Scattered pieces

In the town where we grew up, there was a psychiatric hospital.  It was spoken about in hushed whispers as a scary place where crazy people were fenced in and tortured.  In reality, the hospital catered predominantly for those who were institutionalised during a time in our history when those with even minor problems were often hidden away.  We were told as part of our abuse, that if we told the secrets we would be sent to prison or this hospital forever.  So our early contact with psychiatric hospitals was negative.

If you place these experiences within the context of our rather traumatic experiences with the medical profession, you get a picture of someone who has deep seeded issues and fears about all things medical.  The young ones especially react with terror even when driving by a hospital.  We avoid dentists, doctors and nurses where at all possible.  In many ways this fear enabled us to appear high functioning for many years – if there was a threat of having to ask for help through therapy or medication, well that just wasn’t acceptable.  Time to stamp it all back down into The Basement and carry on being invisible.

Then arrives the dissociative train wreck we experienced when about 34.  Our coping mechanisms fell apart.  Then there was the final straw – we were teaching a group of 40 students when something about the interactive whiteboard markers caused Angel to come forward.  So there you have a 5 year old drawing pictures of flowers on the whiteboard while a group of adult students look on.  M comes back to find half the board covered…

So back to therapy we went.  We were in the throes of an abusive marriage and suddenly facing a childhood that wasn’t as perfect as we’d convinced ourselves it was.  These factors led to constant suicidal ideation and intent, which in turn resulted in us needing to find some support to keep safe.

In New Zealand there are a few support lines for suicide help – Lifeline, Samaritans, Youthline, the emergency number or the local mental health hotline.  Lifeline, Samaritans and Youthline are confidential – unless they feel you are in danger, in which case they will try to get your details and send around the Police.  Emergency services transfer you through to the mental health hotline, unless you are already need emergency care.  Once you’re in the mental health system, you are told to call the mental health hotline.  Usually you wait for 5-10 minutes on hold before the phone is answered – ever been suicidal during the Christmas season and had to listen to Christmas carols for 20 minutes while waiting to see if someone can help you stop killing yourself?  You can at least double the waiting time if you call after midnight, as that’s when they go down to one or two operators.

If you do manage to get through to a human, you’re asked for your details – name, phone, address, caseworker and then why you’ve called.  If they consider you to be at risk, they will send around the local mental health workers to assess you.  If they consider that you aren’t at risk, they will discuss grounding skills you can use before sending you on your way.  The problem with this is that at any one time we can have up to 5 suicide plans – apparently that means we don’t really mean to die as we’re not focused on one plan (we consider it covering our bases in case one doesn’t work).  We can also begin the phone call with one who wants to reach out for help; but by the time we get to actually talk to someone, we’ve switched to one who either won’t talk or says that everything is fine.  So in many ways the service doesn’t suit us (and a majority of the population).

If you are considered at risk, you get the joyful experience of being escorted up to the psychiatric ward of the local hospital.  Where you begin the wait for some poor registrar who has been working for at least 10 hours and is surviving on a combination of adrenaline, coffee and sugar.  This person then has to assess your level of danger.  Most registrars haven’t dealt with anyone with a dissociative disorder, let alone tried to understand if there really is a risk.  They have a thankless job of walking a tightrope – is the patient telling the truth?  To make this job more complicated, during our experiences with registrars they’ve encountered -

• Aimee (9 yrs old and carefree) who smilingly told the nice young registrar that she was too young to drink.  Quite forgetting that the body she shares is in it’s mid 30′s and sitting cross-legged on a hospital bed while drips are hanging from each arm to pump us full of drugs to counter the drugs we’d OD’d on.
• Sophie (16 yrs old) who is our safest bet for these assessments – no one would section Sophie.  The main problem is getting close enough to hear her as she talks very quietly when scared or worried.
• M who is the other safe bet.  She’s confident and knows how to work the mental health system to ensure that we are released.  Release is always her goal as the young ones she protects are violently triggered by hospitals.
• Ellie who won’t be sectioned as long as she can keep her swearing and scorn for the medical profession under control.
• Frank who is the worst one to front for an assessment.  He doesn’t get suicidal, but doesn’t understand what constitutes aggressive behaviour as seen in the eyes of a psychiatrist.  He doesn’t actually get aggressive, but his anger at being in a hospital is seen as aggression.

