Going Back to Go Forward (10)

Two weeks of therapy have passed since my last confession. I'm progressing too fast now to write each revelation and heartache. I try to be honest and write my experience of therapy, rather than just my interpretation, but my experiences of therapy lately have been wounding. And my defences have so far prevented me from writing it down. It's too dangerous. I'm too afraid.

I ache, thinking of death most days, even when cradled in my husband's arms. Even when smiling, laughing, with a colleague.

I know therapy is meant to be hard. And I am making a lot of progress. But at what cost? I don't feel safe in there. I don't trust her. She's my shattered, frosty, bleeding mirror. And thanks to her, I no longer trust myself.

I deserve better.

Read on the NHS Choices blog.

Going back to go forward (9)

I arrived at therapy eager and ready to share how much ground I covered during the weeks she was on holiday. I pulled out a map of my ANP (apparently normal part) and EPs (emotional parts) and explained how I identify more with the EP-Sad: how it’s harder to integrate EP-Happy because I’ve spent so much time hiding and protecting it. I tried to talk about the music and how it helped me access the EPs, but I faltered when it came to EP-Happy.

There was a block, I was struggling, and we both saw it. I admitted that it was too overwhelming to cover, and we moved on to EP-Sad.

I tapped into an EP-Sad memory easily enough.

“And do you remember how you felt?”

The room clouded into a dark winter, chills whistling through the ghost-like trees, and the chair became splintered wood. There were lights on the other side of the small forest, and their laughter carried. My cries didn’t.

I remember how I felt. “Angry.”

A breath. Hesitation. “Lonely.” The room yellowed; I sat on a twin bed in a dusty loft, room bare except one tape playing Wilson Phillips over and over. “Except, it’s not lonely.” Everything dissolved around me. “It’s more than lonely.” My voice was a whisper. A deep, ragged emptiness was opening inside of me.

She named it. “Despair.”

I felt like the princess in Neverending Story, finally named by Sebastian. For a brief moment. And then I felt, well, despair. I felt despair into the night and into the next day. It was horrible. That might not seem like progress to you, but for me it was life-changing. Overjoyed.

My research into adoption revealed a world of children with experiences identical to mine – and a world of people whose primary goals are to help them. I read detailed accounts of a 7 year old’s day from the eyes of their adoptive parent and I crumble in familiarity. An 'A-ha!' moment.

My therapist asks pointedly about my marriage.  I smiled, because I had been expecting this question since day 1. How can I have suffered without attachments for so long and yet have attached to him?

“I love him.”

I love him, so why can’t I trust him? Why do I hide myself from him? Resist intimacy? Control everything?

Together, my therapist and I acknowledged how I specifically seek out the role of Parent to avoid facing my own vulnerability. Even my mother-in-law seeks me out for counsel and protection. And I’m afraid, if I give up those roles, I will be rejected. Unnecessary. Unwanted. Unloved. Alone. Despair.

We left therapy with a partially unanswered directive: in lieu of any other suitable relationships (and given that I am 30 years old), how can I parent myself?

Thanks to my adoption research, I already knew how to find that answer. Self-care.

I started by taking all of the photos of my parents and stuffing them in a drawer. I stood in the hallway, fists clenched, staring across an ocean, declaring to an empty house: “I am angry at you. I don’t like you. And it’s okay to feel that way.” It was unbelieveably cathartic, because it wasn't said in anger or hate. It was said out of deep respect for myself. I don't want to see my parents right now.

It was a tumultuous weekend. I knew what I had to do, and I was afraid. We sat together in silence, he and I, for several minutes. I explained what happened in therapy that morning. I broke down in my husband’s arms. That’s a foolish phrase. I cried in my husband’s arms. I expressed my vulnerability, my grief, my fear, and my despair in my husband’s arms. I didn’t break down. I integrated.

It’s a wall that still needs a lot of smashing, but I carved a window by accepting his love and protection of me.

Suddenly, a part of me desired his approval. No. That desire was always there. Suddenly, I respected that desire. I cared for that desire. I cared for myself. I respected myself. 

