Inner Child/fragment Work?

[doglover]

Wow, guys and gals, very moving discussion.

It reminds me of the scariest thing that's happened in me over the last few months. One day I was stressed, reading a DBT workbook and trying to face things. Looking back I was also very triggered by something. Next thing I know I'm sobbing uncontrollably, feeling intense pain, very stormy and troubled. I felt like I couldn't take it. Then I fell asleep - you know just lightly dosing off - and when I awoke I was instantly back to my "nothing can get to me, life is fine" state. It was REALLY scary at the time. I started thinking I had DID - except "I" was there to witness BOTH states. But it was still really scary to go from "intense pain state" to sleep then "can't hurt me" state. I was completely terrified. Obviously somewhere in my subconscious I felt I couldn't handle the intense pain anymore that day. In reading from the Internal Family Systems model it sounds like an exile part was present, and then one of my manager parts took control.

I have a super playful and creative state, a regular daily state that is more emotionally numb, and a kind of aggressive state I guess. Not violent, just the state that responds to people in a domineering way like what was modeled growing up. I don't like when that state comes out, she has a tendency to do things like give backhanded compliments or ask questions that - if I look harder - are kind of mean :/ Thankfully she only seems to come out when I'm stressed and feeling unsafe and have a felt need to act "tough" so folks won't walk all over me. And since I've decided that I don't like how that state acts, it hasn't come up as much. I suppose I need to cultivate love and respect for my inner bully state as well. Recognize its positive purpose.

Somewhere in there is also a state that holds most of my trauma emotions. And I'm guessing my regular daily state is the one that keeps this one quiet so I can function in my life. It's difficult to think I've shut out a big part of myself so much of the time. I feel for the part of me that's charged with keeping all that pain from spilling into my life.

It's wonderful to see that others have similar experiences. I agree with those who are saying states/parts is something that everyone experiences.

 

[maddog]

I too have many states, the identity and nature of which I have taken a while and a lot of enormously uncomfortable direct discussion with my T to accept. We have built these on the theoretical basis of schema-focused therapy, and in particular schema modes, which outline a number of behavioural modes we use, many of which reflect the development of early maladaptive schemas.

I have a functional adult part, who is very almost ever present and who continues on quietly and resolutely almost always regardless of what else is happening.
I have a very distressed vulnerable child part, an angry betrayed wronged child who acts out quite aggressively and recklessly and I think also a 3rd child who calls incessantly for help and understanding, but does so very quietly.

I have a very punitive, harsh, condemning, sarcastic adult/parent, as well as a rigidly unforgiving perfectionist adult who sets brutal standards of performance and behaviour for me.

I have an angry adult self, I do think she is there, but I don't really know how to let her influence me at all.

It's somehow comforting and empowering to identify and label these parts and begin work to understand how it is that they're there, what is their role and purpose and how I can begin to try to integrate them more fully.

Maddog

 

[Abrasky]

My T says that while I do not have dissociative identity disorder, because I "always have one foot in the room when I dissociate," that there are a lot of old fragments we're trying to integrate now.

This is sought of what my therapist told me. I actually got to a certain part of my healing(about 10 years along) where I got to this sought of instant minefield of very strong emotions (as my therapist put it). I asked her if I had personalities, because I felt like I was going into all these personality state. Some were just a My therapist said " don't be alarmed but when people go through trauma they develop lots of different personalities." My eyes nearly popped out of my head, even though I had known she would have said yes."

The stong emotions which came out 10 years of the therapy were the worst. Their were rages, and extreme feelings of being another person, not me.

Although, I mostly always had one foot in the room, there were a few times I just became someone else, and I was watching myself throw myself around the room in a rage, throwing lamps and hitting my head in the wall as I reinacted the attack on me threw quite literally my dad's viewpoint.

When I identify a feeling that I am dissacoiating from in the first 10 years, then the flashback goes, but going into the 10 year of therapy, I started hitting personality states. They held many feelings hidden that need to be identified before they got less and less and my real personality started coming out. This is my experience anyway. 100 emotions and counting, I have about 30 personality states I think, I think some revolve around not being organised, of insincere love, not being nurturing, being deprivating of experiencing life. I hardly experience the first 10 of them any more, my mind goes through them in an hour, but I am still going through the last 10 of them all the time.

My psych said that the role of therapy was to get rid of the ego states one by one so the real me could stand up. SHe says the real me is gentle. I thin I got my gentle me when I was 5 when my teacher had me over night for 4 days to help my mum out.The teacher said not to do anything, just have a holiday. And my teacher she entertained me and did all the washing up and everything. I just sought of go back there to do nothing, when I need to get myself back. But when I work, I go back into my other states again.

I have a theory about this, I think a child bonds with ideas of personality rather than people. I bonded with the 'idea of gentle" and never belonged in my family. I was different from them. It caused a bonding problem, as they tried to break "gentle" out of me over the years, to the point the memory that helped formed my personality disappeared. When my memory disappeared my ego state kept jumping around like I wasn't anchored anymore.

 

[Tinyflame]

Dear Maze, I think it's hard (but ok) to admit that 'gentle' and 'easily hurt' probably go-together.
Especially when having lived through things that would hurt the toughest person!
(((((Maze, xox )))))

 

[Abrasky]

Going away to have a bit of a cry now. Gentle and easily hurt go to gether very well.

((Junebug))

 

[NutritionNerd]

I came across this paper on a website called mosaic minds - for people with full blown DID. What was interesting to me was the idea that various ego states can be in opposition to one another on some issues - having learned different things about the world. The technique of using a conference room model sounded interesting.

Someone asked how you know you've met all them - the fact is you don't because new ones can be created all the time. A new job or new career or other big changes will almost certainly result in the creation of ego states appropriate for them. It's like the part of you who is mother of your children didn't exist before they were born, she was created out of that experience.