It’s at this point where we’ve usually been sent home.  But on two occasions we’ve been admitted or sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

Event 1:  Sectioning with two nights in hospital.

1. Night of admission, put into art therapy room with triggering artwork around the walls.
2. Given a single room across from an alcoholic man in his 40′s (the father is an alcoholic).
3. As punishment for being admitted W used all of her strength to try and break the arms by bashing them against the storage unit in the room.
4. A miracle was there in the form of a part-time night nurse.  She realised we wouldn’t sleep so asked if we wanted art supplies and then she sat and talked to us.  She didn’t care who she talked to, she just sat on the floor and let us talk and draw.  She got us Arnica cream for the bruised, swollen mess that was now our arms without a fuss.
5. Then there was the daytime registrar.  We had asked to be released as the hospital was too triggering.  He went through the whole assessment again.  He asked why our symptoms made us special.  We tried to explain that we weren’t special, just sometimes experienced dissociation.  He dismissed the dissociation saying it wasn’t important.  Then when returning after talking to the consultant, said that the dissociation made us too unpredictable to release.  Yes, the one symptom that he totally dismissed, became the thing he used to keep us in.
6. That night the same part-time nurse told us how to get out – say the words “I have no intent”.
7. The following day a different registrar got the consultant to come in and talk to us.  He was going to let us out for the day, but M came forward and dazzled him with a veil of sanity.  We were outta there.

Event 2:  Admitted to the secure unit with one night stay.

1. Saturday afternoon attempted suicide through an overdose and was taken to ER by the husband.
2. Put on a drip and was overwhelmed by the dissociation.
3. Overheard the nurses say that we hadn’t really overdosed, but were just attention seeking – our bed was right beside the nurses station and strangely enough the curtains aren’t sound proof.
4. As soon as we were coherant, we asked to leave.
5. After a 5 hour wait, we were assessed by the same psychiatrist who once picked up the phone while we were in the room and told the DBT specialist that “the borderline actually turned up, do you want to come meet her?”
6. Because of all the triggers, Ellie and Frank weren’t able to control the anger very well.  We were escorted to the secure unit by the Police.  We didn’t threaten anyone or even raise our voice, but we were considered to be irrational and dangerous because of the barely contained rage.
7. We were released the next morning.

If we are ever sectioned again, we’ll request to go to the secure unit.  It was comparatively peaceful and safe.  If any of the half a dozen patients even raise their voice, they are immediately surrounded by about four staff and taken away to be calmed down.  The only downside was that the cups of tea were lukewarm – hot water being a dangerous weapon.

This is a very light hearted look at our experiences.  In reality, during the sectioning Sophie was nearly destroyed when her twin came from The Basement to tell her why they were created.  The day after we were released from the secure unit, the ex-husband tried to kill us.  Other incidents have occurred while we’ve been waiting to be assessed, including one I’d like to forget where a patient masturbated while looking through the window at us.

We sit in wonder when people say that they voluntarily go to hospital.  It’s a concept that we don’t understand – why would you volunteer for torture, ridicule and scorn?  We know our perception is warped and that hospitals help people every day.  But it’s not something we identify with.  It was once recommended that we go to Ashburn Hospital for a minimum of six months to try and break our cycle of destructive thinking.  Just the thought of that was terrifying.  I wonder if part of the reason is that in New Zealand the focus within the psychiatric ward seems to be on holding you in a safe place until the suicidal intent goes, rather than helping you in a long term way.  It’s reactive rather than proactive.

