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Okay! Just wanted to be sure.

[September 22, 2017]

Thank you, Aphotic and Blueberry.


September 22, 2017
Triggers for this post: Non-descriptive mention of CSA and grooming/brainwashing toward the end, and a rant about the actions of my non-abusive parent.

Wednesday morning I had my appointment. It has caused some mixed feelings inside and I needed some time to process before being able to put them in words. Still not completely sure how to express the upset I feel, but I'll try.

But first, the good news: I was given a prescription for small doses of Welbutrin, an antidepressant that used to energise me, so hopefully I'll stop feeling so listless all the time. My doctor also gave me Ativan to fight anxiety, so that's good. With a bit of luck it'll help me get back on my feet enough to do the work that needs to be done.

She also put me back on the waiting list of the mental health public system. Depending how it turns out, it'll take six months to two years to be assigned either a therapist or a social worker (neither trauma-informed, unless a miracle happens), and from there I'll be able to discuss my options. I'm of two minds about that -- some parts of me say "this will be a disaster and amount to nothing and I don't wanna goooo", other parts remind me this is how I met the only T. that ever managed to help me a little. So we'll see. It's going to be a long time before it happens, anyway.

So that's good. More or less.

However, and this is the part I have trouble processing, when I talked to my doctor about "the voices in my head" (couldn't find a better way to quickly explain what's going on) she answered with "but you already told me about that about five years ago, I remember that perfectly".

First, what?

Second, if I told you there's people living in my head, why the #@£¢¤!"/$%?&* am I still alone to deal with this?!

Third, what?!

I have no memory of telling her or anyone else about this. Zero, niet, nada. I did manage to figure out Kaylee waking up and screaming then going back to sleep again is a cyclical thing, something I seem to forget every time it happens. Following this realisation, I guess it makes sense in a way that I would forget everything pertaining to those events. It makes sense, but it terrifies me. Feeling out of control triggers me something fierce.

From what I gathered off the conversation we had afterwards, my doctor basically confirmed that my self-diagnosis of OSDD is right, but also told me (not in so many words) that I'll probably never get it on paper because of the way they run the mental health system where I live. They just clump it on with "normal" symptoms of BPD. I can live with that. Honest. I can, as long as I'm taken seriously when I talk about my symptoms and troubles next time I see a therapist. Wait and see. I'm getting good at that.

I'm still angry though. Angry and scared and helpless. Actually, I'm probably having an EF, because I'm feeling the exact same way as when my mum told me that she saw something weird in the way my father was with me when I was three, and decided to do nothing because (in her words) "you were too young, nobody would believe you in court, better wait until you were older". So I spent nearly three more years being groomed and brainwashed, the abuse escalating of course as the years passed, and so what? So I would "be believed in court"? Except there were still no proof acceptable in court three years later, when he finally was arrested! Then her lawyer convinced her to let him escape the country so he didn't even do time for it and I'm left without closure. Urgh.

I'm probably being unfair to my mum, because she did have him arrested in the end. She protected me the best she could, considering she was a victim of child emotional abuse and neglect in the first place, and I'm not even sure "NPD" describes everything my father was. Being married to him nine years wrecked havoc on her mental health and it's a miracle she's still functional today. And mostly her parenting was okay. It just wasn't enough.

Anyway.

So I'm feeling the same way with my doctor right now. If I talked about Kaylee's screams, why did nobody help me then? Or even make me feel heard? Except, maybe they did, and I don't remember. This is so confusing. How am I supposed to make sense of anything now?

Don't know what to say, but sending warmth and comfort your way, Blueberry. Used to do that too when I was a teen. It's called trichotillomania, halfway between self-harm and an obsessive-compulsive behaviour. Can't remember how it stopped. So sorry you're still struggling with this.

