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This Is Not Okay, I'm Not Okay

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theshadowoftheliving

Diamond Member
Things aren't okay. I'm trying to be okay but this new diagnosis is unhinging the insiders and the noise is getting loud and I'm so, so tired emotionally and physically. I feel stuck in a constant hamster wheel of having to work to afford therapy but having the work prevent me from engaging in the therapy and my brain feels like it is on fire and I just want out. I'm scared because I don't care how I get out and I don't want attention ot sympathy, I just want a way to end it all. Not distract, but end, pure and simple. How can I do that without dying? I don't think I want to die, I just want to end and I can't figure that out and I can't get the insiders to stop long enough to let me think logically and I just don't know what to do anymore and I'm scared one of them will do something stupid.
 
Hi Shadowoftheliving.

You say "I'm scared one of them will do something stupid" but what do you mean by this? I'm sorry if I have missed one of your previous posts which explains who or what 'one of them' is.

What's the biggest issue for you right now, are you able to share that with us? If the biggest issue is a new diagnosis, can you share what that us, too, if you haven't already?

Working to pay for therapy, ad infinitum, sounds extremely draining. Do you have any insurance which will pay for the majority of therapy? I'm sure you've checked that out already but I thought I'd ask.

Please talk to us more, and above all, do whatever it takes to keep yourself safe.
 
I did a posting on Structural Dissociation a couple of years back. I am not DID apparently but co-conscious with various 'parts'. I can't even describe to you what went on in my head at the time that this post was forming up and people with more understanding were providing me with information. And of course, I was researching like crazy. I mean, Structurally Dissociated is me. I know that.

The chaos in my brain I can't even put into words. It definitely f*cked with me.

But here is the good part. The part that has led me by leaps and bounds in my healing. I learned to look for clues. How to 'see' visually what part of me was 'out' at the time. One part of me I caught onto almost immediately. I would turn in my right foot. Ah ha! Okay, so why is my foot turning in right now? What is happening that is different?

And I learned that as I found a way to acknowledge that something was switching (for lack of a better word), I could acknowledge and repair the situation. And once I got the concept, it didn't take long. And the main concept (to me) is that it wasn't actually scary. That this switching was a means of communicating with myself in ways that I never had before. And it worked! Eureka! I finally wasn't just reacting to shit all the time in complete ignorance. I was actually able to acknowledge that I had a really powerful tool available to me to help improve my life.

It will be okay. It doesn't feel like it right now because every inner part of you is dealing with this in their own particular way right now. And it feels like life needs to be over because it is overwhelming. You have this hon. You don't know it yet, but you are on your way towards solid healing. It's just that the transition between no knowing and now knowing feels like shit.

Many warm thoughts to you in this moment.
 
I'm truly sorry to hear that, @theshadowoftheliving. I may not be going through what you're going through, but I'm right there with you and I'm here for you, offering my sympathy and understanding.

I know what it's like to live life and what it's like just to get through the day or week. I have D.I.D and it is not an easy life or disorder to deal with. It feels like things are getting worse every day. That's the thing with trauma and a lot of mental illnesses, though. While sometimes our disorders and symptoms can get worse, sometimes it's just appearances. We're under so much stress in our lives. Life is hard enough as it is, but adding mental illness makes life even harder.

I know the feeling of wanting it all to end but not necessarily wanting to die. To become better versions of ourselves. To not be so tired, mentally and physically. It seems as though you're working just so you can live and that's unfair. I wake up every morning and I see both darkness and beauty around me, but it gets to me. I put in so much energy just to get through the week or even day, just to get to therapy, that it's as if I'm forgetting to truly live.

Our minds can sometimes be chaos; a battlefield, if you will. One thing I learned, though, is that it will be okay. Pain. Sadness. Adversity. These things are temporary and adapt and change over time, even though it doesn't feel like it at the time. What I hope you have with you, though, is self-love and hope. I say this because hope isn't about changing a situation. Hope is a unique form of love that says "One day. it'll be okay." So you try every day to be better than you were the day before, because life is pain, but it is also beauty. It's so hard sometimes to see that, because so much of our lives are spent living with debilitating illnesses that make us just want to end it, but we didn't.

You're strong! You're reading this now, aren't you? Be gentle with yourself, you deserve the same kindness that I'm sure you give others. One of my favorite quotes:

You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! - Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator.

If you knew how much people admired you. How much you give other people hope... well, it'd be amazing. Just reading your post today made me feel less alone in that I knew and I know that we're all humans that want the same thing. To be successful, loved, cared for, strong and happy. It's sometimes hard to think logically. We have to push through the darkness to get to the light, but it's worth it.