I’ve been able to keep the kitchen clean ever since. 

Read on the NHS Choices blog.

Going back to go forward (8)

A common theme on adoption blogs and forums is the bewilderment that joyful times are always followed by intense lows. Why can’t a traumatised child just be happy, fin? Adoptive parents acknowledge the difficulty their new child has in regulating negative emotions, but rarely acknowledge that affect regulation goes both ways. The real on-going trauma of neglected and abused children is not poor regulation of negative emotions but in their inability to feel without every feeling digging up the earth under their feet.

Gosh, intelligent adults barely can make this connection, how is a child supposed to know that the anger, fear and shame following such a happy day is not:

1)      Due to their parents (mean and cruel!)

2)      Due to their identity (naughty boy!)

The point is, they can’t.

I am left just as bewildered, as I research more into adoption, reading personal accounts, wondering how I ended up being 30 and relating to the emotions and actions of traumatised 4 year olds.  Am I what they have to look forward to? Or were these adopted children rescued in ways I never was?

Last night was difficult. I played with (emotional) fire and (yes) got burned. Knowing how to tap into my EPs doesn’t mean I’m capable of managing those feelings. As a result, I’ve been physically ill for weeks, as well as suffering from dissociation, derealisation, and depersonalisation. Just one of the latter would be traumatising enough.

I visited an interactive art exhibit in Manchester over the holiday, staring blindly at the 113-beats-per-minute flash of my lightbulb. It looked like a tiny bird, fluttering amongst a ceiling of slow giants. Every other light bulb was half the pace of mine. What is wrong with me? I wondered. My face flushed, because I felt fine. I felt fine. But my heart knew differently. When did 113 beats per minute become fine?

More and more, I regress. As the childlike parts become dominant, I can feel whole sections of my brain going dark. The dissociation comes on more strongly at night. I panic at the sight of a strange man in my bed, my husband. And I realise now why I always think he is a family member. That part of me doesn’t know I am married. Therefore, a stranger in my bed must be my mum or my brother. Imagine waking up naked next to your mum or your brother. The disgust, shame, and confusion is overwhelming.

It only takes a moment, a single breath, to become grounded again: to cognitively realise where I am and who I am. But the feelings persist: an unearthly vacancy of self.

Last night, I experienced a key emotional memory. My EPs flashed me in one big synchronised chorus. Remember this? Remember feeling like this? This is you.

I dissociated strongly in response and then relied on distraction to get me to sleep. The visual memory remains, but could I find my way back to the feelings, when my therapist asks me? Already this morning, I find myself denying them. That’s not me. There’s nothing wrong with me. This isn’t a repression; the feelings and memories are already gone.

I’m restless, unable to work, searching for a new project to distract me. Therefore, we must be making progress. We must have hit a nerve. I’m torn between believing I can integrate this mess, undo decades of damaged attachments and emotional trauma, and the blissful ignorance of giving up. That’s called fear, and since I (the ANP) am feeling it, we must be getting somewhere.

I just wish I knew where.

Read on the NHS Choices blog.

Going back to go forward (7)

I now have a handle on this therapy business. Sure, it's about trauma, affect regulation, coping mechanisms, attachments… but mostly it's about owning up to me. Knowing me. Being me, without shame.

The labels, the theories, they are all metaphors in the end. Complex PTSD, Dissociative Disorder, Schizoid. Psychological theories say I have one ANP (apparently normal part) who controls my actions and oppresses the two EPs (emotional parts) that have split as a result of childhood abuse and neglect: one for bad feelings (EP-Sad) and one for good feelings (EP-Happy). That's a fair enough theoretical model. What's real, though, is my experience, my choices, me. So, enough of the theory.

Therapy extends beyond the hour with my Therapist.

The big unsolved question from the last session was 'where is my safe place' ? I sat in the chair, tears streaming down my face, staring vacantly, feeling lost. My eyes slowly and fearfully scanned the room. I looked inside. I imagined trees. I couldn't feel safe. Did I have a safe place?

She left the room. Relief sifted the shame away. I glanced at my phone. She returned.

