Scattered pieces

It’s considered to be one of the most recognisable songs in the English-speaking world.  It’s also the only song that is almost guaranteed to make me cry.

If you’re not familiar with the origins of Amazing Grace, it was written by John Newton, an English poet and clergyman, and is a song of forgiveness and redemption.  It is considered to be a Christian hymn, and is sometimes played at funerals, often by a solo bagpiper.  John Newton was involved in the slave trade; but on a particularly rough voyage, he began his spiritual journey.  Amazing Grace was written for a New Years Day service in 1773; and has been known to be sung to over 20 different melodies, as it is unknown if the there was any music to accompany it on début.  It’s now most closely associated with the tune “New Britain”, and can be sung acapella, with music, or as an instrumental.

What I find interesting about this song, is that despite it’s Christian overtones, I still strongly identify with it.  I don’t believe that I will ever be forgiven for what I have done, or that I will ever be redeemed; instead, for me, the song is about grief.  It’s about pain and releasing that pain.  It’s about death.

There are many versions of the song available… some of the more popular ones on YouTube are by the Celtic Women, Elvis Presley, British Airways Pipe Band and Hayley Westernra (a fellow kiwi).  One of my favourite vocal versions is by LeAnn Rimes…

I’m unsure about the reasons why I am seeking this song out at the moment.  I’m still in a very bad place, and this is one of the songs that I want played at my funeral – another is by ABBA, just to make people laugh.  So am I adding to the pit that I am in by listening to this, or am I releasing the grief and pain that I feel?  I’m not really sure.

There are so many thoughts floating through my head, that it’s difficult to make sense of them.  I know that I’m sucked dry.  I’ve been running on empty for about four months now, and it doesn’t look as if it’s going to improve any time soon.  I know my safety is a huge issue, and I was expecting Allison to send me to hospital last week… instead there was a misunderstanding, and I shut down.  Any glimmers of trust that were starting to be built, have gone.

I’m trying not to be reactionary, but it’s difficult.  After the session on Friday, I created this Polyvore set…

What’s interesting, is that the rabbit is looking in a mirror… is the set saying that Allison was at fault, I was, or we both were?  Is this about me seeing the reflection of my dysfunctional behaviour, and not liking it?  Or is it a cute graphic about no one being perfect, no matter how hard we try?  I wish I knew…

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Please note that this entry might trigger due to the issues of child abuse and religion being discussed.

Over two years ago, I wrote the post Religion and Karma.  In it, I shared some of my confusion around religious concepts.  Since I wrote that piece, my confusion has, if anything, deepened.  Conflicted and distorted messages about religion, and my self worth, have driven much of my dysfunction over the last two months.  I have been bombarded with messages about being evil and not worthy of being here, or of this healing journey.

To give a bit of background as to where much of the distortions come from, my father is Roman Catholic and attended a Catholic school.  It was a strict (or traditional) school, with his left handedness being beaten out of him, and intimacy a taboo subject.  In contrast, my mother based her religious affiliations on which church had the best outdoor basketball (netball) team – Baptist won.  When they married, my mother converted to Catholicism and regularly attended church.  My siblings, and myself, were all christened, and my brothers confirmed.  The families pathway through Catholicism ended after my mother had me.  She was advised that if she had any more children, she would probably die in childbirth.  When the church heard of my mothers decision to use birth control, she was asked not to return.  As she was the driving force behind our going to church, this meant that none of the family returned.

This is what I now know of the families leaving the fold.  But, as I was growing up, my brothers told me that we were asked not to return to church because I screamed too much during the service.  Being a sensitive and trusting child, I took those stories, and internalised them.  I became convinced that I was the reason that the whole family was going to go to Hell for eternal damnation.

Later, I had several encounters with religion…  My sister attended an extremely devout and divisive youth group… I attended religious camps during the school holidays; where, along with John 3:16, we were taught Matthew 25:46 – my sensitivity meant that I took both as signs that I was a sinner…  I later joined Rally (similar to Girl Guides), which had a strong religious basis.  It was here that things became very confused, as I was old enough to be aware of the messages and expectations, but failed to live up to them.  I was told that I needed to pray for God to come into my heart, and I would know that this had occurred when I felt a warmth and peace.  Well, I was so disconnected by this stage, that there was no way I was going to feel any warmth in my heart, or anywhere else.  This was the final blow, and I turned my back on any further attempts to connect to a higher power.

Throughout all of this, I was being abused.  Some of the abusers used phrasing with religious connotations as part of the abuse.  I now realise that this had nothing to do with me, but I still internalised it at the time, and took it as further proof as to why God had turned his back on me.  I was evil and a sinner.  I was beyond salvation.

