The Mind VS Feelings

NOTE: Please be aware that sex is a topic in this post - it is not discussed in any depth but it is mentioned. If you feel this might trigger you, take care of yourself and skip this post.

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Running away from a Good Thing

The most exciting news I have since my huge break is that at the beginning of the year Elmo proposed! We are planning a small garden wedding for March 2013. I feel very lucky to have found someone who is so loving and supportive and who respects my needs even when they can be a little difficult. He also amazingly great with my littles but I plan to post about that in a later post.

A drawing I made representing how safe I feel with Elmo

The hard thing for me at the moment is that despite all this, I am having to fight a part of me that is telling me to break it off and run away. I understand that this just my subconscious just trying to protect me from being hurt and have been talking to Margaret about it too. According to her, everyone has pre-wedding jitters and when you couple that with my abusive childhood, a father who left me and hasn't contacted me since age 6 and the lack of good examples when it comes to marriage; its no wonder I am fearful of commitment.

The thing is, knowing all this doesn't make the feeling go away - I still want to run away. I'm really worried that I'm going to screw up and ruin this great thing. Its frustrating because I want this to be a fun exciting time and I cant seem to escape my past. I'm angry that long after his death my grandfather is still screwing up my life.

I have talked this all through with Elmo and as usual, he is completely understanding and loving, though I know it hurts him that part of me wants to run away. One of the things I have been doing is writing a list of all the things I love about Elmo and reading through it when I get scared or want to run away.

Terrified of hospitals

I'm over hospitals, first Elmo fractured his L1, then a couple weeks ago I became really sick and couldn't keep any food down and became so dehydrated I needed to go into the hospital for a day. They did lots of tests and never did find out what was wrong however they believe it was just an infection. Then a few days ago Elmo went back into hospital for what they thought was appendicitis but turned out to be a swollen colon. He was released yesterday and is much better but over all I am just sick of hospitals.

I have to go back to the hospital tomorrow morning for yet another test as my doctor keeps wanting to check that the Chronic Fatigue isn't anything else. I will only be in there an hour or two, however its still the hospital and the truth is hospitals terrify me. I have managed with all these trips because Elmo needed me or because I knew I needed to be there and I'm not going to let myself be horribly sick to avoid hospitals. At the same time though they terrify me and it gets me all uptight every time I have to go. 

I am rather impressed though that I have managed to visit the hospital this year and I didn't switch, well for very little time anyway. A year or two ago I would not have been able to cope and would have hid away inside and let another part deal with being at the hospital. I even managed to avoid panic attacks. For me this is a huge improvement, that I have been able to face my fears and keep myself calm.

I believe I know where my fear from hospitals comes from, but it frustrates me at how irrational it is. When my grandmother went into hospital (she was sick for all of my childhood) it usually meant I was left alone with my grandfather and bad things would happen. I believe I associate the hospital with those bad things despite the fact I realise that it was my grandfather and not the hospital at fault, and it just provided my grandfather with opportunity.

I am not really sure about the point of this post, other than to let out my frustration and anxiety about hospitals out. I do want to write in my blog more and plan to try, however as you may have figured out by this post I am still struggling with the Chronic Fatigue and been quite sick on top of that and that makes it hard to keep on top of blogging.

Falling

It has been over a month since I last posted and I feel bad for that. Not simply for the people who read this but more for myself. Writing this blog is extremely therapeutic for me - it helps me to really analyse what I am going through and help me to feel calmer. Margaret explains this as the thinking, logical part of the brain connecting to the emotional part of the brain and helping process things and calming the emotional part. It is why journaling is supposed to help so much. I have also been avoiding doing any art and this is also particularly unhealthy for me as art is a way of safely expressing how I feel.

The reason for all this is I have been having a particularly stressful couple of months. To summaries, Elmo fell and fractured his spine (he has a wedge fracture in his L1 for those of you who have knowledge about spinal injuries), I caught a nasty flu which exacerbated the Chronic Fatigue, I started getting flash backs in relation to a new and particularly nasty memory, and started getting pranks and threats from a man who has hurt me in the past. My house-mate, and good friend has also been particularly struggling with his own issues. Overall, the last 7 weeks have been more than a little difficult.

It can be interesting how things work out; this year I have become a lot closer to a wonderful group of people and started dating Elmo and now all of this difficulties have been dropped in my lap. Had it happened 6 months ago I don't think I would have coped however with the great support I have around me I have been able to get through with out completely breaking down (though there have been moments I have felt close). I am not saying that any of this is good, or even okay - more that it is amazing how the universe/God provides.

Before I began to write this post I entitled it 'Falling' because that has been how I have been feeling lately in a number of ways. I feel that I have fallen off the side of the planet when it comes to keeping in touch with people and keeping up with my blog and reading others. I was literally falling down I was so tired with the Chronic Fatigue (even managed to give myself a mild concussion one night and sprain my wrist). And I have been feeling like I am doing everything I can to not fall into all the emotions that have come with this new memory.

