Strange Star

[Hope4Now]

I met with my therapist today for the first time since January 26th. It feels like it has been forever and for some reason I was really scared about going. So much has happened internally with me over the past few weeks. A couple of days ago, I wrote a longish narrative about all the epiphanies and things that have happened because I knew I would never be able to remember or articulate any of it. I gave it to him and he read it out loud in our session today. That was also very hard and very scary...but turned out okay in the end. I'm glad I gave it to him.

When he read the part about me discovering my SELF energy for the first time...the embodied SELF energy, he said something really nice but that I don't quite know how to interpret. Something like, "I knew this would happen for you at some point." I don't know if this means that he has known for longer than I have that I am not in SELF. And what that even means if it's true. I did tell him I'd read Van Der Hart's stuff on structural dissociation as well as his book called The Haunted Self. He hasn't read it yet (he says I've read more than he has...I wanted to say, "Yeah, and look what good it's done me..."). Well, maybe it has done me good. That thread last week was extraordinarily helpful to me. It helps me believe that what is going on with me is actually real, and that if I work really hard in therapy, it will eventually get better. That I won't always have to live this way. That gives me hope.

I have been rather a mess all day. The glazed eye/no focus/shaky stuff. Couldn't get rid of it, but it's a little better now. Didn't help that I had the dentist this am and I am PHOBIC about the dentist but make myself go...cold sweats and dissociation and all. Almost had a flashback in the chair but managed to stave it off. Then all the fears about going to therapy. Had to sit in the bathroom with my eyes closed for a long while after until I felt able to drive to work. I did okay in my meetings today, but got nothing else at all done...just couldn't focus. Am leaving now.

More snow coming tomorrow. Ugh. I like snow, but this is a bit extreme, even for me.

 

[Eleanor]

Ok

PHOBIC about the dentist but make myself go...cold sweats and dissociation and all. Almost had a flashback in the chair but managed to stave it off. Then all the fears about going to therapy. Had to sit in the bathroom with my eyes closed for a long while after until I felt able to drive to work.

maybe it is just me and all, and maybe I am just a total wuss. But this sounds like a HELLISH morning to me. That you went to work at all after that seems like a major thing to me.

But like I said, Maybe I'm just a wuss.

I read this horse training book once (Mark Rashid - who is an entertaining writer and a great trainer) and there is one point where he says about his horse Buck (Buck was a really cool horse) that he realized at that point that he just thought about horses every day, but that Buck had been a horse his whole life and that might give Buck somewhat more insight into what was called for in a situation than he had. Not being a horse and all. This just popped up in response to your having read more books. Well, duh. How could you NOT know more about it than him? The value is not that he knows more per se - but that he knows different things and sees it from a different perspective. You could be the greatest climber in the world, but if you are at the bottom of a smooth sided hole, you still need someone to throw you a rope (or something) to get out.

 

[Hope4Now]

maybe I am just a total wuss

Nope. No way are you a wuss. Nobody who has PTSD is a wuss.

The value is not that he knows more per se - but that he knows different things and sees it from a different perspective. You could be the greatest climber in the world, but if you are at the bottom of a smooth sided hole, you still need someone to throw you a rope (or something) to get out.

Yes, so very true. I am just beginning to learn that I can't think my way out of all this mess. Big difference between intellectual knowing and real, deep knowing. I'm hanging onto the big rope he has tossed down to me, but don't seem to have the strength to hang onto it. I like the horse training story. I love horses. I miss being around them!

 

[Hope4Now]

Oh, whew. This may be a long post. We'll see. I think I am in a goodish place generally, in spite of a lot of stuff that's going on around me and inside me. Yesterday was a little tough in the afternoon and had some bouts of hurting myself but kept stopping it so overall not so bad. I managed a little insight into it though, which is good. Before the first time, I had been noticing this feeling in my core that I recognized. Think it was fear and sadness mixed up together. Aha. Have no clue what I was feeling that way at that moment, but some parts of me did not like it and decided it would be good to do something to push it away. Classic reason for self-harm, right. So that was interesting. I need to learn how to tolerate not only the scary thoughts and memories, but also the feelings that are starting to come up a bit more often. Have to keep reminding myself I am one person and I am here, now, and safe. That the past is over, but that I need to engage with it to get better. Ah, so much easier said than done. I hope that if I keep saying this to myself intellectually, and I keep working on movement stuff to stay in my body, to see the world from inside my body, that I will eventually believe this. The breakthrough I had last week suggests that maybe this is true.