"But what's the point of trying if I'm not getting anywhere in life?" You are. You're making progress and I myself ask this question very often. The fact that you're pursuing therapy. Working. Pushing through the diagnosis and living on proves to us how strong you really are. It makes me wish that you gave yourself credit where credit is ultimately due, because you remind me and I'm sure others that despite our diagnoses, we are all humans capable of changing.

Even if life seems to be going nowhere, it's not. Your life... you -- you're progressing, slowly but surely -- and once your destination is reached, it'll feel that much more rewarding.

I'm not sure that this response was helpful at all, but I just hope you know that I feel for you. That I see your strength but also the pain you feel and I'm with you. I hope you have a rad night or day and know that I'm rooting for you. I'm rooting for every one of you, in fact.

"Mikey, your response was terrible." It probably was, but I'm sharing my two cents and hope that it helped in some way, alleviate the intrusive pain or thoughts.
 
You say "I'm scared one of them will do something stupid" but what do you mean by this? I'm sorry if I have missed one of your previous posts which explains who or what 'one of them' is.

The insiders are the others that live inside of me. I just got diagnosed with DID; the insiders are the other parts of me, the alters. I can't always control them, which is the problem.

Working to pay for therapy, ad infinitum, sounds extremely draining. Do you have any insurance which will pay for the majority of therapy? I'm sure you've checked that out already but I thought I'd ask.

I have insurance but I have to work to pay my rent and buy food and the rest of it all. I can't quit. I can't quit. I just can't. I wish I could. I wish I could. I don't know what to do though because I can't keep going like this, either.

And I learned that as I found a way to acknowledge that something was switching (for lack of a better word), I could acknowledge and repair the situation. And once I got the concept, it didn't take long.

I can't even imagine what it would be like to "get the concept." I'm glad you did. But for me, I just don't know how to do this because when one of the insiders takes over I don't have any control; I can't even recognize it until the headache comes on later when I move back into "myself."

It feels like things are getting worse every day. That's the thing with trauma and a lot of mental illnesses, though. While sometimes our disorders and symptoms can get worse, sometimes it's just appearances. We're under so much stress in our lives. Life is hard enough as it is, but adding mental illness makes life even harder.

It feels like things are getting so, so so much worse and I don't know how to handle it.
 
I'm sorry o hear of your recent diagnosis. Is it a diagnosis you agree with? Which bit are you finding hardest to handle right now?
 
I don't know if I agree with it. I wanted therapists to acknowledge and agree with my experiences - but now that I have a therapist saying that she believes me, I can feel my brain scrambling to prove that she isn't right; that I'm just one person, not seven of us all shoved into one body ...

I don't know what to think. I think a million things and they are just all different and I don't know what to do or what to believe.
 
I don't know if I agree with it. I wanted therapists to acknowledge and agree with my expe...

Being diagnosed is so scary. And early on, things can be very chaotic. I know that feeling, that sense - for me, anyway - that everything is on fast forward and I can't keep up and nothing, NOTHING, makes sense. You just want everything to slow down, to put everything on hold until you can catch up.

I used to constantly lose time. Hours, days, weeks. It really scared me, 'cause I had no idea what was going on during that time and I felt completely out-of-control. What I later learned - through communication with my insiders - was that almost all the time someone was just taking care of things during that time. I also learned, over time, what sorts of things triggered me/them and how to negotiate with them for "body time" so I was aware of the time they spent out and I felt more in control.

Most of this I did working full-time and going to school part-time. I was a *serious* mess at the time, but I worked on good grounding techniques and good communication skills first, before I did anything else (no trauma work initially), so that we felt safe and could develop trust with each other. I found a community of DID folks to offer support, read as much as I could, and I spent a lot of my free time just taking care of us. I did end up taking short-term disability at one point, not as a direct result of the DID, but because our therapist did something very abusive to us and that, along with a very stressful job and the loss of a boyfriend eventually took too much of a toll.

There are 25 of us, give or take. Believe me, I know this is scary. But you can do this. Things probably will feel like they are getting worse. But what I have learned - not only with this, but with anxiety and depression and everything else in life - is that if we fight it, that will only make it harder to get through. It's when we take each moment - the pleasant one, the scary one, and the awful one - as it comes and just notice it and let it pass, that we take away it's power and it's ability to make us suffer.
 
It feels like things are getting so, so so much worse and I don't know how to handle it.

I'm right there with you. It's so hard to know what to do next. How to feel, where we belong. It's something I think that only time, patience, self-compassion and therapy can heal. Something to remember is that trauma likes to trick us and it is a master of trickery. When we think things are getting worse, it's usually not. It's just about acceptance and pushing through and I realize how hard that can be. I'm still working on it myself.
 
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