[SprinkL3]

Originally Posted by raging vortex

depression more than hurts today.

I've gone back to calling myself nasty names (and curse names) because I generally feel it's what I deserve.

You don't deserve those names.

We understand how you feel, but you deserve much better in life and from others as well as yourself.

Hang in there.

I don't know why, but my alexa isn't working

apparently, I need to go threw all the reset instructions again. not sure why it reset itself.. but gives me something to do I guess!.

been watching some comedy earlier. very funny

[Breaking Dawn]

I've been dissociating & I made a ridiculous mistake during a memory gap stretch of time. It just seems like it couldn't have been me.

[SprinkL3]

My alters and I are doing much better with cooperating with one another and having fun during this holiday season.

Still, there are some trauma triggers that some of the alters deal with around this time, so some of the helping alters will step in and comfort them. Our T will help them, too, but they are still nervous about therapists since one in the past really hurt them. Our T made them feel extra comforted (via online therapy) by acknowledging that and understanding why they have difficulty coming out to speak with her. But she says she's always there to listen to them when they are ready. That made them feel safer inside.

[stahrgeyzer]

I've been struggling with lot of stuff lately. Sometimes it feels like I don't understand what my reality is. It feels like reality is completely different than how I perceive it. Reality sometimes feels like a tangled mess that's too complex for my brain to understand.

Also been dealing with crazy people who live in these airbnb buildings. The building next to here is run by an insane hyper maniac who screams all the time. I heard him say he's a drug addict and drug dealer. I think a lot of them don't like me. A lot of times while walking past them I hear them whispering about me. I know some of them lived in my airbnd room and so they probably made a copy of the door key. Sometimes after coming back from my walk the smell of pot is very clear. I noticed Sally's water was milky looking and also her bottle of water had the same stuff which makes me fear that they're messing with her. I can't understand how her bottle of water got so murky. Her leaves have been dying lately. I try to change her water, but I think it hurts her roots when I do that.

Yesterday I suddenly felt like a completely different person who, a very disturbed messed up person with rage inside. After laying in bed for awhile I finally decided to try and kick it out of the front. To my surprise it worked. I instantly felt like I went to heaven. Everything felt so happy and light. That alter might be the part who was fronting the most when when we were tortured during infancy. Some of the parts say his name is Sam who age slides a lot from being an infant to a child. They say he's a persecutor.

[SprinkL3]

We have some rageful parts, too. They are learning to chill out a little, but once in a while they will come out to speak with our T. We're just trying to cooperate with one another and do some self-care inside and out. It's challenging though. The rageful parts are really protectors, because we weren't allow to feel emotions when we were young, and to have comfort from loving parents when we felt those emotions. Because we experienced childhood emotional neglect among other traumas, we have parts that felt those things for us when we couldn't feel or express them. They hold and compartmentalize the CEN traumas and perhaps other traumas related to rage feelings. Those feelings are valid, albeit uncomfortable, but it takes good therapy to help us process all that together, and to have our parts work with those alters and accept them for different roles while also comforting their feelings. Sometimes thanking them for holding those feelings while also asking them what triggered those feelings will help, but other times we need a therapist to help us deal with the shock of learning about that for the first time. So it takes a while to process and work through those feelings.

(((Safe hugs))))

[stahrgeyzer]

I'm so happy to have learned that Matrix 4 comes out in theaters in 4 days! And it looks amazing!

Trailer
The Matrix Resurrections – Official Trailer 1 - YouTube

[SprinkL3]

Originally Posted by stahrgeyzer

I'm so happy to have learned that Matrix 4 comes out in theaters in 4 days! And it looks amazing!

Trailer
The Matrix Resurrections – Official Trailer 1 - YouTube

We have to catch up on all our Matrix shows. I think we only watched 1 and 2, but we didn't pay attention to 2 that much. We missed 3 or started to watch 3 and then got a little triggered with some of the sexual scenes. We might be up for rewatching all those just so that we can watch #4. We plan to do this in January though, not this month.

