Dissociation Time and Hope

October 9, 2010 at 8:36 am (Uncategorized)
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If you look for it there’s alot out there about dissociation. Are trauma memories real or not, is DID real or not, how trauma exposure at a young age causes children’s brains to store traumatic information and subsume it into Alters, little timebombs of memory that can sit forever in one’s mind and impact their entire life of choices, social capabilities, and of course sex.

But there’s a crushing aftereffect of chronic dissociation that isn’t much discussed that requires a great deal of understanding if any therapist is going to be helpful to the patient. And that concept is Time.

I do not have a concept of Time as something that marches forward. I understand intellectually that it’s the year 2010 and I am a grownup. I know that my perps are dead and they can’t come back to get me. I know too that at any moment I can stumble across a trigger and be suddenly thrust back to 1965. Literally, be there in that year. I have smells and sights and feelings and sounds and physical pain exactly as it happened so long ago.

In my world, things are coming at me constantly bombarding my body and my mind. My job is to quickly sort out what goes where. ice cream, for example, doesn’t need much fending off I can let it in without much of a thought. But these split-second evaluations of people interactions, messages in the media, seemingly “safe” video…..much more challenging. I imagine myself in a particle accelerator, tiny pieces of who knows what constantly assaulting me. My job is to fend off the bad stuff before it gets to my hypervigilance zone.

It’s not easy, but it’s how I grew up. And even now, 45 years and more later, processing in the same way. Permanent victim.

There are many, many ways this perspective on my life is not such a great thing. One, as I say, is the permanent victim status. Things coming at me, assaulting me, and all I can do is to fend off the worst of it and dissociate thru innocuous information. But the real biggie is that I have no sense of future. Of an awareness that time passes. I have no timeline in my head, just a series of still shots.

This fucked up lack of understanding of time gives me no ability to dream. To want. To really understand what improvement means. To envision goals and meet them. If I can’t look forward how then can I make plans? How can I say oh one day I’d like to xyz? How can I have any sense of a purpose for my life? and if there is no purpose, how then do I ever dig out of the nightmares of my kidhood?

If time doesn’t go forward, how do I go forward? It’s a tough question. I can look at this moment and decide how safe I think I am, that’s about it. I can’t say in ten years I’d like to be xyz. I can’t say I have a purpose and it’s to help people in abc ways. I can’t think well I’d really like to retire to a ranch in New Mexico or Idaho or wherever. Because that time doesn’t exist for me.

We never hear about the consequences of lack in fluid timeline but it is an integral part of real healing, or so I believe. Looking beyond the past or this second and making any kind of real decisions about my life. If my traumas had started later in my life I might have a sense of something to go back to, to recover. But I am building from scratch.

I hear letting go of the past and it’s consequences are the key to getting beyond mere survival of trauma. That things need to be of value, that I need to let happen a sort of letting the shit go. But it’s really not that simple.

It is all about learning about time. About how to go about incorporating a clock in my brain that goes forward. That is the real trick.

I suppose I will have to write about this, describe it, get it out there that time bends for child survivors. Because I just don’t really see it anywhere. C gets this as much as one can and I am very fortunate for that. She’s constantly asking me what I am going to be doing…tonight or this weekend or whatever timeframe. My inability to picture the meaning of her questions is how I came to understand that I don’t know how to do that. I have a calendar and I put stuff into it and every day I do those things that pop up. But this is the way I’ve learned to manage the world ahead. I am still a slave to my calendar, events are still happening TO ME.

Dissociation. Time. Hope. This is the real key to healing. What I’m saying here probably makes no sense to very many people, but the mental health community has to get this perception in order to do much good to those of us who missed this part of development.

Not The End.

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Too many Heads

August 4, 2010 at 1:52 pm (dissociation complex Ptsd trauma child sexual abuse DID psychology survivor, Uncategorized)
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So I haven’t seen my therapist in two weeks. My shrink is out of town and wife has been on business trips. I have been left to my own devices to survive. And there has been increasing weirdness going on.

I don’t feel abandoned, oddly enough. A little bit neglected, but that’s very understandable. I am, after all, alone and a touch lonely. But I have been trying to stick to a structure everyday to keep myself occupied. Which has been helpful much of the time.

