one-systems-journey

[one-systems-journey]

Sometimes I wonder if I’d be better off if I just walked away from therapy. I wonder if it just makes me worse, not better. But there’s so many reasons that doesn’t seem like the appropriate choice. Some for my future, some merely living up the expectations of having societal support.

[one-systems-journey]

7.4.24

Things are really bad at the moment. We’re feeling pretty hopeless. Therapy has not really been progressing. We kind of just want to give up on it. It just feels like a waste of money & our counsellors time she could be helping someone else who has hope of getting better.

We recently lost our dog. He was our entire world. He was our reason for living. We were so protective of him. We both knew what it was like to be unsafe in this world. Our whole life was making sure he never had to feel that way again. He gave us endless love. We felt sad with him. We never felt safe with anyone else in this world. The grief continues to eat us alive. We’re also unsure if we can adopt again. We don’t feel capable of rehabilitating a dog. We were so lucky with Wes. He was an absolute angel. We really only had to get him to a place where he could be home alone. He was the easiest dog in the world to teach skills to. We don’t think we could help a dog that wasn’t as easy as Wes was.

Without even being here to be Wes’s furever human, his protector, we feel more & more worthless everyday. In general we just keep getting more incompetent. More fragile. We bring nothing, we contribute nothing, we are nothing.

I feel like we have to stop pretending like everyone can get better. We’re proof that it isn’t possible. 15 years of therapy, after a lifetime of trauma has gotten us nowhere. We’ve tried everything.

[one-systems-journey]

21.2.24

So, that small amount of hope we tried to hold on to was kind of a pointless endeavour. We did processing last week & it didn’t go well. Left things pretty unstable. I guess we pushed too hard, too quick.

We’re going to try CPOS again. This desensitising type of EMDR that’s suppose to help us learn to stay present & go back & forth between present & triggering thing. Hopefully it’ll help calm down the system & make it feel safe to go back into things again.

We have some potentially very scary medical stuff going on, as well as other very stressful things. So we’re really hoping things settle again soon.

On the lighter side our counsellor has really been doing a bunch of little things that make us feel like she cares, is doing all she can to support us & preempts difficult things. It’s lovely & we’re really greatful.

#did #dissociative identity disorder #osdd #otherwise specified dissociative disorder #osddid #structural dissociation #did system #osdd system #emdr #complex post traumatic stress disorder #trauma therapy

[one-systems-journey]

12.2.24

I don’t post much these days. It’s all felt like much of the same. The same monotonous attempts at moving forward. The same hills we have to climb. Over & over & over.

Today feels a little bit different. This past Friday we had therapy. We talked a lot about barriers we’ve faced with EMDR. The things that have been an issue. The questions that are always swirling around in our head when we try to do processing. We wrote down answers, so hopefully when they come up again for a part who didn’t hear the answer, it’s available for them.

It’s just one day. I’m always afraid to say when there’s been one good day because we feel like there’s an expectation that there will be more. But it’s just one day. We realised with this one good day, Sunday. That we’re afraid to feel better. We don’t feel equipped to handle life. We don’t want to have hope because at least now, we don’t have anything. We don’t want to have hope because the future is not certain. What if we miss out on what we want? What if we get through this, only to die? What if we try to have hope & are just let down again because our brain seems incapable of healing.

Something that helped with all of that was first remembering that we are neurodivergent. There’s so much more we need to work on, if or when we ever get through the trauma work. Even with all the hope in the world & all the good days in the world, we’re not going to be suddenly better. We need to stop putting the expectation on ourselves. It may be on some level what we want. To wave a magic wand & be better. But it’s also not going to happen. Slowly improving means slowly adapting to a better life.

We’re also not going back to a highly masked life. We need to build up skills, instead of just pretending to not be neurodivergent. We can’t do that work now. It isn’t helpful now. Why try to equip ourselves for life when the trauma prevents us from functioning in any amount of life? We’re building the skills we can, to help us get through the day, we’re building the skills we can to unmask & stop putting that extra pressure on ourselves. But that’s the only work there that matters right now.

If things fall back & this doesn’t work & the hope was all for nothing? I’m not sure. That’s not one I can really answer other than this attempt of being patient & working really hard to trust that our new counsellor is going to stick it out with us. She also has some of the best people in trauma recovery around her, so hopefully together, they can find a way forward for us.

Second, the world’s idea of a good future is just that. Their idea of it. The plans that make us scared of missing out, are often plans we don’t really want anyway. Not if we genuinely reflect on what we have enjoyed so far in life. That might change. Some of the things that are hard & overwhelming, things we think we should enjoy, may become things that we enjoy; when we don’t have to deal with trauma & anxiety & know how to manage our neurodivergent needs. But we’ll cross that bridge if or when we come to it. For now, they’re not things we want. We can’t hold back from hope because there may be a future that we simultaneously feel scared of missing out on, but also find overwhelming. Just simple, easy days is really worth getting through this for. A day when we wake up & see our pet. A day we can go outside & feel the grass. A day we can feed ourselves some delicious food & enjoy a craft activity, or a game. A day we can tidy without all the effort in the world. When hope knocks & we struggle to let it in for even a minute. We need to remember that a simple life is enough. It’s better & we’re fighting for that life. Not one that society places on us.