I wasted most of my therapy appointment today in avoidance. Talked on and on about finances and worries and debt. I kept trying to stop myself but kept falling back into it. My therapist said that parts of me must need to talk about this stuff, but I was mad because I think other parts needed to talk more about some other things. Toward the end, I was able to shift onto one topic that I really need help processing. I started off quite coherently about it, and was able to answer some questions, but when I tried to go a little deeper and explain what is so difficult for me, something shut me down. Maddening. I am going to try to write about it tonight, maybe something like a letter to my therapist. Maybe this will help me at least frame the complexity of what I'm dealing with here...and given that a big chunk of it has to do with sex and gender and a big tangled mess of childhood memories, maybe writing it will distance me from it enough to articulate rather than trying to say it in person.

Oh dear. So much for long post. Must drive my husband somewhere now. Sigh.

 

[Hope4Now]

Ha! I can't believe the last time I wrote was just Monday. Feels like an eternity. I have major problems with concepts of time. Sometimes too, too fast. Often far too slow. Trauma time, I guess. Feel like I re-live my life every day now. I think I have been living in that for more than a year now since all this shit hit the fan.

There is so much going on inside me that I am feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Terrified that I will not, cannot, keep up with the life I am supposed to live. I am not living my life. Feel like someone else has been living my life. I think maybe I have written this before, but the feeling gets increasingly intense. I suppose part of all this is a mid-life crisis. But far more complicated because it is layered onto so much else. I have cut back on so much in the past year, but it is still not enough. Resigned from boards, skip most social events, stopped volunteering, stopped answering the phone, stopped public speaking engagements and teaching courses, etc. There's not much left to give up except my job and my family. I cannot imagine doing the latter though. My family is the best thing that this person living my life has managed to pull off. They are very funky and interesting and cool. They love me even though they don't know all of me or understand me, and I love them.

I'm feeling the need for a dramatic life change...but I'm doubting it too. Because I've gone through this stuff before, this starting all over again. I haven't done it for 24 years since I've been with my husband (well, maybe that one time when I left and moved to England to take a job, but I returned to him). I think there is a part of me that wants to die, and another part that says, "Well, let's not be hasty...let's see if we can make something out of all this mess." That's the part that wants to run away and live in a cabin far from people and write and paint. An artistic hermit. But other parts don't want this...other parts want to be connected to people, to family. To have more friends. But as ME, not as this other person living my life.

I was going to run away yesterday. But was frozen too. There was enough awareness of my parts that I knew the urge to run was coming from just one. A child part that ran twice, but returned home because too wimpy to go it on her own. This and the other times I've done this are probably re-enactments. I've read enough to know that.

I sat in my car all f*cking day. Got out at one point to walk the beach, and drove here and there, but mostly sat in the stupid car trying to figure out what to do. Kill myself? Run away? Go back to work? Go home and sleep? etc. Just the idea that I actually had a CHOICE was interesting. I have spent my whole life feeling trapped and force to think, feel, and act in a certain way. Suddenly, I realized it is up to me to CHOOSE. That is stunning. Literally. Took me six hours or so to come to that conclusion in the car, and 51 years to come to it in my life. Duh. Slow processor. New neural paths established. So, I CHOSE to return home. Some of my parts were disappointed, others angry, others whooping with joy...a cacophony of opinions in there. It was the right thing to do. I need to rebuild my life from where I am...not run away. Take in all the things that are good and wonderful, and change the things that aren't, and deal with the consequences. Figure out what I want for a change. Because it is about ME now, not them. And that has to be okay. If it can't be okay after all this time, then nothing at all is worth anything. I've paid my dues. Blech. Internal war starting again. Time to end this post.

 

[Eleanor]

This is huge stuff. And six hours seems, a bit paltry to me to process that epiphany, frankly. Still, it sounds like the parts all "got" it at some level.

And it is awesome that you are aware of all the myriad bits having their say...

Maybe you could make spaces for these bits as you go? I'm thinking the artistic hermit might like a little painting shed someplace, or just a weekly trip to the beach with a sketch pad.... ?

 

[Hope4Now]

OMG. It's all coming together. So sick. All of it. All of us. Maybe me most of all.

 

[Hope4Now]

So many bits and pieces are falling into place, I simply cannot believe it. I actually mean that. It all makes sense...it is all clear...it just feels like someone else's life. Other "people" parts have lived my whole life for me until this past Tuesday when I actually fully realized there really, truly is a me buried somewhere under all the parts...a me I got a few little glimpses of over the past two weeks. A me that actually can make a choice that isn't from just one part, but in the best interest of all my parts. What a concept. How could I have gotten through my whole life without realizing this? My poor silenced parts. My poor self.

