Strange Star

[Hope4Now]

You can actually hear your parts tallking to / arguing with each other?! Wow. I've never had that experience. I don't think -- maybe I just wasn't paying attention?

Yep. It's like the Tower of Babel but suddenly I can make out the voices. Makes me feel like a complete FREAK:alien:.

Maybe there's inter-part dialog going-on in these situations that I just haven't recognized as such.

Maybe? I don't know. Maybe being aware of the "two minds" is the pre-cursor to verbal. Or maybe you are just a little saner than I am :).

you can't make decisions for her.

Unfortunately, I have to. Even before the dementia stuff, SWMBS needed a lot of help. (e.g., putting a little band-aid on a gaping wound that needed stitches).

In short, I become responsible for her problems and misery, not her. Good trick, eh? :)

Yes, I get this. I am always to blame (or someone is) for her unhappiness. It is a nasty narcissistic trick. I am glad you are refusing to fall into it. That is so healthy. You cannot be responsible for her happiness.

 

[Hope4Now]

A "logical" If - Then statement from parts (in my own words...not theirs):
Statement A.
If feeling good = being bad, and
being bad = deserving punishment, then
feeling good = danger and shame. Therefore,
Do Not Feel Good. Ever. Or Do So Very Secretly and Carefully.
:wideeyed:

Recurring realization of the sick trauma bind:
A abuses B.
B doesn't understand it is abuse. Thinks it is normal and what is expected and required to earn love. But also scared and hurt and wanting to call out to C for protection.
But D, B's protector, will not allow this to happen because D knows C will just make everything worse because then C will abuse A and B, and then A will abuse B more out of revenge, and also will abuse C.
Then B will feel badly because B caused it all.

Or...alternative 2
C abuses B.
B doesn't understand it is abuse. Thinks it is normal and what is expected and required to earn love. But also scared and hurt and wanting to call out to A for protection.
But D, B's protector, will not allow this to happen because D knows A will just make everything worse because then A will abuse C and B, and then C will abuse B more out of revenge, and also will abuse A.

Then B will feel badly because B caused it all. (Both scenarios end with the same situation).

So D makes B forget what happened.
D remembers it all even though D doesn't understand it either until much later.
Then D disappears, leaving B with no memory of what has made B the way B is.

Now B and D are talking.

Yikes.

Question: If a protector part holds a traumatic memory for the exiled child part that experienced it, does that make the protector part an exile too? Or do they have to connect to each other and share it in order to move on?

 

[Hope4Now]

I feel like I'm going to throw up. I can't make myself get out of the car to go to my interview for the program for ptsd.

 

[sun seeker]

I'm listening.

Are you by yourself?

 

[Hope4Now]

Thanks, @sun seeker !

I did it. I dragged myself out into the rain, walked the long walk to the center, had the interview. Was honest and as specific as I could be. 1.5 hours. The woman was about 12 years old (kidding). Very nice.

Pending my insurance coverage (which I will find out about on Monday), they have accepted me into the 2 week residential program starting on June 16th.

I don't know how helpful it will be...but I am willing to give it a go. I can leave if it is awful. It is a voluntary thing, and not a locked unit.

Supposedly, in the two weeks I will learn and practice skills for mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotional regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. DBT therapy. And other groups too. A LOT of groups.

The goal is to give me the skills I need so I can process my trauma in therapy without getting so destabilized. So, the program is therapeutic in a skill-building sense. Not in a trauma processing sense. I've been sort of doing both in therapy, so it will be a bit odd.

 

[Hope4Now]

I've known Dar for a long, long time as a performer. My closest friend opened for her before she got so famous. But somehow I missed this one. I love this song. So, so, so familiar. If you listen, listen through all the way until the end.

 

[Hope4Now]

I think I do not like this new site. Feel like it is really hard to see what's happening except in my own little bubble of current communications. I need to figure out how to manage this.

I have made a fairly good discovery. Some of my parts will talk pretty openly if I can cook up a trustworthy and kind person in my imagination for them to talk to. Totally weird. It was my therapist the other day. Today, a made up person. It seems to allow the exiles to talk without riling up the protectors too much. I am learning a lot. More than I'd like to. But obviously I must be ready because I'm doing okay.