#did #dissociative identity disorder #osdd #osddid #otherwise specified dissociative disorder #structural dissociation #did system #osdd system #emdr #trauma therapy #complex post traumatic stress disorder #complex ptsd #cPTSD

[one-systems-journey]

We saw a psychiatrist today for non- DID reasons. But she seemed very accepting of DID.

She said something I wanted to share. I know it’s not positive for everyone but it was for us today.

She said in her career trauma hasn’t existed (older lady). In the 70’s they realised physical abuse caused trauma responses in kids. Later again they recognised SA. There’s still not been enough progress. They don’t know how, definitely, to treat DID. The time we’re living in is really the time for pioneering the understanding of trauma & of trauma treatment.

She said we are a pioneer of trauma treatment. That what we do is leaving a legacy for others.

I know some days that would suck to hear. I don’t fucking want to be a pioneer. I want there to be the help available now. So, if you hear that. I get you.

But today. It made us feel really positive. We want nothing more than the leave the world with a small piece of better. Whether that’s on an individual level or a bigger scale. It’s hurt me a lot to realise that may never be possible in the ways I imagined. But she helped me realise just surviving, just fighting forward. Is doing that.

My previous psychologist knew nothing about DID when I was diagnosed. She had been told that she would never meet someone with DID, so don’t bother learning about it. She learnt the person she had been working with for almost 4 years at that point, had DID & actually several of her clients had parts. She went on to focus a lot of her further education on structural dissociation & trauma treatment.

My currently counsellor is also working on up-skilling in these areas. She’s also said in the past that she’s really keen to learn from our experience with DID. Sometimes I feel like that sucks. Maybe it would be easier to have someone who already knows stuff to be able to help us better. But a bunch of circumstances lead us here & we’ve decided to stay.

Anyways. When you have the strength & safety to share your experience (& if you want to), know that you can help change the world for others who have complex trauma & structural dissociation. Every one clinician that understands all of this better, in part because of you, hundreds of other people can be helped. We sadly cannot stop anyone from experiencing complex trauma. But at least people won’t have to wait as long as we have for appropriate diagnosis, for appropriate treatment. They’ll have more evidence to support the treatment, more flexibility in making things work, even if it isn’t written in journal articles.

#did #dissociative identity disorder #osdd #osddid #otherwise specified dissociative disorder #structural dissociation #emdr #trauma therapy #did system #osdd system

[one-systems-journey]

4.9.23

Another long period between posts.

I’ve stayed with the counsellor I was seeing when I last posted. It’s been a bit of a bumpy road there. The lady we were waiting on who had more experience decided she wasn’t taking any more clients this year. We also couldn’t find anyone else with a lot of experience with DID/parts. So, for that time we were stuck.

A few weeks ago we heard from the lady who had a lot of experience who said she was taking people after all. That was really hard. We had really started to trust our new counsellor. Some part spoke on everyone’s behalf & declined her offer. We were kind of pissed after that. But I’m starting to think it was the right choice.

At the moment we’re working on something called CIPOS. It’s an EMDR technique to help orientate to the therapy room, ground & feel safe by flipping between a thought of something distressing & quickly back to something grounding while doing slow bls. We’re doing this with a distraction kind of like flash, & using tappers for slow bls. My counsellor got these random shape puzzles that fit together in so many different ways, to do for grounding. It seems to help not get too flooded & parts seem to really like the puzzles.

We’ve been able to ask for what we need more. Sometimes more than we can with most people.

It’s hard that we need to work one things that are so incredibly basic. Painful even. The distressing thoughts we’ve used in this CIPOS method have been really mild things but it’s still distressing. It’s hard to not want to push ahead to actual hard things… or thing we feel are hard & significant. But I also know that rushing head just makes everything impossible. The destabilisation is too much, the protectors step in & shut everything down & rebuilding trust after that is almost impossible. So here we are. Kind of starting again. Starting with someone who has less training in EMDR, DID, parts, etc. than our last psych. But has more years of experience doing therapy & who’s managed to find a safe way in to resourcing & beginning again. I feel conflicted, to allow myself any hope is scary. But we’re trying. It’s more than we’ve been able to do in quite a long time.

I hope this can serve as some hope for others out there who just cannot find a way forward, no matter how hard they try. There may be another option in the least likely place. Just survive today. As painful & hopeless as it feels, just survive today. You never know, & that’s probably what has kept you alive this far. Keep the sliver of hope, that 1%, safe.

I’ll try to remember to write again soon & talk some more about what else we’ve been doing.