One of the system, W, has great problems with anything religious.  I had never really understood why this trigger was so big, when I had never been abused by a religious figure.  Then, last Thursday, Allison asked W what her role was within the system… her answer “to pray”.  To pray for forgiveness.  To pray for help.

When I was eight, I was abused by some teenagers in the school grounds.  The location of the event is significant, because on the rise, about 50 metres away, was a church.  About 3 metres away from the structure I was being abused in, there was a thoroughfare for pedestrians and cyclists.  It wasn’t busy, but there were usually some people walking by.  As I was being abused, W was created within my mind to pray to the church on the hill… to the God she had heard about… she prayed for help from the people walking by… she prayed for salvation from what was happening.  When no one answered those prayers, she saw it as proof that we were evil, and therefore not worthy of God’s help.

I was never really exposed to the positive side of any religion.  It was all doom and gloom… damnation… selfishness, and selfish acts.  My God was a very fearful, vengeful one, and he wasn’t pleased with me.

As I learned about God, I was getting hurt, as were millions of others in the world.  That didn’t seem fair, or just.  I never liked the overly simple explanation of free will.  I still don’t understand how such evil can be in this world.  Then, if you have evil, then surely there must be a counter balance to that; and what is that counter, if not a God?

As you can see, I’m still very confused.  I initially made this private because I don’t know if I can handle comments on this issue.  But, after a couple of people read what I wrote, I realised that maybe I need others reading this in order to challenge my thinking around all of this.  I still don’t know what I need to help me understand all of the distorted and confused messages in my head, but this post was one step in trying to sort it through.  I don’t know how much help Allison is going to be on this, as when she was questioned last week, there was a sense that she wasn’t firm in her beliefs, so therefore can’t be believed.

I do know that they seriously effect my self worth.  The messages about not being worthy of being here, are tied to the messages about religion.

I finish this post, not knowing why I wrote it, let alone published it on the blog.  Maybe to show you how bad I really am.

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Now playing: Sarah McLachlan – Angel
via FoxyTunes

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“You sure know a lot about being dirty, bad and evil, don’t you?”

This statement came near the end of my time with the work place therapist (WPT) today.  To put this into context, we’d just been talking about safe internal places and stuffed animals…  We have two internal safe places and both are fairly barren.  WPT asked if there was anything that we wanted to take into the safe places… something like a stuffed toy perhaps?  A young ones immediate response was that stuffed toys weren’t allowed in the safe places.  You see, we are so dirty, disgusting and evil that if we touch a toy, it’s soiled and ruined.  She explained that we can go into the toy store, touch them to check how soft they are, purchase the one we want; but then it’s put on a chest of drawers or on our computer desk (with the price tag still on) and left to never be touched again – except for dusting or photography purposes.

To us, this makes perfect sense; but it confounded WPT.  He asked if the toys ever get lonely… well, aside from the fact that an inanimate object can’t get lonely, we have lots of stuffed toys.  To ensure we won’t be tempted to pick up the toys, they’re placed in groups so they’ll never be lonely.  He then asked about HIS stuffed bear… one he’d had from childhood.  It was well worn, with an eye missing and some of the stuffing leaking out.  What do we think of his bear?  Well again, it makes perfect sense to us… his bear is well loved, beautiful and clean (unless it’s really nasty and needs a wash).  It’s only when we touch it that it would become dirty.  We never touch other peoples stuffed toys, unless forced.

The cause for this thinking could be for a number of reasons – OCD, perfectionism etc… and while I think these are contributing factors, I think the real reasoning goes back to what Katie said in her comment to me in a previous post.  She quite rightly, pointed out how flippantly I assign negative labels to myself.  I know I do this, and have done so since I was a child.  I am/was sensitive, and remember the negatives said to me over anything positive.  When I was called the “mistake at the end”, “strange”, “odd” or “difficult”, that is all I hear.  I take those words into the system and hold onto them.  They define me.

However, the most damaging use of the negative wording, were associated with the abuse I was subjected to.  The abusers said that I was “evil for making [him] do this to [me]“, “a dirty little girl” or “a naughty little girl”.  When this was combined with the mixed religious messages that I grew up with; it resulted in parts of me firmly believing that they are evil, dirty and anything they touch would be sullied.

We are our harshest critics.  We believe we are stupid, useless, ugly, dirty… the list goes on.  We try not to make it too obvious that this is how we view ourselves – we learned very early that some people enjoy playing with those who have low self esteem.  So, we usually present a façade of calm confidence.  We were so good at this during our teen years, that our aunt considered us a stuck-up perfectionist… Our protection system failed us…  We’d taken it too far.

Couldn’t they see we were just trying so hard to make up for our dirty, evilness?  We had to be perfect in order to try to counteract all that had happened.  We had to be perfect to try and ensure that no one would see us…

You have to be invisible
If you’re invisible, no one can see you
No one can hurt you if you aren’t there

This is an enduring message that I have lived with for most of my life.  It comes from a young one, and has been one of the driving influences in my life.  During my healing, people have tried to point out to me that by being invisible, we are also invisible to those who want to help us.  I think this new way of thinking is starting to sink in.