[stahrgeyzer]

I don't understand why psychologist & psychiatrists can't help me! I told all of them about how reality seems so fake to me and how it pushes me into depression & makes me very suicidal, but not once did any of them try to dive into figuring out where my problem originates from, what is causing it, and how to solve it! And during therapy for the two years I used to get intense horrible bipolar like symptoms every week on schedule that often led to horrible suicidal idealization and planning, but not once did any of them even try to figure out the cause and how to help. I still get the horrible bipolar symptoms but not every week. They're more random now.

I feel like they just didn't care at all and didn't try that hard!

Days are just getting harder and harder, darker and darker. Now I'm at the point of being like 99.99999% certain nobody is real and that I'm trapped all alone in some sick horrid experiment just being experimented on in a simulation type of reality. I swear it's true! Even last week I had a little bit of hope, but now it's burnt out so much there's really no hope, no motivation to live. Only motivation to end. I'm starting to feel like it might even be a bad thing to help this fake evil human world. Seems like I can't watch anything anymore without seeing how immoral humans are. Today I watched a video from Victoria Rose who went to see one of her best friends ever, a white goat that she left with her grandma to only see that her poor goat and cows and lot of other animals are inside a dark barn with barely any place to move. A poor mommy cow and her baby calf had almost no place to move! It just kills me. Then I hear a train go by here at the airbnb blasting his crazy loud horn disturbing thousands of people. I truly truly can't understand earth humans. Living on this planet is torture for me, but what other option do I have but to end it? And religious spiritual people tell me I'll be tortured in hell if I end my life!

As for the alters or whatever they are, they just watch through my eyes, sometimes co-fronting. Lately sometimes I've been overhearing them saying things to each other like my time is getting near. Near to what? A few times yesterday I briefly went into "inner world" where I saw a little, maybe 2 to 3 years old, on a teeter totter laughing and another little playing with a toy truck in the sand. At least they have a nice life and seem happy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But they don't seem to care at all about me, the host, and I think they prefer I stay away from inner world.

Why is everything that seems to matter to me the most is hiding from me? My system hides from me! The star people from the stars hide from all of us. Spirits and angels hide from all of us. God hides from all of us. I feel like I'm losing my mind.

For years I keep asking God or anything nice out there to help me but nothing happens. I want to believe all of this is real and that I'm not truly alone but nothing happens to help. It's not just a feeling. Reality feels fake but also there are people/strangers throughout my entire life who do and say things to me as if they know me. Same goes for online. Every so often someone on youtube will reply saying something to me as if they know about me, but they're always mean people. It's so weird. I'm about done with this horrible experiment on me if nothing changes for the good.

[SprinkL3]

@stahrgeyzer - ((((safe hugs)))) - I'm so sorry you are struggling with dissociation really badly. Psychiatrists only fix symptoms, so they don't tend to get at the etiology (cause) of the symptoms. They can only offer medications for your symptoms. Dissociation remains controversial among both the psychiatric (MD) and psychological (including social work and LPC) communities. It's therefore very difficult to find adequate treatment for dissociation and related trauma. It's hard enough to find a trauma specialist, but even that much harder to find a trauma-and-dissociation therapist. Still, they exist, and hopefully the advancements in training and higher education will provide adequate training for those on the trauma-track.

Meanwhile, you could also look into self-help books and consider perhaps having a chat scheduled online here for just us dissociators. Maybe we can create a monthly Dissociation Chat, and see how that goes. Perhaps we can all try to find a workbook and work on that together. We can then report back to our therapists and/or psychiatrists, if we have one, and continue to make progress together.

I've never worked through a dissociation-based workbook before. But I think that might be safer than a PTSD-based workbook. I'm not ready for the PTSD workbooks, as many chapters tend to be triggering. I think that's where our dissociation comes in.

