Scattered pieces

We went to see Carol yesterday to see if we could go back to see her – she was the therapist before Bob.  The answer seems to be that we can’t…

The break from us did her good in that she wanted to clarify boundaries and think of ways in which to move forward with healing.  But again it seemed as if the therapy was going to mainly be driven by her.  There was an indication that skills to assist us in coping were going to be introduced, but why weren’t these worked on the last time we saw her?  We saw her for nearly three years after all…  It might just be us being cynical, but it seems that it’s only since we went and saw Bob that she really began to research dissociative disorders.  Surely this should have been worked on while we were seeing her, rather than after we’d left her?

What was both scary and comforting is that she picked up when something she said wounded us.  She knows us, she knows how to read us.  But we need someone who can help us heal – not just someone who knows how to play with Aimee…

The worrying thing is that there are so few therapists in this place.  Carol is going to talk to her supervisor tomorrow to see if they can suggest someone for us.  We know that many people go through periods of no therapy and it helps them, so it sort of makes us feel pretty weak to NEED a therapist.  But we know that our level of coping means that we need those external checks on our safety – we can appear to the outside world to be highly functional, but inside it’s chaos.

Will see what happens tomorrow…

I think it’s time to admit the glaringly obvious fact that (as a dissociative system), we suffer from a great deal of stupidity!  We can do academic work no problem, sometimes we even enjoy it…  But give us anything that isn’t a concrete concept to think about and we’re all over the place.

So yet again Kriss (yes, the man is still hanging in there), was on the receiving end of our stupidity.  On Friday near the end of the working day we had this immediate need to create a set on Polyvore.  This is unusual for us in that we go to work to do work.  Any time we waste at work we make up for at home later – we got into this habit when we realised how much time we can lose at work. This particular set was very quickly created and called Welcome to the Basement.  It was done almost on auto-pilot, and then forgotten – or so I thought…

This set and what it represents for a young one within the system caused a rather rapid downward spiral.  This coincided with Kriss having a really busy week and a REALLY slow Internet connection.  So we were doing a tailspin, trying desperately to reach out for help – but expecting that help not to be there.  We could have just called Kriss and said “Help” – but that would have been too simple, sensible and totally beyond our current level of functioning/coping.  So instead we did the worst thing possible – open up all the IM clients and hoped that Kriss would contact us.  We would occasionally send a message, but he didn’t respond (remember his slow Internet connection issue).

There was so much backlash about the memory and Kriss not responding, that we decided that he had dumped us – without letting us know.  Yes, we are supposedly in our late 30′s and not teenagers *sigh*.  This conclusion caused a further downward spiral and the rapid creation of another (quite creepy) set titled Come on into the Basement.  This second set was the breakthrough… it eased the pain of the one holding the memory and emotions and meant that the downward spiral just sort of “disappeared”.  It was the weirdest feeling, we went from total chaos to clear thinking in about half an hour.  The others stepped back and I could see what we’d done and the potential fall out of those actions…

By this time, according to us Kriss had dumped us and he was “just like all the other men that hurt us”.  According to Kriss, we were not dumped.  He was however confused about how to help us deal with things like this in the future – and a little stunned about what had happened without even a word from him… lol.  Looking back, it is pretty funny…

Carol (codename for previous therapist we’re going to try and see again Tuesday), once said that when we do this we’re like a wounded cat.  We hiss, spit and claw at everyone around us to tell them to go away and leave us alone so they can’t hurt us.  What we don’t see is that those people are genuinely trying to help us.  They are the people who care about us.  Because they care, and we care about them, it makes the stakes so much higher.  It’s easier to lash out and drive them away than to reach out for help.

Thankfully we snapped out of it all quickly this time and could see what we’d been doing.

We have a basement in our internal house where some of the most violent and angry ones “reside”, I have a feeling that it was this group that have the one who needed to do those sets on Polyvore…  Thankfully they picked that way to release the emotion and tell a part of their experience…  Actually, I’m pretty proud of them for selecting that way!!

It’s official, we’re not coping!

We engaged in self-injury for the first time in months over the weekend.  It’s never serious, it’s never in a place that others can see it, but it’s an indication that things are spiraling out of control again. Part of the reason is the pressure that is bearing down us – people contacting us through YouTube, people at work, start of the semester…

We coped well during the week of the anniversary by being in a very dissociated, protective state.  It’s only now that those ones are stepping back that we’re getting the backlash.  Weird responses such as sitting at the computer talking to Kriss through IM and suddenly getting the sweaty smell of the ex-husband all around us.  We’re feeling very much like a caged animal that is being poked at by sticks.  The need to lash out is incredible – but who would we lash out against?  We’d never knowingly hurt anyone else and would not put their safety at risk – if only we regarded our own body worthy of this respect.