At the moment, I’m getting lots of little pieces of the puzzle of my life being thrown at me.  It’s difficult to put them into a place or context.  But I am becoming increasingly aware of how they have impacted on my thinking and being.  Some of the enduring patterns of thinking are starting to be identified, examined and questioned.  I’m both excited and terrified…

And the red dog… I found out today that one of the young ones used to stare at our red stuffed toy dog while we were being abused.  She could look, but not touch…

Another reason why we find it difficult to touch stuffed toys.

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Now playing: Sarah McLachlan – I Will Remember You [Live]
via FoxyTunes

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So, we have a new therapist… Let’s call her Allison.  We’ve had two therapeutic sessions with her, and one introductory session to see if there was a possibility that we could work together.  I’ve been studiously avoiding talking about her here, I think because I’m scared of jinxing the relationship.  Here’s a quick run-down of what’s happened so far…

Introductory session
We were switching like crazy, a revolving door of different ones checking her out and asking different things that we knew had been issues in the past.

M asked about what happens to her clients when she goes away – this I know is because we tend to (for want of a better term) “fall apart” over Christmas.  One previous therapist asked us to contact her if this should happen, and another had no provisions in place for a crisis over this time.  I don’t think either approach is helpful for us, as we feel like an imposition contacting a therapist out of hours – especially during their Christmas holidays; and the lack of support led to a downward spiral that ended up with us going into respite care.  Allison assured us that, if we wanted, she has another therapist who will see her clients while she is on holiday.

W asked about religion.  This is a huge issue for her, as she sees herself as inherently evil and gets very triggered by the concept of religion.  Allison was open about believing in living a spiritual life.  While this did raise flags for W, it wasn’t a show stopper.  What was interesting, is that Allison mentioned that those who are brought up within a strict religious environment, often exhibit significant signs of abuse.  This was mentioned in the context of my father, who was raised within a strict religious doctrine.  So, it was about putting life experiences into context, not meant as a comparison or justification.

The other big question was, “are you going to cope with us?”  There are huge trust issues with therapists.  I can honestly say that each of the therapists I’ve seen in the past have tried to help us, and wanted to see us live a full life, free of many of the debilitating symptoms we currently experience.  But for various reasons – their approach to DID, a lack of skills, or being out of their depth, it hasn’t worked out.  After the rupture from Liz, all the feelings of being too difficult, too much and being a trouble maker came up again.  Allison mentioned that she was one of the top therapists in our small city.  This rankled M a little, as she saw it as boasting.  But, I understand that Allison was trying to reassure us.

So, after much internal discussion, it was decided that we’d keep seeing Allison.

First session
This was mainly taken up with housekeeping type of information – brief talk about what symptoms we wanted to address first, what other support systems we have, and how we are coping.  It was a difficult session, where at one point, W was nearly sucked into a flashback.  What was interesting, was Allison’s reaction to the near flashback… she asked us to look at her in the face.  Now, we don’t look therapists in the face – yes, this may be considered rude by some people, but we can’t bring ourselves to raise our eyes above their boots.  During work, we can do eye contact no problem, so it’s just within the therapeutic relationship.  Allison kept on about us looking her in the face – to prove that our reaction to the near flashback didn’t upset her, or cause her any distress.  We had to switch to M in order for this to happen, but we managed it!  And yes, it did help.  She sat there very calmly and greeted M as if everything was fine.  Hmmm… so maybe she can cope with minor crazy… let’s see about major crazy…

At this session, we discussed having fortnightly sessions, due to monetary constraints.  Since then, we’ve realised that the crazy making between sessions is too much for us to cope with, so have gone back to weekly sessions.  Who needs money for food anyway :)

Second session
This was a really difficult session.  It came off the back of Mother’s Day (those of you with the password to the protected posts will see the two word feeling that some of us have towards the day), and our up-coming birthday.  It was predominantly Sophie and B throughout the session, until Mother’s Day came up.  Then woohoo… lets step on the crazy freight train.  The desire to self injure went through the roof… Allison was particularly interested in the ways the self-injury was manifesting and who was potentially holding the needs and desires to hurt.  She talked about the anger we hold as pertaining to the mother… and then “flick”, Aimee came forward.

