Scattered pieces

Floating high above the pain
Turn away…
Don’t see
Don’t hear… don’t feel

Come, let’s play
Let’s forget about what’s happening below
Look, how many flowers can you see in the wallpaper?
How loud can we sing?

Many days past, playing near the ceiling
Then a tipping point…
Uncle came along
With needs and acts depraved

Floating high above was no longer enough
Singing did little to hush the screams

Come into The Attic
I built it just for you
White and pure
No shadows, no pain

I will protect you
Hide you
Keep you safe
Forever

This partial poem was written by Carrie (the protector of The Attic), before today’s emergency therapy session with Allison.  It was meant to tell how, and why The Attic was created.  It told us that, and so much more…  It told us where the current suicidal ideation is coming from.

Carrie guided the innocents into a place of safety within The Attic; all the while seeing the acts causing the dissociation.  Carrie’s whole world revolves around keeping those within The Attic safe from abuse.  So, when The Basement started to become involved in the healing process, Carrie saw healing as a threat.  She stills sees the world as an evil place – self-injury, child abuse, inequity, intolerance and hate all still occur.  Therefore, it’s a world still unsafe for those in her care.  The only solution she sees… suicide.

This is what I took into Allison today.  Because of the new clarity surrounding the issues, it was a really productive session…

We talked about the poem and image created about The Basement/Vault, and what it meant.  She was curious as to why the image was so imbalanced – with the box being so much smaller than the image representing hopes and dreams.  At first, we thought we had the meaning behind this image sorted, but her questioning made us rethink it.  In an image that I considered to indicate hopelessness and a sense of fear, she managed to show us hope.

Then our familiar nemesis… ACC.  ACC contacted us yesterday to tell us the final results of our latest assessment.  Immediately, M was wanting to fight the decision.  But by the end of the night, she was rethinking the need to fight.  She stood back and looked at the toll our interactions with ACC have had on us over the years… two suicide attempts and countless instances of self-injury.  Was that fight worth it?  In some ways, it is.  The fight gives M something to focus on, and something to be here for.  We’re used to fighting…  there’s a comfort in fighting something external.  But, it’s not healthy.  Allison asked what would happen if we directed the energy expended on fighting ACC into something healing… how’s that for a dose of reality!

Finally, how to help Carrie.  This was difficult.  Carrie has only ever come forward once or twice in therapy, and that was about 3 years ago.  We didn’t really get any sense of having resolved the problem, or the reason for the suicidal ideation.  But, we acknowledged that Carrie’s fears are real and tangible.  Allison tried to show how there is beauty in the world too… I’m not sure if she succeeded or not, but when we were walking back to work, we saw the blue sky for the first time in what seems like forever…

I’m not naive enough to believe that I’m safe.  But, there is a spark of hope that’s been absent for a long time.

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Now playing: Creedence Clearwater Revival – Have You Ever Seen The Rain?
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Note: this entry is about the formation of The Basement. It happened years ago.
The bird in the collage doesn’t represent the guardian.
The bird is a representation of our abusers.

It began slowly, gradually
… the building of the vault.
A place inside
… for feelings so hurt.
Each abuse and cross word
… adding to it’s strength.

As the vault grew in size
… more bars were added.
Strong and true
… to contain the rage.

A guardian stood watch
… ensuring nothing escaped.

Shadows formed
… spreading fear and mythology.
Others whispered
… about beings dirty and naked.
Unable to talk
… only capable of destruction.

Deeper and deeper
… in the mind.
The guardian buried
… the vault.

But not so deep
… that those within couldn’t perform.

Critical mass was reached
… one Winters evening.
The vault exploded
… sending debris flying.
Those within were free
… to destroy.

In a rush of rage and memories
… they came forth.
Ready to spew vengeance
… on a body already abused.

Sticking with what they knew
… peace was sought.

The guardian stood by
… watching the destruction.
Knowing it would be
… for naught.
They weren’t yet organised
… he’d made sure of it.

The rage was exhausted
… as quickly as it had sparked.
No longer beasts
… once again children.