I’ve been getting up by 7, working out for an hour after waking up, then meditating getting cleaned up and working for some hours. Take a little break then practice plinking on my new keyboard. My efforts in all these areas seem to be paying off, albeit more slowly than I would like.

I have been trying valiantly to appreciate all these baby steps forward. Moving in the right direction able to do so much more now than just two months ago getting physically spiritually mentally and emotionally stronger blah blah blah di dah.

My problem is just this blah di dah thing. One head says stick to your new neural pathways, you’re growing a ton in the right direction and each little win is a huge victory at this point. It says your clothing doesn’t fit even if you’re not really losing weight. It says you have discovered that you have the family “gift” in music. It says you’re doing stuff to promote and take care of your business like you’ve never been able to do. Be excited by each of these gains, jump up and down, celebrate them. You feel great, right? and feeling great is, as the wizard of oz says, guess what it’s great. Whether you acknowledge it or not. It’s fabulous.

But another head says so you can run five minutes at a time with a minute’s rest before running the next five. You should be running triathlons like you used to do. Loser. It says you should be making over 300K like you used to. You should be able to play whatever you want, this stupid fucking plinking around is just ridiculous. You should be you should be you should be lots of negative stuff but primarily you should be feeling llike the loser idiot that you are.

There’s a head who already knows how to read music. It wants to be taken seriously and doesn’t like many of the songs we’re learning. Sometimes it pops up to share it’s knowledge and sometimes it doesn’t. Often it will show up for awhile, get disgusted with me and vanish to whence it came.

Heads say just shut the hell up man. You are so far down the loser ladder there’s not climbing up out of the pit. You’re just being a jackass by taking any pride in this stupid little shit. You should be you should be you should be.

It was mentioned to me by a wise friend that I am going down the self-flaggelations because it’s a familiar pathway. So in a sense, even though it doesn’t work out this way, I am trying to do a self-soothing thing by following the same old road I know.

That the new stuff, the feeling good about myself over anything is so new it appears to be dangerous. But it feels better.

Too many heads. Without a support system it could be alot worse than splitting off like this. I mean, I could be dead or in jail or drunk or something. But I’m not I am doing my best.

I will get to see C (the wizard) next week, then we’re off again for another two. I’ll be at my other house with my wife for some of that time, which will be very helpful. But it is hard to have everybody gone. Not a crisis or anything, just starting to get me down. I suppose that the idea here is to keep my head above water and hope the others drown along the way.

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Talking with my Alters

July 2, 2010 at 11:23 am (dissociation complex Ptsd trauma child sexual abuse DID psychology survivor)
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It was suggested by my dear friend @MoreVoices that I write a blog about communicating with my teenaged and child alters. I am in the midst of this huge growth spurt as C tells me, which is making them very very nervous. I’ve been split into three brains to try to deal with them but since they’ve been sorta…fading…since I got away from issue-laden T I agree with my dear MV that perhaps this is a good time for me to check in with them, see if letting them out is helpful.

Part of me is busy living, part of me is being the screaming heebie-jeebie alter mess, and part of me has been kinda watching them go off without really relating to them.

Before beginning my interview I should make it clear that their responses to my questions may be filtered abit because I am so co-conscious these days. In other words I have them and me working at the same time. I will try to limit this interruption so they can each have their say. So, here goes:

ME: Hi this is me, the real-time adult one. I’m not gonna ask y’all for a rollcall you can just jump in or out whenever you want to. So if you want to hide that’s fine. You don’t have to respond unless you want to.

So I am here to let anybody have a say in what’s been going on lately. Because there’s been alot of change, right? And I’m hearing by your screaming that many of you are afraid. I’m hearing Red for sure. Are you here honey?

RED (5 years old): uh huh. I don’t wanna ever talk again after that bad mean lady made me talk to her and she said she wouldn’t make me go away but she did, she went away. I’m afraid I will have to talk to the new one. And she will pretend that it’s okay to get me to talk to her then she’ll do what mommy did, leave me all alone again

ME: You don’t ever have to talk again honey. Has C ever asked about you? No, right? That’s because C doesn’t have to hear your secrets, ever. You have been very brave and you can rest in your room forever now if you want to. We know enough about what happened, don’t we? We don’t have to go back there ever again.

RED: Okay.

ME: Ok, so I hope you feel better red. I am also really hearing the teenagers. Can y’all talk to me?

