Scattered pieces

We went to pick up the mother from the airport today.  It was pouring with rain and the wind was coming as an icy blast from the Desert Road.  While we were sitting in the airport lounge we were dissociating badly and switching all over the place.  It wasn’t a negative thing, just unsettling and rather unusual.  Part of the reason was because there was a high number of families with young children in the lounge area.  At one point a girl who was about 3-4 and what appeared to be her father came and sat near us.  The girl was a typical 3-4 year old on a rainy day – full of energy and excited about seeing who was coming on the plane.  She ran up to the glass looking out over the runway and was pressed her nose up against the glass.  All the time the man with her was talking softly to her.  But he was also listening to what she was saying.  When she went up to the glass he  followed her and crouched down beside her.  He kept his hands in his jacket pockets and just talked to her as if she was a 3-4 year old.  He didn’t fondle her.  He didn’t talk to her like an adult.  He didn’t expect her to sit down and be quiet.  He treated her like the child she was and he would look after her.  She didn’t have to look after him.  She didn’t have to gauge his mood.  She didn’t have to stand in front of him for the fondling.

Is that how fathers are meant to treat their daughters?

We know that on an intellectual level what we saw today was how it’s meant to be.  We treat any child who comes near us with the care and respect that this man showed this girl.  But today for some reason one of us stared at this interaction and asked if that’s what normal looks like.  It was like it was the first time they’d seen something that didn’t involve a girl being hurt.

Soon after another family came by.  This was a woman with four children – some her own and some nephews.  She did an amazing job of managing these children.  She got them co-operating without making the older one responsible for the others.  The youngest girl was always monitored and allowed to take part in the activities of the others.  At one point the woman asked the children to sit down so that the could eat the food she’d brought to help ease their boredom during the wait for the plane.  At this point another young one of ours got caught in a flashback briefly as they heard the voice say to “Sit there and shut up”.  What the woman had actually said was to “Sit there and share your chippies with your cousin”.  The tone of voice she used was calm and questioning rather than demanding.  The different tone she used was enough to break the descent into the flashback.

I have no idea why these events affected us so deeply today.  I have no idea which young ones were so eager to watch what was happening at the airport.  I do know that it was TR who greeted the mother from the plane and went supermarket shopping with her.  That in itself is very unusual.  TR is a roamer like B, but rarely comes forward to talk to anyone.  She did talk to a former psychiatrist once, which was rather amusing considering she knows very little about our life in the real world.

Has anyone experienced the feeling that their daily functioning and coping is falling away, but you still have enough rational thinking to realise that this is happening?  If so, what have you done to help yourself climb out of that hole or situation?

We hate flying.  The physical issues associated with our hearing loss mean that flying of any sort is incredibly painful and tiring.  So just getting to and from the interview we had yesterday was incredibly stressful and draining.  We did it though…

When we got to the University we were shown around the campus by another librarian.  It was an incredibly beautiful campus and the library was a clash of old building with new technology, but it worked.  There was lots of space for communal or individual work and the teaching spaces were well appointed.  The first sign that things were a little odd were evident fairly early on.  Part of the tour took us past the reference desk where two librarians were working, one was busy doing their own work staring at the computer screen, the other was helping a student.  My tour guide paused and it was obvious that he was going to make introductions.  The librarian who was doing their own work looked at us out of the corner of their eye and kept on working.  When the student left the other librarian (who was the head of one of the service areas) my tour guide stepped towards her and we both looked at her.  She ignored us both and went back to typing furiously on her keyboard.

So maybe professionalism and basic customer service isn’t their thing???

Also went into the staffroom where several librarians were having lunch, again just suspicious looks.

So maybe even smiling isn’t their thing???

Then the interview…  we gave a quick presentation and then got into the questions.  The Human Resources guy was rude.  He mentioned that some of our responses were strange.  He was dismissive and at times confrontational.  It was awful.  We were already off-balance because of the odd behaviour we saw during the tour, so answered questions badly.  In part because Management realised we wouldn’t fit in there, so purposefully answered a few of the questions in an odd way – not enough to be written off, but enough to mean that we shouldn’t get through to the next round in the process.