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Now playing: Dixie Chicks – Wide open spaces
via FoxyTunes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Now playing: Audioslave – Cochise
via FoxyTunes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today we went and saw the new therapist for our fourth session.  It didn’t go well.  The need to self injure and the level of suicidal ideation has been increasing steadily for the last few weeks.  Because we’re switching so rapidly when even mildly stressed, we were all over the place in the session.  The only techniques she had to try and keep us present or in the room was to get us to describe three things we could see, hear or feel.  At the best of times we have very little body sensation, so asking us to describe a tactile feeling is difficult – when she asked us to describe the feeling of our jeans under our palms we answered that it was rough, because we know denim should feel rough.  Regarding things we hear, well we’re hearing impaired so we could only hear the rain.  Visually we usually look at a spot on the floor which allows us to see a majority of the floor space, that way we can monitor anyone approaching us from our peripheral vision. But today because of the anxiety and need to protect, our vision narrowed and we could only see small patches straight in front of us.  When she asked us to look up at a fan, we couldn’t do it until our fifth attempt and a switch to someone who could look around.

After the session we went to work.  When going to get a hot drink we realised that we really need some help to ensure our safety.  We’re thinking of going for a visit to our home town for a week.  Not sure if it would help or trigger us further.  Not sure if we can even do it, as we would have to find someone to look after our cat.  Just know that things are getting a little out of control.  It’s not too bad, but we’re doing stupid things – writing a comment on Discussing Dissociation and not putting our point across clearly so it was misunderstood, not being able to think through things logically at work, finding sets we’ve done on Polyvore that have suicidal themes…

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Now playing: Brooke Fraser – Lifeline
via FoxyTunes

When the mother visited last time we talked about the childhood and some of the things that happened.  In some respects I think she was checking out when we were hurt and by whom – a fairly understandable concern for a mother.  What became very obvious is that huge chunks of the childhood are missing from our collective memory.  This is for both good and bad incidents.

I’m quite happy with the knowledge that you don’t remember everything from your childhood.  But what I really need is some good memories to hold onto.  There’s no way that the childhood was all bad.  I know there are some good pieces, and this was confirmed by the mother when we were talking about it.  She’d ask “do you remember…” with a smile in her voice; but we couldn’t remember it.  Admittedly this is the woman who had a baby photo of our cousin and tried to tell us it was us, so odds are her memory isn’t all that accurate either.  But where in this head are some good memories?

Aimee is our happiest and carefree young one, but she holds almost no memories.  She was purely there to be happy and appease everyone around us – she did this well.  K has a smile which would break your heart, but it’s a smile born out of being scared all the time – it’s very tentative.

When the mother was talking about the good memories, it became obvious that not many of them were totally positive.  I remember Nanna brushing our hair dry one time when we were staying with them in Wellington, this is the only totally positive.  The rest are tinged in some way – on holiday at the Marlborough Sounds, getting out of the car and running to find the ocean… we found it by falling down a cliff.  Deciding to eat raw pumpkin seeds before going on a family holiday… only to throw them all up before reaching the town limits.  Being the smallest in the family so being told to go up the storm water drains to scare the eels down for the brothers to catch.  These stories are often told with humorous teasing at family gatherings, but we don’t remember the events.  I can see how they’re funny, but they’re not the sort of thing that you can hold onto when you’re whole body is shaking from a triggered abusive memory.

Whoever in this head has got the good memories, can they share them with me please…  Could really do with some good stuff right now.

I think it’s time to admit the glaringly obvious fact that (as a dissociative system), we suffer from a great deal of stupidity!  We can do academic work no problem, sometimes we even enjoy it…  But give us anything that isn’t a concrete concept to think about and we’re all over the place.

So yet again Kriss (yes, the man is still hanging in there), was on the receiving end of our stupidity.  On Friday near the end of the working day we had this immediate need to create a set on Polyvore.  This is unusual for us in that we go to work to do work.  Any time we waste at work we make up for at home later – we got into this habit when we realised how much time we can lose at work. This particular set was very quickly created and called Welcome to the Basement.  It was done almost on auto-pilot, and then forgotten – or so I thought…

This set and what it represents for a young one within the system caused a rather rapid downward spiral.  This coincided with Kriss having a really busy week and a REALLY slow Internet connection.  So we were doing a tailspin, trying desperately to reach out for help – but expecting that help not to be there.  We could have just called Kriss and said “Help” – but that would have been too simple, sensible and totally beyond our current level of functioning/coping.  So instead we did the worst thing possible – open up all the IM clients and hoped that Kriss would contact us.  We would occasionally send a message, but he didn’t respond (remember his slow Internet connection issue).