Lim,
Thank you for sharing that. I've heard of animal inners(?) but you are the first I've had contact with. I have a lot of dissociative amnesia in both childhood and adulthood.
Andrew

Hello Andrew, did we meet? Andy and I have shared a little on another thread a few days ago, but if you're not the "same" Andrew, happy to meet you! (If you're the same one, please ignore me )
As I was doing research this week, I've read non-human insiders are less common than human ones, which surprised me as I have a few of them. But I guess it's not that surprising, seeing as I was brainwashed into thinking all humans were evil and out to get me. There was no trust with humans when I was a child, and that the most "happy"/"carefree"/"soothing") parts of myself are animals and trees makes sense, just like the happiest memories I still have from childhood are from spending time with animals or alone in nature.

I have a therapy bear who represented a small, unhappy Inner Child. For a long time Bear couldn't communicate at all with language. Bear understood quite a lot but couldn't express. Then Bear started to nod or shake his head. Then eventually to speak. Bear is bilingual now, using both my native language and the language of the country I now live in. So, just saying, these things can and do change.

That's great! So happy for you and Bear. May I ask if you have tricks to help the little ones inside communicate better, even if not vocally? Right now their communication is more than a little chaotic and becomes quickly painful when they scream.

Sounds like Inner Helpers, in fact you can have a whole Inner Team on board.  for you for coming up with these 'others'.  I say  because I had help and encouragement coming up with mine e.g. through Ego State therapy and all the Inner Child workshops I did. It seems yours have come up on their own, without outside help except from you?

It's complicated. I've learned yesterday that I have a lot more amnesia than I thought I had, so my best guess is that some parts of myself are more "conscious" of them than others. When those parts "disappear" to the back of my head, so do the memories and everything related to the existence of my insiders.
But the medical abuse I went through at the hospital caused so much confusion, shock, and chaos that it burned my whole sense of self to the ground. So the best thing I can come up with is that it must have broken down some barriers inside as well. I've only started hearing their screams intermittently after I got out.

On the other hand I've had an inner mindscape since very young, as I was encouraged early to develop my imagination (no wonder why). When I read something about "Memory Palaces" in the "Hannibal" books by Thomas Harris in my late teens, I tried to make one for myself and while attempting to picture the house I lived in at the time, (re)discovered both my first home (where Kaylee lives) and what I used to call the "Magic Island" when I was something like five. When I first stumbled on it I thought it was mine alone, but in truth I have no control on how it appears and only have access to about 10%, the rest is (currently?) blocked off or unreachable (tall and abrupt cliffs, holes in the ground, etc.). So I guess my insiders live there somewhere, more or less protected from even myself.

Thank you for the information on Ego State Therapy. I'll read on that, maybe prepare and bring some reading material when I get assigned to a new T. It's so helpful.

Your experience sounds very frightening. I wouldn't feel comfortable putting a label on them as I have no experience with cults, but they were definitely very controlling and manipulative of you, and I'm so glad you managed to get out. Don't have much energy to say more right now. Warm thoughts your way.

Interesting thread. Like Aphotic, I find intriguing to see how many times similar triggers come back on most lists, and how we relate to each other.

Don't know all of mine either, but I'll try to list a few.

- My birthday
- My abusers' birthday
- Christmas
- Spiders
- Crowds
- Dark and cramped spaces
- Being naked in a bathroom
- Being wet (as in, water over my body)
- Places related to my abuse
- Manipulative people
- People looming/towering over me
- People encroaching on my personal space
- People trying to lord their authority over me
- Any accidental or deliberate touch I'm not prepared for (the only safe spots are my hands and top of shoulders, and again only when I'm feeling safe)
- Compliments and kind words (I can tolerate a few, but not much)
- Pity toward me (including compassion and sympathy, because when I'm having an EF I won't see the difference)
- People laughing at me/making jokes at my expense
- Feeling unheard/invisible
- Lack of proper trigger warnings in fiction
- Books/Movies/other fictional media with vague descriptions of implied CSA (graphic CSA triggers me less, but implied makes my imagination turn wild)
- Books/Movies/other fictional media with characters going through derealisation/depersonalisation (makes me go through the same thing)
- Gross misrepresentation and propagation of mental illness stereotypes
- Being pinned down
- Being asked to say "I love you" back

And I'm going to stop here because I'm triggering myself, haha.