I am such an alien.

I am sort of afraid that I am "encouraging" these parts. Sort of afraid they will start talking externally as well as internally. That has only happened a couple of times with my therapist. Freaks me out.

I hope this does not come back in some awful backlash at me. I'm not sure I could actually tell a 3D person I am doing this. So I'm not sure it is a good thing to do. It's like I'm inviting the flooding. A whole new take on the idea of self-talk. But I'm still there witnessing mostly. I remember a lot of the inner conversations. It's a bit like watching a film. Sigh. I know that's derealization/depersonalization, technically. But it feels different from that too. Because I've been there too. Regularly.

I would love to see what my brain looks like on an fMRI.

 

[Hope4Now]

So today I open up my email and there's one from my boss.

I like my boss a lot. We have worked together for almost 15 years. But.

I knew he gave my job to my colleague. Somebody had to fill in. I get that. I ran the friggin' program after all. Today I find out that they are packing up all my stuff into boxes and putting my desk into storage to make room for new people they will be hiring. The board meeting, at which the strategic plan I wrote was presented this past weekend, obviously went well. I picked a sucky time to finally crash and need to take disability. All the f-ing work I have done over the past 5 years.

His email said, "I hope this isn't to harsh, but..." Yes. It is harsh. Parts of me are actually pretty angry.

I have felt as if I were expendable for a long while even though my boss claims I'm not. Clearly, I am.

I was accepted to present at an international conference in October. I think that maybe I will say no.

Maybe this is all for the best. I just don't know. Grr.

 

[Hope4Now]

Really, really struggling right now.

There are FEELINGS happening.
I don't like this.
Feeling things is very DANGEROUS.

Movies are dangerous. Movies make me feel things I don't want to feel. But I have to feel if I want to become a whole person.

Becoming hurts.

A lot.

 

[Hope4Now]

So...I can destroy myself. OR I can choose to tolerate feelings. And hope that maybe someday this will not be so hard.
That it will make me a whole person.

The last time I remember being a whole person was when I was a baby. It is a very distinct memory. And there is a photograph of it which may be why I remember it. I was experiencing the world from inside my body.

Before I found that actual photograph that I only remembered, I had guessed I was about 18 months old.

I found the photo a few months ago. I am a mother. I was not 18 months old. I was around 6 months old.

Can someone actually remember that? Or am I imagining things?

I DO remember though. I was bonded with my dog. I was trying to move like she did. You can actually see it in the photo. Something terrible happened right after. I don't know what, but it was not good. At least in 6 mo. old terms it was not good. But that moment. I remember that moment. I think that was the last time I was fully in my body.

Scary thought.

So. I'm not a dog. (Whoops, got that one very wrong as a baby).

And I'm not a boy. (Whoops, got that one wrong too. Learned that maybe around age 3-4 but was unwilling to accept). Thank you Stevie who proved it to me, and Dad who showed me how dogs do it, and Mom who made me feel I was just so wrong as a person.

And I am not who I have thought I was for the past 25 years.

What the F am I?

I have no clue. I think I need to create myself from the shards.

It is scary and it really SUCKS. But I can't go back. There is no going back.

Shit. I need someone to help me piece all these parts together before they get sucked into the black hole. I am a black hole. I wrote a poem about that. I am too scared to submit it even though lots of people who've heard it say they like it.

I think there are more people out there like me than I realize. I read a poem at an open mike recently about being "simultaneous." Several people came up to me afterward and said, "YES! I'm simultaneous too." That was nice.

So...do I go and do DBT at a residential program and try to manage all this? Or do I just let myself be completely insane and try to create something that looks like art? Is there some semblance of in-between?

OK. Time to try to sleep. Good luck. Off the seroquel. And the residential program intake lady said no alcohol between now and when I get in. Uh Oh. Need some new form of self-medication. Meditation simply does not cut it. Food--no. Must lose weight. Running--no. Can't do it. Self-harm? No...bad bad bad.

Maybe I'll go back to sucking my thumb. HA. UGH. Shit.

Good night to me.