 

[maddog]

Wow, this is really an intensely moving, impactful thread that I've had to read and reread a few times to try to absorb it for its full effect.

I know that I am still very much in the preliminary phases of acknowledging and accepting the concept, let alone the reality, of these various fragments, or parts, or whatever the least uncomfortable terminology for them happens to be. I would never, ever, have dared to want to go here even a couple of months ago and it's taken a long time for the horror and revulsion of the concept to begin to fade enough to allow some open mindedness in. This thread, and reading of your own experiences and perceptions, has hastened that process along, as has a lot of reading and a lot of very frank, often excruciatingly uncomfortable, discussion chiefly with my T, and also a little with the new psychiatrist.
I'm still learning who all the parts are, how they think and feel, and when and how they're likely to influence me. I hear and read about the key being to learn to acknowledge and to welcome them into your consciousness and to listen to them when they ask to speak. I disgustedly poo-hooed and rejected this concept for a long time as being psychobabble gone out of control, but you know, very, very occasionally I will experience this feeling as though some inner part of my mind is nudging at my consciousness, and often I'm so busy being "functional me" or battling to keep status quo in tact that I barely even acknowledge it, but just occasionally, if I let that little nudge stay with me, I'll have this experience of a new emotion or sensation of vulnerability, and then an odd feeling of having validated something or someone in my head, and there is apalpable feeling of relief and connection somewhere, even for only a second. It's horribly difficult to explain and is quite frustrating and more than a little triggering to even think about right now, but somehow, on some really instinctual level, I think I believe that this may be the key to really understand the impact of my traumas, and how they have made me the person that I am. I don't think i want to deny those parts anymore. I think I want to accept them and to figure out how to help them. I just... don't know how yet, and the fear and denial can overwhelm me at a moment's notice and plunge me back to somewhere that feels far darker and more detached than ever before.

Oh, and DL, I noted your experience the other day with becoming very upset, falling almost spontaneously asleep and then reverting to your external calm. I have had this happen too... actually, most recently just too days ago, when I left work in a state of distress that is almost impossible to put into words. One moment I felt on fire with exploding emotion... the next moment I'd fallen asleep on the train and had missed my station. And while still moderately distressed on waking, that pounding burning fire had gone out. Ego defenses are so complex aren't they.

Thank you everyone for this thread, it honestly feels like therapy just to read and think.

 

[NutritionNerd]

This stuff isn't so scary if you understand that ego states are normal creations of our mind for helping us function in daily life. It only becomes a pathology when the various memory stores are not sufficiently integrated or accessible to each other.

This is from the paper I uploaded:

It may be helpful to think of ego-states as specialized neural networks that hold specific
packages of information related to behavior, affect, sensations, and knowledge of our life experiences
(Braum, 1988). For example, a corporate executive may have one neural network for behaving in
the boardroom, another to interacting with his/her spouse, and yet another for playing with his/her
small children

This sort of situational personality makes it easier for people to avoid things like using inappropriate language when they are with children. Imagine just how vastly different the executive is when talking to his children compared to his office behaviors. Language usage - even accents can be helpful for identifying parts. I have some who have a very southern accent and others with a country accent. I suspect they are from childhood because we lived in Mississippi for a while.

Since you can't directly talk to a neural network - the language and imagery used in IFS helps contact those networks.

This book: Dead Link Removed by Jay Earley is a good starting point. <Link edited by Anthony>

Before I discovered the IFS stuff I had a spontaneous experience with it. I was upset with someone for behavior so I imagined a dialog with an inner child. However I was intending to banish them. Once I got into the imagery however the child was so afraid and sad that I wound up gathering them up and holding them, promising to do a better job of being assertive and protecting them. Which I'm still not doing very well at. So when I found the IFS, it all made sense.

 

[Abrasky]

I have wondered if maybe during a trauma, if there is a superman like reaction. It was like my brain thought of millions of things in the few minutes I was attacked.
The thought has just crossed my mind, that all my 25 ego states were witnessing my trauma when I was 19, and then couldnt' agree on the account of what actually happened. Perceptions of trauma are different between people as in a bank robbery, one victim might think that a robber letting them have a drink of water is a sign of good faith, while another person might see it as a sign of the robber emotionally bribing and harming them. Ego states might be the same. Why would all ego states come up in a trauma anyway though is something I would like to know. Isn't only one ego state supposed to come up at one time or can two come up is something else I would like to know.
Perhaps ego states requiring so much processing in the trauma zap the brain or something. mmm.
The younger ego states would be worse at judging the situation too. My kindergarten ego state was so stressed out by my trauma at 19, she sought the comfort of her kindergarten holiday and blamed my 19 year old's ego state of being career minded for the attack rather than the attacker.

 

[NutritionNerd]

Severe trauma can spontaneously generate a new ego state and make it difficult to recall the trauma.

I know that during my husband's suicide attempt there were several ego states in me present at different times - I was shocked that one of them thought I deserved to be hit. I don't recall multiple ones being present at the same time, however. I saw different ego states come out in him as well and I think that triggered corresponding ones in me. There was a very childlike voice that didn't think I wanted him.
I think sleep difficulty is probably one of the contributing factors to ptsd. The inability to sleep after severe traumas makes it hard for the new memories to be reconciled and processed.

 

[olaja]

This thread is fantastic! I can't read it all, but I am really nodding a lot to what I have read. I have 2 very distinct IC, a 2 year old and a 9 year old. There are others, but these two are particularly evident to me. I can recognize them when they are evoked, and I love the "Who is driving the bus?" metaphor. Made me laugh a little. :)

 

[faraway]

The technique of using a conference room model

We did this today for the first time.