hi I did find that Seroquel helped me sleep during a really bad period years ago. It was a relief that something would... lack of sleep to that extent was really terrible. Bit zombied but could function until things improved.
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Structural Dissociation?
- Post starter shimmerz
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hi I did find that Seroquel helped me sleep during a really bad period years ago. It was a relief that something would... lack of sleep to that extent was really terrible. Bit zombied but could function until things improved.
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- #218
Body first. Regardless of his thoughts on drugs, my T-doc did an excellent job stressing this to me. My friend that I stay with right now as well constantly pointed out what my body did as I dissociated. Originally he noticed that I would rub my eyes. It was something I did each time I dissociated. I realized later (I wasn't so good at it at that time) that I was not 'seeing' something. Peter Levine is a great resource for this body stuff. My practitioner for body work relied too much on subtle things though and never focussed in on the obvious things (like rubbing my eyes). I think I needed to start with obvious and move to subtle.
Holy shiest! And 4 times in the past few months you have felt things shift? Keep at it woman! I am so thrilled for you! Jeez I wish I had been up to talk to you last night to pop open the champagne!
Nice job...! This is huge, this conversing. I am so happy for you! Please let me know how you are today!
I am sorry you had such a chaotic time yesterday with fire dept etc. Your house seems to be in a bit of upheaval these days. Weren't we all going to come over and toboggan off of your roof a while back? I hope that stuff settles down for you.
Congratulations Hope!
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- #219
Yes, and that was the lie.
This describes my thoughts as well. I like the model of ANP=SEEKING. That is completely how it felt to me. Because my ANP retreated so quickly and for so long, I got a very good idea of the contrast between the EPs and ANP. I don't think, while my ANP was in control, that my EPs came out to play much at all. I was always described as very 'controlled'. I, of course, had no idea how people saw this.
I think my EPs came out in mass when I escaped from the house of horrors, I got to the office and I cried (no sobbed) uncontrollably for days, something my ANP never did. Crying wasn't in the program and most likely for good reason. I think the crying brought out a whole gang of EP's that already knew what to do....which was appropriate for a 0-2 year old but absolutely not for a 45 year old. I, of course, was grasping to get my beloved ANP (the one I was so used to) back again.
I recognize that my experience would be dissimilar to other's because of the rapid switch. I feel like most people switch between ANP and EP more gradually. I know why this is for me, but I don't think it serves the conversation to get into that. It just is.
I would be interested to know if others feel when ANP is on, how the EP clicks in. What do they notice? Does the EP take over when at work when ANP is perhaps strongest? How do you get back to ANP?
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- #220
Yes, and I can see this about my T-doc. He was incredibly anti-med. Clonazepam helped me a ton and he told me all sorts of horror stories about people who had to be hospitalized for months to be weaned off of them. I weighed that but recognized that I couldn't get well without it as it restricted my being able to live at all. I felt I would deal with the weaning off when I got to it. As it turned out there were no problems with me going off of them.
So, moral of the story, just because as doctor says it, doesn't mean it is right. Even good doctors can be wrong. Sorry if I freaked you out @Hope4Now. It was not my intention. Just passing on what I thought to be good information from a doctor. I would go with what your doc and JoeyLittle have to say. They have more (and better) experience.
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- #221
Hmmmm, I think there is a ton of value in this. I just wrote about Eleanors post on this but this makes a ton of sense as to why ANP's are so damned functional. I hadn't thought of exactly how the ANP got to be so functional. I am going to have to say that perfection, manipulation, people pleasing, rescuing, over thinking etc all played big parts (maladaptively) in building my ANP. To others it looked like I had it all together, to others still that I was a disaster but my ANP was reliant on many of the above characteristics.
I will have to look at Eleanor's take on this again to compare.
If I am reading this correctly Valentino, would it be that the ANP is built around the EP's then? I ask this because some parts of me were very intellectual, but that left me when my ANP did. I couldn't think my way out of a paper bag. It has come back to me in the past few months but in a lesser form, in a way that doesn't feel like my worth is built on my intellectual capabilities. A sort of 'I have what I have'. That would mean to me that what I thought were my EP's are actually my ANP?
This would fit with my 'physical first' model then correct? Looking at the body first to identify the EP and how it presents....then attempting integration.
And I wonder if with this idea, why it takes what may feel like a complete destruction of self (ANP) before we realize how wrong this apparently well functioning ANP was. Any why it normally takes us several decades for us to implode. This actually fits too. Hmmm. I will read Eleanors post again.
