I am playing with the idea that it really is a spectrum. That DID is out at one end and that most people have some degree of "splitting." And for myself and my H the thing that seems most helpful (since avoiding the splits is not realistically possible, and possibly not desirable either) is to just... switch gears right along with them and try to deal with whatever is up. It is better than walking away, although in our case I have had to walk away because the splinter was verbally abusive. Interestingly, once I stopped being just reactive to the splinter and consistently walked away or (a couple of times) managed to stay just "present" myself with that angry splinter and do nonviolent communication with him, then it... calmed down. This was incredibly hard for me. But I did it. He gets out of sync, loses information, used to get out of time. I don't. But I still ... shift affective states
I have also noticed that I have "scripts" that I fall into, and when I listen to them, and deal with the underlying emotions - in the sense of having a kind of internal dialogue and attending to the feelings - they ... dissipate? shift? Not sure of the right word. Anyway, something changes.
@Valentino posted this on another thread and it seems appropriate here:
"To experience the Self,
there’s no shortcut around our inner barbarians – those unwelcome parts of ourselves, such as hatred, rage, suicidal despair, fear, addictive need (for drugs, food, sex), racism and other prejudice, greed, as well as the somewhat less heinous feelings of ennui, guilt, depression, anxiety, self-righteousness, and self-loathing. The lesson I’ve repeatedly learned over the years of practice is that
we must learn to listen to and ultimately embrace these unwelcome parts. If we can do that, rather than trying to exile them, they transform. And, though it seems counterintuitive, there’s great relief for therapists in the process of helping clients befriend rather than berate their inner tormentors. I’ve discovered, after painful trial and much error at my clients’ expense, that treating their symptoms and difficulties like varieties of emotional garbage to be eliminated from their systems simply doesn’t work well. Often, the more I’ve joined clients in trying to get rid of their destructive rage and suicidal impulses, the more powerful and resistant these feelings have grown – though they’ve sometimes gone underground to surface at another time, in another way.
In contrast, these same destructive or shameful parts responded far more positively and became less troublesome, when I began treating them as if they had a life of their own, as if they were in effect, real personalities in themselves, with a point of view and a reason for acting as they did. Only when I could approach them in a spirit of humility and a
friendly desire to understand them could I begin to understand why they were causing my clients so much trouble. I discovered that if I can help people approach their own worst, most hated feelings and desires with open minds and hearts, these retrograde emotions will be found not only to make sense and have a legitimate purpose in the person’s psychological economy, but also, quite spontaneously, to become more benign.
I’ve seen this happen over and over again. As I help clients begin
inner dialogues with the parts of themselves holding horrible, antisocial feelings and get to know why these internal selves express such fury or self-defeating violence, these
parts calm down, grow softer, and even show that they also contain something of value. I’ve found, during this work, that there are no purely “bad” aspects of any person. Even the worst impulses and feelings – the urge to drink, the compulsion to cut oneself, the paranoid suspicions, the murderous fantasies – spring from parts of a person that themselves have a story to tell and the capacity to become something positive and helpful to the client’s life.
The point of therapy isn’t to get rid of anything, but to help it transform.
----"
from "The Larger Self" By Richard Schwartz, Ph.D.
http://www.selfleadership.org/the-larger-self.html
