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Relationships and Happiness

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Powder

MyPTSD Pro
Relationships are so important for those with severe, chronic PTSD from child abuse.

If you agree, please stay in therapy and rule out Dissociative Disorders with someone who specializes in it; that is my advice today.

Why? Mine was never caught because the questions on the SCID-D are not representative of real Dissociation.

This is so important because relationships are THE source of happiness when people love each other and take the time to work on building a solid foundation based on trust and communication and mutual support, plus having as much fun together as is humanly possible.

Even with PTSD, having a good relationship can happen. But since I found out that I have DID, I am feeling betrayed by the way PTSD is not being dealt with, at least in my experience, in ways that takes comorbidity seriously.

My last point is this, You will be the last one to know you have a Dissociative Disorder. Everyone else will know before you do, and when your T nevers suspected, but your long-term friends, co-workers, or SO tells you they see a pattern, listen. T's do NOT see you enough to know you very much at all.
 
I agree with you completely. I also think that your T only knows you in as far as you view yourself, too a certain degree. I mean, don't get me wrong, they can see some things, but not everything. They're limited to what you're saying and what they're observing one to two hours a week.

I wish more people saw it the way you do. I know that for us, I've always welcomed my family to be involved with my T for a whole picture thing. With K, he keeps it all a covert secret. I know his therapist doesn't know the whole story. He's doesn't even know it, he's too busy hiding from it himself.

He has never let me anywhere near his therapist. He would talk to my old one, we even did a little couples work with her. But his is off limits to me.

Honestly, I think it helps to have loved ones involved. It really is healthy.

I'm sorry you're struggling with your treatment. You're such a wonderful sweet soul, you really deserve to have the best treatment possible. You're doing amazing work.
 
All of my relationship problems seem to have gotten sucked into my most trauma-holding and hidden insider, M.

M does not trust people easily, which is understandable given her experiences. She feels very easily hurt and rejected from perceived slights. Any anger at all or blame or defensiveness, and she's going to have to go hide those instant woundings.

I realized recently that the reason my rel's seem so ideal is that M. is like a living Rumba, having to suck up all the pain within the rel's in my life and hide it from me. I have a hard time confronting what I feel is crossing my boundaries. I'm getting some baby steps momentum from sheer practice and then praising myself when I do it.

There has been a lot of pain and no safety in my relationships in my life. I have not felt safe with my own feelings about this, and I don't want to hurt others, so I only raise it with them. This has never worked. There is no accountability. And I can't bring it to therapy because it feels like I'm betraying people, and the supporter or T will always rush to a quick fix that doesn't empower me to decide. I don't like gossip or slander; I refuse to do it. But I have to be honest with my T this time and stop allowing an alter to take the role of human vacuum for all negative emotions. It's not working out well for me at all. If I have a good T someday, I will need to be grateful and repay the trust with open and honest truth. But I don't know if my insiders will front for like ever. :(
 
Is it possible to keep a journal? Is it possible to let your T read it? I'm not sure if this would help or not, but maybe? Or sending an email from you without the alter getting involved? I'm sorry if this seems dumb, I'm not completely sure how you're experiencing this. But I'm listening!
 
Is it possible to keep a journal? Is it possible to let your T read it? I'm not sure if this would help or not, but maybe? Or sending an email from you without the alter getting involved? I'm sorry if this seems dumb, I'm not completely sure how you're experiencing this. But I'm listening!

Alters definitely get involved. They do things and then come out and tell me much, much later when that alter feels "safe" to do so.

One of them keeps trying to break up my relationships. Also, I just found out that one has been in love with a man for about ten years and had a long time romance with him, without my knowledge.

While I believe her that he is an angel in human form, such that, she really did nothing wrong per se, except my other alter didn't know anything about it, can you imagine the shock of finding this out a decade later?

The shock seems to not wear off. I'm getting bits and pieces of the alter's story. She has all the main trauma (father & torture & rape from a small child), PTSD, and Dissociation (Derealization). When she fronts, she has to ground. She has to lock eyes with whomever she's trying to stay out for to feel the intensity of their gaze in order to know this is real. I call her M. on the forum, short for her name.

She is heartbroken, to say the least. Long story short. I believe that each alter could, in this life, potentially be found by its soulmate. In this case, the story is so intense it's hard to even believe. I've (main worker) been trying to piece the truth of her experience together with her. It's been very hard because she has been in such pain that she has dissociated most memory, which is scrambled.

I've contacted the man, and aside from one email, he won't reply. At first, I just wanted some information, but in DID, there's always mixed feelings and motives.

Just yesterday, I found out from another (3rd) alter that it was her that was breaking his heart in order to mess it up. She was jealous of me and M. for having love, and she was stuck inside, so she thought.

If it sounds crazy, that's DID. Why couldn't M. share her love affair with us? Well, for one thing, she has the thickest amnesic walls due to the torture she endured that the rest of us couldn't handle. She has the dissociation so I could function in school. I was in gifted and went on with full merit scholarship to Uni and earned two degrees, becoming adjunct professor and administrator in a small community college in my town. I wrote a book for my Master's thesis. Since then, though, whenever an alter gets creative in writing, some other drama happens. In this case, the search for this man and his meaning to an insider has been my life mission for some time. However, I tried to do this covertly so as not to upset my H.