He welcomed them back
… into The Basement.

In The Basement, there is no place for childhood dreams and wishes.
That hope was destroyed years ago.
Dreams and wishes are for the good children, not for them. Not for us.

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Now playing: Emerson String Quartet – Streichquartett No. 4: Child Holding a Dove
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Last week I posted about Felicity Goodyear-Smith’s involvement in ACC Sensitive Claims research.  The articles which prompted that post (ACC advisor silent on links to sex abusers (Sunday Star Times, 29 August, 2010), and here), have created debate amongst interested parties about whether Goodyear-Smith should have been involved in the research. There are two clear camps – those who believe she is the best person to carry out the research, and those who think she has potential conflicts of interest which should have excluded her from any involvement in ACC SCU.  There have been numerous blogs and websites advocating both sides of the issue, but rarely have the two camps directly conversed – mainly because it is obvious that two such opposing viewpoints will never come to any sort of agreement.

I got a hint of the emotions the topic stirred when I entered a Google Groups thread over the weekend.  I thought that as all participants were adults, it would be a reasoned debate.  Unfortunately, that proved not to be the case.  Insults were thrown and behaviour which could, at best, be described as creepy, at worst threatening, ensued.

As I had joined the discussion under my usual Google username, the people involved had the name “castorgirl”; and they used it.  They found this blog and used information about my suicide attempts to question my character and credibility.  I understand that all information on the Internet is fair game, but the use of this information scared the younger ones in the system.  All they saw, were aggressive men finding, and potentially hurting them.

This may seem like it caused havoc, and it did for awhile.  But from this event, some major shifts have occurred.

Firstly, I was able to maintain a sense of adult self, and was rarely reactionary on the forum.  I could see the behaviour of the people involved for what it was – diversionary and bullying.

Despite getting scared about the blog being found, I realised that by hiding the blog (I re-directed traffic to Google for a day), I was acting as if I was ashamed of what is contained here.  If I was ashamed of what is contained here, then I was ashamed of me.  This proved to be a tipping point in my thinking.  I began to question whether the shame belonged to me, or those who hurt me.  While I sometimes cringe at what is written here, it’s my place of safety.  By hiding it, I was questioning my healing and learning… not a good message to send to the rest of the system.  So, I removed the re-direct.

In addition to the drama on the forum, yesterday was both Father’s Day and the mothers birthday.  I managed to make it through the day by distracting.  But, as midnight rolled around, I became more fragmented and derealised.  By 1am a young one was actively keeping us awake through their hypervigilence.  There was enough awareness, that I was able to soothe this young one - repeating over and over that we’d stayed safe during the day and that the father was no longer going to hurt us.  That he lived far away and it was a different time and place to the one they remembered.

We eventually calmed, but this internal communication continued.  An unknown young one came forward and shared some of her experiences.  At first she gave distractions, but then revealed part of what had happened to her.  In what is a first for me, I identified this young one as part of me, and as needing empathy, love and caring.  I again realised that the shame was not hers/mine, but that of the father who hurt her/us/me.  We tried to see if she would go with Sophie to be cared for, but instead, she melted back into the shadows to be taken care of by One.

The pain of this young one, was what we took into therapy today.

Allison, to put it bluntly, was brilliant.  She encouraged us to pause in our telling of what happened, and to check the emotional response.  This allowing and acceptance, meant that another young one came forward to tell of her experiences with the father.

I was left shaking, yet in a place of acceptance.  There was still denial to try and counter what had been said, but it was not the overwhelming denial that there has been in the past.  It felt as if the denial belonged to the different parts of the system, rather than to me as a whole.

Oddly as it seems, I have the bullying behaviour of a group of men to thank for this shift.  Young ones realised that I was willing and able to protect them.  They didn’t see me as weak and unable to handle what they held.  They equated these men with the image of the father, and they saw the adult me standing up to them.  This is what many of them had been waiting for, some sign that I was strong and capable of protecting them.

So, I have Goodyear-Smith supporters to thank for helping me gain huge ground in my healing.  There’s an irony in that, which I find amusing.