We hope we don’t get offered the job, I’m not sure how you turn down a job offer.  I’m just so lucky that we’re currently employed so we have the luxury of being able to turn down jobs.

After we finally got home Sophie was in tears and couldn’t stop crying.  We needed to reach out, but didn’t know how.  We chatted very briefly with a friend, but the sense of compassion and caring we got was too much to handle.  We needed to punish ourselves instead…  punish ourselves for needing to reach out… punish that need Sophie had to cry… punish ourselves for applying for the job…

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Now playing: Brooke Fraser – C S Lewis Song
via FoxyTunes

Today we were doing some work on our old blog when we realised something which tells us a great deal about our coping mechanisms and psychology.  Reading through the December entries it is obvious that we were struggling with what Bob was asking us to do – evicting one of us from our internal house.  But what is also obvious is that we were fighting!  We were arguing, trying to learn, working it through.  There was humour obvious in our entries despite the confusion – for example Today’s lesson on how to bang your head against a brick wall… When we compare these entries with the entries over the last few months, it appears obvious to us that our fighting spirit has gone.  Things are no worse than they were then.  In many ways they’re better.  What has changed is our reaction to the things around us.

Potential reasons for this -

• We’ve been trialled on several different anti-anxiety medications, none of which have been effective and have often caused very nasty side effects.
• We haven’t heard from Ellie (affectionately known as the “Irish Bitch” by Carrie) since before Christmas.  Ellie takes on many of the characteristics (and accent) of an amazing Irish uncle who told brilliant stories about his times as a policeman in Rhodesia and running black market flights in and out of Africa.
• Management has been around only sparingly since that time as well.
• The restructuring at work was badly handled and our job was changed to one that we don’t get any satisfaction from.
• Our levels of exhaustion caused by chronic insomnia have not been able to be relieved by any catch-up weekend sleeps.
• We took the risk of caring for Kriss and it proved to be a disaster.
• People around us who knew about “us” mentioned that they wanted to talk to the “real T” and that they didn’t want different ones coming forward to perform their roles.  This told some of us that they weren’t wanted and were being rejected.
• We don’t have anything concrete in front of us to fight.  We don’t have the husband to get rid of, Liz doesn’t generate the anger that Bob did and we don’t care about our job.

What we’re going to do about it…  kick ourselves in the butt.  Remind our collective selves that the reason we survived that kindergarten fort, rugby clubrooms, parties etc is because we are stubborn fighters!  It’s about time we remembered that.

At the moment we need to poke and prod at ourselves to get that fighting spirit back.  We need Management, Ellie, S, Sophie and every one of us to fight back against this apathy.

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Now playing: Iggy pop – Lust for life
via FoxyTunes

We were going to take a break from writing here for a couple of weeks to try and get everything sorted out, but things have happened.  Some of them are good – like getting an interview for the job we applied for.  Some of them are not so good – like the mother deciding to quit her job and talking about moving up here for six months to get out of the hometown.

Everything is scary again.  It’s our birthday in a couple of weeks and the mother is going to come up for the week to be with us.  We should feel glad that she is going to come up, but we feel scared.  We should feel happy that we’ve got a job interview, but we’re terrified.

We’re losing so much time and losing our train of thought so quickly it’s hard to focus on anything.  A short email to our American friend took an hour to write.  Just craziness.

We try to look for ways to simplify our life.  Not sure if the job down South will simplify or complicate things.

Talking to Liz in therapy this week was not good and wound us up more.  She set homework, which we completed.  When she looked at it she said it wasn’t what she was expecting – didn’t say what she was expecting, just that what we had done wasn’t it.  She played word games with W by saying that the father “missed her”.  To an eight year old, that means that he physically missed her.  But Liz was putting meanings behind it which W was not able to grasp alone.

We talked with Liz about the frustration of her trying to ground us by listing three things we can see, touch and feel each week.  These techniques really grates in that we have little physical sense of our body, are hearing impaired and our vision narrows significantly with stress.  Liz counters with the theory that if we expect the same, we’ll get the same.  We agree with this, but you can’t expect significant changes to happen in a week.  It’s frustrating when you read articles about moving on to another therapist when the one you are seeing isn’t working out, isn’t a trauma specialist etc.  But what if there are no other therapists in your town?