 

[Hope4Now]

Whew. Tough night last night. I did sleep though. From 1:30-6 AM. Solid. That was nice. Had a disturbing dream, but that's okay. I'm getting used to that. I think the fact that I am more often remembering dreams now is a sign that I am healing in body and mind. This encourages me. It sort of cracks me up that my dreams are so blatantly obvious symbolically. Actually, sometimes they're not even symbolic/metaphoric. Last night was quite literal. I can't remember whether it was Mr. Famous Psychiatrist or my therapist who told me that dreams are parts talking to me. Another way to communicate.

It has finally stopped raining. Yay. I will plant the rest of my garden today and tomorrow. Hopefully my family will take care of it while I am away, and the dog will not eat it. (Yes, she likes to eat vegetables right from the plants...not tomatoes though. She has a predilection for pole beans, but they won't come in until August). I planted flower seeds in the rain yesterday. Nasturtiums (which are edible AND pretty) and morning glories (which will probably not work because I am too late) and a black-eyed susan viney type thing and some purple petunias.

I also bought a bag of compost. There is some kind of analogy here waiting to happen. We have a city curbside composting program. We've been doing it for around a year now. Now, the composting company is selling the compost. $9 per cubic foot. Expensive. I am buying back my own garbage, transformed into something healthy that will help things grow. I think I will write an essay about this. :) It can complete my garden trilogy. Maybe someone, somewhere, sometime will actually publish it. IF I can make myself submit it. Sigh. I just shared this idea with my writing group. We'll see what they have to say. I rely on others' feedback because I am, after all, the Queen of Tortured Analogies. QTA. Ha. Oh dear, I feel the sillies coming on again.

 

[Hope4Now]

So yesterday, the intake therapist type person (I don't actually know what letters come after her name) asks me: "So, what brings you to being interested in this program?" I stared at her blankly. How do you answer a question like that? I mean really?

So, I said, "Well, I need more than what I'm getting right now. That's why I landed in the hospital."

"Can you tell me about what led up to that?"

I try. Start and stop several times. Then I give up. "I have no clue how to answer your question," I respond.

So she is kind and rephrases for me, the clueless one. "Why don't you tell me a little bit about the things that are going on in your life," or something along those lines, she asks. And I'm thinking, which life? What things? About 5,000 thoughts skitter across my mind seemingly all at the same time. The garden. The psycho dog who needs her shots. Son's graduation. Mother's nuttiness. Etc. But I suppose I do know what she is asking. Sometimes I wish people would just be blunt and clear. Say, "Hope. You had a psychiatric hospitalization recently. Something must be very, very wrong in your life. What's feeling wrong?" Maybe then I could answer. Maybe not.

So, I know this is the answer she's seeking. How to say it in as few words as possible. Hmmm. I said something like this: "Um. Well. I have a lot going on. I don't quite know how to describe it. I'll make a list and we'll see how that goes. Here's the list. No order: gender issues, flashbacks, PTSD, stress, anxiety, recovered memories, crazy mother, pain pain pain is what started it all, had to leave my job, thrown family into financial crisis, exhausted all the time, can't do most of what I used to be able to do physically or otherwise even, freaked that I used to help other people set goals and make plans and execute them, but I can't do it for myself anymore so I feel distressed. Shall I go on?"

She looks at me. I can't tell what she is thinking. She writes something else down. She says, "No, that's fine for now. Let's talk about..."

Okay. I need to go write stuff elsewhere now. Me and my parts. My parts and I. I begin to understand why people sometimes refer to themselves as "we" instead of "I." I need a ziploc bag or something to carry all these shards around in until I can gorilla glue them together again.

I think it may be time to write my story. It's still emerging, but if I wait until it's over, I'll be dead. So I'll start in the middle. Maybe someone will be interested in it. I wish I could do it here, but dang, then I wouldn't own the words. I'd own the ideas, but not the strings of words. And one needs to own one's own string of words if it is their story, their truth. So I will either start a blog and out myself and my story, or I'll go the traditional route and begin a manuscript or several. I think it will take several, and in several media. Am creating visual poetry now. I like it. A lot. It appeals to my need for multimedia and multilinguistic expression.