TEENAGERS: Of course we’re here we have been talking haven’t we? We have already said that you are making us go very dangerous places. Norman can pop up any time because you won’t sit still.

ME: I know that you all think that Norman can pop up at any time. That’s because nobody ever said it’s done, right? Norman never said okay I’m done with you. So it’s reasonable to think that he can spring up from nowhere again. But this is very important for you to keep in mind: Norman is dead. He can never come to get us, and that means nobody else can get us either. We are not living in your time anymore. I know that you’re very afraid and you think what we’re doing these days is very, very dangerous. But you are just gonna have to trust me and C on this one. He’s not coming back. The tigers are gone. You’re living with me now. I know that I haven’t been the best parent for you, like our real ones, right? But I want to know what y’all want to do. We can even have fun. You just need to trust me and C.

TNS: Trust another one? Don’t think so. We think this one is going to make alot of danger happen and she’ll just let us die. By going out into the world it’s gonna be bad. Plus we don’t feel good, everything is very confusing.

ME: I know you think that. But we’re all coming together now. Just like you know alot more about the Others, right? If something bad does happen C will be there. She doesn’t push you, your secrets are safe. If you wanna talk to her someday you can. But we know enough, don’t we? It was bad enough, right? WE don’t live there anymore. Here, let’s cut a deal. Y’all go back to Maine for the weekend. Just lay on the beach and watch, right? Notice that Norman is gone, that his buddies are gone. Notice that just maybe you can try trusting me. If we get in over our head I will take care of us. OK? You can always come back, I’m not kicking you out. Just try for the weekend to relax at Searsport, let the screaming go. If you want to you can always come back it’s okay.

TNS: Why should we trust you? You’re just gonna fuck up you always do. You let all that shit happen to them and maybe to us too.

ME: I wasn’t around then, it was the littles. You all know that there was nothing they could do. And you are past all that age, right? I am an adult. It’s 2010. I drive right? I work sorta when I can, right? I’ve been taking care of things and I’m getting stronger every day. Just try this for the weekend. If something is coming, just let me know. OK?

ME: Ok, so that didn’t go so well. I hope you can just take this weekend off. You do a thing called hypervigilance by waiting for Norman to come back. But it’s not gonna happen. You can back up, go in deeper and just watch. I hear you loud and clear, you’re waiting for him and you don’t trust anything. You have every reason for that. Just sink back to Maine and watch. I am only asking for 3 days here.

ME: Ok, so we’ll see how that goes. I have also been hearing alot of crying from the littles. Does anybody want to come out and talk or all of you together maybe?

LITTLES: We wanna stay together. Uncle Norman’s coming. You are doing all this stuff and he is gonna find us and hurt us again.

ME: I know you’re afraid of that honeys, but he can’t come to get you. We all live in a different time now. We live in a time where I am an adult and I won’t let Uncle Norman hurt you ever again.

LIT: You did before. He comes all the time.

ME: I know it seems like he comes all the time because for you he does, right? But you are just remembering what he did. You are just looking at it like a movie, where you have to watch it all the time so people will know it really happened and you’re not making it up, right? You’re also watching all those very bad bad things so nothing worse sneaks up on you, right? Maybe this time it will be worse, right?

LIT: Uh huh because it can be really bad and mommy said no but it happened. We know all about that. Plus we’ll disappear if it didn’t happen and we don’t wanna disappear. Plus you’re the one who let it happen.

ME: I want you all to listen to me very carefully ok? I was not there when Uncle Norman did all those bad things to you. I wasn’t old enough, I was you. I was each one of you. But I am a grownup now and I can protect all of us. We live in a different time now, we’re big now and we will make sure that Uncle Norman never comes again. He can’t come because he is dead. Do some of you know what dead means? Like Grammie Davenport, remember? She died and that meant we wouldn’t see her again, right? Uncle Norman is the same thing.

LIT: But she came back after 47 days. And she is someplace now. Uncle Norman too, he came back after 47 days. And he is someplace maybe looking for us again.

ME: Grammie Davenport came back after 47 days, that’s right. She I think came back as a person because she was good to all of us, right? So she came back as a person and maybe one day we will see her again and that would be very nice, right? But do some of you remember from Temple School that sometimes very bad people who make very bad Karma come back as other things, right? Remember the story about the cockroach from School? Uncle Norman is not a person and he won’t be a person for a very long time. Maybe he’s a cockroach like the story or maybe he’s even something worse. Uncle Norman was a very bad man and his karma will keep him from hurting us ever again.