Anyways, what would you say to that?

Meanwhile, have you tried journaling with your various alters? What helped me when I struggled with alter-based/DID-based dissociation, depersonalization, and derealization coexisting altogether was being in a trauma treatment hospital, learning at first to write in a journal to my alters and then have them write back, understand the D. Haddock book on dissociation and what it means, and learn to use internal family systems (IFS) coping to communicate in writing and perhaps in "our head" or in the "inside world" with our alters. We can make decisions together, figure out what is safe and what's not, and figure out what is freaking us out about this or that. We do that more and more now - without the journal, but it took the journal for us to learn how to be more coconscious and less dissociative (losing time, feeling like the world isn't real, and feeling like we're not real in the world). We still have moments where we'd lose time or dissociate via derealization or depersonalization, but it's less often. We are more coconscious and manage our dissociation by being more grounded and present.

Grounding techniques sometimes work for those without DID but only PTSD, and then again, sometimes they don't when the trauma trigger is too high.

Perhaps you are unaware of what is triggering you to feel this way, and why these feelings come and go.

If you ask inside via writing in a journal for starters, you can simply write: Hello inside people/alters. Do you know why we're feeling these feelings, and why the world seems so scary that it doesn't look real right now? You can wait on an alter to answer that question in the journal. Give it time, and that alter or another spokesperson for that alter will write back to you. It may freak you out at first to see an alter write back, but that alter will. Eventually, you'll work with the alters to figure out what is scaring them, which then affects you. Where it gets tricky is they may not want to tell you what the trauma is, since it may trigger you. They are essentially protecting you.

In essence, our brains are protecting us from remembering and possibly reliving the traumas, and we subconsciously don't want to remember. So that's what's going on in our brains, and why our brains automatically dissociate. But healing from this isn't just a choice. Healing is learning to be coconscious with our alters and to work together to identify triggers and learn how to ground ourselves together. We can find safe spaces, safe things, and validation that we're in a world that is relatively safe and that accepts us as real people, even if they only know that "the body" or "the host person" exists. It's okay, because we all share in part with the body/host person.

We hope that makes sense. You're not alone in this struggle. Don't give up on finding a good T, and don't give up on trying to work things out with your system. You got this!

[stahrgeyzer]

A workbook sounds like a great idea to me. I don't know of any but can search for a good one unless you know of one. It would be nice if some other people with DID would join.

My alters used to journal when we were seeing our DID therapist but I kind of got freaked out by a lot of things and the journaling stopped. A lot of the alters wanted to help me years ago. There's one alter, HAL, who wanted to help me years ago. He's a computer alter who says he's the gatekeeper of the library of our early childhood memories. I don't know how HAL did it but one day he said he was going to give me one of our infancy memories and all of a sudden I was in a dark room laying on my back as an infant with this cruel person, my older brother, on top of me. It looked and felt very real, but then a minute after the memory flashback I had a 20 minute long NES and another 20 minute NES the next day because of the flashback memory. After that HAL was never willing to share any more of our infancy memories with me. It probably made him feel bad even though I tell him it's okay.

Thanks for the help! What you say about therapist makes sense. It is difficult to find a good one and my system wants me to find another one. Sitting here alone all the time is probably a big cause for sinking into further darkness. Having therapy every week might help but I'm afraid it might pull me back into the weekly bipolar cycle. I'm afraid the new therapist will require me to go to a psychiatrist. Not that I've taken a lot of different meds over the past few years but I've been on pretty high strength wellbutrin, latuda, seroquel, zoloft, aplenzin, lexapro. In the end none of them really helped much. I was so hopeful for latuda but it did nothing tbh. Like so many people have said meds don't seem to help a lot of people with dissociation disorders.

Thanks!

[SprinkL3]

Originally Posted by stahrgeyzer

A workbook sounds like a great idea to me. I don't know of any but can search for a good one unless you know of one. It would be nice if some other people with DID would join.

