Scattered pieces

When Paul announced that the topic for both the Carnival Against Child Abuse, and Expressive Arts Carnival would be “your truth”, I was excited. I struggle with what my truth is, almost on a daily basis; so saw this as a great way to explore my reactions and issues around the concept.  Then the reality of writing about the topic hit me… literally.  I published a post about my truth last week, which received some negative feedback, and all my insecurities came out and had a party.  It became a fight about whether I would look more foolish keeping it up, or taking it down.  I decided to take it down.

I consider truth to be an amorphous concept.  What I wrote last week, was my truth at that time.  What I write today, will be different because I’ve learned from last week’s experience, and gained more understanding about the situation.  If I write another post on this topic in a week, month or year, it will be different again.  Truth isn’t set in stone.  Truth is derived from the understanding of our experiences… but that understanding comes from our perspective, bias, values, etc.

Truth also has political, economic and cultural importance.  This is where I start to get confused – not because I think I’m of any great importance, but rather because so many people seem to have a vested interest in my truth…

• The False Memory Syndrome Foundation and DID deniers are vocal in their opinion and research that they say proves you cannot repress traumatic memory in the way that many DID cases are presenting.
• Extreme supporters of DID tell you to seek out each memory and believe it as the truth.
• My family don’t know what to believe, but they are tired of having a daughter who is unwell.
• Work doesn’t care as long as they get more than my contracted hours of work, and I don’t inconvenience them with my phobias.
• ACC accepts that I have issues related to sexual abuse, but would prefer this to have been “resolved” long ago so that they didn’t need to keep funding my therapy.

I find it impossible to ignore all of these conflicting messages and theories.  In some ways, I think it’s dangerous to do so.  Each group has something to teach us… FMS helped to place a check of poor therapeutic practice; our family show us how confusing our experience can appear to the outside world; and so on.  But, I don’t think that it’s up to us as individuals, to get caught up in the debates and arguments.  I think that we owe it to ourselves to be an informed consumer; to gain power over our own healing, and to play an active part in that healing process.  But we shouldn’t hurt ourselves in the process.

I’ve read much of the FMS material.  I’ve debated with the DID deniers.  I’ve questioned the beliefs of the extreme supporters.  Each of those interactions has come at a personal cost.  I begin to doubt my truth.  I become conflicted and destabilised.  Opponents to DID, would argue that this destabilisation was due to the house of cards that I have built my life on, being threatened.  The thing is, the intellectual part of me likes this reasoning.  At times I embrace denial for all it’s worth.  Events which I know occurred are minimised, or I detach emotionally from them.

But, this doesn’t explain how I continue to react to things.  Even in the midst of my denial, I still avoid the smell of tyres on a hot summer day, I must have my back to the wall… the list goes on.  I can appear bright, happy and be super-functional; yet internally I’ve compartmentalised the turmoil, and can dangerously self injure within the hour.  This is where my intellectual/autobiographical truth, and the truth of my sensory memory collide.  For me, healing comes, not from trying to uncover every single memory, but rather in coping with what I am facing in the present – it’s about symptom management, not chasing memories.

It’s my intellectual part that needs to know what happened to me; but this has never been where my healing has occurred.  My greatest leaps in healing have always come from working through a trigger in the present.  It’s shown the wounded parts of me that it is possible to be safe.  Ironically, this safety has often led to more sharing of emotions, and yes, sometimes memories.  But these were shared from a place of strength, not chaos.  They didn’t have the power to sweep me along on an emotional tidal wave.  That’s not to say that I don’t get swept away, I do.  But I’m learning how to cope in the present in a more proactive way… a more emotional way.  It’s uncomfortable, it’s scary, but the benefits are showing.

So what is my truth?  I was hurt in the past by people who should have protected me.  That betrayal of trust now influences my life in significant ways.  I get confused, distracted and hurt by the controversy that is associated with the diagnostic label that a psychiatrist assigned me.  I am trying my best to heal from the wounds of the past, understand the controversy, and (more importantly) live a life.  Isn’t that what most of us are trying to do?