There was so much backlash about the memory and Kriss not responding, that we decided that he had dumped us – without letting us know.  Yes, we are supposedly in our late 30′s and not teenagers *sigh*.  This conclusion caused a further downward spiral and the rapid creation of another (quite creepy) set titled Come on into the Basement.  This second set was the breakthrough… it eased the pain of the one holding the memory and emotions and meant that the downward spiral just sort of “disappeared”.  It was the weirdest feeling, we went from total chaos to clear thinking in about half an hour.  The others stepped back and I could see what we’d done and the potential fall out of those actions…

By this time, according to us Kriss had dumped us and he was “just like all the other men that hurt us”.  According to Kriss, we were not dumped.  He was however confused about how to help us deal with things like this in the future – and a little stunned about what had happened without even a word from him… lol.  Looking back, it is pretty funny…

Carol (codename for previous therapist we’re going to try and see again Tuesday), once said that when we do this we’re like a wounded cat.  We hiss, spit and claw at everyone around us to tell them to go away and leave us alone so they can’t hurt us.  What we don’t see is that those people are genuinely trying to help us.  They are the people who care about us.  Because they care, and we care about them, it makes the stakes so much higher.  It’s easier to lash out and drive them away than to reach out for help.

Thankfully we snapped out of it all quickly this time and could see what we’d been doing.

We have a basement in our internal house where some of the most violent and angry ones “reside”, I have a feeling that it was this group that have the one who needed to do those sets on Polyvore…  Thankfully they picked that way to release the emotion and tell a part of their experience…  Actually, I’m pretty proud of them for selecting that way!!

The lack of sleep is getting rather boring.  It’s starting to influence our functioning and thought patterns.  We’re becoming more sensitive to knock backs and the switching is becoming more obvious to the outside world as we’re having to use it to cope with daily functioning.

The amusing side of this dysfunction was obvious yesterday when we found that some paper wasps have been making a nest in the wall gap of the house.  The 1st floor was the predominant group present for the discussion about what to do about the nest.  As with anything this floor does, it was a rather interesting discussion – the males wanted to blast the nest with carbaryl; S wanted to ask the cute male neighbour to take care of it; and a young one wanting to ignore it and going back to playing in the water.

The scary part of this dysfunction is that we’re again losing quite large chunks of time.

We’re spending a large amount of time curled up on the couch rocking in an attempt to soothe the internal chaos.  We’re at the dangerous point of being close to slipping into depression again.  The sad and hopeless ones are coming forward.  The food issues are starting again.

This week we have to do the final session with Bob.  I’m hoping M is around by that time to do the session, I just don’t have the strength to keep it all together.

We’ve been having trouble ending our therapeutic relationship with Bob (codename for our therapist).  Bob has been trying to encourage/force/fast-track an amalgamation, integration or eviction.  This didn’t go down too well with us, to the point where we pretty much stormed out of her office last week.

So today was “The Day”…

• We told her that we don’t trust her.  We also explained that this isn’t uncommon as we don’t trust people in general.  When we do develop trust it takes a long time.
• We were feeling rushed through the process, which was causing some of us to dig our toes in and resist or hide.  We mentioned that this was a very similar feeling to having no options while growing up.
• We felt that she didn’t give us a chance to say what issues we had during the week or to discuss non-integration issues – Bob’s response was that we never raised them.
• It was now at the point where we had lost respect for her and some of us hated her.  It was fine that some hated her (which she agreed with), but the loss of respect meant it will never work.
• Bob didn’t see co-consciousness as an option, as this is what was happening now and it obviously wasn’t working.  We did mention that if we were truly co-conscious, we wouldn’t lose time – this didn’t seem to register.

She gave us options:

• Staying with her, but under a therapy contract which would cause a fee to be added – but ensure more sessions were granted so trust could be built and the time pressure removed.
• Going to see another therapist or psychologist.
• Returning to our previous therapist.
• Stopping therapy.