#did #dissociative identity disorder #osdd #otherwise specified dissociative disorder #osddid #parts #structural dissociation #didosdd #EMDR #trauma therapy #CIPOS

[one-systems-journey]

23.5.23

It’s been a long time since I posted here. Mostly because I’ve felt hopeless & didn’t find any benefit in sharing the same old shit.A lot has happened. My psych decided about 2 months ago, maybe a bit more that she couldn’t help me any more & didn’t feel like she could ‘be objective anymore’. Still not 100% sure what that was suppose to mean, if she hated me or cared too much or what. But she did say she was feeling my stuckness. What was most frustrating & upsetting was that she wasn’t going to wait til I was settled with a new psych to finish. She wanted me gone within 4 sessions.

The week prior to her announcing this we had been back in contact with someone who is more experienced with DID/OSDD & I went back on her wait list. I’m still waiting, I think I have 2-3 weeks wait left. She said at the time that she would likely have availability within 3 months.

In the mean time I’ve started with a counsellor at a clinic that specialises in EMDR & trauma. The lady I’m seeing has an interest in neurodiversity, so that’s been helpful. I wasn’t the biggest fan of this person to begin with. Our appointments felt scattered & it was a huge blow when I found out she only had level one EMDR training. For reference my previous psych had done level 1 & 2, structural dissociation plus others. I do not trust this clinics reception staff to actually understand or correctly convey the skills of their therapists because this is not the first time they’ve mislead us. But anyways. It seems to have kind of worked out. I think I like this new person. She’s promised she won’t give up on me. Trying not to hold too much hope in that. She’s in the right place to learn a lot, the owner of the clinic does a lot of training on both EMDR & parts. Her supervisor is also very experienced with DID & that person has a close contact with a lot of experience too. So there’s some hope that she could help. The neurodivergent stuff is useful too. But I’m also not sure if it’s worth staying in the hope that she can help, or if it’s better to move on to the more experienced person because that’s more likely to be helpful. There’s the toss up of experience vs. relationship. I guess I’ll see if I find the more experienced person to be a good fit relationship wise. I don’t know what I’m going to do if I like both of them. Eeep.

We’re already experiencing resistance to doing EMDR though. Struggling to access memories & the wall fragment comes up to block access to any inner thoughts, feelings, memories, any access to anyone else. It’s frustrating & annoying & overwhelming. Young parts are also crying a lot. They’re confused about the upheaval, the opening up to someone new & we’ve been experiencing flashback quite a bit. It’s been awful. I’m torn between letting them open up about trauma or not with this new person, ultimately is doesn’t help & the littles forget that we’ve told someone about it. But I also feel like maybe it will quiet them down for a bit. It’s probably helpful for the counsellor to know a bit more.

We’re mostly writing all of this because the counsellor is away this week & it’s hard. It feels like the last little while has been a lot of just holding on as hard we can, while hurting so incredibly much. It’s the second week in the almost 2 months I’ve been working with her that she’s been away. As well as unstable appointments, one time it was a Monday one week & the following Friday which made the gap longer than when she actually was away. I struggle without the regular support & I was just starting to feel a bit more settled. Anyways. Will update if or when there’s something worth saying. Good or bad.

[one-systems-journey]

Last weeks therapy 1/3.11.22

On Tuesday we spoke about how difficult the meet space/fraisers table is. How we’re frustrated that it just seems like a given in the EMDR & parts worlds that it’ll work when the reality is it’s just one person that made it up with little research to support it, especially for systems. Apparently it’s something non-systems can do which I find weird, the concept of meeting non structurally dissociated ‘parts’. I guess schemas may be a better word for their example. It was also frustrating that the example we read about just seemed so easy for the person involved who wasn’t a system. Like who knows how legitimate it was or what work went on before hand. My psych did say kind of like ‘it makes sense for non-systems to recognise their schemas because they’re not trying to hide, they’re not super dissociated’. So I guess that makes sense.

I spoke about how doing the meeting place makes me feel fake because I can’t keep track of everyone. How it brings up feelings of ‘I don’t have DID’. I also really drove home the fact that I don’t have a safe place, the internal resources we tried to build aren’t really that great & parts try to corrupt everything we try to make calm & safe. I don’t even know what it means to be calm. I don’t know what that’s like. I can’t keep parts away from other parts when they’re triggering to each other. In the end I decided that maybe instead of trying to make a calm safe place inside, I could at least make the environment of my psych appointments safer. So, I made an order for some more sensory items, I’ve also taken my weighted stuffed dog in so everything can be in reach.

I took in the new things Thursday & they seemed to help. I think they do make us feel safer. Thursday we talked about the parts who don’t want to keep fighting. How hopeless they feel. How much they want to give up. We talked about the part who does seem to hold hope despite everything. We talked about how they’ve been reduced & reduced especially since high school. They were so convinced that we would be free of a lot of issues after high school, unfortunately not. We had to realise we needed to drop back our study to part time. We had to give up on our dream career & settle for studying something else. Then we had to realise we were not able to actually do that job after we graduated. Still, after like 13 years of therapy, we’re still so far from better. That’s hard even for the part who has some level of hope.