Like you Aphotic, I used to fawn and pull and please as much as I could, and was taken advantage of by friends and romantic interests alike. So now I push everyone away and isolate myself as much as humanly possible. I feel I'm too much of a mess anyway to impose on a partner, seeing as I can barely deal with myself on a good day.

Friends I keep at a distance also, communicating through internet mostly, staying at home and doing my own thing, and also disappearing for unknown periods of time when I'm overwhelmed or feel people are getting too close. It's a bit of a vicious circle sometimes as I usually do everything I can to be invisible/not part of people's lives, then struggle because I'm feeling invisible/unheard.

You're not crazy. It's a "normal"/invasive/sensory flashback, meaning it includes visuals and other sensory input as well as an emotional charge, unlike "emotional flashbacks" where you just get the emotional charge.

I experience that a lot, and not just with negative memories either. Most of the time it's actually very normal memories where nothing special happens. The process is very similar to the visual negative flashbacks I get when I'm having panic attacks, but without the emotional charge. I'll be doing my own business, often focussing very intently on something, then suddenly I'll get distracted/a little daydream-y (meaning I'll stop focussing onto whatever I'm doing at the moment, my thoughts will wander away from reality), then as you say, bam! For a split second I'll be sitting on an uncomfortable plastic chair, listening to a teacher explain how to multiply simple numbers, feeling the sticky laminated desk under my fingers and how cold the classroom is and how bored I was at the time, then bam! Back again, with a slight disoriented/displaced feeling and renewed sense of awareness of my surroundings.

No idea where it comes from, but as it's not overly problematic in my everyday life (meaning I can get back to doing whatever I was doing in no time, unlike when it's a negative flashback), to me it's not a cause of concern as long as the memory I got access to doesn't trigger a rush of negative emotions. Not sure if I'm clear here. Let me try to explain better.

Possibility 1: Wave of anxiety => negative flashback (often related to abuse) => hypervigilence => strong emotional flashback (fear, horror, pain, etc.) => panic attack.
(This is what happens when I have the "negative" kind of flashback. The ensuing emotional flashback/panic attack usually lasts at least an hour at best, several days at worst, and I get completely non-functional while it lasts.)

Possibility 2: Intently focussed on something => thoughts start to wander => neutral flashback => hypervigilence => no perceived threat => back to normal.
(This is what I was talking about earlier, the kind I don't mind so much. It's invasive, but neutral in nature so for me there's no cause for concern.)

Possibility 3: Intently focussed on something => thoughts start to wander => neutral flashback => hypervigilence => mild emotional flashback (guilt, shame, etc.) => back to normal but with a pervasive sense of dread/lack of self-worth.
(This happens when I flashback to a moment where I was unkind to someone, or did something even just mildly wrong. With that kind of memories I'll usually be able to keep doing what I'm doing, but I'll tire easily and will feel down for a while as long as the memory is "active" in my head. It sometimes can lead to waves of anxiety that can later trigger a negative flashback.)

As far as I know, I never flashback to a positive memory. I guess it's just one of the many ways trauma can hijack our brain.

I don't have amnesia in my day-to-day life now (as far as I know), but have dissociated fragments/separate parts and used to have some amnesia until late in my teens. Lately some parts have been acting up more than usual, so I'm actually seeking a psychiatric evaluation in three days to see if I can get help.

Your dad's behaviour sounds so frightening. I'm not surprised you dissociated.

What justdontknow says. I'm really sorry you went through that. Hopefully you'll be able to find yourself a safe place soon.

An unhealthy obsession with food is also something that occurred in my FOO. Both my parents were health nuts, both of them taking something that in theory should be healthy in all sorts of wrong ways.

Until he was arrested, my father forbade any of us to eat anything containing refined sugar (honey was "safe" though) or salt (food with high salt content like cheese was safe, but adding salt to a meal was forbidden). He was so neurotic about it, my mother told me later that one time when I was 5 the bus driver gave me some peppermint candy and that, after eating it, I asked her in tears if I was going to die.