Another indication that we’re struggling is that some of us are at peace and content.  Quite often when we’re going into a downward spiral the difference between those who are at peace and sad or angry becomes greater.  Not quite sure why this is, but it has happened consistently.  It is at these times that the soothing messages about suicide being the ideal option become stronger.  These messages are always harder to ignore when they are soothing…

The final straw came in two forms yesterday:

1) Someone on YouTube sending us a message about forgiving our abusers and accepting God into our hearts.  We respect everyones right to exercise their religious freedom, as long as it doesn’t negatively impact on anyone else.  But why would someone do such a random message?  The person talked about letting go of the anger towards our abusers.  We don’t hate them, we don’t feel anything but confusion and self-blame about it all.

2) At work there is a vacancy for a position that will be working closely with us and is two grades lower, meaning less responsibility.  We found out yesterday that the library manager was going to offer the position to the person at a pay level $5000 above our current salary.  So we would basically be supervising someone who is earning more than us.

One moment at a time…

So many aspects of our life right now are caught between old and new patterns, things, behaviours etc.  A therapist would probably describe it as a turning point, in that we can now see how damaging the past has been, but not yet healed enough to be able to fully challenge those old of ways of thinking and behaving.

Sometimes we can see glimpses of a healthy reaction to a situation.  Sometimes we’re flipped back into the old patterns and coping mechanisms.  Our reaction to Kriss is probably the most obvious example of this.  If he is not having a good day or is tired, we can sometimes see that it’s something that he has to manage – with our help if needed.  Unfortunately, most of the time we look for what we have done wrong, for him to be playing games with us or to be getting sick of having to deal with us.

The intellectual response is to realise that this is our PTSD and domestic violence patterns kicking in.  Problem is that we still can’t change our behaviour and reactions even though we know the reasons why.  The mixed messages from within make it impossible to decipher the true reason for him not having a good day.  The young parts fall into the only pattern of behaviour they know – “it’s our fault”; the angry ones consider him to “be a typical man that we need to get rid of”; the intellectuals argue about whether he is a good man, or we’re hoping he’s a good man but he’s actually just like the others and we’re fooling ourselves.  It’s exhausting to have this constantly going on.

This sort of thinking can go into every part of our life.  We know that this is often the reason that we can’t sleep – the brain is going too fast for it’s own good.  But the brain is all we know, we have very little awareness of the body – it’s too unreliable…

In the “well fancy that” files, we got the report to ACC from Bob yesterday.  She did consider us to be DID, she mentioned talking to alters and our “fragile personality structure”.  I now think that she was quite worried about that fragility, so as a result tried to rush an integration in an attempt to stop further splits.  If only we’d all been able to talk about it, things might have gone differently with her.  We’ll see what happens when we have an appointment with Carol (new codename for previous therapist).

A year ago today, the ex-husband left us. Valentine’s Day means good and bad… hope and pain… life and death…

When Valentine’s Day means pain – by castorgirl on Polyvore.com

We made it through the anniversary!  It was rough – derealisation on the day and then it hit us like a freight train the following day.  Poor Kriss got a crying female who couldn’t stay still for the entire day; well until we switched and then he apparently got someone who talked in a monosyllabic monotone.  I have a feeling it was a protective one taking their role quite seriously…

So yes, we made it through – we knew we would, we just weren’t sure how bad it was going to be.

We heard back from the recommended therapist today.  It wasn’t good news, she isn’t taking on anymore ACC clients.  So we’re going to have to go back to the search.  In the meantime we’re going to go see the therapist before Bob just to see if the break has helped the situation.  It may let us create better boundaries.  We’re just going to try one appointment and see what happens.  If there’s too much backlash internally, we’re back to the full on search.

Feeling very lost and adrift again – hate that feeling.

A year ago today we were physically  assaulted by the ex-husband for the last time.  It’s a day to celebrate in that it was the last time he touched us with violence.  But we’re also being triggered by pretty much everything.

In the true tradition of YouTube, here is some illegal music that means something to each group within our internal house…

The Innocents – Hymn by Brooke Fraser

Sophie, M etc -  Breathe me by Sia

1st Floor -  Lust for life by Iggy Pop

Basement -  Show me how to live by Audioslave

Yes, we’re an eclectic group that doesn’t listen to any of the music above unless one group is strongly present.  We usually listen to soothing music of any genre.