So, that’s where we’re at. Possibly going to try some meeting place with all the sensory additions. Maybe try more processing of stuff we’ve looked at before. We’ll see. Brain has been pretty bad recently, so just trying to hang in there.

#did #dissociative identity disorder #osdd #otherwise specified dissociative disorder #did system #osdd system #osddid #did osdd #osdddid #structural dissociation #parts work #actually did #actually osdd #therapy #cptsd #emdr #complex post traumatic stress disorder #complex ptsd

[one-systems-journey]

25/27.10.22

Tuesday we worked on the awful feeling we’ve been having lately. Part of ‘pruning’ approach to getting to trauma or lessening how bad it’ll be when we get there. It was really hard & really painful. It’s hard to know if we made any progress. I never know if something has changed or if I’m just detached/dissociated from it. I also don’t know how much to expect any small aspect, such as this emotion, to change when we haven’t processed the whole thing, like the bigger issues of trauma. It makes it hard to know whether to keep working on one thing or move on. I feel like it’s kinda like one of those children’s toy with with pegs in the holes & the child has to hammer them down. But it’s as if each peg can only be hammered down so far, before it can’t go any further & other ones need to be hammered down a bit, then return to the first one & it’ll finally move some more. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it does in my mind.

On Thursday we had a lot of parts talking & not really wanting to do what we were suppose to be doing. They also made it hard to talk. So, that was hard. Our psych now is talking about how she wants to meet all the parts & learn what part knows about what trauma so that when we do processing, they’ll be involved. But this seems like an impossible task. We experience a lot of passive influence & blending, so we rarely realise someone else is fronting. We hard really limited internal communication & zero communication outside. Parts rarely know who they are when they’re fronting, they don’t realise that they need to leave communication, I don’t know that it’s not me in charge when someone else is around, parts rarely front if there isn’t a negative trigger, so kinda hard to get them out, it hard to get anyone to retain information. Table communication causes way too much dissociation inside to do. All of these things make it feel like it’s impossible to what she’s asking. Not to mention it makes us feel like maybe this isn’t real & somehow we were just convinced we have parts when they’re no more than your average person has ‘parts’ to one whole personality. Then I start denying parts exist. It’s triggering AF to try to communicate within. ‘What if none of this is real? What if I’m unconsciously just making this up? We can’t have part’s because our life isn’t ‘bad enough’. I can’t hear anything. I can’t answer these questions. I can’t hear anything.’ It’s so overwhelming & frustrating.

I don’t know how, if we do have parts, improve communication when it’s so blurry when parts are around, we have no way to communicate externally & internally is triggering & we dissociate, parts rarely absorb new memories, etc. Any experience with similar is welcome. Any other input is not.

#did #dissociative identity disorder #osdd #otherwise specified dissociative disorder #did system #osdd system #structural dissociation #therapy #emdr #osddid #did osdd #osdddid #parts work #actually did #actually osdd #cptsd #complex post traumatic stress disorder #complex ptsd

[one-systems-journey]

20.10.22 Therapy

Tuesday we cried about how much we’re struggling. How dismissive our GP has been about our physical health concerns. How hopeless we feel about everything. It was hard. It is hard. Our mood has just been some of the worst lows ever recently. Plus the uncertainty of all the physical health stuff. It’s still a few weeks til I can see my old doctor & see if she can offer any other insights.

Today/Thursday we talked about a few more ways forward. The focus is going to be

1) Use EMDR protocols for shame. Try to reduce some of that.

2) Allow us to try long sets of processing. We feel that it may help more than short ones. Short ones are meant to contain the processing, particularly in complex trauma but we always feel like it just is disruptive & prohibits progress. It’s a risk but I’m willing to take it.

3) Have our psych try to help us identify switches because we often aren’t aware it’s happening til after.

4) On days where littles are around, or everything is just too hard, just sit on the floor & let them play/explore. We want to help them feel safe at our psychs office & participate in processing, so it’s still work to do this.

We looked a little bit into these other therapy modalities that some other trauma therapists in the area do. We didn’t feel particularly drawn to either. So, even though we want to be able to try different things, I am content for now that there isn’t really anything else that I know of, that I want to try.

Our psych said how us looking into these therapies, trying to find other ways to address DID, & coming up with more things to work on/ways to work, reiterates to her how hard we’re trying to find a way forward & are trying to help ourselves. She’s always said that she thinks that we work really hard & it’s not our fault that we’re stuck. But it was almost like that first statement contradicts that she genuinely thought that. I’m probably just too sensitive to nuances in language. She did try to reiterate that she always believes that, it was just more confirmation. But I’m like, if you believe us, why do you need more confirmation? I guess it’s still good. We do want her to know that we’re working hard. Even though we are quite mean to ourselves often for the lack of progress.

