to help and yet be helpless to do much?

I'm not sure that approach would work for everyone, but seeing things that way kind of works for me. You'd better remind us of this, so I know when to cross my fingers for you!

 

[Sideways]

I'm so grateful for all the ideas you guys:)

My T talked about the meaning we assign to things, and how we can choose what meaning to give things. I really like the idea of the carpet being on my side and being a helpless witness and trying to think about it that way, but I will definitely be hunting down some carpet to practice with beforehand.

Feels better knowing that something as stoopid as grey carpet doesn't have to get in the way of me getting treatment- that would have been really deflating.

 

[EveHarrington]

Maybe this is a crazy idea but you can actually thank the person before me in the association thread, lol.

Can you buy a pair of rose colored glasses? The whole world will have a pink tint. Yes you'll know the grey carpet is still there but it will look pink.

I'm all for the exposure therapy aspect BUT I fear that without some sort of go between intervention that you'll be focused on that darn carpet all week and won't get much benefit from the course itself.

 

[Sideways]

@EveHarrington - yeah, tinted glasses came up earlier in the thread. I'm not sure it would work with the colour of the carpet, but it may v well send me a bit hypermanic, which is something to be avoided in hospital:)

 

[EveHarrington]

Oh sorry my bad. I should stop responding to threads if I can't read the whole thing. I just don't have the attention span right now.