Expressive Arts Carnival: Breaths
The activity for this months Expressive Arts Carnival is to:
Draw or paint your breath.
On one sheet of paper, draw or paint your breath in the moment. Then, immediately after, listen to some soothing music (if you want), close your eyes (if it is okay) and focus on your breathing. Do this for a couple minutes and try to relax.
When you are done with the breathing exercise, come back to the drawing and draw your breath again on the other paper.
When I thought of this activity, I had a very preconceived idea of what I was going to draw. I had the patterns and colours planned. I was “set”. In my minds eye, the two images looked similar to these photos that I took awhile ago.
This is typical of what happens when I do conscious breathing. I become calm and return to a central place of being where everything flows. So when I sat down to do this exercise, I went with these images in my head.
What I drew, was nothing like I intended.
The first drawing was very easy, and very symbolic. My breathing can become very shallow, choppy and quick. It feels like I have a huge blockage in my throat that prevents my breath from going down into my lungs. While the exhalations are short and sharp. There’s very little fluidity about my breathing, and I can be like this for hours or days if my stress levels are high.
After doing the conscious breathing and relaxing, I came back to the paper ready to draw my nice flowing swirls to indicate how centered and aware I was. I used finger paints, because I thought it would help me to blend the colours and feel as if I was more in touch with the whole experience. I had six colours to chose from, and was going to cut this down to five by removing the black punnet – black didn’t fit into my view of the flowing picture I was about to draw. But there was a strong internal message about being a censor if I didn’t allow for the possibility of black to be used; so it remained in front of me.
I’m aware that I started off with a central core of yellow, then moved outwards to the other colours. The next thing I was aware of, was sitting back and looking at the image below.
Not quite the flowing picture I had in mind.
But in that moment, this is what was happening. When I relaxed, the emotions came forward and were expressed through the drawing.
I think the only reason that some colour remained, was because there was an internal conflict, or backlash, about erasing another ones work. I know I took a risk in using finger paints, I could tell there was curiosity about them. The last time I used finger paints was probably in kindergarten. I was aware of smiling as I dipped my finger in the yellow punnet of paint.
What’s interesting, was that there was a need to eliminate the yellow colour first.
PDF Chillout song
I found this today… Simple and soothing.
The story of how this song came about can be found here.
Losing control
Yesterday during lunch at work, I had no idea who I was. I had no idea what my name was, how old I was or where in the world I was. There was a sense of detached wonder about being able to use the computer… “wow, I can use this thing”. I had no memory of learning how to type, or even how to use my body to do basic things such as pick up my cup. Everything seemed so big, scary, and yet wondrous at the same time. It also seemed really bright… the artificial light in the office felt like I was looking directly into the Sun.
This is yet another sign that the dissociation is out of control… this was a young one from our internal Basement, in charge of the body, while at work. That can’t happen again. It’s not fair to the young one, or to the ones who usually attend work.
The problem is, what to do in order to get some sense of control back? We’re actively doing all the coping mechanisms we can think of – breathing, taking breaks at work, distracting, grounding etc. But I’m still a mess. I’m constantly getting flashbacks of some sort… I’m seeing things out of the corner of my eye (psychosis or a lack of sleep?)… It feels as if I’m constantly on the edge of switching – that spacey, free-falling feeling…
There’s also dread… I don’t WANT to know why I keep on seeing flashbacks of the changing rooms at the rugby club; I don’t WANT to know why L&P is suddenly a trigger; and I don’t WANT to know why I keep hearing certain phrases over and over in my head… I’ve had enough… Surely there can’t be more.
But, I also know that I need to listen and try to understand what’s happening internally. I know this is the way to healing… listening, understanding and easing the pain. But, I don’t think I have the strength to do this anymore…
Below is a something that was created while at work earlier in the week. I’m not good at art – I got a D for it in school. So I’m unable to translate what is in my head into something that is recognisable in practice. I keep trying to tell myself that art within a healing context is more about the feelings, than the technique… but I still can’t get past how bad it looks in comparison to what was wanted. It’s so frustrating when I can’t find a way to express what is going on in my head…
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Now playing: Cat Stevens – Moonshadow
via FoxyTunes
Boundaries
I’m not good with boundaries… I know this. When the dissociation and switching increases in frequency, my scant understanding of appropriate boundaries goes out the window. This was (yet again) evident earlier this week, when Matthew Branton asked (a perfectly legitimate question) about having a place within the blog where new readers could get an understanding of my background and the experiences that brought me to this place in my healing. This question, in conjunction with reading Matthew’s account of his past (Dissociative Identity Disorder and me), and Faith Allen’s series of posts about her past on Blooming Lotus; meant that a part of me took this question very literally… Suddenly there were over a 1000 words on a new page within the blog which described my family and what I have been told about my childhood up until I was a toddler. There was a real drive to write this history out, but that need came from a part of me that didn’t understand the implications for the rest of the system. They are a part of me that always obeys a suggestion or request without question. The ultimate people pleaser.