The forum discussion reached an uneasy conclusion yesterday, with the publication of the latest article by Tim Hume (Sex abuse cuts ‘all about cost-cutting’) which indicates that ACC did know of the potential conflicts of interest regarding Goodyear-Smith, but commissioned her for the research anyway.

All in all, a very odd weekend.

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Now playing: Louis Lortie – Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 27, No. 2, “Moonlight”: I. Adagio Sostenuto
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I’m writing this entry from a hotel by the beach… Out one window is the view of a bay, out the other is a glimpse of the ocean…  It’s beautiful.

I wish my state of mind matched the beauty surrounding me, but it doesn’t.  Instead it’s a floating mess of past and present memories…  It’s a harsh reminder that no matter how far I run, the problems will follow me until I work them through.

I hate that.

I knew it was risky coming to the beach, but I didn’t realise the memories and issues it would throw at me.  A combination of being in a hotel; by a beach similar to the one where I grew up; and the psychiatric assessment on Tuesday, has opened old wounds.  To top it off, the free cable channels in the hotel are the Rugby ones… just typical!  Why couldn’t they be the kids, movies or arts channels… why????

The fall-out from the psychiatric assessment on Tuesday has been severe.  I made many mistakes, thereby giving ACC lots of ammunition to use as a way of apportioning away responsibility to other issues.  In fairly typical fashion, I’m beating myself up for it.

I won’t know the results of the assessment for several months.  The psychiatrist assured me that he would recommend that I continue to get ACC funded therapy.  But, I was honest about my level of dysfunction and self-injury, so ACC might decide in peer review that I need to be in the hospital system or forced into DBT.  Then there’s the issue of determining my level of impairment… this is a brutal system, and one that has been harsh for me in the past.  I’m expecting it to be just as harsh this time around…  This will have little to do with the assessing psychiatrist, and more to do with the peer reviewers at ACC.

The assessing psychiatrist understood DID, he really “got” it… One of the last questions he asked was how long we’d been talking, B had just come forward again, so thought it had just been a few minutes… it had been over an hour.  B then noticed that the sunlight had moved across the floor… she forgot to check the agreed upon marker of time before answering him…

One of the things we did to try and ease the stress of the assessment, was to produce a summary of our life.  It was harsh to see our SA experiences summarised in a dozen bullet points on half a page.  That summary was difficult to write… one line alone took 4 hours… we finally admitted in writing that the father abused us.  It is now on our ACC records.  That makes it official… scary… overwhelming… disgusting… shameful… ugly…

Sorry, I know this is disjointed…

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Now playing: Blindspott – Phlex
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Note: This entry may trigger due to issues around suicide being discussed.

I’ve been fairly open about my levels of suicidal ideation on this blog over time. But the last week or so, I’ve been dancing around the subject. The reason why… on the 2nd and 3rd of August I tried to commit suicide.

I’m still trying to make sense of the attempts, and the triggers which precipitated them.

The main things I remember about Monday, are that I didn’t work my usual late shift, and that I was very tired… very, very tired. So tired, that it made perfect sense to come home, empty a pill bottle into my hand and swallow them down with a caffeine drink.

I vividly remember looking at the pile of pills in my hand, and thinking… “This will help me sleep”.

This terminology is significant… “This will help me sleep”. Usually, my suicidal ideation and intent is termed “running away”, so I wonder if the change in phrasing was an indication that different ones were driving the attempt, or whether I was just really tired?

In the past, whenever there has been even a suicidal gesture, a protector has come forward and immediately called for help. But not this time. This time, I climbed into bed and waited for sleep. That was at about 6pm. The next thing I remember, is waking in a panic at 2.45. I wasn’t panicking about the pills that were now well absorbed into my system…  Oh no, I was panicking because I wasn’t sure if it was morning or night, and I was worried about missing work!

The details are fuzzy, but somehow we ended up in ER. ER’s always seem so bright… so well lit… super bright… I know this is a medical necessity, but it’s also about our fears. We hate hospitals. We feel ourselves get smaller, younger and more tongue-tied in hospitals… It’s hard to hear what people are asking of us, and we become more robotic.