LIT: Are you the Storyteller? We like her she is nice to us.

ME: Well no I’m not the Storyteller but I made the Storyteller come to help you feel better. The Nanny too. So things are different but these are good things and changes, right? We can have fun whenever you want to if you want to do something fun all you have to do is tell me and we will do that.

LIT: But fun is for the other kids not us.

ME: Well, we are going to learn about fun. I have to learn about it just like y’all do so we can do it together. Like when the Storyteller tells you a story and you go to sleep, right? That’s a good thing that is called fun. We don’t have to be on the lookout for Uncle Norman anymore so we have time to do neat things. Like skydiving, I know you all really like skydiving right? That is what fun is. And like that race with all the gay people like us last weekend. I know some of you were there, right? And you liked it right? That is fun too.

LIT: But we have to be little and quiet and still or Uncle Norman will find us. Bad, bad, bad things happen when we’re not still and quiet. And you are making them be too loud.

ME: Okay. I know that you’re very scared. And it’s my job to help you learn how to be happy. For all of us to be happy and together. I want you to go with the teenagers to Maine for this weekend. The Storyteller will be there and Nanny too. So you can be safe there. I know you all know you are safe there, right? So go with the teenagers to Maine this weekend and you can stop yelling. Just watch me while I have some fun and you will see that it can be okay. I will be here to listen to you when you’re really scared and you can always tell me when something is scary. But you can use your indoor voice and I will take care of whatever you think. OK? Just for three days go back to Maine and play around on the beach. Then we can talk about it on Monday.

LIT: This new one is making all this stuff happen and we’re scared.

ME: Well, the new one is there to help us. You never have to tell secrets again I promise. We know the secrets enough by now, right? And she isn’t making us do anything. She is helping me help you better. You don’t have to tell anything like the last one tricked you and then left you.

LIT: She was bad.

ME: Yes she was. But this one isn’t. I know you have no reason to trust anybody ever but you’ll see. Everything’s gonna be okay. It will be fun some day even.

ME: Okay, so I hope you can think about these things and let me know on Monday what you think. I am very tired now and I am going to have a sort of a nap Meditation. Some of you know how to do that I know. So go to Maine everybody. Do whatever you want to do. And just see if it’s maybe okay, just for this weekend.

Ok. Let’s hope I’ve been influential. 😉

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Transitional Objection

May 19, 2010 at 12:16 pm (Guest Hosts)
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Splinterdones has been kind enough to allow me to write (my first ever) guest post on her blog. Therefore, I am an amateur at this. Although, I do have my own blog (Hopefortrauma) that I use to disperse my grandeurious thoughts/delusions through the inter-webs.

Nevertheless, a rather pertinent issue that Splint and I have discovered is transitions. As a multiple, the word “transition” can have many meanings. However, for this blog post I will be discussing the transition onto a new therapist as well as things that I do to “switch” from session mode to productive-ish mode.

Adjusting to a new therapist is very challenging for me. One may become accustomed to their previous therapist through many aspects such as their voice, clothing choices, office space etc. Regulating oneself to a new environment can be difficult but not impossible.

When I was forced to leave my therapist whom worked at a trauma program, I compared every therapist I met to her. This made it more difficult to choose a new therapist to work with. And when I finally decided to separate my previous therapist from my newer potential therapist, was when I found someone I was willing to collaborate with.

I have a hard time acclimating myself to new offices for therapy because I am very tactile which is not always a bad thing. However, when I started with my current therapist I went to her office early, so I could evaluate the surrounding (and find the best possible way to exit if needed). Then I went home and drew where all her furniture was within her office as well as where she sat etc.

It helped my parts & I to get more comfortable in the new surroundings. Well this was until I learned my therapist had two offices 🙂

Since I am a college student as well as multiple, multitasking is what I do 24/7. However, after therapy sessions, my brain feels so overloaded & rather mushy. This makes multitasking sometimes impossible.

I made this playlist on my iPod that is my “chill out music”. My drive is rather long so I try to center myself before I get behind the wheel. I park in a safe yet far away place so I am required to walk which helps me to ground myself after sessions.