This would also fit with how my ANP completely retreated when I had my crying fits. My child personas completely took over. During the crying, I was out of control but the feeling was familiar to me somehow. I knew I had been there before (although at the time I had no idea that my past was so messed up). That is when the flashbacks began. Those would be considered explicit memories, correct?
Yes, this is my feeling as well. I wonder if the change that @Hope4Now feels during those times of integrative feelings is about this?
Interesting. Long story short, at the beginning of my 'journey' I had acupuncture done to relieve a frozen shoulder. The more sessions I had, the more grief (overwhelming grief) I had. Then, as I got further in, my panic attacks started. OMG they were horrifying. But it makes sense if you are speaking about EP's being body memories. My shoulder was locked tighter than a drum. As the shoulder released, it makes sense that the EPs were too. I remember saying during one of the last sessions, 'this has to do with when I was 2'. Long story, but I remember looking around afterwards and saying 'where did that come from? I had no idea at the time that horrors happened in that stage of my life. Apparently something knew or I wouldn't have said that. It wasn't until 3 years later that I would recognize how true this statement actually was.
This is all just so 'wow'. Thank you for this post.
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@Valentino said...here was a feeling of lightness, a feeling of deep understanding or an insight high.
Yes, @shimmerz, like this. Just like this. Then parts get all jumbled again and it is very hard to believe that ANY of this is real or true. This is why I keep coming back to this thread, in part. (Other than the fact that I am becoming so attached to you all and admire your intellects and complexity of thinking!)
Yes, @shimmerz, like this. Just like this. Then parts get all jumbled again and it is very hard to believe that ANY of this is real or true. This is why I keep coming back to this thread, in part. (Other than the fact that I am becoming so attached to you all and admire your intellects and complexity of thinking!)
I'm obviously NOT the best person to answer this, given what is happening to me and that I am still in full throttle self destruction mode from ANP(s) points of view. But what the hell.
First, I'll point out that I have no idea where dissociation fits into all this or how...the term still bugs me because it is so amorphous. Mr. Famous Psychiatrist told me last time that different parts have different ways of dissociating. So perhaps that's it...parts dissociate (verb); AND the relationship among parts is defined by structural dissociation (noun). Hmm. Have to think on that. Maybe I solved my own conundrum.
I do not know that an ANP is on until it isn't. It is why all this business about me being traumatized kind of came as a shock. I mean I knew a bunch of things (e.g., adopted, alcoholic and personality disordered father, bizarre and incomprehensible mother), then other stuff came out of some dark nowhere of my brain in flashbacks of varying sorts over the past 16 months. But traumatized? Not I. I'm just fine, thank you. Fine. Just can't walk. :bag:
All this body/mindfulness stuff is very gradually starting to teach me what my ANPs feel like in my body. Pretty much every time I take a moment to be mindful, I realize I have shut out everything else but whatever ANP is there, including the awareness that I have a body. Sometimes, if I'm not so far "gone" into it, I can shift the energy from my head down more into my core and that seems to reconnect me to my body and give me a little bit of clarity. What I think are my EPs are VERY embodied. All my emotional stuff seems to be exploding out physically. It is just beginning to "look" like emotion to me. I can only flirt briefly with "feeling" emotion before whole system freaks. I'm working on tolerating this for longer periods. It is very hard.
Other times, most times actually, an EP has to get really extreme to get my attention to shift out of ANP--pain, flashbacks, exhausted/overwhelmed immobility that sends me to bed, dizziness, ear-ringing, visual effects (ever had a visual migraine?! not ocular, visual. It's a trip), self-harming stuff, or intense and barely controllable body movements or changes in body temperature. Mostly when other people are around, my appropriate ANP is freaked out enough by the EPs that it wrestles control back fairly efficiently.
This system is what is breaking down in me with increasing regularity. And the hell of it (even though it's probably good in general) is that I have some kind of "observer" part that makes me mostly aware of all of it, but as if it is not happening to me. It is totally weird. I feel like a freak. I am trying very hard to just embrace this weirdness and accept that it is me. Right now, it's mostly intellectual acceptance, but that seems to be the doorway in. I have a part--some kind of superpower protector part that has served me very well through my life (ANP or EP I don't know) that will not calm down until it is convinced that it understands everything to do with what is bothering the system. It is why I've become so obssessive/compulsive about "figuring out" what is wrong with me.