Suddenly it was all bright and breezy, talking about the calender on the wall that hadn’t been flipped over for the new month, the old heater that was in the corner of the room and other diversionary tactics.  Allison welcomed Aimee, which was a huge relief (her type of diversion had been discouraged with some therapists).  They were chatting along nicely, until Allison, as part of the normal conversation, said the word “shadows”.  This meant an immediate hiding by Aimee… she is absolutely terrified by shadows.  Shadows within our internal house represent evil, danger and the angry ones.  So Allison’s innocent comment caused a trigger switch to a stuttering teen.  We hate it when we stutter.  It’s usually only in therapy, and it’s just awful.  Of course, the more we try not to, the worse it gets.  The stutterer explained what had happened, and assured Allison that in no way was she to blame – she had no idea that such an innocent word could have such devastating effects.

Overall, we’re not sure about Allison.  She is good with the silences… both allowing the silence, and bringing our attention to what is happening during the silence.  She’s good at slowing us down, and getting us to try and notice things.  But, we still think we’ll be too much for her.  This is not because we’re the “worst” case of DID or anything, it’s just a mix of the old messages from the childhood, being re-enforced by actions of therapists who were out of their depth.

So, we’re still fence sitting.  She has shown the most promise of the therapists we’ve seen so far…  But, it’s hard to judge things accurately because we are so dissociated from life.

If anyone has had the “joy” of a comment from us over the last week or so, it’s probably been bordering on rude, pompous or left field.  We really shouldn’t comment when we’re so dissociated.  We again had a comment not published on a therapists site, this time because of our side-ways hostility.  That’s a classic sign that we’re not communicating internally, and M is running parts of the show without input from the calming influences of B and Sophie.  I’m not sure what will get us back on track…

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The other night I watched Sunitha Krishnan’s TED India talk about her fight against sex slavery and Deliver us from evil: The Catholic Church lies, a documentary about clergy sexual abuse.  As a note: both the talk and documentary carry trigger and adult content warnings. I’m not familiar with either of these forms of abuse, other than what I’ve read and seen through the media, but both of these clips affected me.

Sunitha talked with passion and courage when describing the horrific stories of some of the people she has rescued. To see the smiling photos of the children who had been used so badly by society that they died of HIV/AIDS before their 10th birthday…  The main focus of her talk, was not to tell horrific stories, but rather to confront societies attitude towards the survivors that she and her organisation Prajwala have rescued.  She was challenging our intolerance, judgments and the cruelty directed towards this group of survivors.  Turning a blind eye to the abuse is not acceptable… Finding excuses not to employ these survivors is not acceptable…  Society shuns these victims and ostracizes them to the fringes, making it difficult to find employment and develop a sense of self.  Society refuses to open our minds and hearts to their plight…

Within my context, I know that my mental health issues would be treated with scorn, derision and skepticism amongst my co-workers.  I know this, because I have seen how they have treated students who have mental health issues – with one being labeled a stalker!  Because I had to take time off work after my ex-husband attacked me, everyone at work knew that I was a victim of domestic violence.  In the months that followed, I got sympathy and understanding from some people, but I also heard domestic violence jokes from others.  If this is the reaction within my small workplace to what is a relatively common occurrence, I’d hate to imagine how they would react to my full abuse history – would I hear child abuse or suicide jokes?

My situation cannot be compared to the situation of those rescued from sexual slavery.  I live in a relatively wealthy farm based city where homelessness and drug problems are considered the greatest blight on our landscape.  I will never know the horror of the sexual slave industry as experienced by those children; and looking at their stories of survival, I’ll never experience their strength.  The context and extremity of the situations is worlds apart, yet there is still a general theme regarding a lack of acceptance by society.  Both situations show how people can be stigmatised for being a victim…

The documentary, Deliver us from evil, affected me for several reasons – our family was asked not to return to the Catholic Church after the mother started using birth control, and we have been subjected to varying forms of odd Catholic based indoctrination by the father, youth groups and camps.  But, the single thing that affected me the most about the documentary, was witnessing the father’s pain at knowing his daughter had been victimised by one of the priests.  The priest was a man the family had welcomed into their home, and he had abused that trust on so many levels.  The images of this grown man crying and distraught over the pain inflicted on his daughter and his inability to protect her were so confusing for us.  Is this how an otherwise healthy family reacts to such an event?  When I told the mother that I had been raped by three teenagers when I was 7 or 8, I don’t think she shed a tear.  I know she told my oldest brother, but he hasn’t said anything to me about any of my abuse history…  I compare this to when my sister was raped by her boyfriend when she was in her late teens, and both my brothers were willing to track him down and beat him up.  They didn’t, but there was some emotional response.  Am I so worthless that I don’t deserve such emotions?  I don’t want anyone to be hurt because of what happened to me, but some sort of reaction would have helped me gain some form of validation that I am a person worthy of concern.