What is the truth… or are they both the truth seen from different perspectives?

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Now playing: Collective Soul – December
via FoxyTunes

Ever notice how easy it is to lose track of the days, weeks, months… years?  At times it scares me.  I know that the mother visited for three weeks.  I know that when she was here, we had several lunches at The Coffee Club; went to two 3D movies (I think Tangled was one of them); I brought her a new camera; and we went to a nearby town where I purchased a small gift for a friend.  The only reason I know all of that, is I have the bank statements to follow my trail.  I’ve no idea what happened on the days when I might have used cash – that’s one of the reasons I never carry cash on me.

According to my computer, it’s now 10.22am on Wednesday, 12th of January.  Isn’t that strange?  What happened to December and the previous 11 days of January?  I really don’t remember – I have some vague, disjointed images of that time, but not many.

I know friends have been struggling.  I know there have been bereavements, Christenings, excited moments over hope for new life, humour in odd things… yes, I remember more about the lives of the people I consider friends, than I do my own.  I don’t know if that is a dissociative feature, or just some weird thing that happens just to me; but sometimes it does my head in.  Sometimes, it acts as an anchor in my own life.  I use the theory that I can’t be insane, or totally stupid, if I can remember a conversation that was important to someone else.

This time loss, is one of the reasons why I have the next four days off work.  I’m sinking.  Well actually, I sunk a little while ago, and I’ve only just realised it…  I always was a bit slow on the uptake.

On Monday I went to work and said that I needed the rest of the week off.  My team leader and manager were supportive; so here I am, in the kiddie pool of life, getting my balance back.

I spent Tuesday sleeping… I went from getting 1-3 hours of sleep per night, to sleeping 8 hours straight, and then sleeping on and off for the rest of the day.

Today, I’m going to go take photos.  My aim… to reconnect with the moment.  I’ve lost too many moments lately.

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Now playing: Missy Higgins – Where I Stood
via FoxyTunes

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
via FoxyTunes

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
via FoxyTunes

I’m on Facebook…  The big thing about Facebook is that it tries to encourage connections – connections with your workplace, interest groups, family, current friends and people from the past.  As a person who is fairly wary of friendships and making connections, I have only a few friends on Facebook – mainly people from the survivor community, a couple of family members and more recently a couple of people from my childhood.  One of the ways in which Facebook encourages connections is by suggesting friends for you based on the friends of your friends.  This means that you get a list of people Facebook suggest that you might like to become friends with, because one of your friends happens to know them.  This was all very innocuous, up until the point where I friended the people from my childhood.  These were safe friends when I was younger, so they weren’t triggering or associated with anything negative.  It just so happens that some of their friends are people who hurt us.  Last night, I logged into Facebook and on the right hand side of my screen were the photos of two of the people who hurt us.  These boys (now men) were part of a gang of boys that hurt us… One of them has a smiling photo of his family, which includes a daughter who would be about the age I was when he was hurting me.  It was such a shock to see these men smiling out at me.  They looked so “normal” and happy, you’d never expect them to have anything untoward in their past.

I have very little memory of my past involving these people.  I have vague images of a wood sheds, boys, smells and the light coming through the window…  Seeing these men and their smiling families triggered switching and internal chaos.  I didn’t even think I remembered their names, but obviously someone inside remembered when it was combined with their photo.  The problem is, what do I do with this?  If asked about the past, these men would probably say that what occurred in the wood shed was natural experimentation amongst consenting children.  There is no way that I could do anything about bringing charges against these men, it was too long ago in a context that could be twisted too easily.

But now, one of my safe escapes has been invaded by their presence.  I could “un-friend” the people from my childhood, but the parts of me that remember the carefree times we had with these people are reluctant to do this.  I’m also not sure that I want these men to have power over me… but sitting here writing this, I’m starting to have memories around the physical pain inflicted by these boys.  I keep thinking that they’re just silly photos, I don’t have to look at them, but, they’re like a car wreck – you don’t want to look, but you end up looking anyway.