"Distraction." My voice was quiet. I didn't look at her. "I usually rely on distraction."

We moved on. At the end of the session, she pointed out my pin, and I smiled, but not at the compliment. She was distracting me. And I, I was being me, in everyone else's heads but my own. Fair play.

But the work continues without her.

Today, while writing this blog entry, I found my safe place.

I'm grateful there are parts inside that are smarter than me: parts that unconsciously reach for familiarity and expression. Parts that find their own voice even if it isn't through my thoughts or my lips. Even if it is in ways that others don't expect or accept. Ways that I don't even expect or accept.

I'm also grateful that it's Christmas. Because my happiest part, my most fragile part, feels safest here. EP-Happy sings Christmas songs all year long (annoys my dear husband to no end) but it's only at Christmas that she can do it without judgment, inhibition or shame. It's safe to be her at Christmas, despite all of the sadness and grief that surfaces from EP-Sad, too.

But this story isn't really about Jingle Bells or presents under the tree or turkey dinner. It's not even about Christ's birth. It's about listening, connecting my parts together, and feeling safe.

It's safe to be me at Christmas, because it's safe to be Christian at Christmas. Silent Night. Away in the Manger. We Three Kings. The First Noel. No matter what I believe about God, the greatest sense of calm comes to me in the form of Christian music. When I was younger (and in much more pain), Christian music gave me a voice; it connected together my experiences and my feelings in a way that no one… nothing else... did.

I stopped listening to music because it was affecting my mental health, and that was a mistake. It helped to silence EP-Sad, but I also silenced EP-Happy in the process. I should have known better. In struggling to find EP-Happy at counselling several years ago, I realised listening to music was a clue. I wrote it on my board. And still didn't learn.

Since beginning therapy again this winter, I've started listening to more music. I also started eating more carbohydrates, so raise your glass for bad habits, eh? Except music, it wasn't all bad. And my body knew better than me. I started to preferentially play my Christian music. First Jars of Clay, then WOW mixes, then Christmas music, and then.. "My Will" came on while I was writing today, and it hit me.

"Complexity haunts me, for I am two men
Entrenched in a battle that I'll never win.
My discipline fails me, my knowledge it fools me
But you are my shelter, all the strength that I need."
-Sung by DC Talk

I was calm.

My safe place is listening to Christian music. Not a palm-lined paradise or army of pillows. Moreover, my safe place is where I feel whole: where EP-Sad and EP-Happy hold hands, which is a fanciful way of saying I allow myself to be happy and sad at the same time. I allow myself to be me. I am happy, sad, and grateful to have moments of brilliance like this from my ANP.

Merry Christmas.


Read on the NHS Choices blog.

Going back to go forward (6)

The first post I ever shared about my mental health echoes in me.

I didn't know then what I have a good idea of now: that my collective physical and mental health problems, complex personality changes, and emptiness were a result of a dissociative disorder. In fact, it wasn't until CandyCan joined the mental health blog that I started to wonder why my experiences were so similar. I didn't have DID. That's impossible.

And then my new therapist started almost immediately into transactional analysis. Integration this, Parent-Child that… psychological babble. Just semantics, really, to help us have a common language. That's all. Right?

She got frustrated when I couldn't answer her questions. Was I being resistant? I had answered honestly: I didn't know. Nothing caused it; No one told me my feelings didn't matter. But they did; she insisted.

I couldn't see it. Couldn't feel it. Why won't my therapist accept this?

And then she lucked out: I got triggered, and she finally pulled something emotional on her fishing line. But neither of us expected how painful my reaction would be, and I left, traumatised.

When I was finally alone, I cried to exhaustion, because I finally realised what my therapist wanted me to reveal and what I was trying so desperately to protect:



They say that people who have experienced abuse or neglect as a child spend a lot of effort trying to convince themselves and others that they are fine, that it was nothing, if they can even recall it in the first place.   I thought that was just dissociative amnesia, but now I realise dissociative disorders are more complex than that. I might have some cognitive memories of the abuse and neglect, but my emotional memories were sliced right out, until I could sit with a straight face and wonder "why am I so unwell?" My life was fine. My day was fine.