We’re losing that sense of hope that we had for awhile.  We’re now starting to realise how much damage the incidents with Bob caused to the system regarding evicting a part as a way to move forward.  Ian (theroyalus) once said that no therapy was better than bad therapy.  We now believe him.

Just a note to say we’re going to be taking a break from everything for awhile.  Need to do a bit of re-grouping and hiding.  Nothing serious.

I know that most people just don’t update when this happens, but we’ve had online friends just not contact us for weeks and it’s been very triggery, scary and caused fears about their safety.  We didn’t want to cause anyone undue concern through an innocuous break.

Take care…

Up until today’s session Liz has predominantly talked to Sophie.  Today, Liz got B acting as a filter for M and One.  This group present quite differently to Sophie.  Sophie is gentle, shy and talks very softly; while the trio are observers, direct and carefully consider all responses.  As an example, if Liz asked who was present, Sophie would immediately respond with her name; while the trio would want to respond with “it’s none of your business”, but would mull it over and then say “mainly B”.

This trio is what Carol used to call the no-affective response powerhouse.  It can be quite intimidating and definitely throws an inexperienced therapist.  But for the trio, there were questions and issues that needed addressing – informing Liz of what happened at the support group appointment and questioning the whole “who have you become” statement.  It also made the observations of Liz easier, as the softness of Sophie was eliminated from the equation.

It became obvious that Liz has decided that father abuse is the main issue – despite the fact that there is no mention of this abuse on our records and us not having mentioned it within session.  We’re losing approximately half to three quarter of the sessions to stress and dissociative related memory loss, so it’s possible it has been mentioned and we’re not aware of it.  Liz is looking at the family dynamics and trying to understand them – we wish her luck.  I thought that’s why they invented ambiguous labels like “dysfunctional”, so that you didn’t need to poke at some things.

We made our discomfort with the “who have you become now” phrase known.  Liz clarified that she wasn’t meaning anything about us acting different roles when there was a switch.  It will be interesting to see if she uses it again.

I’ve often thought we must be an awful client for any therapist.  We don’t attach in any sort of way to anyone and because of the compartmentalisation we appear to contradict ourselves so often it must be hard for the therapist to keep any sort of event straight.

In other news, it’s all over with Kriss and the young ones have just started a blog of their own to help increase communication and participation – worked a little too well last night with us being woken up by a young one who wanted to write that they liked the header image that was used :)

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Now playing: Audioslave – Cochise
via FoxyTunes

Just read an interesting post by Faith Allen about the Importance of integrating the host personality.  This post hit a sore spot in that were not really sure who or what our host personality “looks” like.  Surely this is the sort of thing you’re meant to know?  I know more about who ISN’T the host, than who is…  You’d sort of think that this sort of thing would be obvious – ok, so maybe they haven’t got “Host Personality” tattooed on their forehead, but something would instinctively let you know surely???

We did have one who was the predominant fronting personality for much of our adult life, and her name is the one given to this body at birth, so maybe she’s “it”?  Only problem is that a couple of years ago  T thought the body was curled up on the couch reading, but it was actually S fronting having to have sex with the then husband and S forced T to see this.  At that point T went into her room in our internal house and locked the door.  We haven’t seen or heard from her since.

Feels like we’re trying to do a puzzle with most of the pieces missing and no idea what the final picture is meant to look like…

The following may trigger as a mild incident of abuse is discussed.

So onto secrets…  Over the last few weeks we’ve been struggling because we knew there was something going on internally, but we weren’t quite sure what it was.  We knew there were external stressors – ACC mediation, applying for a new job, finding a therapist etc, but this was something internal and quite different.  On Thursday we had another appointment with the woman’s support scheme/group that Bob encouraged us to contact.  In the morning we’d had a meeting about the review of the re-structuring that had occurred last year, so were very on edge and dissociated because of the stress.  When we got there the woman realised we were a bit out of it and suggested we do something other than talk.  She suggested drawing with crayons, which immediately fitted with what we needed to do.  After a bit of hesitation we agreed and sat on the floor with these crayons.  Thankfully the woman had to leave the room to go get some more colours (maybe just a good excuse?), so we could sit and gather ourselves.  There was an immediate need to go crazy on the paper with lots of red and black – just ram the crayon into the paper and rip it across so that it became covered in the black redness.  Sophie was overwhelmed at this point and a young one came forward.  She picked up the brown crayon and drew a table and chairs…  It was the classroom.