#did #dissociative identity disorder #osdd #otherwise specified dissociative disorder #osddid #did system #osdd system #structural dissociation #therapy #emdr #did osdd #osdddid #parts work #actually did #actually osdd #cptsd #complex post traumatic stress disorder #complex ptsd

[one-systems-journey]

Thursday 13th October 2022

Haven’t been posting due to not having therapy. Psych had covid in June & she’s gotten every single fragment of a virus that’s crossed her path since. But we were back this week, so that’s good.

Prior to her time off, we did speak about how difficult EMDR processing was just because of different parts holding different memories or parts of memories. How hard it is for me to actually feel the pain of trauma sometimes because we’re so detached. But also every time I try to look inwards, I’m just flooded by the overall awful emotions. I don’t know if it’s the trauma we’re trying to work on, just the whole lifetime of trauma bubbling away under the surface or just a shitty mood. Unless I’m actively triggered, it’s hard to tell the difference. They’re all just as awful as each other.

So, we’re going to try not to focus on the SUDS (subjective unit of distress) before beginning processing & just go off if the distress is increasing or decreasing. We’re also going to do some of the schema therapy rescripting. Just see if it makes any difference. Apparently early evidence is saying it can be as effective as EMDR. Of course more research needs to be done, but might as well give it a go as we haven’t seen much change with EMDR.

I’m not sure we’re all on board because it feels like it’s just making up stories. ‘That didn’t really happen in the trauma memory, so why would it change my perception of the trauma’. But we just want to give it a go anyways.

We tried that today. Just briefly. We started to dissociate after a bit. Things started to change colour & we felt spacey, which is usually the last stage before we can’t pull ourselves back from it. So, we stopped & will hopefully try again next week.

We also spoke again about trying someone else. We just haven’t got anywhere in so long, we really need to try something else. So, I’m going to see a college of hers from her old clinic. They both left aliens the same time, my psych to open her own clinic & this other to go to work for a trauma specific clinic locally. She started the intensive trauma work training around the same time as my psych, but she’s gone on to become fully qualify in it, & is now working on becoming accredited to teach it. Whereas my psych is still completing her full qualification. This new psych has also agreed to allowing me to stay with my current psych for as long as I need. The last person we looked into didn’t want me to do that. She’s also already helped someone to the point of not meeting criteria for DID. Whereas my psych hasn’t got that far with someone, I was her first DID client (not her only one now, but the others are apparently a lot earlier in their therapy journey as a whole). The only down side is it’ll be feb when I can meet her. But I guess with the general limited availability of psychologists & psychiatrists at the moment, for such a specialised one, it’s not too bad. The other thing with this psych is apparently her father is a very well known psychiatrist in the realm of DID. So, she had a head start on her learning. Fingers crossed this works out & it makes progress. I’be been struggling a crazy amount in the past few months & it’s really disheartening to put in so much work with therapy & not get anywhere.

#did #dissociative identity disorder #osdd #otherwise specified dissociative disorder #osddid #did system #osdd system #structural dissociation #therapy #emdr #did osdd #osdddid #parts work #actually did #actually osdd #cptsd #complex post traumatic stress disorder #complex ptsd #schema therapy #rescripting

[one-systems-journey]

20.9.22

Today was a talking day. With our psych being way for the past week & not even having support worker appointments, it’s been extra hard. Our mood as also been very low for a while now, struggling to do much of anything & struggling to leave the house. All round, we just needed to vent. We also struggle feeling comfortable back after any length break, so I think it was important all around to not get into anything too heavy.

Reminder to just stop sometimes & talk about what’s going on. Not all therapy appointments have to be ‘the work’. Respect where you’re at & what you need/you’re system needs each day. Checking in is progress. Helping settle issues in daily life is profess. Parts learning their needs/concerns will be addressed & it’s a safe, validating environment is progress.

Wish us luck as we continue to try to chip away at small daily tasks despite how atrocious we feel.

[one-systems-journey]

15.9.2022

Psych has been away this week sick. Plus the office flooded again. Given how incredibly hard things have been, Tuesday wasn’t so bad for her to be away. I think I was too exhausted to care. But Wednesday & today it’s been harder to deal with. I kinda just had a feeling today would be cancelled as well, but psych had made it sound like she was going to be okay by today.

It is a little easier these days when she is sick, she knows that it’s a lot easier for us to cope with the automatic ‘abandonment’ feelings, if she messages in a fairly casual but understanding way, rather than a really formal message some may expect in the context. She also lets us know when she expects our next appointment to be. If you have a good long term relationship with your psych, & experience feelings of abandonment, it might be worth chatting to them about it. You don’t even have to request anything be different. Just opening up that conversation was super helpful for us. Before our current arrangement of her texting, it was still helpful. It’s hard to explain, but even though there’s not necessarily any words exchanged, if an appointment is cancelled, we feel like someone understands & knows this is hard & we’re not so alone in that. Even though technically we are alone & she obviously thinking about whatever is going on for her in that moment.

