Integration of parts, anyone else who got healed?

[zaniara]

Hi.

So my journey from severe, complex PTSD(I know, not a 'real' diagnosis) and severe dissociation to todays rather(ok not totally) symptom-free life has been long and tough. 3 years of trauma-therapy, with a lot of EMDR(which for sure was extremely hard but immensely rewarding) and a lot of exposure and also a lot of pastoral care(which also have been so very helpful) really changed everything so much.

During therapy my therapist managed to find out I was in "parts"(structural dissociation), with a ANP trying to run the mad show called my life back then. It was really hard accepting it, because it freaked me out, but it also explained a lot. Mostly in my life I was ANP, but badly triggered I lost it and an EP was out. I sometimes could recall those hours or days vaguely, like a dream, others were just gone. I've been so disoriented in all of it and scared and ANP really trying hard to cope with "normal life". So when anyone said I said or did something I 'knew' I did not say or do(because "I" would never do that!!) my anxiety went through the roof and I got really angry, and said they lied.. I felt they were trying to make me crazy. :rolleyes:

But after a lot of work, both with therapy, EMDR and physiotherapy I was suddenly, one night(after my baptism) actually integrated into "one self". It took me some days to understand what had happened, since after that date I can't dissociate totally, but am experiencing everything that happens. I am experiencing it, not ever in "dreamstate" or some other part of me. - It was hard learning to live with this, and is its own story.

But I just wonder if anyone else has been integrated?

I can sometimes struggle with the strangest grief, missing my parts- who I actually got somehow aware of in the end, and was trying hard to deal with in some more healthy way than denial.

Also the parts of my life where I "totally lost it", and an EP was out and ANP not, have not come back. Parts, like fragments, maybe.. Sometimes I seem to recall something that I somehow think is from my life, but it seems so odd. If anyone else got integrated, did you get those parts of your life back? Like do you remember those moments?

Whenever I think of my life it's so strange. It's like remembering someone else's life, not mine. I'm not that person who did all that crazy stuff. But of course it was me. Also if I should meet people from my past I'm very likely to not remembering them, or only vaguely, like "in a dream". A lot of people have probably been hurt by me, especially since one of the EP's/alters could form some kind of relationship to someone, being very unlike "me"(who I am at what I stand for for real), and then suddenly hit the road without ever looking back. It was as it never happened. - One person actually came up to me and was really angry, and I did remember her like from a dream, but not much from our interactions, and it was really, really hard and disturbing. Also I didn't know how to deal with it, or how to answer her questions. I only know she triggered me back then and that I then acted out and then fled. (My specialty for all my life.)

I really don't know sometimes how to deal with all of this. It's like living with a potential mine going off at some time, not knowing where it is or in what shape it might come. Or knowing how to deal with possibly many people "knowing me"- the me who I rather not be viewed as. (I vaguely remember fragments from at least a dozen "relationships" with people who probably think we were close, but who's faces and names are fuzzy at best to me.)

Ok. Long... But I really wish so much to find anyone who can relate. I feel like the oddest and so alone in this.

 

[zaniara]

. A lot of people have probably been hurt by me, especially since one of the EP's/alters could form some kind of relationship to someone, being very unlike "me"(who I am at what I stand for for real), and then suddenly hit the road without ever looking back. It was as if it never happened.

I just realized that my EP's/alters actually was much more than only "popping out" for just some hours or a day, but actually forming relationships sometimes, and then I must have drifted in and out of this, until I hit the road totally again. I was really like several different persons back then. And they were very, very different from each other. Like totally.

Oh.. Feel so unsafe not figuring more out, not remembering more. Not knowing how to deal with it. It is as if I was healed so quickly that I hadn't even processed or got to "know" the parts much before I got integrated into one self. Thus, since I didn't get to "know" or map out, somehow, the parts well I don't know much about what they were like, more than some stuff. I know they were at least four. And one of them I knew better in the end- 10 year old "miss batshit crazy".. Oddly she's the one I miss the most.

And then remembering "dreamy fragments" of stuff that could be real and me... :( Of course it was what it was, and I can't erase it. It's just not easy to know how to deal with it.

 

[whiteraven]

I haven't integrated (and have no plans to - that's a conscious decision on my/our part), but I wanted to reply and offer my support, because I can imagine how disconcerting this must be for you. And, at the same time, a moving forward of sorts of course, as you heal without the intensity of symptoms that you had.

I've known folks who have been through integration, who had a diagnosis of DID, and one thing they all had in common was that they occasionally became fragmented again. I think we, as humans, are very fluid beings, so that what the books and traditional psychology like to impose upon those of us who dissociate in a neat little package doesn't always work as it is "supposed" to.

I hope that you are at peace in your healing, and along the way, if you struggle a little with worries or concerns, I hope you will be kind to yourself and remember your human-ness. :-)

 

[spiritess]

I went through months of therapy, working toward integration. Then another traumatic event happened in my life that shattered everything I had worked so hard to heal. I have since decided that my dissociation is a blessing in disguise. Even though I tend to lose time, it is my means of escape when I can allow another to deal with a situation that I might not physically or mentally be able to handle. I'm getting too old to consider this as anything other than a gift.

 

[trying2movefwd]

I was intrigued with your post as a therapist told me last session that maybe some parts have been integrated? I wonder how I would know this for sure? I don't think this therapist has met parts like others have which I don't get cause this one seems like the best yet! Unless I am just "that healed". I feel like a part wants to suffice though which is odd? Is it something that I can "feel"...in the past I just kind of "woke up" not knowing what had happened?