Also after I get home if one of my parts or I am not ready to be productive I let myself have 90 minutes to do self-care-ish things. This could sometimes be coloring, writing or just laying on my carpet to decompress from my venture into the past.

I think having a schedule can be helpful for some parts because they know what to expect and I enjoy controlling things. Therapy is not easy and it may help to give oneself permission to just be whatever afterwards as well as before.

Transitions are sometimes scary for both myself as well as my  internal system. But, I think it is important to notice when and if one may need time to just chill out.

Acclimating to anything in life can take time but I think it is important to allow yourself “breathing room” to step back and realize how far you have come along the journey and to live in the moment.

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Painting my Soul

May 1, 2010 at 1:31 pm (dissociation complex Ptsd trauma child sexual abuse DID psychology survivor)
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Long ago in a land far, far away, I was in my twenties and my PTSD hadn’t put me to a full stop yet. I was a Marketing Consultant, pulling in a ton of cash working for myself and basically living the life of a young affluent city gal. If someone at that time would ask me what I was I’d say I was a painter. It was what I loved, I made money on it…it was just who I was.

Once the PTSD brought my life to a screeching halt in my mid-thirties everything in my life basically stopped. Except my painting. It morphed into angry, screaming drivel yes. But I kept doing it because it was the only thing giving any oxygen to my soul.

I hung onto painting because I was never allowed to express creativity when I was a kid. I was “gifted” in those days before the category was created. I was smart, so smart that I was attending college courses in grammar school. My parents decided to keep me with my regular class and not advance early because I exhibited chronic socialization problems. I didn’t seem able to form bonds with kids teachers anybody. They assumed it was because of my braniacism and not the sexal assaults that my mother consistently denied. So while my sister was able to draw and color and play violin I studied. Bitch. I never even owned crayons.

Anyway, for my 22nd birthday my girlfriend at the time took me to an art supply store and set me up with oils guache brushes the whole nine yards. Trying to think about what to possibly paint the first time she told me that it didn’t matter. That whatever I painted no one else in the world could paint exactly my vision and that was what creativity was all about. I fell in love with it immediately.

Anyway, I’ve had a few fairly successful shows but for the most part my stuff is Impressionist which is not a popular style these days. It doesn’t matter to me if anybody else likes my work as long as I do. And I’ve done very few things I don’t adore.

So I’ve been happily painting along until about this time last year. My therapist at the time was on me to bring something in for her to see. So I brought in this really cool still life that I’d recently finished. She said wow I had no idea how cool your stuff is blah blah can I keep it I was so shocked to get any kind of reaction from her of any kind so said sure. I mean, I can always paint more, right? Right.

The next time I was in her office my painting was leaning against the wall I would stare at, straight ahead of me. It stayed there for nine months, until the day I fired her. For other reasons than this, but it did have an impact on me, this cavalier disregard for my stuff.

Today is the first time I have picked up brush to paint and canvas. It’s like blissing out. I can’t really describe it, I just paint what I see and there it is. My old self-portrait of a hundred individual tiny little slivers all rimmed in black no longer applies. I’ve only just started this one but most of the black borders are gone. There are still alot of us,. 42 I believe, but the lines of delineation between them just aren’t there for the most part. That tells me that what I am feeling internally, that there’s actually communication going on, that the littles are gaining shape and that things are very confusing. The littles are feeling things for the first time and even though I’m not finished with it I can feel them there. I recognize everybody, which is also a great surprise.

So there it is. I get my creativity back. There used to be a single internal, the Painter, who did it. But today it was a thing by committee. Parts that have never known of others’ existence are deciding on color texture and all the decisions you make when you’re painting in oil. The best part of the whole thing is that I gave this back to me. I gave the best part of me back to us. Cool breeze.

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New Internal System

March 18, 2010 at 4:26 pm (dissociation complex Ptsd trauma child sexual abuse DID psychology survivor)
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So. We have a new internal system. T has suggested it several times before but frankly we blew her off and never really thought about it. But it makes absolute sense and we’re going with it.

I should introduce myself. I am the Weaver. My job her whole life has been to throw out whatever piece she needs to function in the world. Student, daughter, driver whatever.

The way I had run things was to sit on top with a big heavy industrial loom. I threw in strands of color that was whatever functionary. I had absolute control over this process. Nobody inside ever bothered me or questioned me. I was an autocrat. Absolute rule. I kept everybody separate and isolated from one another. As long as there were enough colors I was all set.