Again, I can’t compare what happened to me to those who suffered at the hands of the abusive clergy.  There can be no generalisations made that those who were victims of the clergy were from otherwise healthy families or that all parents were as demonstrative in their grief over what had occurred to their children.  The daughter of the man who was open with his grief had been abused for years, and the daughter had made a conscious decision not to tell about the abuse for fear of her father being sent to jail for killing the offending priest – basic questioning as a child had led her to believe this as being a very real possibility.  So again, there are some similar general themes, but the context is totally different.

Sex slavery, sexual abuse by the clergy and my own situation should never be compared in regard to their severity; but there are similar themes which run through all incidents – societies acceptance and reaction to the victim seems to be the most common.  Anger seems to be the another.  Sunitha mentioned that she trained her survivors in male dominated trades because they have the courage and strength to push through and succeed in that area – she mentions anger as being one of the drivers.  The survivors of the clergy abuse, openly and strongly voiced their anger.  I’m just starting to realise that I might be angry about what happened to me, and more importantly how angry I am at those around me at the time – the mother suspected something but did nothing, while my sister would’ve been blind not to notice.

The question for all of us is, what do we do with that anger?

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Now playing: Audioslave – Like a Stone
via FoxyTunes

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I’m struggling…  struggling to maintain the feeling of being alive and being an adult.

Tomorrow I go to the funeral of my cynical work friends husband.  He died on Sunday after a year of battling cancer.  I unsuccessfully researched the guilt associated with someone who is suicidal continuing to live, while someone who was in love and loved life dies a horrible death.  There seems a great injustice in that scenario.  When I mentioned it to Liz on Monday, she came very close to talking about religion again, but squeaked by with the “there must be a reason” line.  I’m at a loss as to what that reason is.

We’ve been asking M to do a majority of the work and I think this might be part of the reason why we’re struggling.  M is incredibly functional, focused and driven; but she comes with the baggage of addiction issues which can harm the rest of us.  I’m not sure how to break through this barrier that we seem to have up.  I’m not sure if it is the time of year causing the problem (Wedding Anniversary, ex-husbands birthday and Christmas are approaching).  It could also be the work environment which is still negative and emotionally draining.

I suppose the big problem is that I was hoping the time off work would help to ease these issues, but it hasn’t.  Maybe I was hoping for another quick fix…  I’m realising that quick fixes don’t seem to exist within mental health.

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It was an interesting session with Liz today.  I had gone there with a plan of what to talk about – boundaries (especially around religion), our diagnosis, what that diagnosis means and her cell phone.  This agenda probably indicates that a fair amount of M went into the planning – it was a little optimistic that we would be able to get through all of that without dissociating badly and losing the entire session.

We went in prepared… or so we thought.  In our usual fashion we walked into the office, sat down and became unable to look anywhere apart from the floor, her beanbags, stuffed toys and tissues.  Sophie fronted while a major discussion happening internally about how to broach the subjects.  Liz has this habit of waiting for us to talk first; we have this habit of sitting there, unable to talk.  Today she asked how we should start each session – waiting for us to talk, or for her to start asking questions.  We said unless she wants to spend an hour in silence, she’s best to ask a few questions first :)

Sophie started off saying that religion shouldn’t be mentioned unless W raises it first.  W will raise it, but Liz needs to wait for that to occur.  W is consistently curious about why other people believe in whichever religion they follow and has asked all our previous therapists about their beliefs.  Liz just has to be ready for the grilling that she will face when W does ask.  W has heard many of the reasons behind why a God would “allow” abuse to occur, so Liz needs to have some solid arguments to present or else W will dismiss or destroy her logic.

Then things went a little haywire as Liz again brought in issues which really shouldn’t be raised mid session regarding ACC funding further sessions.  As neither of us had been notified of any decision, she called them during the session – she asked if that would be OK with us and we’re incapable of saying “No”.  This then led onto a discussion where ACC are going through new guidelines where clients who haven’t met their goals will be referred to a psychologist.  Liz wasn’t sure if this meant existing clients as well, but it was something to be aware of.  This triggered all our self-hatred for not being “cured” yet, and being a problem client for not being “cured”.  Does it mean we’ll have to go see someone like Bob again?  What will ACC do with us?  We rarely meet our goals as we don’t fit into a definable goal framework – we show gradual change over time rather than a “cured food issues” sort of thing.

All of this triggering brought forward someone I’ve never met before.  They were male and from either Ellie’s floor or The Basement.  They communicated with Liz and asked what had happened to trigger them coming forward.  They were actually pretty polite, but the whole time they talked he continually ran the sharp keys across palm of the left hand.  He didn’t break the skin and kept talking in a non-threatening way, but kept on hurting the body.  Liz tried to distract him with the soft toys that he could squeeze instead, but that idea was rejected.