I’ve yet to find a way to turn off the “Suggestions” area of Facebook, if anyone knows how, I would appreciate them letting me know.  I could block these men, but that means going into their profile which is something I wasn’t strong enough to do at the time.  Maybe today or tomorrow I will have the strength to block them…  I hope so.

I’ve noticed over the last week that we’ve moved from a state of denial to one of superficial happiness and coping.  I’m not sure which is worse.  Both of these states allow me to block out the chaos caused by some of our negative actions and allow me to get through the day at work without too much trouble…

The ex-husbands birthday is less than a week away.  To understand what that day meant to us in the past, read this potentially triggering post we did last year at about this time.  I know we’re nearly a year gone with no interaction from him, but the memories are still very fresh.  What’s been interesting is that we’ve been remembering more of the good times as well as the bad – he could make us laugh and smile…  Sometimes the two are blending in our memory, so they’re flicking from him laughing to him hurting us almost seamlessly.

Hating anniversaries… hating this depersonalised functioning…

I noticed a very odd thing yesterday while playing FarmTown on FaceBook…  My issues with having a large personal space, seem to translate to my online avatars.  In FarmTown, you can go to market to sell your produce and see if someone wants to hire you to harvest their crops or plow their fields.  If you’re waiting to be employed, your avatar can be “standing” with a number of other avatars for a period of time.  There is a certain amount of psychology that goes into the strategies behind being hired – the “spammer”, where you repeatedly ask to be hired; the “dancer”, where you move around or get your avatar to dance on the spot; or the “loner”, where you get your avatar in a spot alone so they’re easily noticed.  I’ve always adopted the “loner” strategy, and have always attributed this to my game strategy.  I now realise there might be something more to it.  I can sometimes cope with another avatar being near or overlapping mine for a short period of time, but never long – even my ugly little avatar must have a large personal space.  For those of you who think I’m being cruel about the relative ugliness of the avatar, you obviously haven’t seen FarmTown graphics – they’re UGLY!

I wonder if this is an indication that I’ve been playing the game too long and are therefore personalising it too much, or whether I have extreme boundary issues.  When Carol (previous therapist) asked me about arranging the room in a way that I felt comfortable, we did an exercise about personal space.  In order for us to feel even mildly comfortable, we had to be in one corner of the room and she had to be in the opposite corner.  We would’ve preferred for her to be outside the room, but that wasn’t feasible.  During therapy with Carol, we’d often end up on the floor tucked around behind a cabinet that she had – this was mainly when the young ones were present.  They often felt a need to hide and create physical barriers between us and Carol.  During sessions with Liz when the young ones are present, there is still a pull to sit on the floor in the corner, but we’re too scared to do it in case it makes us look too odd.

We felt that need to sit in the corner today during our session with Liz, Aimee and SO were strongly present and felt like hiding.  It was a rough session in many ways – the main topics of conversation were denial and self-injury.  It brought up a very odd concept of how to cope with the denial.  We’d tried to construct a basic timeline of events to try and create some order out of the memories, but had found it too difficult to write them down.  We got about four events written, but then the derealisation started.  As this way of coping and “getting the memories out” hadn’t worked, Liz suggested something which is too bizarre for my very literal brain – think the memories or whatever is bothering me onto a piece of paper, fold it up and give it to Liz to keep.  This will mean that we don’t have to worry about those pieces of information again as they are being kept safe and separate from us.  To us this didn’t make sense…  How do you “think” something onto a piece of paper without writing it down?  How does giving Liz that piece of paper signify anything?  It was all too abstract and alternative for our very concrete, narrow way of thinking.

A therapist once told us that our education was lacking because we hadn’t studied any of the Arts.  That’s true, we don’t understand the beauty in art, music or philosophy.  In many ways we deliberately avoid studying them, because if the intellectuals amongst us get hold of the ideas they have this tendency to strip away the magic and enjoyment.  So we take photos because they’re fun… we listen to Beethoven, Foo Fighters, Brooke Fraser or any music because it moves us at the time… But when it comes to having to think through an abstract idea, we need the intellectual ones to come on board with some assistance.  This is fine, unless they get faced with something which they can’t dissect or reason through logically, then it sort of gets lost in their cynicism…

I’ve struggled long and hard to understand what is meant by the term “healing” within a mental health context.  I’m familiar with healing that can be quantified (e.g. a broken bone mending), but how do you quantify healing from childhood abuse?  Is it possible or desirable to do so? What time-frame should we look at as reasonable when we’re considering the healing process?