Maybe I sensed it somewhere down deep but I've been so suffocated by protector parts who think they ARE me that I couldn't even believe I existed, believe I had a self that was mine. Still can't quite believe it. Still feels like those parts that have constructed my life are NOT-ME even though I know they are intellectually. And they still feel like they ARE-ME even though I'm trying to convince them otherwise. Or something like that. No wonder I have a constant headache. But at least I have the story now. At least I can start from there. So many pieces that never ever made sense for all my life now make sense. The emotions that go with are WAY too overwhelming. They're threatening to explode out too but haven't really except physically. I think my system can't handle it all yet. I told my therapist, "This is when dissociation is really helpful!"

I was SO happy last night I couldn't believe it. Like a huge disgusting gaping knot in my core came undone. I haven't felt that way since the chiropractor yanked my hip back into place 2.5 years ago. I thought that was going to be the end of the pain. Ha! I know this new release will not either (actual physical pain has flared badly actually...thanks protector parts). The euphoria and relief were mostly gone today, but I talked (dumped!) non-stop to my therapist today about things I've not been able to say before. Some new things that have come up, some actual existing memories that have clicked into a different perspective. It freaked out a lot of my parts that I said all that, but I had to or I felt like I was going to explode. I think he was trying to slow me down, but I had to get it all out. I got most of it out until the time ran out and he asked me to hold the rest until Monday. I hope I don't lose it. I need to write it down more so I will remember if other parts are up then and get in the way.

I am really sick or injured, or whatever. I AM crazy...but I understand now what made me this way, and why my brain works the way it does, and why I do the things I do and feel what I feel...and it really isn't crazy...it is just me. It's who I am. Thank you Otto van der Hart, et. al. for defining Structural Dissociation, and @Eleanor and @shimmerz for all your conversation on the thread about it (and @Pietro...I'm tagging you so you so I don't have to re-explain it all...want you to know what's happening with me :)). I told my therapist, "I am embracing my craziness." And I am. I think somethings are integrating that were disintegrated before. My head hurts all the time. Neural fireworks. He says it is healing. That I'm uncovering my self energy.

This is so jumbled. So terrifying. But so good too. For the first time I can glimpse another way. Like I got to a opening with a panoramic view on my way up (or maybe down...yes, I think down...into my body and my self, not lost up there in the ether) this uber-challenging mountain trail. It's like the prison doors have stood open most of my life and I was just too blind or scared or clueless to see it. Probably why I hate myself. Or parts do. Or whatever. Ugh. Too many mixed metaphors.

I said to my therapist today, "I think that my mother and father did terrible things to me." He said, "You THINK, or you KNOW? Or both?" I couldn't really answer that. I said sometimes one, sometimes the other. Just depends. Jeez...what a chaotic mucky mess. I think my poor lost self is going to need a lot of help to stand up more often. Wow. Wow. Wow. One epiphany after another. An avalanche of epiphanies. I'm a little scared they're going to take me down with them, these big boulders of memories and feelings. Hope I can dodge without being annihilated. I think I can. I think I can.

 

[shimmerz]

Just the idea that I actually had a CHOICE was interesting. I have spent my whole life feeling trapped and force to think, feel, and act in a certain way. Suddenly, I realized it is up to me to CHOOSE. That is stunning. Literally.

Freedom. This has been a really mixed bag for me. All of my life I have been owned somehow. Mostly by these 'parts' of myself. Now that they have been 'outed', I can literally converse with each that peeks out when I make a decision and say, 'hey, this is for the good of us all'. And when the decision is made, well, it must be made responsibly. What is the end goal? Freedom. Freedom from what, one might ask? Freedom from the scattered way of life when living with parts that don't function together.

I honour your journey @Hope4Now. Each and every piece of it.

 

[shimmerz]

Wow. Wow. Wow. One epiphany after another.

And this, my friend, is the beginning of the end of dissociation. Welcome......I know you can.

 

[Hope4Now]

And this, my friend, is the beginning of the end of dissociation.

Really??!! I'm :nailbiting::laugh::wideeyed::wtf::yuck::wtf::confused::confused::confused::eek::facepalm: etc. All at once. Thank you for your belief in me. It means a LOT to me. I'm wildly fragile and vulnerable right now.

But...I managed to put it all away and finish one of my scripts just now. And I'm letting myself leave work and go home...\maybe I can keep managing and do the other one tomorrow...and salvage the disaster that was going to be the big filming on sunday. But at least if I crash, I have enough for a half day of filming! Yay. It won't be a total wash. Expensive but we'll make some progress.

That probably makes no sense at all to anybody but me. I think the scramble is coming on again...I'm starting to feel when it happens in my head. I wonder if that is a physical cue I can tune into before the more obvious things take over....Hmmm. Will have to contemplate that on the ride home.

 

[shimmerz]

lol lol lol. And does each emoticon stand in for each part my friend? Coolest set of emotions I have EVER seen in ANY post! lol lol lol. Your cute part is shining through!