We’ve been struggling to leave the house a crazy amount lately & experiencing a lot of physical & emotional pain. So, it’s really hard. Not a great week for her to be off. But no one plans to be sick.

I saw multiplicity & me’s video this week. It was encouraging, at the same time as disheartening. In some ways it’s like ‘wow, if Jess can do this & get to such a good point, maybe we can too’. At the same time it’s like ‘we’re so far behind, she’s the same age & is free from this. We have so long to go. So little communication compared to where they were. We have so many parts who disagree with doing certain things in therapy & really hold us back. I feel like we’re never going to get anywhere. We’ve been in therapy for 13 years’. Like, I know we’ve only known about being a system for 2 years, but it’s still hard to believe we’ll make that kind of progress ever. I guess that’s the purpose of this blog, to show others our journey with this & to dispel some of those feelings for someone else one day.

I think that’s all I wanted to say in this post.

#did #dissociative identity disorder #osdd #otherwise specified dissociative disorder #osddid #did system #osdd system #structural dissociation #therapy #emdr #did osdd #osdddid #parts work #actually did #actually osdd #cptsd #complex post traumatic stress disorder #complex ptsd

[one-systems-journey]

I don’t think I’ve written about how much some of our parts hate us & how hard it is to be accepting & kind toward them. It’s also hard for most of us to be compassionate toward each other. We don’t want to take care of each other. Life is hard enough without having to be a parent or a care figure to little ones, ect. We don’t have a huge amount of communication between parts. Or even really recognition that other exist. But for the small extent that some of us do, that’s our experience.

I preface this with that, just for anyone read to understand how hard it is to have any compassion in this system. Not only do we hate ourselves, but we are either resentful or straight up hate everyone else.

But last night something unique happened. Someone said ‘we really want to self harm, we want that relief. But we don’t want to cure our hurt, by hurting ourself. We’re tired of hurting ourselves to deal with the hurt others have caused’.

I’m not sure who it came from. & our really persecutory part was not very impressed by that idea of self compassion. But just for a second, some of the general difficulties we have as a system was lifted a little bit.

It’s so incredibly hard to work together with people who you never signed up to be with. People who honestly, make life harder most of the time. Between the challenging ways everyone has learnt to deal with the world, ways each of us do not agree is the right way to act & the difficulty with memory, emotions, ect. But we wanted to share a small glimmer of what accepting the system could look like. How maybe some day we can extend compassion to our system.

#did #dissociative identity disorder #osdd #otherwise specified dissociative disorder #osddid #did system #osdd system #structural dissociation #therapy #emdr #did osdd #osdddid #parts work #actually did #actually osdd #cptsd #complex post traumatic stress disorder #complex ptsd

[one-systems-journey]

8th September 2022

Therapy with some updates from the past week.

I was really disappointed because last Tuesday I had something really important to share, but was too tired that night & forgot following that. So, I kind of haven’t wanted to post again. But here is last Thursdays appointment, Tuesday’s & todays.

Last Thursday we talked again about creating a resource for the little parts after the huge trigger we had a few weeks back. The resource is a caring person in the inner world that can support the parts when they’re feeling overwhelmed & need comfort. Back when we re commenced this resource, the little ones chose miss honey from Matilda. She felt safe in a way no other person seems to. Her care for children is never questioned in any way. I think I mentioned previously that the trigger happened when our psych guided us to imagine miss honey touching the little one, in a kind & gentle way, of course. But it was enough to trigger trauma memories. Now, our protectors don’t want to do that resource again. We were really flooded & triggered for several weeks. So, I guess it makes sense. The little ones decided last week that maybe instead of imagining miss honey, they could just imagine the house & going to visit to begin with. This seemed like a great work around. However, on Tuesday when we tried to work with this resource, some of the parts bought up memories of when the big house isn’t safe. They also were frustrated with the idea of the kind person resource in general because ‘it’s not real’ & it’s incredibly difficult for them to think about the fact that we wanted someone kind & caring like miss honey as a child. It’s hard for them to deal with the fact that we never had that, & we also struggle with ‘having needs’, all of this was making us feel bad because we have needs & these needs will never be met. So, I guess you see it was very complicated. We didn’t get anywhere Tuesday. It was very frustrating & also upsetting that there’s just so many barriers to doing the work.

Today we did EMDR on a memory with our grandmother. It had been triggered off yesterday. Our grandmother has dementia. She’s already had very poor inhibitions, poor social boundaries within family. So, the dementia exacerbates it. That lack of inhibition & her previous behaviours way over stepping boundaries triggered us. It also ties in with early trauma. ‘Trauma life’ if you will. Scraping the surface of the deeper trauma. There are some parts who are like ‘this isn’t even traumatic, just get over it’. But I think it would be uncomfortable for most people, but given our history of trauma & people being inappropriately & never having boundaries respected, it is traumatic. Just to remind everyone else too that so many factors go into the experience of if something was traumatic or not. No one can one thing is traumatic vs not.

