flower garden

had T out in the flower garden tonight.

Hello, that sounds like a wonderful time.......Hope you had a good session//

Yeah it was a good session. Sitting outside with the flowers and birds helped us not feel so trapped. T was able to get 2 pieces to talk to get other.

Tina is good at writing and art and just expressing things. And Emily is very hurt and s******al and has a lot of emotions. So they agreed to work together and T is going to help them. So did a lot.

How lucky to have a flower garden to have a session in. My T is in town and has an office upstairs and there's nothing like a garden anywhere. I wish we could go to a park or something and let littles play on the swing and talk.
Wouldn't it be great if there was a place for us that would have a play ground for the littles, a place for the youngers to hang out and a place for the bigs?? Then we could all get together and who ever is out could have a place to be themselves and play or talk or whatever...
Maybe a retreat center or something.
w_i

What a wonderful thing!

Hugs,

Jan

I always think about how great it would be to have a DID retreat. Just a bunch of DIDers being are selves. Wouldn't have to worry or hide from anyone. How it would be just a great day to play and be happy with who we are.

Lisa

It's so nice to have the beautiful flowers there to greet you as you come in. And their there to make you feel better as you leave. Sometimes I pick a couple to take home with me. Makes me feel safe sometimes. Like I'm taking T home with me or something.

Been doing a lot of work. But T say's we can go slow.

hugs

glad you had a great session. My past therapst SKR and I rarely stayed in the office either. We would get together and SKR or I would say lets get out of here how about heading for the library, a restraunt and so on and off we went. My present therapist LL says she wants to go to a near by park with me, we have gone out walking to a coffee shop. Most of my 19 therapist in my therapy history have welcomed getting out of the office with clients. On told me "why not? The object of therapy is for the client to take what they learn during their sessions and apply it to their outside of therapy life to make their lives better so what better way then to explore taking therapy outside the office and into the real world during sessions too."

As for having specific places for each type of memory piece I have found that happens with me naturally. When I am on the autopilot of dissociated to the point where I am acting out pieces of memories (alters) I act out that memory content that got triggered by something in my present life so no matter where I am and what I am doing it gets acted out.

My DID isn't like saying "ok Im in an adult restraunt so I cant get triggered by something here that is going to make me act out the memory of a 5 year old sucking my thumb, forr that I have to wait until I am in a childs play area"

DID doesn't work that way. A person can get triggered any time regardless of what they are doing and mentally run for their mental safe places and leave the body rerunning and acting out pieces of memories. Just like a rape survivor can be walking down the street and experience having a flashback.

I do have toys, drawing supples and so on around the house but it isn't like I can say ok its time to play now so only these pieces of memories can be out or its time to draw only Mary please.

When I have dissociated and come back to full awareness and do my dissociation log I have found that the trigger (reason why I floated off to la la land) matches the type of memory piece that got acted out. If the memory doesn't match the trigger that memory didn't get rerun and acted out.

For example LL and I recently used the sand tray. I dissociated (relaxed myself into my tunnel area) Because nothing was triggering me and she was not suggesting anything I just sat there looking around and explained to her what it was like in my tunnel area. She asked me if I wanted to put some toys in a bowl to play in the sand with and I reacted by taking the bowl from her. I looked through the toys and because nothing matched what my automatic thoughts were I could not choose anything. But I acted on the part of her question that said - to play in the sand - and I started to touch the sand with my hand. From there what got said by me while I was in my tunnel was what her questions were and what matched with memories of me playing in the sand.

The same is true when I am on line. I have no child memories of being on line in support group when I got abused which would lead to that memory of being on line in a support group being separated and then be acted out later on when I got triggered.

Computers were not invented for residential use until I was 19 or 20. and then then the computers I had access to were in college buildings and in public librarys not in my home life until just this past year so I could not have been abused while on a computer as a child and have that memory get separated.

So even if I was on a on line support group that had separate message boards for each type of alter I would not be able to post as an alter. And even if I could post while being an alter well I would only be acting out the memory content of what got triggered so I would be posting the same words each and every time.

Oh I could pretend I was posting as if I was an alter but I don't need to pretend I'm one of my alters to feel comfortable posting what I feel. I didnt spend the last 5 and a half years in therapy learning to be more dysfuntional. I spent it learning how to take care of myself and my problems not learning how to pretend the problems don't exist and learning how to pretend to be alters to say what I feel. So my pretending to be an alter while on line is not something I am interested in doing and will not do even if there were message boards here for specific types and ages of memory pieces.

so given all this for me having message boards for each specific type of alter is not something I would use anyway

And in my real life DID isn't something where I can control which memory piece gets acted out when so having the availability of age and type specific parks, playgrounds and so on would not make a difference in my life. I would and could still get triggered into the memory piece of an adult in a playground and vice versa for adults only areas.

I think that is a wonderful place to hav T. I wish my t would do that. Keep enjoying.