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  #1  
Old Oct 13, 2006, 04:45 PM
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Monty_girl Monty_girl is offline
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I've always called my alters pieces, so didn't what to confuse anyone.

But a very many of my pieces are emotional ones. There are 3 of us that are the main strongest pieces that control our family inside. Last night during T, Elise ( one of the 3 of us, Elise, Monty and James ) laid it all out for T to understand. That it's not all about the memories of what happened to us, but the bottleing in, pushing down into pieces of the emotional memories. We were never aloud to have any emotions, good or bad. Our emotions were always used against us in some way shape or form. She explained that happiness brings pain and hurt. No emotions are safe emotions. She explained that we were afraid of T using our emotions against us. Fear is so great. Today we lost a friend and had cried alone so no one could see us. How do you overcome this? How do you trust someone enough to let them see your emotions? How do you express emotions? And express them in a healthy way? Feel like a baby trying to figure out the world around me.
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  #2  
Old Oct 13, 2006, 07:09 PM
confused43 confused43 is offline
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wow. i understand what your going throug. I guess when your emotions are so over whelming that you do not have any control at all over them they just com out no matter what. I dont really know how to deal with them in a healthy way. i try to push them back. I guess taking one step at a time. find someone you really really trust and know that it is safe to express your emotions to that person. May be if you ask your T if she can help you do that and find some healthy ways to cope with them it might help.
  #3  
Old Oct 13, 2006, 08:04 PM
wanttoheal wanttoheal is offline
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Emotional Pieces Emotional Pieces (((((((Everyone)))))))) If wanted.
I'm so sorry you are struggling so much. I understand what you are saying about emotions. Emotions are not shown here either.

Trust is pretty confusing here but T says it comes about when things are consistent. As you see that your T consistently takes the information you give and uses it in a good way and not a harmful way, hopefully you will be able to trust him more. From the things you have said about him, he seems to be trustworthy.

As for the emotions, perhaps test the waters with little things. See how he reacts, handles those things. From there, you can determine how much more to give him. It seems that you are trusting him some because information was given about the emotions. Maybe the emotions will come in time, as you learn that T is safe.

I'm not sure about healthy ways to express emotions. We are kind of still in the stage of, what is an emotion again and what does it look like?

T said different people can be trusted with different things. I hope that you will be able to find your T trustworthy in the matter of your emotions one day soon.

If this doesn't help at all, just diregard. But please know we care.

Wishing you peaceful thoughts as you heal. Take care. Emotional Pieces Emotional Pieces
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  #4  
Old Oct 14, 2006, 03:11 AM
Anonymous29319
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some of my memory pieces are emotion based too and thats still a memory. For example if you go to a party one day the next day you know you were happy at that party. How do you know that - because your brain stored that emotion in your brain as a piece of memory. everything that is not happening right now or tommorow is considered a memory of the past be it something you felt said did 2 minutes ago or years ago its now a memory because it already happened and it is not happening right now.

how do I express emotions - by writing what I am feeling, by painting what I am feeling, by creating scale models and diaramas of what I am feeling, by listening and singing along with music that says what I am feeling these things are things that I sometimes do alone but it is still considered by therapy professionals as appropiate forms of expression. Just like someone who writes and publishes a book is expressing themselves in some way, an artist expresses themselves by their art, an actress and actors express theirself by taking their scripts and adding their own tone of voice, movements and so on to it. dancers express their self by dancing. and so on.

not everyone expresses themselves in verbal ways and no body HAS to express theirself in verbal ways. everyone expresses their self in whatever ways that they are able to do.

What makes the form of expression appropiate isn't whether or not they tell someone verbally or not. ways of expressing emotions are considered appropiate as long as those ways are not doing harm to the person or others.