My mother on the other hand was a lot less strict about our diet. But she's a survivor of neglect and emotional abuse, and she read somewhere in a psycho-pop book or magazine that "anorexic kids stop eating as a way to reject their mother", so she literally forced food on us. She always took pride in the fact that my two brothers were huge eaters, probably because it sort of confirmed to her mind that she wasn't a bad mother. As for me, I'm a Freeze/Fawn type -- so whenever I got to lose a bit of weight from exercise, she went all sad and worried, asking if I was anorexic, and I started eating like mad just to prove that I still loved her. As a result I was always just on that side of pudgy at best (and massively overweight at worst).

[September 17, 2017]

September 17, 2017
Triggers for this post: Mention of self-hatred toward the end.

This morning I gave Kaylee a blanket.

I never tried interacting with my "others"/"inner children" -- something in me refused to even think about it until now, refused to even acknowledge them, because if I do it means they're real, it means I'm really not alone in my own mind. The idea of not being in complete control of my own body and mind (because I can't control the whole world, isn't it? so at least I thought I could control myself) is nightmare-inducing. But I've been hearing screams in my head for days now, and everything I read about DID and OSDD says "communication between parts" is the key to healing. I still don't know if I'm multiple or it's just that I have very strong mental representations of inner children, but I'm exhausted and ready to try anything right now.

So I closed my eyes, tried to see her in my mind. She had crawled under the last shelve of a small cupboard, one I remember from my childhood home that used to hold towels and linen, but in my mindscape was empty. She was naked and dirty, with huge dark eyes focussed intently on me, obviously scared out of her mind. So I just pictured myself leaving a soft blanket there, beside the door. She latched on it so quickly I nearly didn't see it happen, wrapped herself in it until only the top of her head was visible, then went to sleep.

Blessed silence.

It's an extremely alien sensation to feel tenderness for any part of myself. But as I watch over her, the only thing I can think of is how scared and helpless and hurt she is, and that the last thing I want is for her to keep feeling that way. My level of self-hate reaches unmeasurable heights, but when I look over Kaylee -- well, she's cute. Endearing. I'm not quite sure how I feel yet about parts of myself not being completely horrible and disgusting. (Please don't offer positive validation that I'm not, I don't react well to kind words about this and get triggered easily.)

I've been unable to do what needed to be done these last few days, so now that she's sleeping again, hopefully I'll be able to gather a little fortitude (or at least a few spoons) and get back to "work" (aka, writing the next chapter of my ongoing online publication). Despite hating being "hooked" on antidepressants, I can't wait to have a new prescription and get back on my own two feet.

(Sorry to answer months after the last one, I hope it's allowed?)

I also experienced that. Remember when I was a child, maybe 6-7, we had choir practice and I started having strange visual hallucinations. The choir master's head suddenly growing and becoming disproportionately big, then shrinking back to normal. Or feeling like suddenly I was floating over my own body, or the entire room going dark except for the pianist.

What's funny is, at the time it didn't appear scary to me, it just was. I remember feeling detached and vaguely intrigued by the phenomena, but not scared. Same happened later, when I was in my late teens. I remember I was in class one day, early January not long after hitting 18, writing this in my diary: "It's like sometime around Christmas I fell asleep and never woke up, and now my life isn't real anymore."

I also experience these things. It's like each collection of similar memories is a separate person inside my brain. I can't remember my life because the memories are locked away in those other selves. I definitely have EF where those people take over and I go away but I also hear their thoughts in my mind almost all the time. It's very noisy in my head sometimes.

Could have written the exact same thing, with the exception that most of my amnesia is centred in childhood.

Most of the time, my "others" (don't know how to call them, "alter" doesn't seem right, "head mates" either) don't speak though. Possibly a consequence of being told to "shut up", "keep quiet about this", "never say a word"? If they communicate it's through bursts of emotions, abstract shapes and colours, sometimes wordless screams. One of them spends months "sleeping", only waking up to scream as if someone was trying to kill her, then goes back to sleep again. Another one is constantly terrified and freezes when confronted to a trigger. She's probably responsible for my panic attacks. Then there's the cat, a playful, curious and happy little thing, and the soothing guardian tree, and the super observant ghost who's protected by being invisible but as a result cannot interact with the outside world. And many others.

