Here we go... finally (Scrat gets back to the World with Nut)

[Scrat]

I think trigger warning for mention of or hinting at child sexual abuse and neglect.

Okay, here we go...
I guess I just start in medias res and yet it is still the beginning of the journey on which I finally could take my first steps only three months ago.
I am still trying to feel what it feels like to write about these in English, which is my second language and thinking of making this bilingual, doing it in both Hungarian and English. I guess I'll just try to go with my healing instinct. That, my healing instinct, I have found in recent years, is my strongest and infallible resource. I have no idea what I am doing, except that I have been feeling for months (oh my god!) now: there is no return anymore, I finally have the road to recovery wide open in front of me and it is not going to be taken away as it was so many times before.

Today was therapy day. Therapy is the most important thing in my life now. I wanted to heal so strongly and so long and I have been so desperately longing for this chance of healing that I think I became a little obsessed over it. But there is no need to cling to it anymore. V is my therapist. (I have no idea what's her number, I lost count. V is number X in the long series of therapists I encountered. But I dont need to care or count anymore). V is... V IS here with me. For real. Everytime. I think it is over two years now. She has been here with me every single session and between them for more than two years now. And then I realized... more like my eyes opened somehow and I finally could see her. I am in this metaphoric house, metaphoric me is chained together injured and exhausted behond belief. And there are these metaphoric rooms in this godforsaken house. And I have been trying to escape and get outside (back) to the real world where there are (kind and good) people. And I tried in every possible way to untangle myself and get out except for one way. To open these doors from where these chaines come out tangled hopelessly and follow the chains inside these rooms. There was a time I asked over and over how should I go into a room where I know for a fact that I will be abused, raped, hurt, because these already happened to me I just could not be there to experience the very things happening to me because I needed to save myself somehow and my brain did the only thing that could save me: dissociated off everything. Then I asked an even better question over and over... with whom can I be brave enough to go into these rooms? I never really saw anyone who would go near these things on their own. It always seemed to me that there are no human being who would go near these things. And I could understand everyone who did everything just to avoid even hearing about these things... including hurting me and leaving me alone in the process. P... was the first person and therapist I could connect to and I learned to trust and I beleived for a very long time that she was the bravest and only person who would go in with me, stand witness to those inhumane things and retain her humanity. Until she... throw me out of therapy I have no idea how many years ago. And now... somewhen in January, after two years, I suddenly somehow... I have no idea how and why... but almost incidentally looked up and there V was. V was there standing by my side in this metaphoric house just like she has been standing by my side every single session for two years now, in front of a door, waiting patiently and wordlessly for me to stop for just one just enough second and be able to see just one just enough second that she is not the one who is hurting me. And my first move was to tear open that f*ing door and hit V in the face with it in the process. Metaphorically. But it still hurt I am sure. The metaphore stands for that in reality I let out a cuttingly sarcastic comment or something instead of feeling my pain and fear, I just defended myself with that comment in the very same breath I was trying to open that door and let V in because I wanted to and I was trying to, for the very first time after two years. I just did not know better and did not know how to open that door gently, so I hit her in the face with it. Yet, in a heartbeat, V was looking inside completely open, completely silent, and completely by my side. In reality, sitting close to me and reaching out to me, offering to take my hand. I think, it was after that session I really, deeply realized that V's silence is the very thing from where I will alway be able to know that she is really seeing me and not going to leave me alone no matter what nightmare we find behind what door. Because in the face of the unimaginable and unthinkable there is nothing to say. I remember thinking that my alter who up to that point was the only one who trusted V, was right: What I was expecting V to say? That she is sorry? That it's going to be okay? That I am brave or strong? She is effing standing in front of an open door and witnessing the things that every human brain will immediately dissassociate away and since I am dissassociating and I am unable to feel, V is the one who is feeling my emotions as well on top of her own emotions and her job is to somehow be there for me and hold my hand because I am not able to be brave enough otherwise and yet stay in her chair and support me from there as well. She said so. And I saw and hear her doing that. I just could not really see and hear her up to that moment. And I realized that it IS possible. There is still a bit of a confusion and disagreement between V and myself about what exactly should happen once we step in those rooms, should I completely be there and feel or should I just look in somehow a little more removed... but one thing is certain: whatever healing means and whatever this road is, it is TRUE, it is not going to be taken away from me again, and I am not alone. V is here. Here where nobody would want to be, except for the reason V is, to help to heal. And its effing hard. That's a direct quote from V. And I am not triggered by her occasional swearing since I realized that what the heck I am expecting her to say in the face of this? It is effing hard. It became sort of comforting. Just like her silence. Or her face. Or her sometimes sarcastic style. Or her psycho-way of breathing when I dont feel I have a body, so V feels my emotions too. I used to get soooo triggered by silence, by swearing, by sarcasm, by anything remotely reminescent of psychology. Now that I saw through those triggers and saw what V is doing and - more importantly - could finally feel my own emotions, have a semblance of sense of myself, these sort of things from V are sort of comforting, became safe beacons to look for when I need to hold on to something.