You cried alone. maybe that is just your way of expressing your sadness like mine is singing to my favorite country music singers CD's, tapes and so on. or doing my splatter arts and dot arts and so on. crying alone is not a bad thing and I do it sometimes and many therapists told me so what theres no reason I have to get over it because there is nothing to get over. I just happen to be the type of person that has other ways of expressing myself then verbal a majority of the time.

and how do I learn to trust those that are in my life - by getting to know them and knowing what their personal beliefs and points of views are and over time of being around them and experiencing their not hurting me.

Trust isnt something that you can make happen it just does through your experiences.

Hang in there.
  #5  
Old Oct 14, 2006, 09:21 AM
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Evangelista Evangelista is offline
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Hard for me(s) too, been in therapy for DID 2 years this month, very hard to show emotions, usually end up agitated, really dont understand how to stay in the moment endure the feelings, without dissociating, IRL will do the same, dont want anyone to see me upset, so will hide, or start to self injure, alters automatically will start in commenting, and interacting...

yet the most cathargic session I had with T involved him interacting with a child alter who was so despondent and crying, and I was like in a floaty place watching the interaction between them, suddenly I was there with them in that place she was, behind a gas meter where she had been trapped so many years, and a covergence occured and I wept like the wells of heaven were being dumped into my heart, I actually allowed myself to feel her pain, our pain, and yet this time their was someone there for us that didnt hurt us, but was supportive and caring, I learned allot during that session about why she had been trapped there bits of memory came back surrounding the event..it shocked the heck out of me, and my T, the intensity of the pain and reaction..but that the alter does not cry anymore, before I would always hear her weeping inside... now she is in a meadow picking flowers..not in a dark alley listening to the sound of the gas meter clicking..

The traumatic loop was closed that she was caught in..not sure but that is personally the closest thing to integration for us.

Emotions have a huge amount of energy, and I truly believe power allot of the switching for us and our alters..a.k.a memory peices..

Take care..be patient..it akes allot of time when you have been hurt so bad, and yet deined the ability to feel...

Eva
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  #6  
Old Oct 14, 2006, 06:48 PM
Anonymous29319
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I also wanted to add that memory pieces can store memories not from a literal point of view for example -

I get flashbacks and nightmares where I am in a room on a table and things are going on. you know that magic trick of passing objects through a persons body. well that kind of thing where a wire is going through my digestive tract. The people involded are my abusers his friends, doctors and orderlies. I can feel the wire very realistically including the gag and pain reflexes upon removal. and being asked questions for which I had no control of what to answer and no control of if I answer. the drug I was given gave me no choices, I could fight them in any way verbally or physically. When aware and after flashbacks and this nightmare,from time to time I have unexplained sore throats that cannot be contributed to having a virus or bacterial infection. when unaware drawing are done depicting this ssituation.

This situation did not actually happen. it is a memory piece (alter) stored from my emotional point of view at the time 4 years ago ( the memory piece is my age of 4 years ago)

this is definately after my abuser has been dead for many years and most likely his friends too. My abuser and his friends never did this to me.

So why am I having the flashbacks, and a memory piece (alter) of this non existant situation?

Because it is a metaphoric emotional memory of my going through endoscopys and colonoscopys for cancer diagnosis and treatment.

My brain percieved the emotional level of those procedures to be equivelent of being abused orally and anally by my abusers.

Memories are stored as they are happening from the point of view of the person experincing the situation. Those memories can be litteral or based on emotional and or metaphorical for the situations being experienced which is why when doing memory recall work with DID's nothing is passed off as being not a real experience. The stored memories are real experiences its just the person has to figure out by themselves or with their therapist if the memory is literal as in the situation happened physically and mentally as they are remembering, or emotional and or metaphoric for a normal situation that they percieved as being abusive and invasive th their self.