It was slow. It was painful. It felt like we didn’t get very far. It also feels like it may be another one of these memories that aren’t processed much until the deeper trauma is worked on. It’s a bit of back & forth in that way. Do we do the ‘pruning’ approach of tackling less awful memories & maybe not lower the distress very much, or do we go for the worst parts & possibly, probably have it blow up & make everything awful for a very long time. It’s hard to know what the right way in is.

When we got home we were feeling extremely exhausted. It was hard to move for a while, body fatigue & weakness set in. We had to be very careful what we chose to watch because most things were distressing in this vulnerable state. It took ages til we could do anything really. Eventually we could have dinner & play some stardew. Our heart has kinda been doing it’s weird feelings & beating kinda fast tonight. All makes sense with EMDR & with the distress.

At the end of appointment we always try to close off the processing in a way that will try to keep the memories at bay til the following appointment. Tonight the little ones decided they would put the memory in a bubble with a force field around it & kick it to the beach, because ‘the beach is a long way from the mountains’ (at least for us, & their inner world house is in the mountains with all the trees). I found that quite amusing. The things kids come up with. They’re much more creative than adults.

So, I guess this can hopefully be some validation if your parts come up with 101 reasons why they can’t do a resource. Also, how difficult & slow processing is with complex trauma. You never quite know the right way to approach such a big mass of triggering.

#did #dissociative identity disorder #osdd #otherwise specified dissociative disorder #osddid #did system #osdd system #structural dissociation #therapy #emdr #did osdd #osdddid #parts work #actually did #actually osdd #cptsd #complex post traumatic stress disorder #complex ptsd

[one-systems-journey]

25.8.22

We only had one therapy session this week, my psych was sick & then the office flooded 😬 & it seemed to have been going for some time before anyone was in to notice.

We had to do Telehealth Thursday because of said flooding situation, but it seems like hopefully we’ll be back next week. The damage luckily wasn’t too extensive.

Being Telehealth we didn’t talk about anything too serious. I talked to her about cancelling with the more experienced DID therapist I had been planning on seeing. Generally parts seemed to be becoming more & more opposed to the idea, even though at least one person wanted it. I had thought that maybe because our defensive parts seemed to be so opposed to some of the work with our currently psych (due to lack of trust & thing going badly in the past), maybe they would be less activated with someone else. But that didn’t seem to be the case. The more anxious we got about these new appointments, the more the defensive parts were coming up being like ‘no, we’re not engaging with this person’. So, I guess that’s good for us to know. That they’re going to try to protect us no matter who we’re working with & it’s probably best to stay with our current psych who we trust, have a lot of familiarity with & we honestly have a lot more support from than we would from someone else. There is a small amount of I guess sadness, regret, something. We did really want to see if things could progress better with someone new. But I guess it wasn’t worth giving up what we have right now, for that chance. We also didn’t like that this new psych didn’t want us to continue to see our current psych for any reason. We had wanted to continue with her just for general support, so the work wouldn’t overlap. But she didn’t want us doing that. So, that’s that.

We also talked about someone we had watched on fb & how their struggles from her upbringing are relatable in so many ways. But it was frustrating because it bought up so many emotions, but we don’t have particular memories to go with them. I don’t know if it’s because of DID or because the neglect side of things from my experience was more subtle. There aren’t necessarily huge/significant events. It’s a day after day if not having needs met. Things that in ways, didn’t seem ‘significant’ at the time. I didn’t notice were ‘abnormal’. But it all added up to compound the traumatic experiences of my life. We talked about how often times psychs have focused on the early childhood abuse as the most important experience of my life. But I always said like ‘no, my experiences as a teenager of both abuse & neglect & other trauma affects me a lot more’. No one ever cared when I said that. I know know that I’m much better at dissociating from the early childhood trauma, so it seems ‘less bad’ but also I still live a lot of the teenage trauma. It’s my current trauma. So of course it’s hard to dissociate from & feels the most pressing. We talked about how we can process the feelings of this time, we don’t necessarily need an exact event & possibly as we process, parts will bring up memories. Hopefully we’ll do some work on that next week.

I also remember talking to her like ‘I’m struggling so much to leave the house & do what I need to do’. ‘I don’t understand because I don’t feel so awful as I did the last several weeks, so why can’t I do anything’. She made me realise that even though I’m not still in ‘crisis’, that doesn’t mean that everything is okay. It was validating. I did manage to get my dog Wes to the vet on Thursday for his arthritis injection, went to the chemist, & took us to the nurse at the doctors clinic today. I honestly feel like they were two massive achievements because of how hard they were.