I don't know quite know how to take care of all these wild parts. No balance in this system except for these wee insightful moments that are lovely but fleeting. My lovely therapist keeps patiently repeating, "It is a practice. You are doing what you need to do." I suppose, given how things seem to be unravelling, he's right. I just want it to be fixed NOW:shifty::shifty::shifty::sour::sour::sour::banghead:. ANPs want to be independent and needless of anyone or anything again. EPs want somebody to love and care for them and keep them safe. I don't have a clue how to do both, so I'm living in a perpetual crisis:wacky:.
Me too! :hug:
:wtf:Yeah, my boss emailed, "I know it's raining and icy in your house, but you didn't have to burn down your kitchen to get warm!" Ha! It was 2 degrees yesterday morning as I sat here with all the windows open waiting for the smoke to clear. Ugh. Snowed AGAIN last night. Truthfully, I would love the snow if I didn't have the physical problems I do...I used to love sledding and snow-shoeing and skiing :cry:.
It's always something, I suppose. Trying to be zen about all of this. Good news was that we found out that although my mom does have one type of cancer, the other really scary thing they thought she had turned out to be nothing. Got the labs and cat scan results back, so hopefully we're finished with all the hospital visits.
Eleanor
Diamond Member
@Hope4Now - WOW. Congratulations on the shifting! Big big stuff! I wonder if that "feeling of lightness, a feeling of deep understanding or an insight high" (I love that, by the way "insight high" a super way to say what I mean by "epiphany" which just confuses my students!) is just what making a lot of neural connections all at the same time - suddenly gaining access to all those other EP memories feels like? Or maybe just any old other set of memories.
I'm going to keep at this because I am a little worried about the idea that the ANP is or even could be organized around RAGE of FEAR... I am worried about it for two reasons, one theoretical (because these are states that are VERY expensive metabolically, and so are wired to try to get turned OFF) and one practical (They aren't very functional on a daily basis.)
SEEKING is different than the other systems, it is kind of the "regulatory emotional system." That is, since it is, in a fairly direct way, connected to getting our basic physical needs met (hunger, thirst, cold, etc) in the usual course of things it needs to be "on" all the time, or at least available. There is good reason to think that a great deal of depression (particularly chronic depression) is SEEKING getting turned all the way down, or even OFF. If an ANP is to be functional - accomplishing things other than just running away or killing shit - it MUST be based in SEEKING. But SEEKING by itself won't get you much more than meeting basic bodily needs, although one might be very clever about that.
The other thing about SEEKING is that RAGE tends to shut it down/off. You don't want to think when a tiger is attacking you. RAGE, when turned up makes us stupid. The confounding thing is that at lower levels of activation (a "cold" kind of anger) it IS compatible with SEEKING - but what would make most sense to me is that it would have a consistent OBJECT, AND while it might be kind of clever, it is much harder for it to be flexible in its approach as PLAY goes offline when RAGE is on (good evolutionary reasons for this - if you think about how cats can go from PLAY to RAGE in a second while playing, and think about the dangers of cat play for cats, you will see how/why this works this way.)
OK, but I don't think these are primarily RAGE based behavior - PANIC seems a better candidate for perfectionism, manipulation, people pleasing (as these are typically about avoiding rejection and/or getting a need met without getting rejected... CARE for rescuing there is a payoff for helping others... "overthinking" would be SEEKING without a clear objective in mind.
Remember, that ANP is about making ones way in a SOCIAL world. It must be "apparently normal" that is, it must function like an undamaged person in regular situations.
I would guess your ANP is not destroyed, just... way off line for now. Mostly because I don't see how it COULD be destroyed. An ANP is, on this view, the name of a particular pattern of neurological activation and integration. She's still THERE, and in the right circumstances she will doubtless come out again.. just like the EP's eventually did. They were never GONE, just in hiding. Same for the ANP. But the ANP was so good at maintaining executive control of the whole system that she never let the EP's out - until she couldn't any more.
Here is where terminology can really screw us up. "Memories." What the hell are those? We have experiences. When we have those experiences we are in particular emotional states - memories get stored and "filed" according to the emotional states. Memory is state dependent. So if you study for the exam when you are calm, and then you go to take the test and you are all freaked out with anxiety - (and your anxiety aka PANIC is not extremely well integrated with the ambient emotional state when you were studying) you will not be able to remember what you studied - it/you are in the wrong "drawer." You will have super recall of all the stuff you've experienced and thought while you were anxious however. This is why anger management programs are generally such a dismal failure. You learn a bunch of stuff when you are bored to death. Then you get mad, click into RAGE, and poof! you no longer have access to any of that stuff. Because you are in a different drawer and there is no cross reference system (if there was, you wouldn't be in anger management classes) The trick would be to get people really pissed off and THEN teach them what to do. Then they'd have a prayer of at least remembering it when in RAGE.