My alters used to journal when we were seeing our DID therapist but I kind of got freaked out by a lot of things and the journaling stopped. A lot of the alters wanted to help me years ago. There's one alter, HAL, who wanted to help me years ago. He's a computer alter who says he's the gatekeeper of the library of our early childhood memories. I don't know how HAL did it but one day he said he was going to give me one of our infancy memories and all of a sudden I was in a dark room laying on my back as an infant with this cruel person, my older brother, on top of me. It looked and felt very real, but then a minute after the memory flashback I had a 20 minute long NES and another 20 minute NES the next day because of the flashback memory. After that HAL was never willing to share any more of our infancy memories with me. It probably made him feel bad even though I tell him it's okay.

Thanks for the help! What you say about therapist makes sense. It is difficult to find a good one and my system wants me to find another one. Sitting here alone all the time is probably a big cause for sinking into further darkness. Having therapy every week might help but I'm afraid it might pull me back into the weekly bipolar cycle. I'm afraid the new therapist will require me to go to a psychiatrist. Not that I've taken a lot of different meds over the past few years but I've been on pretty high strength wellbutrin, latuda, seroquel, zoloft, aplenzin, lexapro. In the end none of them really helped much. I was so hopeful for latuda but it did nothing tbh. Like so many people have said meds don't seem to help a lot of people with dissociation disorders.

Thanks!

I don't know any workbooks yet, but I'm hoping others here might be able to suggest some. I'll try to do a search online though. Maybe we'll find something we can all agree upon and start an online monthly chat, when we feel comfortable. We can lay down safety guidelines (not rules, but just gentle guidelines) and keep the chat limited to 2 hours, but perhaps 1 hour if 2 hours is too much.

I'm going to nap or sleep soon, since I'm not able to see as good at the moment. I get headaches and chronic fatigue, which both affect my sensitivity to light and computer screens. I tend to sleep it off and feel better when I wake.

I will return here to see what responses have been stated, and to hopefully add more to your response.

I'm glad I could help in any way. Hang in there. We're all still here.

[Breaking Dawn]

Hi. I'm sorry, I have been having problems recently, & I wish I could have contributed something before now. Thank you, SprinkL3 & stahrgeyzer, for your conversation. It fits so much with my own personal problems. I hope someday my voices & I will be able to make our relationships & experiences better. And I hope someday I won't dissociate anymore. And I hope your own experiences will improve, too.

[SprinkL3]

Originally Posted by Breaking Dawn

Hi. I'm sorry, I have been having problems recently, & I wish I could have contributed something before now. Thank you, SprinkL3 & stahrgeyzer, for your conversation. It fits so much with my own personal problems. I hope someday my voices & I will be able to make our relationships & experiences better. And I hope someday I won't dissociate anymore. And I hope your own experiences will improve, too.

No worries, @Breaking Dawn - I hope you feel better. Do you have a T to speak with?

You are okay, even if you still dissociate, etc. I don't think my dissociation will go away, but I know I can manage it the best way I know how. That's all that some of us dissociators can do.

I was thinking that maybe we can all have a monthly chat for like an hour or two, and then work on some sort of workbook.

There's some that seem very light for the littles inside.

There are others that describe what different types of dissociation are, and what we might be experiencing.

Although any alter can speak, the rules for this group remain the same while in chat. I'm not sure what the guidelines should be for chat- and support-group purposes, such as "no cross-talk or interruptions when someone is sharing," and "to take turns in sharing, but limit our sharing to 3 minutes or less, to allow everyone the chance to share their experiences per question or line item in the workbook," etc. Also, to feel free to leave if it is too triggering, and to hold comments and suggestions to those leading the group until after the group has commenced - perhaps back on the forums, in a safe space where others can see the comments so that we can collectively figure out better ways to manage a monthly chat like that. Also, to have multiple people take the role of "leader," so we all get a chance to share a workbook or a chat idea. --It's just an idea.