Hang in there
  #7  
Old Oct 16, 2006, 02:46 PM
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Monty_girl Monty_girl is offline
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I can relate to what Eva said about staying in the moment in T. I've been with my T for a little over 4 years now. It will come to the point I can feel the emotions there and ready to come up and out. But the emotions coming up will trigger a switching or dissociating that I can't control. I feel comfortable enough to deal with the emotions or share them. But I can't control that automatic response to dissociate. How do you break the cycle of dissociating? It's so learned and ingained into my daily functioning I don't know how to stop it. And I really do want to stop the dissociating. I feel like this is the last part of therapy I need to work on. I've never not known about the abuse. I always knew I was abused. I've learned more about what happened and I feel able to move past those physical memories of the actual events. It's the emotional effects that are left.

For me it's the effects of the emotional abuse that are the hardest to work through. When you have been so emotionally abused from birth, how do you learn to identify emotions and express them? I have them. I know that, they overwhelm me. But they are trapped in this system we developed to be able to live.

Feel like I've walked 1000 miles to get home, only to find that I've been locked out. My emotions trapped in pieces inside are keeping me from being a whole person now.
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Old Oct 16, 2006, 04:56 PM
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"How do you break the cycle of dissociating?"

Yup that part of the therapy sessions is so hard to do. at first I could not do it. I would feel those emotions coming up and BAM I was mentally gone.

It took alot of effort, practice and trial and error on SKR's and my end of doing this.

One day I was sitting in the therapy room that SKR had during that hour (in this therapy agency there are more therapists then rooms so some of the therapists have to sign a log book for rooms as they schedule thier appointments).

Anyway we had just sat down and SKR said she wanted to try something and wanted to know how I felt about it then told me she wanted me to start telling her when I felt myself going into my la lal land. I told her I could try but I didn't always know. its like one second I was there with her and the next Im sitting under my la la land tree watching musical clouds and my favorite music idols or floating in my musical clouds. Then she told me she was going to bring up topics that I had previously dissociated during. Outside I said ok lets go for it. inside everytime she tried to bring up a topic I blocked her by working other safe topics into the conversations so that we would be going in my direction of conversation instead of hers - onto the harder topics.

we did this for a few sessions and then without even talking about it the two of us just slipped into going back to our normal conversations. Then one day when reading my journals she asked if I could start keeping track of when I lose time. I told her sure I could do that just write down I lose the whole day and consider it done cause thats pretty much what was going on. So I started keeping a running log ... lost time today 4 times, lost time today 6 time..

During sessions I started noticing something. We would be talking and the next second the session was over. Whats going on here. I pulled out my journals and saw that from the first day I saw SKR there was very little wrote about what went on in my therapy sessions. I had been floating off every session. thats why SKR wanted me to tell her when I was going to la laland. She had hoped by my telling her I would start becoming aware of the fact of how much of my time was spent dissociated. She found another way to get the point across to me. The next session I told her what I figured her out. She laughed and said "not so scarey knowing how much you dissociate is it?" I told her no and I would start telling her when I was floating off.

For months we would just do our normal conversations of jumping from how you doing? and going where ever the conversation went to, and I would tell her if I started feeling floaty and far away. She would say ok and we would continue with the conversation as if nothing was happening.

At home I was doing my research and came across Nancy J Napiers books. And in one of them (Getting Through the Day)it explained Therapeutic Dissociation (pages 50-72) and its benefits and that other words for Therapeutic Dissociation was hypnosis and self hypnosis, imagry and relaxation exercizes. the purpose was not to create more dissociation but to remain aware of both your present day adult self at the same time as being aware of the child like parts of yourself. Back then when I was reading this book I did not realize what was in this whole book was how to develop co consciousness I was just amazed that there were people out there teaching others to do what I just do dissociate.

So I read the books and practiced doing the exercises and at the local library I located her website and started doing some of those meditations and weekly practices.

I slowly worked my way through my reactions of how I dissociate braking down my own Dissociation response and through trial and error I ended up with a 10 level what happens when I dissociate list including 5 as la la land and 0 as the point where I float out of my body so to speak (a place where im not in la la land, not in my tunnel and not in my body either. Some people call this "out of body experiences". I don't know if I am literally spiritually out of my body so I just always called it going to level zero which fit in great for my self made plan of using Therapeutic Dissociation.

then I practiced over and over again taking myself through the Nancy J Napier relaxation visualizations and pull myself back out of them then back in and back out over and over agains.

when I could do that I turned and applied that to my own dissociation reactions but at each level forcing myself back out of it.