One way to look at integration is to think of building transitions/connections between states. One way to do this (my H and I have experience with this since PANIC and RAGE - in the form of resentment have been huge issues for us) is to condition yourself to activate another system (CARE mostly) when it comes up. Specifically, one adopts the practice of a bunch of times a day (ideally, like 12 or 15) you go through this mental exercise - you think about something that you resent... just enough to activate the system at a low level - like 10-15% .... then you go through a series of visualizations that get you into compassion/CARE for yourself and others and the good part of the PANIC system where you feel attached in a positive way... and then you imagine how the person you are resentful of feels underneath the doing of the intolerable thing ... and then you think of a way to respond that is in YOUR best interests. It is interesting. The switching back and forth. The idea is that you are building neural connections between these systems, and I can say that it works. Specifically it slows down the transition from trigger to full blown ON of the RAGE system and creates a lot more flexibility in the responses you can offer in the real time situations.
Maybe there are two kinds of problems one is where the WHOLE EMOTIONAL SYSTEM just gets STUCK and doesn't really integrate at all and stays uncalibrated to boot. Baby PANIC, is the one I'm thinking here. where attachment at all becomes a big problem. But more common is when a particular state of a system gets unprocessed, so stuck, but in a different way. Got to take a break, but I'll come back to this...
I'm going to keep at this because I am a little worried about the idea that the ANP is or even could be organized around RAGE of FEAR... I am worried about it for two reasons, one theoretical (because these are states that are VERY expensive metabolically, and so are wired to try to get turned OFF) and one practical (They aren't very functional on a daily basis.)
SEEKING is different than the other systems, it is kind of the "regulatory emotional system." That is, since it is, in a fairly direct way, connected to getting our basic physical needs met (hunger, thirst, cold, etc) in the usual course of things it needs to be "on" all the time, or at least available. There is good reason to think that a great deal of depression (particularly chronic depression) is SEEKING getting turned all the way down, or even OFF. If an ANP is to be functional - accomplishing things other than just running away or killing shit - it MUST be based in SEEKING. But SEEKING by itself won't get you much more than meeting basic bodily needs, although one might be very clever about that.
The other thing about SEEKING is that RAGE tends to shut it down/off. You don't want to think when a tiger is attacking you. RAGE, when turned up makes us stupid. The confounding thing is that at lower levels of activation (a "cold" kind of anger) it IS compatible with SEEKING - but what would make most sense to me is that it would have a consistent OBJECT, AND while it might be kind of clever, it is much harder for it to be flexible in its approach as PLAY goes offline when RAGE is on (good evolutionary reasons for this - if you think about how cats can go from PLAY to RAGE in a second while playing, and think about the dangers of cat play for cats, you will see how/why this works this way.)
OK, but I don't think these are primarily RAGE based behavior - PANIC seems a better candidate for perfectionism, manipulation, people pleasing (as these are typically about avoiding rejection and/or getting a need met without getting rejected... CARE for rescuing there is a payoff for helping others... "overthinking" would be SEEKING without a clear objective in mind.
Remember, that ANP is about making ones way in a SOCIAL world. It must be "apparently normal" that is, it must function like an undamaged person in regular situations.
I would guess your ANP is not destroyed, just... way off line for now. Mostly because I don't see how it COULD be destroyed. An ANP is, on this view, the name of a particular pattern of neurological activation and integration. She's still THERE, and in the right circumstances she will doubtless come out again.. just like the EP's eventually did. They were never GONE, just in hiding. Same for the ANP. But the ANP was so good at maintaining executive control of the whole system that she never let the EP's out - until she couldn't any more.