As an indication that there was still come cognitive thinking happening, we’d remembered to bring our iPhone with us. Hours of playing Boost 3D, Euchre, Hell’s Kitchen… Anything to try to keep calm! Then the unspeakable happened, the iPhone battery ran out… This tipped the scales back to crazy.

• We removed the lure ourselves and went to the nurses station, asking to leave. They took us through to the observation lounge instead. Yay… power points for recharging the iPhone :)
• WPT came and visited us in the ER, and we brushed him off… told him we were fine and not to worry about us…
• When we were assessed by the psychiatric team… I say “assessed”, but to the system, it felt like a grilling.  They asked about family relationships, abuse history etc.
• By the end of the assessment, angry protectors were up front and they ripped up the discharge papers as we walked away from the nurses station.

Yes, we were released with no follow-up or safety options mentioned.

When we got home, there was still the need to sleep. I think one of us called the crisis team, but gave a fake name… I remember the crisis person yelling at us that they were sending the Police around. This was the wrong threat to make, as it gave the protectors hope that help was on the way. They became less vigilant…

We sat down at the table with enough pills for a fatal overdose. It was very mechanical and quick. Again, there was a need to have enough pills to “get some sleep”. Once these were consumed, we went to bed. Again, a panicked waking a few hours later and a ride in an ambulance.

This time it was serious… I knew that because of the number of nurses around. I remember looking over when they took my blood pressure, and saying how good it was (53/45). Usually my blood pressure goes through the roof in hospitals due to anxiety (the next day it was 195/146). I asked if I could go home, because my blood pressure was so good, and it was all just a silly mistake…

I remember the nurses being nice.
I remember them wheeling me down corridors to a ward.
I remember a nurse sitting in a chair at the end of my bed all night.

We called the mother, asking her to come up because we needed help. Our cat needed food…

We were kept in for a couple of days, and again had a psychiatric assessment, this one was much more gentle. They asked about safety and stressors. They gave us options – they suggested hospitalisation, or respite. But the psychiatric ward was fairly full, and the respite place would be different to the one I’ve been to previously. Instead, we were released to the mother (a former nurse) at home.

The thing that blew me away about the medical ward, was their compassion and understanding. I was there for an overdose, but they didn’t judge. They had almost no knowledge of mental health issues (I had to tell them how to spell “dissociative”), but they were respectful of me as an individual…

It’s now over a week since the attempts, and I’m still on shaky ground. Last night, R was very present. I know it was him, because I could clearly see what he wanted – to be wearing just jeans, standing in the middle of the road, in the pouring rain, arms up, yelling (in pain, release, anger???).

I’m very aware that I’m still walking along the cliff edge. One little push will send me over.

It’s times like this that I realise how amazing the people around me can be… WPT came to see me in hospital (twice); while my blog friends have been a steady, calm voice of reason when I needed it desperately… thank you!

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Now playing: The Freshman – The Verve Pipe
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You shall not pass!
You shall not know.
You will never know.
It will destroy you to know.
I will destroy you, before the secrets are told.

This message has been driving my existence for the last week (month?). D. One from my internal Basement has drawn, what can only be described as, battle lines. There’s no give, little communication and no trust. She’s said several times that she hates the rest of us, and has apparently sworn at Allison – not something that I would do.

The problem… We’re getting closer to her secrets, or the secrets in The Basement. This has been deemed as too dangerous for the system by D. One. This is a Polyvore set done last night to prove the point.

What surprises me, is that it looks rather tame in comparison to some of the other works that have involved her (for example D. One). But, it more clearly shows the dissociative wall she is protecting.

As an aside, she was associated with fire and a serpent in the last set, but now it’s birds and trees?

Last week, it became obvious what she will do to protect that wall. It wasn’t pleasant.

As a result, the mother is now staying with us. Those of you familiar with this blog, will know that the mother has a tendency to grate, annoy and trigger different parts of the system. She was psychologically abusive and neglectful during my childhood, and parts felt betrayed and hurt by her. Saying that, there are parts of the system who love, cherish and want to have a relationship with her. At the moment, for our safety, she is being tolerated by us all.