I also stopped & got food both days just to make life a little bit easier. Food is an ongoing issue. Every time we’re struggling or young parts are close to the front, we really struggle with being able to find food that fits within the little ones very narrow area of food fussiness & also a lot of food has been making us feel nauseous &/or upsetting our stomach lately. So, just another difficult area to deal with. Here’s your reminder that it’s okay to do the thing that makes life a little bit easier. Buy that pre cut veggies, buy the take away, throw out the recycling you can’t bring yourself to clean, use paper products on plates to cut down on cleaning. Whilst I still think taking care of the planet is all our responsibilities, someday we can’t do everything. The best thing we can do is keep putting pressure on the big companies who ignore their massive role in destroying the world & give ourselves a little grace.

That’s my week. Progress in therapy & bit of an inclusion of where things are with my mental health.

#did #dissociative identity disorder #osdd #otherwise specified dissociative disorder #osddid #did system #osdd system #structural dissociation #therapy #emdr #did osdd #osdddid #parts work #actually did #actually osdd

[one-systems-journey]

18.8.22

TW for discussion of sui*, in relation to a strangers death, later in the post. Will add a second TW where it begins.

I haven’t really wanted to post for the last 3 therapy sessions, so this will be a combination of the 11th, 16th & 18th of august. Apparently I haven’t posted since the 5th, but I don’t remember what we did in the appointment on the 9th (edit to add later, our angry protector was agin pretending & refusing to do much work, but we ended up very distressed after because it didn’t help the littles who we already immensely triggered from the previous week). Things were overwhelming & I wasn’t sure what to say, so we haven’t posted til now.

The 11th we still had little parts triggered from the previous Thursday (I think that’s when it happened, could have even been the Tuesday directly before). They had been triggered during the process of trying to make them a carer in the inner world. Apparently a cuddle from a caring person still feels incredibly unsafe to even imagine. However, on the 11th we tried to process some of the little parts feelings. It was a pretty intense session. It hurt. But it wasn’t quite as chaotic inside after. I’m not 100% sure it was the processing, I wonder if it was just time. Either way, it was good to have a little bit of distance from the constant trauma responses.

We did however have a really critical part show up, one who was angry that our psych didn’t have the Thera-tappers there (thera-tappers two small electronic devices that buzz in one hand, then the other to replicate bi-lateral stimulation, see below for that info). She’s often quite disorganised & sometimes.. more than sometimes, to our detriment. The tappers were a much more preferable option for bi-lateral stimulation (the premise of EMDR, can be done with left & right sides of body, not just eye movements). This became a sticking point for this week. But it seems to have resolved somewhat in our appointment on the 18th. Our psych has said she will try harder to keep them at the office & organise a charger (her reason for taking them home). We were able to ask her to really try with this so parts can see that she is actually trying to address something that affected them. It was hard to ask. We hate having needs. But she was really good about it. I know this seems insignificant, but if I explained the other ways her disorganisation has let us down, I think it would make sense as to why this felt like a lot bigger deal that it was. Plus, the way we were feeling, we were too exhausted for tapping ourselves, having the tappers there would have been of a significant benefit.

This week we stayed away from too much parts stuff. We we’re really dissociated on Tuesday. So, I don’t really know what we did. We know what lead up to it though. This is the part I TW’ed for, so here it is again.

That day my mum msged & said their had been a death on her university campus & the building where the event occurred was closed for the rest of the day. It was someone ending their own life. This was very triggering at the time. Discussion of the suicidal behaviour that result in death, tend to be quite triggering to us. Discussion of & other peoples thoughts of suicide aren’t really triggering, just when it results in death. So, that’s probably why we were so dissociated & felt so off, it was hard to place. So, my psych just went gently & tried to ground us. That’s all I really remember. Lots of grounding needed.

The 18th we talked about my mum. Her attitude toward suicide & the complete flip flop of a response during the proceeding 48hrs. It’s been triggering stuff with her. Her hypocrisy when it comes to matters of mental health, suicide, her lack of care toward her kids, just general emotional neglect. It was validating. We also had the discussion regarding the tappers.

So that’s kind of an over view of the roller coaster that has been the last fortnight. I’m not sure it I expressed just how destabilising the trigger was leading up to these two weeks. But I just want to reiterate that because these two weeks have been a bit all over the place in terms of therapy work. That’s why. It’s taken so long to get the littles back into a fairly stable base. We’re still struggling quite a lot with some parts screaming in my head & issues with eating; it gets hard to find foods that feel okay to eat, parts like & don’t make us nauseous, at times. So, we’ve been dealing with that too. I think it’s easing a bit, but it’s hard to tell yet. Just wanted to check in those bits of info because they’re all parts of being a system.

#did #dissociative identity disorder #osdd #otherwise specified dissociative disorder #osddid #did system #osdd system #structural dissociation #therapy #emdr #actually did #actually osdd