Here is where terminology can really screw us up. "Memories." What the hell are those? We have experiences. When we have those experiences we are in particular emotional states - memories get stored and "filed" according to the emotional states. Memory is state dependent. So if you study for the exam when you are calm, and then you go to take the test and you are all freaked out with anxiety - (and your anxiety aka PANIC is not extremely well integrated with the ambient emotional state when you were studying) you will not be able to remember what you studied - it/you are in the wrong "drawer." You will have super recall of all the stuff you've experienced and thought while you were anxious however. This is why anger management programs are generally such a dismal failure. You learn a bunch of stuff when you are bored to death. Then you get mad, click into RAGE, and poof! you no longer have access to any of that stuff. Because you are in a different drawer and there is no cross reference system (if there was, you wouldn't be in anger management classes) The trick would be to get people really pissed off and THEN teach them what to do. Then they'd have a prayer of at least remembering it when in RAGE.
One way to look at integration is to think of building transitions/connections between states. One way to do this (my H and I have experience with this since PANIC and RAGE - in the form of resentment have been huge issues for us) is to condition yourself to activate another system (CARE mostly) when it comes up. Specifically, one adopts the practice of a bunch of times a day (ideally, like 12 or 15) you go through this mental exercise - you think about something that you resent... just enough to activate the system at a low level - like 10-15% .... then you go through a series of visualizations that get you into compassion/CARE for yourself and others and the good part of the PANIC system where you feel attached in a positive way... and then you imagine how the person you are resentful of feels underneath the doing of the intolerable thing ... and then you think of a way to respond that is in YOUR best interests. It is interesting. The switching back and forth. The idea is that you are building neural connections between these systems, and I can say that it works. Specifically it slows down the transition from trigger to full blown ON of the RAGE system and creates a lot more flexibility in the responses you can offer in the real time situations.
Maybe there are two kinds of problems one is where the WHOLE EMOTIONAL SYSTEM just gets STUCK and doesn't really integrate at all and stays uncalibrated to boot. Baby PANIC, is the one I'm thinking here. where attachment at all becomes a big problem. But more common is when a particular state of a system gets unprocessed, so stuck, but in a different way. Got to take a break, but I'll come back to this...
Eleanor
Diamond Member
Actually they are ALL embodied - ANP as well. Thinking is BUILT on feeling/emotional response systems. It is just that when there is a very low level of activation it seems to us like it doesn't "feel" like anything. Kind of like how we hear - when it is "quiet" it is not really "quiet" it is just comparatively quiet. If you do one of those sensory deprivation tanks and block out all external noise it is STILL not "quiet" because you hear your own body. Like that.
That is a good place to start building the connections because when you are doing "intellectual" stuff you are practicing keeping the emotional systems that are ON at a low level. And that seems to be where they are most able to make connections with each other.
ANP - that's what ANP's are - the parts that serve us well. And the NEEDING to know... that is SEEKING at an intellectual level. So there are these levels - the "old brain/animal" level where we are like... well, wild animals - just doing what needs to be done to survive until tomorrow. Then there is the social mammal level where we are just like any other social mammal (dogs, horses etc) and respond to aggression, dominance, rejection etc - being part of a group enough to survive. Then on top of that is the "human" part that imagines and plans and analyzes. But the human level can't operation without the old brain and the mammalian levels, any more than your car can work without the pistons and axles. (That metaphor runs out pretty quickly tho)
Yup, ANP wants to get the basic needs met, in a non-risky fashion and get on with things, preferably learning new things. (SEEKING in action wanting to get satisfied) EP's want somebody to love and care for them and keep them safe (PANIC/attachment wanting to be satisfied) EP that wants to rescue/take care of others (CARE wanting to be satisfied), EP that wants to run away (FEAR wanting to be satisfied) EP that wants to beat the crap out of/neutralize another (RAGE wanting to be satisfied) EP that just wants to have fun, have people that are friendly (PLAY wanting to be satisfied) EP that wants someone to rescue IT (PANIC wanting to be satisfied) EP that wants sex (LUST wanting to be satisfied).
The activation pathways can go both ways, high level thinking can activate wild animal emotion, and wild animal emotion can (with some difficulty and a lot of practice) activate high level thinking.
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- #228
Okay, I see where you are at @Eleanor, but I have to ask, where is the physical part of all of this? You speak about memory on an emotional part (I think that is what you are alluding to), but there are actually memories stored in the way of cellular memory. This played a huge part for me. This seems to be all neurological you are speaking to. Am I mistaken?
And yes, I do agree with Hope. You are absolutely brilliant. All of you. I am just limping behind, cane in hand, trying not to be intimidated. :whistling: :meh:
And yes, I do agree with Hope. You are absolutely brilliant. All of you. I am just limping behind, cane in hand, trying not to be intimidated. :whistling: :meh:
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