Things are getting better slowly. After 7 weeks in a full back brace, Elmo was given the all clear today to take the brace off, and is getting around just fine. I changed my mobile number and the threats seemed to have stopped (though Elmo is still being very protective). I am very slowly starting to get my energy levels back to where they were and I am not falling down any more. While I am still having a lot of nightmares and still struggling to come to terms with the new memory I am beginning to be desensitised to it and the number of flashbacks has significantly reduced.

I will be trying to write more often though my posts may still be short and irregular at the moment. But I do want to get back in the habit because as I said at the beginning of this post, it does help and when you guys leave comments it really is encouraging and does make a difference.

So to all those people who have regularly read and commented on my blog in the past, thank you, you have helped me get through some difficult times.

Home again and crashing...

It has been a very long tiring week and I fear I am crashing both  emotionally and with the Chronic Fatigue, because of it.

I am now back home after 14 hours of travelling over the past 3 days, the reason for so much travelling is that I had to make an extra trip for Ann's funeral which was on Tuesday. The funeral was very well done, and a beautiful reflection on Ann's full life and the love she shared with so many friends and family. I found the wake harder than the funeral - there were a lot of people and I was expected to be involved in all that small chit chat with people I barely knew (I didn't know a lot of Ann's friends and have never been close to her family bar Judith).

Now that I am finally home and I am alone, I am starting to come apart after holding it together since Ann's death. I am physically exhausted and my body  is aching a lot, I know I have pushed myself to far this week physically and adding the emotional stress of it all I am not surprised that the Chronic Fatigue is hitting me hard today. I tried to take plenty of breaks and rest but I did do too much.

Emotionally I feel numb, too tired to feel much more. However at the same time I am uptight and anxious and I am just feeling generally negative at this moment. I feel disappointed in myself too considering how well I have been doing and how positive I have been despite the sad events.

I recognise that it is okay to feel this way and I just need to take some time and take gentle care of myself in the mean time. However I have this fear that now I am home I will settle back into some old habits of last year and just give in to the Chronic Fatigue and feeling down again. Don't get me wrong -  am glad to be home, to sleep in my own bed, to be able to follow sleeping routines and other healthy habits I have at home that are harder to follow when I am away. But I am scared of the bad habits I have here too, I am already overwhelmed by the amount that I need to do around the house and I am feeling dreadfully alone in having to handle getting it done.

Parts of me?

When I was talking to Steve about DID he asked me where I felt my little ones came from. I had a lot of trouble answering this and I thinnk Steve recognised that as he then changed the question to where did my psychologist think my parts come from. I told him that Margaret said that they are each a part of me - that my mind created different parts to deal with different things in a difficult situation.

Intellectually I have accepted this but when ever Margaret (my psychologist) or someone else talk about them as part of me I want to argue with them. Its a purely emotional response, I recognise that and generally I stop myself from arguing and just bite my tongue, so to speak. Steve seemed to be of the opinion that they are spirits helping me. But that doesnt feel right either.

I have always felt a sense of togetherness with my little ones, a sense of kinship, similar to the ties to family - a connection to them. I remember Paul describing a circle that encompasses all of us - I could relate to that. I have been considering this for a while and I actually found something written down in our shared journal, I am not sure who inside decided to give their opinion but I liked it and thought I would share:

When we were hurt our soul shattered, breaking into different pieces. As it healed it became a multiple of wholes; all connected but seperate, shared in a body.

I dont know how true that is, but it does show that feeling of togetherness while explaining the sense of seperatness.

I suppose Margaret would say that it is not really productive thinking like this. Margaret has been very good at helping me - she has taught me so many skills in coping, she was the one who diagnosed us, and she has help to empower me in particular in really trying to actively heal. She encouraged me to get back into my art after I took that long break. However Margaret seems to feel the only path to healing leads to intergration.

For those of you who dont know what intergration is, the idea is that all of the parts of a person with DID "intergrate" or join together to become one person again. I have heard of people who have interegrated and it has fallen apart months or even years later. I have heard of people who are currently living "intergrated". I also know of people who have full co-conciousness; in other words that are full aware all the time however who is in control can still vary. Or at least that is how I understand it.

Currently my goal in healing is to reach co-conciousness, to be able to function in the every day world. Intergration just doesnt feel achieveable to me at this point and some of my little ones panic at the idea of integration. I guess I panic a little at losing something that has protected me for so long.