This is very much from the random section of my brain…  But last night I had extremely odd dreams about insects and spiders.  I hate insects and spiders.  They move fast and are just “creepy” – yes, that scientific term used by many to describe bugs of various species.

But these were not ordinary bugs.  They were moving jewel encrusted bugs – sort of like the insect world and Cartier colliding.  They were everywhere – in my folded pile of clean washing, in my wardrobe…

What’s odd is that I wasn’t fazed by the jewel encrusted bugs at all.  I just swiped them away and let them fall to the floor.  My usual reaction to bugs is to either “abandon ship” and let the 1st floor deal with them; or to go get the bug spray and empty the can on the poor unsuspecting thing.  Both of these methods usually spell doom for the bug.

It appears as if the jewel encrusted variety were ok to let live as they just picked themselves up after being swiped onto the floor and kept on going.  They did seem to be slower moving – possibly the weight of all the jewels attached to their little bodies.  Considering our financial situation, I’m surprised there wasn’t some desire to pick the bugs up and sell them off :)

In our last entry I stated that the sister had been “psychologically abused, but was not subjected to any other abuse”.  Reading it again has made me realise what an odd statement it was, and it’s possibly tied to the rather large issues we have with the sister.  The family dynamics created a household where psychological abuse occurred frequently – the mother has now accepted this as a reality.  What I find frustrating, annoying and degrading is the way in which psychological abuse is often ignored or treated as if it isn’t serious.  All you have to do is consider the Megan Meier case to realise the implications of psychological abuse – in this instance a campaign of cyber-bullying. 

I wonder how many people know what psychological abuse is, and what it’s like to live in a psychologically abusive environment.

One of the most obvious examples we can think of when we were growing up, was presenting our report cards to the father.  At the end of each year we all had to give our father our respective report cards and wait for the fall out.  We all used to show them to the mother first so she could determine which order we’d present them to the father.  Depending on his mood we would go first or last, as we generally had the best grades of the four children.  If we went first then the others would get compared to ours and he’d end up in a foul mood calling at least one of the siblings useless, thick etc.  If we went last, he was in such a rage by the time we got to see him that we were terrified.

Due to the abuse we were subjected to, we became very withdrawn at school.  We didn’t talk and were incredibly shy.  One aspect they assess in school is participation, it eventually led to the teachers being honest and starting to give us B’s, C’s and D’s for class involvement/socialisation.  While we can now understand why this happened, seeing these lower grades on the report card caused major panic.  We were never praised for the straight A’s, so what was going to happen with these lower grades appearing?  We’d seen the abuse given to the siblings, so what was going to happen to us?

But if you look at psychological abuse as this one incident, it doesn’t give a true indication of the nature of psychological abuse.  The difference between psychological abuse and a father being angry at his children’s academic achievement is the nature of that anger, how it’s shown and its context within the life of the participants.  One quote we quite like to describe this is that psychological abuse is a campaign.

So if the fathers anger at our grades were a one off incident, it could be explained by him having a bad day.  It’s still not acceptable, but once the anger had blown over the family would be able to re-unite to talk about what had occurred with genuine remorse shown by the father.  Hurt had been caused and it would be addressed.  In families where pressure was building to the point where there was anger management issues, you can see how there would be room for family and individual counselling as a way to stop patterns developing.  This seems to be how a healthy family would deal with isolated incidents that cause harm, but they are not what would be considered a campaign of psychological abuse.

Without going into too much detail, it’s easy to see how the parents ended up in the marriage and family dynamic that they did.  While there are no indications of physical abuse, psychological abuse did seem to be a factor in the fathers up-bringing.  The mother married the first man she seriously dated.  Add to this the father’s alcoholism and enjoyment of pornography, and it was a disaster waiting to happen.  By the time we were born, the disaster was full blown.

Looking at any form of abuse that occurs over time as an enduring pattern, it can be quite baffling to stand outside of the situation and question why the victim doesn’t just leave, or the perpetrator realise how destructive the behaviour is.  But when that abuse is all you’ve ever known, or has been so slowly introduced into your life and is now insidious; you often lose sight of what is “normal” or healthy.

In our experience, the psychological abuse ensured that we didn’t tell anyone about what else was happening to us.  It meant that we tried to help a woman at work escape from an abusive marriage, without realising we were also in an abusive marriage.

In the sisters experience, the psychological abuse and having Cushings Syndrome, meant that she also went from one bad relationship to another.  She abused us in order to release the anger that she felt and couldn’t express in any other way.  She repeated those patterns for many years.

We haven’t had any real contact with the sister in over eight years.  We both continued the patterns learnt from childhood – we did become a product of our environment.  In our own ways, we’re all trying to break those patterns.