At first it was I would be watching tv and boom Im in la la land. ok I got to get out of here and back into my bedroom. That movie was scarey but its just a movie I can shut it off but first I have to get back to my room and then I would think about things I knew were in my room and look around trying to see them. after doing this many times it finally worked I could pull myself out of la la land.

over more time and practice I was able to stop my dissociating into la la land before I go that dissociated. I was now able to recognize and pull myself out of my tunnel area.

I told SKR what I had been doing and she followed suit by helping me to do the same thing that I was doing at home during therapy sessions by anytime I started dissociating during therapy soe whould try to get my attention and and teach me how to use grounding techniques. but I just kept floating off when talking about the harder stuff.

I wrote to Nancy J Napeir and explained how I was using her book and materials and what SKR and I were trying to do. She emailed me back telling me to focus on SKR's voice. When I feel like I am in my tunnel area look for SKR's voice. That will lead me back to my present day adult perspective.

So I let SKR know I was going to start adding focusing on her voice into what I was doing so I would be calling her voicemail more. I had already been calling on and off because of my nightmares. But now I was going to be calling but for no reason but to hear her voice before I do my relaxation exercises.

During therapy sessions we added my focusing on her voice too, She said to tell her when I was feeling like going to la la land and then no matter what the conversation find her voice just like I was doing at home.

Alot of trial and error and practice and so on later I started to be able to find SKR and her voice while I was in my tunnel area.

Sometimes I would pull me out of my tunnel area and sometimes after grounding enough to where I was aware of SKR's voice we would continue by my telling SKR what was going on, what I was scared of, what I was seeing, hearing and so on.

Now I can pull myself out of my tunnel area about 85% of the time and alot of times just as fast as LL (present therapist) realizes I started to switch I am back and grounded.

Hang in there monty girl. its hard but it will happen for you. just practice practice practice. and one day you will be where you want to be. Emotional Pieces
  #9  
Old Oct 17, 2006, 04:34 AM
wanttoheal wanttoheal is offline
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This is awesome information, thanks myself. My t and I have been working on using her voice as well. It doesn't work all the time but I have gotten so that now in session, as long as we don't talk about anything yuck, I am staying more. It used to be that I couldn't stay present even with non yuck stuff. A lot of times though, I think I was there a lot and then T will ask a question about something and I realize I wasn't. That has been very frustrating to realize although that was the whole reason she asked that question, because she already knew.

I still have a lot of problems outside of session though. Even though I have gotten so where I can stay present longer in session, I have realized that I am not able to a lot of times outside of it. Thanks for the reminder about that website and books. I need to talk to T about it and start working more.

Monty, I hope things are calming down for you. I know it's been a struggle. I'm thinking about you.
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Old Oct 17, 2006, 03:19 PM
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Yea I know. It doesn't always work for me either. If I am really tired from lack of sleep I have more trouble fighting the dissociating. which is kind of why sometimes I purposely go to my sessions tired - so that I can't use my background of psych classes, grounding techniques and so on to block when LL is trying to stear the conversation around to harder topics. She can't help me if I am blocking my experiences, memories and emotions from her ALL the time right. time. One thing I have learned is that not dissociating may be the ultimate goal but sometimes you just got to go with the flow because you can't prevent yourself each and every time from dissociating, otherwise how would you begin to remember that memory trying to break through unless you let your guard down and dissociate enough to where you are aware of that memory replaying and at the same time aware of the present.

so when I can't prevent my dissociating I go with the flow and my therapist lets me know "who" was there if she thinks I should know and what happened if she thinks knowing what I said while dissociated will help me and I am ready for it.

Hang in there.
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