When I first found out I had DID - before I could even hear my littles ones, I thought that it was a disaster, something to be ashamed of, that I was somehow broken. I believed that intergration was the only solution. Then as I started to get to know my little ones, I started to realise it wasnt the end of the world, I started to read as much as I could on DID and began to realise that there were other options. At that point I would have said I would never intergrate - that it was an impossibilitity - too hard and too far out of reach. Now? Now I think its a possibility, I feel more together than I ever have however I still feel a strong sense of seperateness at the same time. The idea of integration creates less anxiety than it used to though there is still some. It is something I will consider in the future - for now co-conciousness seems a good goal.

Loss of Routine

So I am staying at my parents place until after the new year and I have been here one night and I am already ready to go home.

Dont get me wrong I love my Mum and step dad, they are good people. And my Mum tries to be supportive as she can of the DID but she doesnt completely get it. But she tries and she has been getting better. But my mum's house if full of clutter - piled high along hallways and in every room. There is no escaping it. I find that makes me stressed, my parents also live in a small country town where unless you drive at least 30mins there is no where to go. I dont have a license so I cant go for a drive and get a way for a while.

I also just cant keep my own routine here, my parents live differently, eat differently and generally their lifestyle choices are rather different. Its hard getting up in the morning and not having my usual choices available for breakfast. Or have all my tea things (sugar, kettle, mug, teaspoons) all set up in the corner ready for me to make my tea in the morning so I can function. These are small things but I find myself more stressed, more tired and just generally more unhappy. I love my parents and I cant explain it to them without upsetting my mum so I just live with it.

Routine and familiarity can be really important in making people feel more safe and less stressed. Our routines are what make things "normal" for us, provide us with a familiar base to work with every day. For me, my routines make functioning in the outside world easier. They help ground me after a bad night, and when I was really struggling with depression they helped me keep going because I didnt have to think I just followed what I knew.

Misdiagnosis - Skitzophrenia vs DID

Thursday is the day I visit my psychologist. I cannot say enough how lucky I am to have found someone who can help me and my alters. There are alot of therapists and psychologists who dont know how to deal with DID. Some just dont believe it exists. There alot of misdiagnosis - usually saying DID is skitzophrenia.

Let me try and explain the differences between skitzophrenia and dissociative Identity disorder:

DID is a way with coping with trauma, usually sexual abuse. A young mind breaks off apart of themselves to deal with the memories, the on going trauma, the emotions etc. This is basicly how alters created, they deal with what our minds couldnt cope with at the time. However each alter is a part of the host.

skitzophrenia is a mental illness, its a chemical imbalance in the brain. Skitzophrenia actually destories brain tissue. There are a number of symtoms one of the most common is hearing voices. This is where the misdiagnosis comes in. However the voices a person with Skitzophrenia hear are not parts of themselves. ANd usually they believe these voices are coming from outside influences.

I saw alot of psychologists and councellors before Margaret (my current psychologist) but while I went to them to help me with what I had been through I did not tell them about the DID. It took me over a year with Margaret to trust her enough to tell her about my alts.

I was terrified that if a doctor or councellor found out they would have me locked up in a hospital - have me committed. I have a large fear of hospitals - not quite phobia I have managed to enter them without having full blown panic attacks at the door - but they are a place I try to avoid - at all costs.

Luckly Margaret reckonised it for what it was, and has been able to help me with it alot - despite how good I am at avoiding. I have a habit of steering the conversation away from anything to painful. Funnily enough I cant actually say what happened to me without trouble if I trust a person. But when I do I tell it like its a story I dont connect with it within myself. I just say the words. I never let myslef feel the pain.

Part of therapy is to visit that pain in small doses to learn how to handle it. I am just starting to get to this stage in my therapy - first I had to establish trust and make sure I was in a stable place. Which I am for the most part - uni assessments dont help. Another part of therapy was learning how to deal with results of trauma - the symtoms of PTSD. the panic attacks, the fear, the nightmares.

I can handle panic attacks now - it took a long time but now I can focus concentrate on my breathing and calm myself just enough before I am hit with a panic attack. I still panic and it is still hard when I am triggered but I dont go into a full blown panic attack.

Nightmares are harder, but in some ways I am doing better with this than 2 years ago. For a long time a good nights sleep was 4 hours max, nightmares where a constant thing every night. Now I can get a full nights sleep, and sometimes go 3 or 4 nights without a nightmare. However it comes and goes in waves. there are times when I will only get a 1 or 2 nightmares a week and they are fairly easy to manage. Then there are times when the nightmares come back every night worse than ever, alters and myself are triggered really badly and our body remembers. But with time and work with Margaret I hope the bad nights are further and further apart.

Fear - it is still very much apart of my life, not just fear of being hurt again, but fear of rejection from people. Fear of large groups of people or loud noises. Fear of how people will react if I switch and an alter comes out. Fear of never being loved.

This is probably the biggest thing I am focusing on at the moment - trying to get past my fears.