When we were in primary school there were a few students who knew quite a bit about sex – beyond the normal exploration.  We were one of this group.  Because this behaviour was such a normal part of our lives, we carried this sexual behaviour into the classroom.  One day we were under the table in the classroom pleasing one of the boys while a lesson was going on.  A student at another table suddenly yelled out “Look Miss Y, they’re doing dirty things”.  Miss Y looked straight at us while we were still under the table and as we moved to get back onto our chair, then she looked away.  Nothing happened as a result of this incident.

We’ve always wondered why this incident has affected us so badly.  It certainly wasn’t the worst thing an adult did to us.  Plenty of other adults had already turned a blind eye by that time.  Over the last few weeks we’d noticed this incident just sitting under the surface, chipping away at our safety.  After the young one had drawn this picture, the woman asked us about the incident.  It was only then we realised the true impact of this incident – we did more than tell the secrets that day, someone saw them and THEY DID NOTHING!  If a teacher saw the secrets and did nothing, what is the use of talking about them now?  No one will believe us.  So there’s no point in going to therapy, it’s all hopeless.  It was good to finally realise what the problem was.  We know what we’re facing again…

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Now playing: I’ll follow you into the dark – Deathcab for Cutie
via FoxyTunes

We’ve never felt like we’ve fitted in anywhere.  Whether it be due to physical, psychological or social causes, we’ve always felt that we were different to those around us and didn’t really belong.  We try very hard to fit in and have acted like a chameleon for most of this life – doing whatever is needed in order to not stand out and fly below the radar; but have never really succeeded.  At times we’ve been accused of being “stuck-up”, “a bitch” or snobby as we make dissociative switches to ones who are involved in protecting the system from harm.  To us it feels like we’ve retreated behind another wall of protection, but we now realise that this is viewed as putting up a veil of superiority.  Our language becomes more formal and disjointed when we do this, and we know this has had a negative affect on those around us.  We can look at it and see the tough 8 year old who is trying so hard not to be scared and to act like a grown-up, to others it can seem like we’re being condescending.  When it becomes particularly bad, we can see evidence of Carrie and One in the language – things have gone downhill rapidly when these two are around protecting us.

Growing up, we were always the tallest girl in the class and tried to be perfect at school.  These two factors made us stick out before we even opened our mouth.  We tried to speak as little as possible in an attempt to be invisible.  We were often bullied because some children instinctively know who to pick on – who won’t fight back, speak up and is already a victim.  We were often targeted for special attention by the teachers – usually for “privileges” such as taking the special needs girl in our class for art supplies while the teacher tells the rest of the class not to tease her.  These privileges rarely felt like a privilege as they often caused us to be seen, and therefore bullied by the other children.  Despite this, we loved school.  It was a relatively safe escape. We did well at school, but have never considered ourselves to be intelligent – if we can do it, anyone can.  We have a masters degree, but it wasn’t a real one – how hard are library studies after all??

We know we have a massive inferiority complex and we could sell insecurities we have so many of them.  But we struggle to find a place that feels comfortable.  Any little slight from anyone and we’re a mess.  A group of survivors who are high functioning and verbal – too scary as we feel we’re not intelligent enough to contribute there.  A group of survivors who are struggling – we never say the right things, or we don’t understand the depths that they are going through, so we’re best to not say anything for fear of stuffing it up and causing hurt.

We’re writing this purely to try and explain some of our actions lately and to try and work them through. Nothing more, nothing less.

What’s been interesting looking at our writing over the last few months, is that our basic grammar and use of punctuation changes depending on who is present.  We’d never spotted that before, it’s kinda weird.