You’ll see that the page is no longer on the blog, I’ve hidden it. I realise that I do need to write out my history, but I need to write it out for Allison’s eyes only. It would be too easy to piece together my history, and find out who I am in real life from the detailed account that was being generated… that just can’t happen! I would risk losing my career and being labelled with all of the negative stereotypes that those with mental health issues carry. I hate the stereotypes and misinformation about those who deal with mental health issues every day, but I’m not in a strong enough place to fight it. Also, to be blunt, librarians are a bunch of close minded, gossiping old biddies… if they discovered that I have DID, I would never get another job within New Zealand.
After talking to a friend, I realised that I can still write a summary here about my past, but I don’t have to go into so much detail. This is where I need to learn about the appropriate boundary. How much do readers of this blog really need to know about me? Does it matter that I’m the youngest child? Does it matter that I have no memory of what any of my family looked like as I was growing up? These are the questions that I need to ask myself, and take my time answering. So, I will put up a new page that carries a summary of my experiences, but it will take me some time to come to an internal agreement as to what I can reveal safely.
The other boundary issue I’ve been facing this week, is the re-decorating of my rented house. I knew that the landlords were going to re-decorate the house sometime soon, but on Monday I got a call from a painter saying he’d be starting Tuesday; so, could I leave a key to the house under the mat to allow his team access to the house. Now, I know I should be grateful that the landlords are doing the work – the wallpaper was peeling. BUT, STRANGE MEN WERE GOING TO BE IN MY HOUSE WHILE I WASN’T THERE. They were going to be moving my stuff. They were going to be walking in my house… the house that I worked so hard to try and make feel safe. It caused havoc within the system.
On Tuesday when we came home, the wallpaper had been stripped from the walls, but the house wasn’t too messy. We could cope with a great amount of deep breathing and locking all the windows and doors – then re-checking them every hour or so. But on Wednesday when we came home, they had painted the woodwork, which caused a huge mess. They’d been careless with our possessions – our cats food and water bowl were spoiled with paint dust, there was paint on our wooden dresser and they’d carelessly knocked over our things in the bathroom. We’d also had to do some teaching that day, so it was all too much… What I’m really proud of though, is that we didn’t self injure! We were in a mess, but One remembered Paul’s oil pastel artwork, so found our old pastels and got us to draw instead of injure. This is what we drew…
Swirl
Black Red
I’m not really aware of what happened as we were drawing these, or even what they mean. But, I know that there was a great deal of energy used on the second one.
We were hoping that they would be finished the redecorating on Friday, but it looks like they didn’t do any work at all that day. This, in combination with a rough day at work and being the anniversary of when Sophie and R were born due to an abusive event in the past; meant that last night there was a total loss of control. I only came back to any sort of awareness late Saturday morning.
What’s interesting about this latest event, is that I’m being told “You won’t tell that b@t@h Allison about this.” I’m not sure if this is a statement of fact, a challenge, or a derisive comment on my inability to talk about the tough issues in therapy. But I know that this time, I do need to tell Allison… I need to get outside help for the dangerous dysfunction. So, that’s what this weeks therapy is going to be about… wish me luck!
This latest round of confusion and self-injury, has made me aware of how little internal communication I now have. The dissociation has ramped up several notches, and my old skills have been lost (or maybe misplaced). Trust has gone, and it feels like I’m starting from scratch again… For some reason I was reminded of this old Telecom ad… Maybe it’s the message about communication being the first step… and maybe about communication starting with the children/young ones… Or, as is now being suggested internally, maybe I’m just a sap :)
Oh, and on a positive note… I’m the lucky “god-fearing” person chosen by Miss Linda to help her money launder retrieve $22 million from her fathers estate. The poor man was poisoned by his business colleagues (nasty men), and her only hope to get the money out of the Ivory Coast, is through me. I’ll be the lucky recipient of 15% of this sum, so it’s all good… my money worries are over! This is also a much better offer than last weeks one from Mr Philip, a lawyer from England… Strange how a lawyer would track me down as a long lost relative, when I never use my real name in any of my email addresses… but then, he’s a lawyer with wicked mad skills apparently ;)
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Now playing: Cat Stevens – Where Do The Children Play?
via FoxyTunes
Anatomy of a panic attack
It always starts out small… or seemingly so. That one last trigger that pushes you over the edge… some threat to safety… the hint of a flashback… a confrontation at work…
Then…
The heart starts to race… you feel it pounding and hear the blood rushing in your head. Breathing feels impossible… like you’re breathing through a straw… but, it doesn’t matter anyway, because you don’t have any lungs… your breath goes no where, it’s just an activity for your mouth to do out of habit. You put your hand on your stomach to try and force yourself to actively breathe deeply… but your stomach muscles move purely on reflex.