When Sophie returned, she could tell something had happened with the hand, as it felt hot.  We don’t feel pain very much, but could feel the heat radiating from the hand.  Liz explained what had happened and Sophie tried to explain that it wasn’t attention seeking.  It may look like it as we were sitting in front of someone hurting the body, but it wasn’t for attention.  It was purely to punish.  At this point Liz stunned us, and agreed.  She knew it wasn’t for attention.  I don’t know how she came to this conclusion, as we’ve always been told that any sort of self-injury was for negative, attention seeking purposes.  Also the undeniable fact that, we were sort of doing self-injury in front of her – surely that means we were attention seeking.  But according to Liz we weren’t.  I think the reason she saw it this way was because she was totally irrelevant in the self-injury.  It wasn’t being done to manipulate her or modify her behaviour in any way, it was just what that one needed or wanted to do.  It wasn’t really a big deal in the scheme of things.  But for us, it was another indication that we are crazy and losing our ability to act “normal”.

This then led into the final big issue regarding our diagnosis and what that means.  This has always been a sore issue for us – DID is not widely recognised in New Zealand and is seen in a negative light.  Liz’ experience with other dissociative clients means that she can compare our behaviour to theirs.  This comparison will mean that she can state with some certainty that we do, or don’t have DID.  We’re stuck between the options which could describe our behaviour and thinking:

• Believe that the childhood was perfect and we’re now attention seeking.
• Believe that the childhood wasn’t perfect and we have an undiagnosed personality disorder.
• Believe that the childhood was traumatic and we have a trauma or dissociative disorder of some sort.

The problem is that the parallel truths about the childhood are so vivid.  On one side there is the perfect childhood where we feel loved and safe; on the other side is abuse, pain and fear.  A previous therapist has stated that these two truths don’t necessarily have to be mutually exclusive, but it’s hard to see where they would meet or co-exist.  Liz responded that each of us play roles within this life – how we present at work is different from how we present at home, in parties, out shopping etc.  I accept this is true, so it seems to be that Liz is saying that we’re not dissociative, but rather are doing a bit of hysterical attention seeking through exaggerating what is nothing major.  The session ended before we could fully talk through the implications of what she was saying.

Sorry for the rambling waffle, I’m trying to make sense of what happened in the session and failing.  I’m not sure if this is a continuation of my ability to appear higher functioning than I feel, or whether Liz is seeing me accurately and I need to just get over myself.

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The last few months have been interesting ones to reflect on.  I can spot within the blog entries the points at which I’ve been suicidal, trying to reach out and at what point I shut down and went back to the “everything is fine” mindset.  This is the one of the big advantages of blogging – the ability to reflect back on your thinking.

So I sit here, listening to Missy Higgins and wonder how I can keep going and in which direction to go.  I know that I am losing myself again.  I know I do this regularly.  I get lost, confused and overwhelmed.  I then seem to find some sort of plateau that seems safe for awhile – almost like finding a clearing in the forest.  I’m deep in the forest now and I’ve got no idea which direction to turn.

Having the mother here is difficult.  I have issues about the sound of people eating or breathing – yeah, I know it’s weird.  I can’t stand the sound of either, it seems to get amplified in my head and drives me crazy.  Unfortunately the mother does both fairly loudly.  I wish I could say that I love her and this is the only problem, but in all honesty I don’t love her.  I know some of us feel happy when she is around, but there are no tears when she leaves.  We don’t mind her being here for a short time, but we’d prefer it if she was only here for a very short time.  I know this sounds ungrateful, disrespectful and as if it’s breaking some law of nature.  But I don’t feel anything much towards her.  I also don’t feel hatred, I know that much.

Part of the reason is that I have never felt like a person around her.  If I was noticed, it was as a medical condition, an A+ grade at school, thin, fat, loud, silent, the mistake…  I was never “Me”.  This de-humanisation has been present throughout my life.  At the wedding, it became more about what the sister-in-law wanted rather than anything to do with me or the now ex-husband.  This feeling of being an object is what I tried to capture in one of the very first Polyvore sets I did…

I was a silhouette that had no soul, no place and no voice.  I can hear some in the background telling me not to be so melodramatic :)  I apologise, I’m in a rather odd mood.

Yesterday while out mowing the lawns, we decided to give Liz another try.  It was interesting reading through the comments to our entry about our journey with therapists (a BIG thank you to those who contributed).  Our reaction to the comments summed up our history – if it was possible to read into any of them that the whole issue was our fault, we would; if it was possible to read into it that it was the fault of the therapist; we would internally defend them.  It was a replica of our attitude towards our abusers…