It was obvious within weeks of starting work with T that this internal system was no longer going to work. Alters were jumping over me to speak directly to her. Which was pissing me off and so I had to set down martial law. Which resulted only in chaos and fights and a bit of self-injury. At the same time that I was struggling to regain some semblance of control, T took away The Furies. Who served the very important function of scaring everybody to death with flashbacks and creepy self-talk, thus allowing me to keep them all in line.

Blah blah in any event I gave up the Loom about a month ago. Because our goal, wverybody’s goal, is to be just one. Which requires communication, sharing of information, being able to sort it all out, what belongs to whom exactly. And everybody in here really needs to be able to tell their story to T so she can help us get put together.

I had been waffling around with all of this, being basically a sniveling bitch, because I wasn’t yet able to let go of the authority. I feared that things would go completely awry with somebody else in charge. And I like bossing them around. Once I realized that I could still be the coordinator, though, I began to soften up. I also realized that at one time, very long ago, there was only one of her. Got me thinking.

I have always had this perception that we are made up of thousands of tiny individual splinters, each with it’s own unique piece of memory or emotional state. I realized the other day that this is not really how it works. Each of these tiny fragments belongs to a functioning character within us. A finite number of people. While it’s going to be a major bitch to sort out what feeling or memory or whatever belongs to who, and who exactly the who’s are, it is a very comforting feeling knowing that there is a finite number inside.

So. What we are is a great big jigsaw puzzle. Each piece of the puzzle is important as a part of the whole but has no real meaning sitting all by itself. The people within are composed of clusters of pieces put together. These have some meaning as independent agents. Just like in a puzzle, they form together to be a tree or a spring or a garden. Something, but the pieces only have real meaning when all are put together to make a whole Terri. That is the only way to get the picture of what she really is.

Of course, all of the pieces are blank right now, since we’ve no idea of who the Hell she is. But given time and patience and a T who is just perfect for us the colors and the shapes will come.

I really really like this internal system. It’s flexible, it’s communicative, it has as it’s natural conclusion the picture of all of us coming together. And we all together get to decide what the end picture is going to be. I like that.

It’s rather nice not having to be a jerk any more.

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Seeking new internal system

March 4, 2010 at 7:28 am (dissociation complex Ptsd trauma child sexual abuse DID psychology survivor, Lesbian)
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Last weekend, when the earthquake hit in Chile, there was a huge alert in Hawaii for a potentially disastrous tsunami. We were glued to the TV, watching coverage on CNN, MSNBC and I believe BBC in America. Transfixed.

As regular readers know, we have kicked out the internal system that has gotten us thru the past…well all of our life. The weaved sat on top, throwing colors and textures into a loom as each color was needed to function. Colors were people, emotions, functions such as driving and dealing with clients…splinters.

This was a very autocratic system. The Weavef would pull something up and it would have to be there. Whenever there was dissention in the ranks, very infrequently, the Weaver would throw in the Furies to scare the shit out of everybody else hence achieve compliance.

We’ve decided that this is not a good internal organization. Too secluded. Kept everybody sepRate from the rest. No communication hence no cooperation. No teamsmanship. No personal growth learning or real expression for any of the splints. Which is all counter to our goals in getting better.

So the old system is gone. Unfortunately the Weaver doesn’t have a new conceptualization yet so things are rather chaotic. Hence the drive to create increased safety and stabilization at this time.

Watching the fizzled Hawaiian tsunami something began to form. Something so familiar in the pattern of waves crashing onto new and higher ground. Followed by the sucking out of the sea, leaving the seafloor totally exposed. And able to be seen.

This in out in out pattern is how our life seems to be these days. Battle royale leaving our sea floor bare and exposed. Then crashing in of waves on new territory and the coolness of that epiphanous moment. Then the draining back, to create even greater self-awareness. In out in out.

We like the idea of the ocean. It is vast and seemingly infinite while holding itself to very firm boundaries to keep if safe and functional. The currents the riptides the stillness at any given minute. The tremendous temperature variances of the same water system. The ebb and the flow. The teeming lives that it supports. The tempest and the doldrums. All in one package. Oxygen aplenty.