Fuzziness hits… lips tingle… then the rest of your face. Palms sweaty and no longer associated with your body. Legs disconnected and unable to move.
And the noise…
Screaming internally… strong voices trying to cut through the chatter. All to no avail. It’s lost in the torrent of chatter and screaming.
You feel the dissociation pull… but it doesn’t happen soon enough. A door has opened into the hell inside your head and there’s no going back. No longer adult… now a seething mass of voices screaming out in pain.
Just stop the heart… don’t slow it down, stop it. Anything for relief…
The tightness travels across your chest into your arms… the clinical side of you wonders if this is a heart attack.
Head swimming and mushy now… the screaming echoing around.
But always, hypervigilant of what’s going on around you… you back slowly to a wall… scanning the room for any threat. Trying to contain the crazy and appear normal… please don’t let anyone notice…
Noise jars you into a startle response…
Your movements become stilted… every muscle aches from tension. Your body is ready to sprint for safety, but it doesn’t know which way to go.
Time warps… seeming to slow down, yet race at the same time… it feels as if this moment will never end.
Then, mercifully… you feel the Earth tilt… yes… blissful oblivion.
Blackness of dissociation… feeling the rush of the protectors coming forward… slowly the noise fades away.
Sleep… blissful sleep. Only to wake an hour later as if coming out of a cotton wool cocoon… your voice is a little louder than usual. But that’s understandable, because you feel as if you’re looking out at the world from about 5 paces behind your eyes.
The noise from the outside world echoes around in your head…
Nothing seems real. Derealisation settles in… your hands belong to someone else, colours seem brighter and everything is disjointed.
Drugs… too late for the panic attack, but it might help with the derealisation. A fear that the protectors took some during the dissociation… you start to second guess yourself. But you can’t go on like this, so risk the drugs anyway.
Covert looks around… no one sees you popping the pills. Just breathe…
Finally you feel that rush of air go into your lungs… the big ball of tightness at the top of your chest slowly eases…
Slowly, the automatic actions ease and control returns.
But there’s still that nagging fear… it will be worse next time… someone will see next time… you can’t do that again…
Internally the chaos is stamped back down… layers of dissociation bury the screaming… different ones are returned to their cells… locked away and ignored…
Until next time…
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Now playing: Natalie Merchant – My Skin
via FoxyTunes
A dance to the edge
A good friend recently mentioned that she felt like she was going to fall, and fall deeply. Part of her was expecting, and almost wanting the fall to happen. Thankfully, her fall hasn’t happened, and I hope it doesn’t; but what she describes is a feeling I know all to well. It’s like standing on an edge, waiting for that last push to send you over into a mental health free-fall. The scary bit about standing there, is that you have an awareness about where you are. You know that one more negative thing is going to push you over, and part of you wishes that it would come so that it’s over with; but another part of you hopes that you can still claw your way back to safer ground. It becomes a tug of war between different parts of you… This alone is so tiring that it can be enough to tip you over…
I know I’m also moving closer to the edge. The stressors in my life have kicked into high gear and I can feel the pressure building. At the moment, I’m far enough away to know that I’m in danger without being too close to it. A part of me niggles that I’m thinking myself into moving towards the edge – why do I think of my ex-husband, why worry about the ACC assessments etc. But the rational part of my brain knows that I’m experiencing PTSD flashbacks and my worry is justified based on past assessments. This is the beginning of the tug of war that intensifies over time. Soon other issues will come in to muddy the waters – denial, and a need for validation have already started to appear. All of this increases my anxiety levels. I’ve experienced this often enough in the last few years to notice the pattern… It becomes like a dance, to and fro… ever closer to the edge…
The problem becomes, how do you stop the dance? If I called a crisis line, they would take me through the individual stressors I am facing and encourage me to break them down into solvable chunks. This would work for some of the issues I’m facing, but they can’t help with the PTSD symptoms. I saw Jo today, and she was recommending trying to ground in the present, and while I agree with her reasoning, I also know that I can be very grounded in 2010 and still keep on dancing towards the edge. Some of the grounding work can make the situation worse – repeating “it’s the 26th of January, 2010 and they are just memories” can morph into a denial statement about the memories all being made up. The most effective way of keeping the anxiety at bay is to consciously breathe deeply – this also tends to by one of the first things I forget to do. Like many survivors who experience anxiety, I have a form of hyperventilation syndrome, with my breathing being short and shallow. It takes a conscious effort to alter my breathing pattern to a healthier depth and pace. Changing my breathing will temporarily ease the anxiety, but often this isn’t enough to stop the dance towards the edge. I’m not always sure what moves me away from the edge, I think this time it will be the formal dissolution of my marriage and completing the ACC assessment. If this is the case, I’ve got about another three weeks of doing the dance around the edge. I don’t think I’ll fall, but a part of me thinks I will… A part of me wants to fall, because they think that this is what I deserve…
And so the dance continues…
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Now playing: The Feelers – Stand Up
via FoxyTunes
Raspberry and chips
Please note that this may trigger.
