Quote:
Originally Posted by 1976kitchenfloor
Hello, The expereinces I read about -that are being posted here among those who have DID - I am have a really hard time understanding.
|
I have had similar problems and it has chased us out of many a site.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 1976kitchenfloor
They are so unlike anything Ive expereinced.
|
I don't
really know how anyone's system functions but ours. That said, the descriptions we hear are often foreign to us.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 1976kitchenfloor
One thing is that some members here are talking as if they function and do activities as a group of alters that she "(the poster) is aware of. The poster writes as if she is aware of what one or the other alters wants to do and it seems as if there is this control going on, as if this was a choice. That is the part -the choice part- that makes no sense to me. I read about you go on walks together and how you know each other and reference each other as being there together and aware of each other--not at differnt times but in the same time. Your alters have names which you refer to them by--and you even know the desires of the alters. ( in one case, a little alter wants to post a poem)
|
Well for me, what you describe makes sense - but it didn't always. Until I was twenty-seven years old (I am fifty years old now), I never knew anything about my alter (I have just one). Didn't know her name, didn't know she was a she - that was a big shock btw, because I'm a guy. Didn't know what she thought, wanted, or dreamed about. Then, one day, we met. There was a build-up to that meeting and quite a lot of work went into it. If you (or anyone else for that matter) are interested, ask and I'll tell the story.
Anyway, we met through a moment of shared consciousness that I had never experienced before. That was the last day of dissociative amnesia (with one exception). It's been twenty three years now that we've shared consciousness. Oh, and she told me her name - I didn't know it before that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 1976kitchenfloor
Such clear awareness that these individual named alters are there is aprt of what I find so upsetting. I believe, and maybe I am completely wrong on this, that encouraging separation makes this a real circus in which the patient almost creates more trouble for herself than anything else.
|
I understand the point you are making here but respectfully disagree. We are more than the sum of our parts. Believe it or not, we can do things that normal folks just can't do. For instance, as a Buddhist, I meditate daily. There are some deep levels of meditation in which one can get the same restorative effects as one gets sleeping. I taught her to meditate. There have been periods in my life when sleep was not an option - and as long as she was meditating, I didn't need to. In fact, for many, many years, I didn't sleep on Friday or Sunday nights. I worked out of state all week and then drove home to see my wife on the weekends - 700 miles one way. Then Sunday night after spending all day with her I'd drive all night and make it to work Monday morning. Mind you, I was not a kid when I was doing this but throughout my thirties and forties.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 1976kitchenfloor
Isnt it difficult enough having to hope nothing sets off your dissociation so that you find you are again lost? Even when I was in flux and changing whose eyes I was seeing through frequently it was nothing I would want to encourage or indulge. To lose my sense of self and connection to the world around me and my past was the most awful, lonely, isolating and alienating of expereinces.
|
For the most part, we look at the world together through the same eyes now - but again, it hasn't always been like this. I describe it like so: I am driving the bus usually, but she spends an awful lot of time on my lap. Sometimes, if what we see out the window is boring to her, she'll hop back a seat or two and color or play make believe or whatever. Sometimes I need a break - for instance social situations, and she'll drive the bus and I'll head back a seat or two. I can still see out the window from there - as can she when she heads back, but my hands aren't on the steering wheel so to speak. There are rare times when she'll head to the back of the bus (like when I am being intimate with my wife).
Quote:
Originally Posted by 1976kitchenfloor
Also, my dissociation was always just something that happened with me and that I later become aware of.
|
It was that way for twenty-seven years and let me tell you, we got into some pretty bad situations.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 1976kitchenfloor
I think this forum is not good for me. I find it too theatrical in many ways and maybe thats because I am an older lady.
|
Older is relative, but I certainly feel older.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 1976kitchenfloor
The last thing I want /wanted was for others to know about me. I mean no offense when I say that it seems to me that on this forum there is too much exaggeration and theatrics and that does bother me and concern me. I guess I see all the people whose alters are coming our and getting together here as being more than a little over the top. I have a difficult time seeing this as being helpful to anyone who dissociates and wants to be able to function as fully as she possibly can in life, with or without therapy. Chatting about activities and ways to help ourselves and each other is a good thing. But, I guess I see this other stuff as sensationalism or encouraging sensationalism.
|
Is there theatrics and sensationalism? Probably, but who am I to say - I don't experience their world. My biggest problem is that my alter likes to participate but only if she feels comfortable, and she hasn't found a place she feels comfortable in a long time. One reason, and her pet peeve, is that most child alters (she is six years old), tawk lik dis. Her frustration stems from the fact that, in her words, "I may be six, but I'm six with forty-four years experience - and I've learned a few things, like how to spell."