I keep on wondering what all of this activity by D. One means… Reflection is my key to healing and understanding. But yet, I find it almost impossible to reflect on the actions of the past week. I find it difficult to put them into context. If D. One was so stead fast in her rules of no more secrets being shared, why was a young one allowed to talk to Allison on Friday? It doesn’t make sense. Admittedly, there were no secrets shared, it was a very narrow flashback being described, but I’m struggling to make sense of it all.

One good thing about the mother coming up, is that she has again validated some memories, either through mentioning suspicions, or by describing vehicles that were either used, or around during my childhood. I know this is a double edged sword – if she had suspicions, why didn’t she act to protect us? Possibly this goes back to what Paul was discussing when he gave a brief overview of how societies attitude towards CSA has changed over time? Possibly, it’s because we were a white, middle class family? Possibly, it’s because the mother is a nurse who was clinical, rather than emotional and nurturing? All I know, is that it hurts that there were seemingly obvious signs and suspicions, which were ignored. I also know, that this is a similar story for thousands of other survivors.

So where to from here? Well, in just over two weeks, I have an ACC assessment. I’ve been assured by people I trust, that the assessing psychiatrist is good. But, it means describing my dysfunction, past and struggles with someone new. The results of this assessment will determine whether we still will receive ACC funded therapy, or not. We’re expecting to get our funding withdrawn – either because we haven’t shown enough progress, or because ACC will consider us to be better off in the public health system.

This assessment is what is destabilising the system. This is what is ramping up D. One’s activities… The difficult part, is that even once the assessment is over, it could take months for the results to come through. I’m not sure whether the system can cope with that sort of delay.

On a positive note… Two of my favourite blog distractions at the moment are DogHouse Diaries and Message with a bottle. As a warning, the first is a sarcastically funny take on relationships, and the second is a photo diary by a stay at home father of post-it-notes to, and about his son. I add the warning, as I know many of us struggle with fertility issues…

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Now playing: P!nk – Trouble
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I’m stuck… Stuck in a hellish limbo.  I’m derealised, dissociated and generally out of touch with reality.  Memories are flicking through my brain, stinging like needles.  I’m so out of touch.

This is the cause…

Stuck in a memory, and can’t get out.  No matter how much I try.  Half the problem is that the memory won’t form so I can work it through.  Just little fragments darting through my mind.

Want to run.  Want to hide.  Want to…?

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Now playing: Natalie Merchant – My skin
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The activity for this months Expressive Arts Carnival is to:

Use any visual means (e.g., drawing, painting, photography) to represent, in an abstract way, your experience of all or part of your internal world. The key to the activity is to focus on an abstract representation. The reason for this focus is that it helps us to describe our experiences in a way that is not so familiar to us.

First off, I’m not good with abstract thinking or art, let alone putting the two together; so this activity has proven to be a bit of a challenge.

Saying that, here are our  attempts to represent what our internal world looks like…

Internal World: Part I

This one was heavily influenced by M.  It’s a very structured view, and I think comes from her place of being a little apart from the rest of us.  I think it’s possibly more of an abstract system map, rather than a representation of our inner world.

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Internal World: Part II

Well, our internal world according to Aimee and K (with help from Sophie)… They like the baby moose playing, and the mother moose always watching to make sure nothing will hurt them :)

I’m not sure if this is really a representation of our internal world for a majority of us, but I think it’s accurate for these two young ones… or how they’d like it to be???  They also love the clip, so wanted an excuse to put it on the blog…

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Internal World: Part III

In the shadows, waiting.

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Internal World: Part IV

Which leads to the final representation… the one that all of us agree to some extent represents our internal world, or a very important part of it…

Shadows…  The lower left corner represents areas which are in total darkness, while the upper right corner represents areas which are flooded with light. These two extremes are linked by varying degrees of shadow intensity.

This was an interesting exercise to do… Thank you Paul for providing the prompts.

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Now playing: Five For Fighting – 100 Years
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