I’m very aware that this is the intellectual side of me asking these questions.  The questions are born from frustration at what is seeming like a very long journey that hasn’t got us very far.  I know that many survivors experience a decrease in functioning with the start of therapy, but how long can I expect this to continue?  I do what I can to hasten the healing process – I do the homework I’m set, I try to be as open as I can within therapy, etc.  But is this enough?  I’ve been told by therapists that I’m “working hard” within therapy, but I often feels as if it’s another part of my life that I’m drifting through.  There will be a moment of clarity surrounding why I do a certain behaviour, but it’s then lost in the confusion and dissociative memory gaps.

I’ve yet to fully understand what the term “working hard” refers to within therapy.  Yet, I often come out of a session absolutely exhausted or on an adrenaline high, both signs that I have experienced something extreme for what I sometimes dismiss as “sitting in a chair for 60 minutes talking”.  I have a great deal of respect for those who are working on their healing as a full-time endeavour, it’s not something that I have the strength for.  But I have no respect or patience for my own healing.  I’m still caught in dismissing and minimising the memories.  Liz has offered to assist with this process by using her as a sounding board to test out the feelings and potential accuracy of the memories.  There is a certain attraction in doing this, we could finally prove what is real and which memories have potentially been influenced.  But there is also a fear that Liz will say nothing about the validity of the memories, but rather ask us to look at them and analyse our feelings and emotions about the events.  This is my greatest fear, having no way to prove or dis-prove the memories and still having to do the work of recovering from the toxic mess they generate.

Part of my anxiety is generated from the proposed changes to the ACC scheme (check out the ACC category at Gudrun Frerich’s site for some of the issues surrounding the changes).  As an ACC client, the changes will mean more reporting, increasing need to measure the healing progress and the threat of my cover being stopped at any time.  There is no way that I would be able to afford therapy without ACC assistance, so this is  a huge issue.  This is not because we are attached to, or reliant on Liz; but rather I have a fear that if we can’t release the thoughts within a therapeutic framework, we will self-destruct.  Yes, I realise that I’m contradicting myself – how can therapy be “sitting in a chair talking for 60 minutes” as well as one of the things that keep us sane…

In totally other news, B entered us into a photo competition which we have absolutely no chance of winning or even placing in.  This goes against every single strand of perfectionism that runs through our body.  I do realise however, that it’s going to be an great deal of fun for them deciding how to photograph 100′s and 1000′s creatively.

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Now playing: The Feelers – Stand Up
via FoxyTunes

Yup, I’m thick.  I might be intelligent, but I’m still as thick as a thick thing on a thick day.  I’ve been a dissociative, anxiety ridden wreck for the last week and had no idea why.  I thought it was just S acting out that was causing me to lose so much time.  It’s only today when I was at the supermarket check-out that it clicked… The check-out operator was asking the usual pleasantries about how my day was etc.  Then she asked the big one “Did you do anything special for Father’s Day?”  How in the world could I not connect today with being Father’s Day?  I brought one of the special Father’s Day lotto tickets last week; I’ve seen the Father’s Day card stands in the shops; I’ve seen the advertisements on television; I even thought of buying a camera tripod in a Father’s Day sale.  But for some reason, the words ‘Father’s Day’ didn’t connect correctly in my brain.  Don’t ask me why, but I didn’t associate it with the father and the past.

I don’t know if this lack of connection is a good or bad thing, but it sure helps to explain why I’ve lost most of the week.  It could also explain why S was acting out so violently and challenging the power dynamics within the system.  We were all oblivious to her pain and memories…  I’m so sorry S, please forgive us.

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Now playing: Mad World – Gary Jules
via FoxyTunes
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