But really, I haven't been fine for a long time.
---

Therapy last week was different. For one, I was exhausted from the crisis at our previous meeting. I had experienced derealisation, depersonalisation, and a resulting 4-day migraine. I also realised that there was a lifetime of emotion tucked away somewhere inside me that I've never owned up to. To put it simply: I was terrified of me.

But I don't like not having the answers, so I took the most important question from the week before (what was I feeling) and investigated.

At first, I was angry at my therapist for expecting me to answer something I simply had no answers for. Then when my therapist asked me if I was angry with her, I was angry at myself. I battled between these two emotions (Anger at Therapist and Anger at Self) while I struggled to tell her. As I struggled to say it, I had to push through a growing Fear (directed at Self) in response to the Anger at Self. When I finally squeaked out a 'Yes', I panicked because the Anger at Self skyrocketed.

It felt like I was abusing myself. It felt just like I felt when I was being physically abused for the first time. Anger, fear, panic, and finally shame. Shame was the hardest emotion to name; it took me days to recognise it. And when I explained all of this to my therapist, she praised me animatedly...

…and then verified: I said the FIRST time? I paused. Yes, I guess I did say that. And I understood what she noted, unsaid: (1) there were other times I was abused and (2) I must have been dissociating by the time they occurred.

Sometime in the latter half of the session, my therapist pulled out the empty chair. I knew immediately what I would be asked to do and started shaking and crying. Panic. Fear. Something saying no, and something saying yes. "What do you want to say to her?" Her being the Child, of course, and me being the Parent.

I tried desperately to calm me down, the mess of emotions inside. Meanwhile my therapist didn't want a repeat of the week before, so she pulled out the stops trying to calm me down. We don't need to do this. Just say the word, and she'll put the chair back.  A moment, please. I raised my hand. "I just need a moment."

It just got worse. I looked at the chair. I needed to talk to my therapist, not myself. Barely in time, I bubbled out "I have nothing to say to her." The chair was pulled quickly back. And within seconds, everything inside went quiet. Blessed relief.

But let's take a step back, too. You see, while I was fighting myself, my therapist was trying (desperately?) to calm me down, letting something very interesting slip in the process. She asked me which part was present.

Like most of her questions at the time, I didn't reply.  And even in that moment, I thought she had made a mistake. My parts can't be present. They aren't those kind of parts.

She let me interrupt her. I wondered how I was going to admit it. So I didn't admit it. I simply told her what I knew:

"When we first moved, I became very depressed and missed my first home terribly. But most of all, I missed me. You see, ...I did everything I could to protect and preserve that part of me, until it was safe enough to be whole again.

But it never became safe."
Sound familiar? Here is what happened next:
"Sometime after the last move, I gathered together all the photographs of me (my parents were prolific) and split them into piles." I raised my right palm. "Me." I raised my left palm. "and Me." The tears started to flow.

"It was so easy to do. They were two different people." Sadness. Grief. "Why didn't anyone else notice? I wasn't me anymore." I looked forlorn. My voice cracked. "It was only supposed to be for a little while. I.."

"I didn't mean to not listen to her." I'm sorry. "I didn't know I wasn't listening."

"I just want to go back." I weeped. "I just want to be whole again."

My therapist had been quiet, not even writing notes. But I could read her reply all over her face. Pride.

For most of our sessions, I had been either overwhelmed with emotion or numb from dissociation, so this moment of fragile and honest grief manifesting so calmly stood out.  There was more unsaid in the silence before she spoke. It felt like she took my hand, but I know she didn't. She simply looked me in the eye and gave me hope.

A far cry from "Perhaps therapy isn't right for you."

I went home and pulled out the photos. I pulled out my writing. I posted here.
The evidence piled. But I wasn't convinced until this morning, as my husband drove us to the store. I was revisiting the empty chair situation in my head. Play by play. As an outsider. This wasn't out of ordinary; I always playback situations afterwards, chattering with myself about what it all meant, reprocessing every detail.