The husband of our cynical friend was buried today. It was an amazing service which showed how much he was loved by those around him. The eulogies were funny and heartfelt. Our friend held up well throughout the funeral, she cried and was supported by her youngest daughter… the love within the family was obvious and honest. One of the graphic designers at work did a montage of photos of his life, it was amazing to see how much he had changed, but not changed over the years – the laughter in his eyes was there all the way through.
We were close to not going to the funeral, we don’t find funerals easy things to attend. They tend to overwhelm us with too many messages… but we were fine today. Our friend also said she was looking for us when we went to give her a hug afterwards, so I’m glad we went. She deserves all the support she can get.
After the funeral there was a wake held at a working men’s club. We didn’t particularly want to go to this as we knew there would be lots of people, but everyone from work pressured us into going. We were fine driving there and parking… it was when we got to the door that the trouble began. This club is like many throughout New Zealand, they have a similar feel and design – a big open space with table for standing and drinking at while you watch the big screen TV, and another area for dining. The smell of alcohol greets you at the door. What also greeted me at the door was the first flashback.
The father managed a working men’s club as we were growing up. Our lives revolved around that club, sport and alcohol. We were abused at that club. We were forced to drink alcohol for the first time in that club. Some of us still live in that club within our head, they’re stuck there. Walking into the club today triggered them all…
M took control as best she could, but she has problems with alcohol – she uses it to drown out the noise in the head. As we walked to the bar all we could hear is the noise of the crowd becoming fainter and the internal screaming getting louder and louder.
“Raspberry and chips… raspberry and chips… raspberry and chips…”
This is all M could hear, so she orders a drink to drown out the sound. The screaming gets louder as she takes the first sip of beer. She always drinks beer as it makes us drunk quicker. The first beer doesn’t deaden the screaming, time for another…
Random flashes, snippets and sounds from the past come through… some good, some not so good, some horrific. Still the screaming…
“Raspberry and chips… raspberry and chips… raspberry and chips…”
M tries deep breathing, but that doesn’t calm the noise… Time for another drink. No one around us is aware of anything going on. M answers all the questions and shows an interest in everything as she continues to drink. I don’t know how much she drank, it’s always hard to tell as the dissociation seems to mask the effects of the alcohol… or maybe we’re just immune to the effects, I’m not sure.
We all know what “Raspberry and chips” means… it was a reward for being a good girl after the abuse. We hate raspberry soda and potato chips…
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Now playing: Crowded House – Better be home soon
via FoxyTunes
Mothers and clinical psychologist
We’re seeing a new clinical psychologist at the moment to try and move forward in the therapy and healing process. It’s an interesting time as we all hide more so that she doesn’t see the craziness that is our life. Part of the reason for seeing her is to try to learn more skills to cope with the anxiety and triggers. I’m not sure that this is going to happen as it’s mainly been a concentration on breathing exercises which we already know. We’ve got another 6 sessions with her, so will see what happens…
Awhile ago we mentioned that the mother was going to come up to see us sometime, so she asked that if she does that we arrange it around one of the sessions so she can see how we interact with the mother and find out a little bit more about the past. We had that session yesterday and it was not fun! It was all going OK as she asked the general questions and asked to talk to the mother alone for awhile. But then she asked to talk to us alone and asked us to tell the mother how she could help us. Well it was a good way to check whether we could put the breathing exercises into practice! We’ve never wanted anything from anyone, especially from the mother. So we just fumbled around, and because we had to say something said that what she was doing was fine.
Then the mother had to tell us what she wanted so that she could help us. She talked about not blocking her out. That’s all we do with everyone, even those that haven’t hurt us, so why would we change that pattern and let her in when she’s hurt us so much?
Just keep breathing…