Anyway, we’ve decided to give seeing Liz another go.  We don’t have any strong objections to her methodologies (although the religion issue is a big red flag).  Many of our issues with her are about her habits, for example turning her cell phone to vibrate mode.  I’m a little stunned that none of her other clients have found this an issue.  One of the major issues is that we are unable to communicate an issue as it occurs.  Because of this, we couldn’t say “Liz, we find it uncomfortable that you look at your cell phone while we are having a session”.  We sent an email to her to explain some of the issues and to see if she thought therapy was what we needed right now.  She responded that maybe the relationship issues with therapists is something that needs to be part of my healing (or words to that effect).  I agree with this, but also know that I’ve let bad therapeutic relationships go on for too long when they’ve hurt and been destructive.  I don’t trust my own judgement on what to do at a very basic level.  I, as the object doesn’t have a direction…

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Now playing: Missy Higgins – Stuff and nonsense
via FoxyTunes

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I’ve seen 4 therapists in the last 5 years.  That seems a high number.  M was told by Liz that we have very high expectations of therapists, maybe they are too high?  Here’s a brief run-down of what happened with each -

Debra seen for 6-8 months.
Worked part-time from home.  Her methods were based on Mindfulness and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.  She was intelligent and studying towards her masters.  Reason why we stopped seeing her was because of boundary issues and she was stopping therapy work to concentrate on her masters.

Carol seen for 2.5 years.
Worked part-time from offices.  Her methods were based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy with some influence from other methodologies including Dialectical Behavioural Therapy. Reason why we stopped seeing her was because of boundary issues and her fascination with our dissociation. She loved playing with Aimee. She wasn’t helping us move forward in any meaningful way and we’d started to become convinced that she had planted the whole idea of DID in our head.

Bob seen for 6-8 months.
Worked full-time from her extremely busy offices. She came highly recommended and we saw her to try and find out if we were making this dissociation thing up. She had extensive experience with abused teens and children. Things went a bit haywire with Bob when she was trying to force an integration of personality states to counter what she described as a “fragile personality structure”. We stopped seeing her when the short term contract was up with ACC.

Liz seen for about 6 months.
Works part-time from offices. She was the only therapist willing to take on a client that came with warnings about dissociative issues. She has other dissociative clients and came recommended from another therapist. We don’t know if we can go back to see her.

Earlier this week we posted a rant that was fairly quickly deleted.  It covered the issues we’d had when seeing Liz on Monday and problems we’d seen throughout the time we’d been seeing her.  Some of these include:

• Turning her cell phone volume down during sessions.  It has rung during session, so you get the noise of a vibrating cell phone dancing across the desk as you’re trying to talk about something important.  She has also looked at the cell phone to see who is calling while in session.
• She has a habit of clearing her throat when being asked something difficult or is faced with challenging ones within the system.  Mickie is generally silent during sessions when fronting, which prompted much throat clearing and a conversation about us living alone meaning that we don’t know how to socialise and make conversation.
• On Monday there was a discussion about our night-time photography trips and the reason why we’re doing them – to get hurt.  Liz suggested that the reason why we hadn’t been hurt was because of someone or something looking out for us.  She was meaning a higher power of some sort.  Any talk of religion is a huge trigger for us.  It felt more like the focus of the discussion had moved from helping us, to preaching to us.
• She is unable to remember our basic biographical information – we’re the youngest of four, get on alright with the oldest brother and have minimal contact with the entire family.  This is the sort of information that she has asked several times, including constructing a sociogram with us.  If the information was important enough to ask several times, it’s important enough for her to remember or to write on the front page of our file for easy reference.

Monday’s session was particularly bad.  The religion trigger set off a negative reaction with W.  M came forward to protect W when she realised what was going on, but it was too late.  This meant that M came forward annoyed that Liz was talking religion without checking out who was present and their beliefs about the subject.

It was after Liz again asked M about our basic biographical information that things got particularly tense.  M asked why Liz had to keep asking about this information, Liz responded that she might get a different answer one day.  M pointed out that we would always be the youngest of four children and unless something major happened, we’d still feel the same about the family as we do now.  Liz said our expectation that she would manage this information was too high, M asked what a reasonable expectation would be…

To be fair, M was defensive as Liz had challenged one of the young ones she protects.  But Liz was helpless to find us all a way through that defensive mechanism.  We left without making a further appointment.  If this has been a one off bad session we would have had a cool-off period and made another appointment.  But it isn’t, it’s the latest in a series of unusual sessions.

Now we’re stuck.  We don’t trust Liz and don’t know if we can go back to see her.  But if we don’t, are we doing so because our expectations are too high?  Are we being unreasonable with our expectations that a therapist will manage basic information, silence their cell phone and not talk about sensitive issues without checking who is present?  Maybe our reaction is off the scale because of our dysfunctional thinking and reactions?

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Now playing: Audioslave – Cochise
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Disclaimer note: Please don’t take our confusion about this subject as an insult on you or your beliefs.  It is purely an indication of how we struggle with the concept of a higher power.

I’m probably WAY to tired to tackle this subject at the moment, but we’ve encountered these concepts again recently and they have always bothered us for various reasons.