Oh, my god. I was chattering with myself.

There she was. There we were. There I was. This is how I did it. Isn't it? Decades of neglect and abuse.. this is how I survived. She took on the emotions, I took on the thoughts, and afterwards we got together and shared notes from a safer place. We soothed each other.

Immediately I remembered us, shaking alone in the woods in the middle of winter while everyone else enjoyed dinner inside. Aged 14. I remembered going to bed at 5 pm and talking the day over. Aged 12. I remembered my glands being so swollen I couldn't breathe. We barely got through the night. Aged 20. 

I guess Truth really is a Spectrum.





Read on the NHS Choices blog.

Going back to go forward (5)

When we first moved, I became very depressed and missed my first home terribly. But most of all, I missed me. You see, to protect myself from the trauma of continued neglect and abuse, I had split part of me off.  I did everything I could to protect and preserve that part of me, until it was safe enough to be whole again.

But it never became safe. Not for years and years, not until I was a grown woman, married. And now I'm thirty, battling with a precious cargo: Me.



When I returned from therapy last week, I bawled and bawled. As my dear husband came home to a sad and vacant wife, I had no words to tell him why. There are not many precedents for "Me and Me, we cried together."

Many professionals don't believe in dissociative identities. There are a few fine things in life that we can hold to be sacred, and being 'I' is one of them. The idea that a single person's identity could be fragmented into two or many parts is possibly a step of Truth too far. But, in reality, there are no steps. There is no category, no line separating Eve, Candycan, and me. Truth is a spectrum.

Call her my past. Call her my Child. But in truth, she is me. In fact, she is the me I've always wanted, more than anything in the world, to be. Every moment of every day since the split. She has always been with me, and I've always felt her there. Days, weeks, years passed. The photographs began to fall into two piles. Me and Me.

Obligations and responsibilities grew. I grew. She didn't. I was torn between trying to forget her and wanting her desperately.

"Turmoil twisting inside me
Figuring out what I should be

Find the piece that goes there
Find every single care

Put together what I once was
Who cares what the new one does?

Watching all the days go past
All the days I see go fast

Losing all the time I had
Had no time to be sad."

Reading these couplets, written in those first few years following the split, makes it so clear how I struggled with dissociation. I thought I could fix it. I thought I could fix it alone. 

"Twist and turn every which way
Wrenching apart every single day"

But the more years passed, the harder it became to admit that something was wrong, muchless what was wrong. In a breathless moment, someone caught a glimpse.

"Irgendwie lebt sie sowieso in ihrer eigenen Welt -- allein."
In any case, she lives in her own world, alone.

Perhaps had I let them closer, they might have noticed more. But instead, ten years passed.

"My heart raw against the world
my eyes tearing and dazed
staring back into
life-altering changes
horribly

    unpoetic

tentative homeostasis
phew.

    phew.

        phew.

too much weakness in
self-provoked emotions
finally freed by this emptiness
and a callous heart
afraid of itself
seeping soothingly
into childhood dreams"

My body and voice grew older. And the truth was ringing, ringing out. But we all refused to see it, even as I wrote it. Still a child, still knowing better than anyone what was going on, and still with no idea what to do about it:

"When I walked in the empty room my heart beat with a fear unimaginable. My backpack slid off my shoulder, crumpling on the knob beneath my coat. The air smelled of crayons and glue. My gut felt as though it were in my mouth when I took my cap and hit it under my lunch. My hands were cool and moist, shaking from the deep inside. The desks were in pairs. I walked through the aisles wondering which would be mine. My shoulders were tense and my eyes were already tired under the dim yellow lights. My mouth was parched and dry, lips stuck together from being clenched so long. My stomach hurt and I was afraid... of who would walk through that door, of tomorrow, of the teachers, of anything I would need to face. I was so tired.