It's as if every positive representation of myself is non-human. I guess it talks of how I feel unable to trust people, and see most of humanity in the very worst light.

I'm so sorry this is happening  to you, CepheidVox. You are very right, being afraid of male genitalia isn't a normal occurrence for a non-traumatised person. I don't know what else to say, except that you are being heard.

Thank you, Blueberry and Aphotic! I'm sorry I didn't answer before, these last few days have been difficult. Lots of dissociation and anxiety, confusion and lack of focus up to the point of sometimes being unable to understand the meaning of everyday words, insomnia and nightmares. Anyway. It's a little better right now, so I'll try and answer before it starts again.

I know that in the country I'm in BPD is often diagnosed after about 5 minutes to mean 'patient = difficult'.

Same for where I live. There's also a tradition of being very self-deprecating and sarcastic in my culture, which doesn't help as a lot of people (including professionals supposed to help you) feel entitled to joke about lack of self-worth as if being laughingstock material is something normal in everyday life, and having a sense of humour means being able to "take jokes", aka laugh when people are making fun of them no matter how mean the "joke" is. (Not sure if that sentence was as clear on paper as it is in my head. If it's not, I'm very sorry, my brain currently seems to be wired in my mother tongue instead of English.) Since I've been really sensitive to any jokes made at my expense since I was very young, I've often been labelled as prickly and difficult, something that no doubt came up when the doctors were interviewing my mother after I was admitted to the ward. (That, and the fact that my mum -- the main person they interviewed to corroborate what I was saying -- seems chronically unable to make a difference between "acting rashly/on impulse" and "verbally lashing out when triggered". Seeing as the first one is a criteria of BPD and the second one is not...)

Anyway. I just hope my doctor will agree when I ask for a new evaluation. She's been known to dismiss my concerns very quickly in the past, so I'm a little worried she'll do it again.

Apparently I used to start screaming with no apparent provocation, at least according to FOO. If it's true then undoubtedly the amnesia is there (and was there when I was much younger) to protect me. Maybe for you too?

I relate a lot to this, yes. Apparently my "screaming" episodes used to be triggered by having to go outside the house, something that is still extremely difficult for me today. I have no memory of this, except for one really strange upside-down and red/yellow-tinted image of rice crispies flying in the air (my mum said I grabbed a box and flung it in the air the very last time I had an episode, so at least I know it happened).
Those episodes occurred between the ages of 14 months and 6 years old, and stopped when my mum grabbed my shirt and held me against the wall, telling me "that's enough". She says it was done firmly but not violently and I believe her, but still I can't help thinking how absolutely terrifying it must have been for six years old me, used to see adults as looming monsters always on the brink of causing harm.

I feel rather privileged - like I've struck gold when I tell people my second (and current) therapist has been the most helpful and kind therapist I know of.

Actually the first T I saw as an adult (discounting all those I've seen as a child and teen) was great. A fantastic no-nonsense woman who had some experience dealing with trauma victims, just the right amount of both warmth and clinical distance, and was patient enough to avoid rushing me, but still called me out a few times when she noticed my mind was going in circles. She wasn't perfect, but she probably was the most helpful T I saw since I was diagnosed. Unfortunately she had to take a sabbatical year -- the few Ts that followed weren't so great, felt completely helpless before my problems, kept dropping me on other Ts, and in the end pushed me to agree to a transfer (from the public system to a BPD-specialised centre). By the time my first T came back, I was two weeks away from being officially transferred and couldn't stop the process anymore.

Sometimes I regret agreeing to the move, but at the same time when she came back I couldn't trust her anymore (as a small part of me feels she left me alone to fend for myself). It's very possible I could have rebuilt trust with her after a while, but at the time I felt it would be easier to start over with someone new who didn't carry that kind of baggage.

Thank you both for hearing me out. It helps a lot.