As a system, we all agree with the concept of “do unto others”. To us, this makes sense. You shouldn’t go around hurting others, and it makes sense that if you treat someone nicely they are more likely to treat you nicely. If they don’t, well at least you’ve tried your best to make it a positive exchange. This is not to say that you shouldn’t stand-up for yourself or be assertive.  It’s about having respect for the people and things around you.

We’ve tried to connect to a higher power several times during our life and never reached any sort of understanding regarding Christianity.  This could well be because of our early experiences with Roman Catholicism.  We are the youngest of four children, and the Mother nearly died giving birth to the oldest brother and had difficulty giving birth to us.  As she realised that she couldn’t leave us alone with the father, she started to use birth control – meaning she was asked not to return to the church.  However, the older brothers told us that the family was “kicked out of church because … [we] … screamed too much in church”.  Because we believed the brothers, for years we lived with the guilt that we were the reason that the whole family was going to go to Hell when they died.

So we were always a little wary of organised religions.  Despite this, we tried several times to “save our soul” by joining things like Rally (sort of like Girl Guides), which was a religious based organisation that was meant to empower girls.  One of the common memories we have is sitting in the church during a Rally meeting and being told to “let God into your heart”.  We would know this had happened when we felt a warmth and lightness come into us.  We were pretty good at dissociating and feeling separated from the world by that time, so no warmth or lightness got near us.  We considered this as a sign that we were truly evil and beyond saving or consideration by a God.

Another aspect of religion that has bothered us as described by a previous therapist is the concept of “free will”.  In that God gave every person the free will to do good or bad as part of their personal freedom.  W countered this with the rather stark statement “so she had the free will to go into that kindergarten fort and let us all get hurt” … “so we had the free will to leave that party with those men that hurt us badly” … “so we had the free will to say nothing when we were being hurt”.  Our therapist tried to explain that it wasn’t our fault and that the people who hurt us had the ability to exercise their free will to not hurt us, but they didn’t.  It was their evilness being forced onto us.  This didn’t make much sense to us.  How is it acceptable for someone to use the concept of free will to abuse another person?  It’s a bit too late to be accountable for that abuse once they’d died and are being held accountable by any higher power – the damage has already been done.

This is one of the reasons why the concept of karma brings more comfort, if we treat others with respect, over time we will also be treated with respect.  However, it also means that we were so bad in a former life that we deserved to be punished so harshly in this life as that balancing influence of karma.  We must have been someone REALLY nasty!  I think this is why when we think of karma, we prefer to think of it in the short term – even if we have had awful things happen to us, it doesn’t mean that we can take out that hurt on others around us.  We have the option to break that cycle of destruction and move to an attitude that will be more likely bring positive karma.

It’s obvious from this post that we’ve never studied any sort of theology.  We come from an applied science background.  We’re not particularly good at understanding abstract concepts such as faith or higher powers.  When someone points out to us the beauty of the flower, we look at a flower and explain how natural selection has meant that this flower has evolved over the centuries to ensure that it is more likely to be cross-pollinated and continue the species.

That’s not to say we can’t see beauty in things – we do.  We find peace and beauty in nature.  In fact its one of the few places and environments where we do find peace – there’s nothing like standing near the waterfront while a storm comes up from the Antarctic and slams into Wellington harbour; going for a walk through the Abel Tasman Park; or going around the Marlborough Sounds.  But we see those environments and elements as beautiful and having a scientific reason for being in that ecosystem.

What we’ve found interesting is that all three of the therapists we’ve seen recently have followed some sort of religion – the first involving a goddess and the last two Christianity.  How can they hear the horrors that their clients have experienced and still believe in a creator?  Or is the belief in a creator the only way they can hear those things?

I know there are survivors who believe in, or follow, some form of religion.  Some people find a comfort and purpose in that belief, and I respect that.  This piece is just about our confusion with the concept of a higher power.  In some respects I think this is because we learnt very early on that we can’t rely on anyone or anything outside of the system.  Our only avenue for help was to retreat inside rather than reach out.

Awhile ago we were asked via email whether we believed in any form of religion, here are the answers given at that time which probably best describes our confusion around this topic:
Sophie – no I don’t believe in a God as such, but I do believe there is something that is bigger than us.
W – Dear X, there is a God and we are being punished for being evil.  We keep on doing very evil things which mean we won’t ever go to heaven when we die. Yours sincerely, W.
M – Hi X, well not sure really.  On one hand it would be arrogant to consider that we are the only beings out here, however I’m not sure if that other being is what would be described as a “God”.  I have been curious about the afterlife and psychic mediums to the point where I had a reading done that was incredibly accurate and disturbing.
S – nuh no god no matter how much they chucked it down our throat.
SO – But there has to be a God or else how can we be saved when we die?

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