HV is... one of my alters. (We are five and not fully separated, so aware of each other and can cooperate when I am not flashbacking or dissociating, which has been very rare until recently - otherwise it has been a hellish mess for years.) HV has the most formed and complete personality among us. She and me. HV used to be the one who protected me, especially in therapy, especially from therapists in her own kind and funny but very persistent way. HV simply was not letting them therapize me by explaining to them (or me) endlessly what they should do and how they should react to me to the smallest of details. I guess her trick was that as long as she is doing the psychotherapy no therapist could get near me again. Recently she took a u turn and became very healthily and warmly supportive - in suspiciously (in a very good way) similar ways to how V is doing it or showing it or leading the way towards it. It actually looks good on HV. A bit strange but endearing. HV became a sort of assistant support and caretaker... whenever and however V cannot be here and take care of me, HV is here and taking care of me. I dont really have anyone else anymore AND yet. And to be honest, I am sick of trying to take care of myself even if I never had a chance to learn how to do that in a healthy way. So HV is here for me. And today, for the very first time, HV came with me to the session. We knew it was going to be hard. I think I have been preparing for today for months now.

I usually still only remember bits and pieces after a session. It always have been like this - sometimes a bit better, other times a lot worse. But I never could take away a coherent string of memory complete with visual, sounds, words, sentences, etc. But I do remember that today V knew instantly that it's going to be really hard. We sort of planned to do this in the last session, but with me it never is sure that I would even remember next time let alone would be able to reconnect to my feelings and follow through. Now I could. And V seemed like - it's still a wonder for me, almost too good to be true - she really gets me and all my fears and how she can make it easier for me. She immediately told me that I sould not worry now about anything, she told me that she will sit over next to me today (at the moment it is the only way I can calm down enough to be able to stay there and feel my emotions a little bit and last time was the first time V tried out what happens if she does not come over), and she told me that it is okay if I cannot look at her and that she will not look at me. And then she let me know first that she was coming over and then she sat over beside me and offered to take my hand. It strange... most of the time I do not even seem to have a body but we talked a lot about how when she (or anyone else) is near me or touching me, my body is torn into a half a dozen directions - by unbearable emotions from the desperate cries of a child who is longing for her parents to hug her to comfort her to the shame and guilt of whoever was abusing me in the actual emotional flashback and screaming to get the * away from me... - yet I cannot really feel or discern what my body screams, so most of the time V feels the various aches, numbness, pains, emotions I cannot, in her body. Mirror neurons, I think, what she always says. Mirror neurons. And always tries to turn my attention to my own body and what it feels.