Our only weak point is that Buffie needed a rest after having to deal with all of it, so Sophie took over for awhile.  While Buffie was present she mentioned that “something odd had happened over the weekend” but didn’t say what it was.  When Sophie was present, she related what she’d read in this blog about the interchange between S and Kriss.  Bob’s response – “Oh, so you remember now…”

*Sigh* she just doesn’t get it.

Bob also talked Sophie into delaying making the final decision about what to do with therapy until next week.  We’re OK with this as it will mean that we’ll have re-grouped as such, so it will be easy to end the sessions.

Today was the first time Bob gave us any sort of compliment – we gave her a chart that indicated the current level of communication.  I think that in some respects, today was the first time she saw us as anything other than a “problem case”. I think she was pretty clueless that we were feeling this way.

Trying not to panic too much about the anniversary being so close and being without a therapist…  We’ve survived up until now, so we can do this too.

Today we talked to Kriss (friend from England), and are still a little stunned.  We were talking through IM and S came forward to “please” him.  Usually Kriss gently calls her out on it when he sees it happening and S laughs it off before returning from whence she came.  Today for some reason Kriss didn’t call her on it immediately – he didn’t engage in it, but just let her go for a little bit.  Then just gently asked her a few questions, starting off with the biggie:

“Why do you think I want that?”

S at this point called him several uncomplimentary names and told him to stop messing around with her.  But she stayed around, she didn’t disappear which is what she usually does when she’s spotted and not wanted around.  S is 13 and thinks very much in generalisations – “all men want to hurt”, “all men want just one thing” etc.  So when questioned she threw insults at him with a force.  But then something changed and she was telling him things that happened and why they happened.  Why the mother isn’t to be trusted and how people around us covered up the abuse.

S cried for the first time ever.  It was two tears, but it’s the most she has ever cried. As a result she now hates Kriss – how dare he make her say those things and make her cry.  Yes, she is 13 so will blame him.

We’re all stunned.  He listened, he asked gentle questions and tried to show S that not all men want to hurt.  After S left he needed a break – funny that.  We needed to be sick.  But he came back and kept talking to us.  He had some pretty disgusting concepts thrown at him – no real details as far as I know, just general statements. But he still wanted to talk to us.

After we checked that he was ok and didn’t hate us, we tried to divert the conversation to something “normal” – fixing his sister’s car, his rough week at work etc.  Well did that hack him off or what!  He wanted to know why we didn’t tell him how we were, if we were ok, if we were safe.  We didn’t give him the chance to ask those questions and he wanted to know why.  It’s an easy answer – we mean nothing, we’re worthless, so why would anyone care if we were going through something rough.  If we divert the conversation, it might help him forget that we’re damaged and what we’d just told him.  Also because of the compartmentalisation, we had no real awareness of what was said.  We knew secrets had been told because of the nausea, but no idea what they were.  So it’s easier to distract than to look at the reasons why the nausea is there.

As an indication of how well he knows us now, he then said we had to talk it out before saying bye for the night or else we’d worry about it for three days :)  Actually in this he was probably off – it would have been closer to a week, and by the end of the week we would have convinced ourselves that we had to run so our dirtiness didn’t touch him.

Last month we signed up for a calling plan that would save us money on our toll calls.  Due to a couple of mis-understandings between us and our toll provider we were facing a rather large phone bill for the December period -  causing more than just a bit of panic.

In an attempt to sort it out, M sent a couple of polite and then a couple of more blunt emails to the customer service department.  The end result is that she got about $200 refunded on the telephone bill.

However, in the meantime C rang the toll provider and talked to another part of their customer service team.  She explained the situation and mentioned things along the lines of wanting to talk to supervisors etc.  The end result is that she got about $80 refunded on the telephone bill.

So from a bill that was looking at being about twice what we usually pay, we’ve gone down to paying about $60 less than usual :)

Neither M nor C knew that they were both trying to sort out the same mess – M is more comfortable communicating via email, and C prefers the telephone (so that the other person can feel the lashes of her rather sarcastic tone).  End result – we’re better off financially.

If only all the time loss and memory issues could be this financially beneficial and amusing – well it was amusing for me as I knew what both of them were doing.  My excuse for not stopping one of them is I wanted to see if either of them were successful – and OK the sheer fun of watching them was pretty good too.