She told me to sit in a chair. I waited anxiously within myself, two personalities split by time. As the students came in, one by one, I stared at their eyes, wondering, doubting them, doubting myself. I choked on my heart as I told them my name. I threw up my past with monotone interest. I felt so detached, lost, alone, but beyond it all afraid. A bitter anxiety echoed through me like an outpouring of anger. When I blinked it felt like minutes, and an hour felt at once like both a year and a second as my heart counted its beats and my soul held its breath. Memories flooded me. I knew the feeling of loss before I had ever known love. Reality felt like the screen of a television, blurring before my eyes. I grasped my chair. It felt like fire, but I knew it was my hands that were ice. I enveloped the cold and still my racing heart as the robot controlling me took out a pencil and began another first lesson of another first day."

How easily we [want to] forget. But there it is. And here I am, ten years later.

Read on the NHS Choices blog.

Going back to go forward (4)

"Perhaps therapy isn't right for you."

I was stunned. Emptiness was bubbling over the edges of my bowl. My therapist stared at me, unsmiling. I didn't know. I don't know. I wouldn't just make something up. I don't know how it felt. I don't remember knowing.

It started when I told her she asked the wrong question. She should have asked "Who told you your feelings mattered?"  She disagreed with me. She asked the right question. My question wasn't right. I don't remember what she said after that. Which probably means I already split, five minutes into therapy and 30 seconds into sharing how I felt.

So we moved on to my past. How did I feel when that happened?

I don't know. I tried to remember. But I couldn't feel anything. Couldn't remember.

"Perhaps therapy isn't right for you."

Did she say that to provoke me? We've only just started. She's already acknowledged how far back the splitting goes. Surely she isn't giving up now? Is she giving up now? I knew it would be hard. It should be hard. But I didn't expect her to say this. I went silent, searching.

She asked it again, a different way. I wondered how she could judge based on one difficult session. Did I think it was possible to engage in therapy?  Yes. Couldn't look her in the eye.

"Why?"

I glared at her, slicing away the feeling. "Because I have." She assumed I meant with another therapist, before her. In truth, I meant last week. Maybe she didn't know, didn't realise? I was agitated, perpetually crying.

The rest blurs between fumbling examples of integration, childhood and triggers, as the anger continued to bubble. I couldn't concentrate. Too busy trying not to shut her out completely.

I can't write about how I felt. Not even inadequately. That's why I'm in therapy. I never had a mother or a father to explain what these feelings meant. What their names were. What to do with them. That they mattered. That I could trust them. That I could manage them. How to listen.

"Are you angry?"  She knew I was angry. I knew I was angry. Angry is a very basic and loud feeling. I can name (and avoid) anger very well. "It's okay to tell me you are angry with me. I'm a therapist, we know how to cope with that."

I was angry. But it was more than anger making my body shake, my eyes stream, and my lungs spasm. It should be so easy to say it. I was angry. The words had been ringing in my head during the whole session. I am angry.

"Are you angry with me?"

But, it wasn't the anger making me so upset. It was me. I was fighting against me to say that simple word, like I was being tortured for a singularly valuable piece of information. Tortured by decades of precise and overwhelming control and invalidation, more like. I was afraid and…

"Yes." (Was that me saying that?) I was angry.

In therapy, this is called a crisis point. The goal is to be challenged into reaching a cathartic moment without going too far, because, if you go too far, you can open up all sorts of vulnerability and pain. This in itself can be traumatic. The client may not have the ability to cope, muchless learn from the experience. My therapist took a gamble, provoking me. I'm still not entirely positive she did it on purpose.

I reached crisis point. Every part of me was screaming. Literally? Does it even matter whether it was literal or metaphorical? My head was a mess. My body had been attacked. I was gasping for air, shaking uncontrollably, mindful that I may have finally answered her question the way she intended, but I had betrayed myself in the process. And who mattered more here?

I was still angry. Maybe even more angry. But when I finally calmed down, I was a bit less afraid. I was angry at myself.

She still asked whether I wanted to continue with therapy.  I still felt insulted she asked. But maybe this was protocol. In any regard, I was already split again, and nothing she said stirred anything in me, though I give her credit for trying to offer me some positive comments and stability.

How do I feel now?

I really don't know. But I want to.

Read on the NHS Choices blog.