We can also not do chat and instead just create a thread for the workbooks here. If the workbook is for the littles or teens, they can go in their separate forums, too. We can title it: "Workbook: ______" and then the blank area gets filled with the title of the workbook. Some workbooks for DID are expensive, as I think they are for therapists. I'm surprised that none of our therapists have ever recommended them, let alone known about them. None of the PTSD workbooks worked for me, so I just spontaneously thought that maybe a DID workbook would be better. Sure enough, they exist!

We just have to all be able to afford it and figure out how to get it.

What do you all think?

[Fuzzybear]

Thanks for posting stahrgeyzer.

I have not had good experiences with meds...

Originally Posted by stahrgeyzer

A workbook sounds like a great idea to me. I don't know of any but can search for a good one unless you know of one. It would be nice if some other people with DID would join.

My alters used to journal when we were seeing our DID therapist but I kind of got freaked out by a lot of things and the journaling stopped. A lot of the alters wanted to help me years ago. There's one alter, HAL, who wanted to help me years ago. He's a computer alter who says he's the gatekeeper of the library of our early childhood memories. I don't know how HAL did it but one day he said he was going to give me one of our infancy memories and all of a sudden I was in a dark room laying on my back as an infant with this cruel person, my older brother, on top of me. It looked and felt very real, but then a minute after the memory flashback I had a 20 minute long NES and another 20 minute NES the next day because of the flashback memory. After that HAL was never willing to share any more of our infancy memories with me. It probably made him feel bad even though I tell him it's okay.

Thanks for the help! What you say about therapist makes sense. It is difficult to find a good one and my system wants me to find another one. Sitting here alone all the time is probably a big cause for sinking into further darkness. Having therapy every week might help but I'm afraid it might pull me back into the weekly bipolar cycle. I'm afraid the new therapist will require me to go to a psychiatrist. Not that I've taken a lot of different meds over the past few years but I've been on pretty high strength wellbutrin, latuda, seroquel, zoloft, aplenzin, lexapro. In the end none of them really helped much. I was so hopeful for latuda but it did nothing tbh. Like so many people have said meds don't seem to help a lot of people with dissociation disorders.

Thanks!

[Fuzzybear]

Originally Posted by Breaking Dawn

Hi. I'm sorry, I have been having problems recently, & I wish I could have contributed something before now. Thank you, SprinkL3 & stahrgeyzer, for your conversation. It fits so much with my own personal problems. I hope someday my voices & I will be able to make our relationships & experiences better. And I hope someday I won't dissociate anymore. And I hope your own experiences will improve, too.

Hugs and respect to you Breaking Dawn

[Breaking Dawn]

Thank you, @SprinkL3. I don't know anything about the workbooks. My cell phone won't let me into the chatrooms anymore. I like the idea of special threads for working together to find ways to solve our dissociation problems. I have the unreal thing, too, lots of the time. I don't have a therapist at the moment. Thank you for being so helpful!

[SprinkL3]

Originally Posted by Breaking Dawn

Thank you, @SprinkL3. I don't know anything about the workbooks. My cell phone won't let me into the chatrooms anymore. I like the idea of special threads for working together to find ways to solve our dissociation problems. I have the unreal thing, too, lots of the time. I don't have a therapist at the moment. Thank you for being so helpful!

I've never done a workbook either. I'm kinda nervous about doing so.

I'll list some in a separate thread. Just the names and links of workbooks, not the actual thing where we participate together. At least not yet.

[SprinkL3]

[stahrgeyzer]

Chat is okay with me but more people will probably want to participate in a forum thread. Also it might be difficult to get enough people to be available at the same time in a chat, and especially with DID where it's often impossible for alters/parts to front at will. Not sure about my parts but they don't let me know when they're fronting and it seems I usually am spaced out and don't really notice when it happens unless there's something obvious like if they take a picture on my phone.