FInally, it became overwhelming and I confessed to him how obsessed I (main worker ANP) have become. I feel ashamed of that. I am monogamous and deeply loyal and in love with only one person. So much so, in fact, I have been with my H since I was 17. However, even with him, insiders came out and broke up with him periodically during times of stress; we have taken a long time to figure out what is going on inside my head. So is M. Problem for her is that her love felt hurt and rejected (I'm thinking) and had enough. I suspect he must have known, too, that there was more going on than met the eye. But when the heart is hurt, it won't always listen to the head's musings about what is going on.

He knew M. loved him more than her own life. She is no longer what I would call "alive." She's been mourning and nothing else since it ended, causing a lot of pain and confusion in my system.

To be honest, I am not sure how to live like this. She is just now, years later after their breakup, coming to front to talk to my H and letting me hear. I cannot remember all that she thinks when she's talking, and her thoughts are scattered. But I hear and remember most of what she says, for a while. Then, it gets fuzzy.

DID that I have is very rare. I can sometimes ask one to front, and sometimes that one will. My H. can call an alter out, but sometimes they can't or won't come due to him doing it in the wrong order, with someone else in the way. Or sometimes the one with the most problem that needs solving has to front, whether I like it or not.

While I'm learning to manage having DID and a busy life, and having three alters, two of whom are deep in love with my H. (others are befriending him now in order to work with him for M's sake). M is beyond crazy about her love, who is far and away.

This is in some ways an impossible situation.

I tried to find a T for massive and majorly crazy DID like this. No luck in my area. Not giving up hope though.

According to M. "Love is bigger than the choices of one alter." This could mean the alter that chose to F***up her relationship by interfering and intercepting her Skype messages to him. Perhaps M. thinks that the actions of one alter in us, either that little gremlin, or M. herself, will NOT decide the ultimate fate of true love. However, I personally feel that true love is like a fire. It is powerful, passionate, all-consuming, volatile, destructive, illuminating, and yet, can be snuffed out. Then, for the rest of the life, there is just the embers or ghostly smoke to remind us of what once burned and is now dark diamonds of the past warmth and heat.

When M's pain is too intense, the body gets very sick. I nearly gave up last year with two months of the flu and pneumonia. I decided I was ready to die. I refused to go to the hospital. I was not afraid of death. M. is a very intense woman. So is the one who interfered.

Sometimes having DID is so confusing and emotional a journey that I just have nothing to say to anyone and feel so very and desperately alone.
 
M. has been in such pain that she has walked in front of cars while out taking walks. I am still alive. Her suicidal tendencies were worse after the others in the system decided to move far from the man. She wanted to stay by him, but also couldn't stand seeing him dating when passing by.

Impossible situation. It's going to take a lot of time to get M. to come out and do her grieving and work on strengthening herself after her terrible loss. To be clear, she now knows it was an insider who sabotaged her and drove her lover away from her. It's very hard to have a system at war like a bunch of fighting cats in a dark alley where you can't see who's winning or losing. We all lose when one loses.
 
I should have listened to my co-worker who said that I have a "scientist" side that would come out and talk like a completely different person, and that she couldn't account for but just had to go with it.

My H always said that I could go into modes and be completely different people, different voice, face expressions, attitudes. Some like him, some don't.

Why does it take so long to figure this out?

DID is a disorder that a child develops and in order to survive in the world, has to be good enough at hiding to avoid being further harmed by society. In fact, life is already so compartmentalized in Western society. By high school, kids see about 7 teachers or coaches per day in huge classrooms. This kind of thing simply flies under the radar. By adulthood, the average American changes jobs 7-12 times, moves about 5 times, and then there is changing friends as they move, etc.

DID is a disorder of isolation. In supportive environments, kids with DID after severe, repeat traumas will naturally integrate (so I read.) But an adult who is 40 like me will not always spontaneously integrate. However, with ongoing support, love and communication in a safe environment, there does seem to be a lot of walls finally coming down.

I am very grateful for that. My H. has been better than my Ts over the years. He would tell me things and then the T would repeat some of it. I finally realized that my H and I, putting our heads together, make further headway than any T has time for. He and I are best friends for over half our lives (25 years together out of 41 years alive) and have seen each other through it all. I want a good DID T. but so far, there is not one available for the long-term therapy I would need.

I'm grateful he hasn't given up on me after finding out an insider who was been most shy to come out with him over the years has been living her own life, including love life, without either of us knowing.

DID makes things complex. Fortunately, he has a very high IQ and multiple gifts and intelligences, including emotional intelligence, to be able to handle a person like me and actually help all of us inside with dignity.

I guess it's why we picked him.

My proudest achievement in life is that despite childhood trauma that would easily have made it hard to merely survive, I have found a way to keep one of my Angels with me and to love him madly. This is so important to me, personally, given my mother's proclivity for my father, a sadist.

To me, Men as either Angels or Demons, as Viktor Frankl, the famed psychiatrist who survived the Nazi camps claimed: there is no middle ground; men are either "saints or swine."

Life may be short or long, traumatic or smooth, passionate or humdrum. So what?

It's who you get to share it with that matters.
 
Update. My insider didn't have a love life after all. It has been disconfirmed. So it was an imaginary friend situation that she's seen as real to her? We're not sure.
 
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