We are not quite sure how to go about reorganizing ourselves. There’s not yet formed a global interpretation but we think we’re getting close. All those molecules separate but equal, forming the planef’s biggest biomass. So fagile and yet so overwhelmingly powerful. Awesome.

The only safe place we had as a kid was our house on the ocean on the Maine coast. Tides are very apparent there, some of the most extreme in the world. It’s so cold it takes your breath away. Some days the high tide pounds on the rocky beach and other days it creeps in on kittens’ paws to steal from Robert Frost.

Anyway. Like a journalist with a scent on news we see something here. Something fluid, able to sustain incredible and diverse life forms. Has it’s own rhythms yet is capable of tremendous change in an instant.

So. Any thoughts on how the Weaver can put this all together?

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Accepting Applications

February 23, 2010 at 8:36 am (dissociation complex Ptsd trauma child sexual abuse DID psychology survivor)
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So. We are now accepting applications for a new internal system. We assume it’s possible for us to change it;we also assume it’s gonna be a bitch to do. But we are strong and we are creative, so we have faith in being able to get the job done.

Here’s what the right applicant will require:

–Creative sensibility. We write cook and paint, all very important.

–communicative. Must be a le to effectively get messages across amongst a wide array of personnel with varying interests.

–conflict resolution. Must be able to efficiently negotiate conflict resolutions between splinters of all ages and experience levels.

–calm. The applicant must be able to engender calm when Rome occasionally burns to the ground around it.

–sense of humor. Must be able to see the humor in various situations.

–triage. Mist be able to quickly discern priority cases amongst population

–switching. Must be able to quickly and painlessly coordinate appropriate switching as necessary.

–growth. Must have the ability to grow and change as life permits.

–open-minded. Must be able to witness life events and splintered responses without judgment.

–hypnosis. Must be able to put to sleep various personnel when warranted.

–separate past from present. Must have the ability to quickly discern staff responses that are triggers from the past from what is happening in the present moment.

–religion. Must be a Buddhist, Tibetan preferred but not mandatory.

–woman. Nothing more to say than this. Must be a woman.

well, this is a start. Apply here.

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Internal System For Sale

February 22, 2010 at 8:14 pm (dissociation complex Ptsd trauma child sexual abuse DID psychology survivor)
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It’s time for a new internal system. The old one is far too limiting and it can’t handle the traffic. As we go thru this work On our DID and the associated traumae, splinters are waking up. They Are coming out of hiding and they want their stories to be heard. There are hundreds of litle splinters in here and the traffic is an absolute gridlock on the current system.

Here’s how it has always worked: Weaver sits on top with a loom. Her job is to throw colors into the loom at the right times. Colors represent the specific coping skill that is required at any given moment.

The weaver is used to working without questions or comments or with any splinters that have any free will for themselves. Martial law. Things have run relatively smoothly and successfully for them for nearly 50 yeArs with this organizational system and it has rarely completely failed on us. But it’t time foe somehing else.

The Weaver’s first reaction to getting feedback of any kind was to say screw you guys you wanna deal with it go right ahead, deal away. Chaos reigned because there was nobody to step in and keep the loom running. So nobody ate for days, somebody carved “bitch on her body in Morse code…well, it was all just a mess.

So. Weaver having felt she mDe her point has come back. She has agreed to be more communicative in her plans and to accept more feedback from the various splints rather than to just force colors to come out to work.

But I is a system that has outgrown it’s usefulness. Oh, we will always need the weaver. She has after all kept us alive. She knows what’s appropriate and when. She’s our first responder.

But there is no opportunity for sharing of information in this way. Colors are fixed by hue, there is no wiggle room. And because each splinter is it’s own distinct color there is no mechanism for them to share information or even get together on whatever Idea X.

We need greater elasticity, teamwork. The days of autocratic rule no longer serve us. Of being just a lost coping machine. We are human and that is going to require everybody’s cooperation to the healing process.

So, we’re shopping for a new internal system. Last night there was something attractive about the Curling methodology. Yes, as in Olympic Curling hah. The teamwork approach was appealing, that several little jobs were going on at once. The stone (the thing they throw down the ice) seemed to be us as we live our life and the Sweepers helped to influence the curve the stone takes after it is set free. What can I say we are grasping at straws here hah.

So. We have an internal system for sale that is in good order. It just doesn’t fit any longer. And if anybody out there is getting rid of theirs, lemme know we are in the market.

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