I think what I will be able to remember even tomorrow or even on next Tuesday, when the next session is, how V was sitting on my right and holding my hand gently (and I was able to hold on to her hand a little bit, which was always very hard for me, to hold on when someone is holding my hand), while HV felt like sitting on my left - where my abuser was during the memory. And I was able to... well, tell V what I have been wanting to tell her for three months now. If someone would show me this session just half a year ago I would give my soul away for it, for the chance that it could become true. And it happened today. And it has been happening in almost every session in the past months. And it is amazing. Hard as *. But amazing. It is possible. And it is mine. And I can hold on to it. And it is not taken away. And V is telling the truth all along and she is staying and is here and is not going to hurt me in any way. And I've just told her about one of the hardest, deepest, harshest shame I have ever felt and I am confused, yes, but V told me today (as well) that "You can get tired, too. I will be here on Tuesday." and I have no doubt at all that yes, she will be here and either I will be able to be there on my own or V will help me to be there.

I am... was a bit frightened by V's silence... but V actually talked today way more than usual. She told me how children - especially emotionally and physically neglected children - sometimes get confused and that there are adults who have special senses for noticing these children and that they take advantage of them and abuse their confusion to satisfy their own sexual desires. (The whole thing that lead to today started with an innocently looking sentence from V when Sandor Ferenczi somehow came up - otherwise freudian psychoanalysis is not a topic, V is a very modern somatotherapist with a lot of experience in trauma work - V's sentence triggered me and there was no way I was going to run away once again. I took that EF and all my courage and HV and did it, I told V.) And after today's session I think I am starting to realize what I really need now... what I was longing for as that little girl... what I want to ask from V and talk about. I just need to build up the courage to tell V next time. I think I need to finally talk to someone about what happened to me then, ask someone what was that, ask everything that little girl would have asked if there was someone who would be willing to listen and answer. And I think... that V would answer. I'll just need to be able to really be there next time, too and ask V somehow.

(I always had a lot of trouble with writing too much and only now I am trying to learn to be a bit more direct when saying something and learn how not to escape my own body and reality and hide behind long-long-long sentences.)

[Armee]

I'm here, reading, and really feeling what you are writing. I found I held my breath through the whole thing. 

I relate to so much of what you wrote and how you wrote it and it seems really positive that HV was able to be there today.

[Papa Coco]

I read every word. I feel like V is being a help to you right now.

I am currently seeing my 7th thearpist. The first 6 were nothing more than Cognitive Behavior Modification Therapists. CBTs. They were offensive more often than not. They were trying to retrain me to be happy, rather than trying to merge all my CPTSD parts back together. My current therapist is a DBT, Dialectical Behavioral Therapist, which means he works at finding all my parts and helping me merge them back together so that my inner network of various parts of my personality all respect each other and talk to each other. It's working SO much better than the CBT methods of screaming into pillows and just "deciding" to not let the past bother me anymore.

I like the way you talk about your 5 parts and how you are in touch with them. What I've learned about the inner parts of my personality is that every single part within me is on my side. They just didn't used to know that. Because they were so fragmented, and didn't communicate with each other, they were giving the wrong reactions to today's problems. They were all still living in the past, where the abuse and the neglect did all the damage that I'm still struggling with today. It didn't mean they were trying to hurt me, as I had originally believed. It means they were trying to help me but they didn't know how.

Don't worry on my account for having written long posts. I tend to write long ones also. We have a lot to say, and we have finally found someone who wants to listen. So, as far as I'm concerned, Let the words flow as they need to!!!!!

I hope your therapy continues to get better, and I hope that all your inner parts become increasingly more joined in the right ways to help you work through the PTSD from the past.

[Scrat]

Hi Armee and Papa Coco
Thank you so much for your support and kind words.
And I am overwhelmed and a complete mess because of therapy stuff, but... wow! I just realized that I never really met or even talked online to someone who is like us. This is just wow. And a lot of things you said Papa Coco makes so much sense to us, too. I mean it was like this with us, too. The trying to help and it sort of worked back then but not really in other situations. And the communication and cooperation I think, too, is really important, although it seemed easy for us once I realized that I might have DID and HV and co started to really show themselves... we have this very deep acceptance and understanding for each other. Yes, in the beginning there were arguments, HV even tried to sabotage my relationship with P, but after the initial turmoil we just simply accepted each other as we were very fast and easy. What is harder is to form relationships to outside in the middle of what feels like basically an atomic minefield all around us.
And also I could tell so much about all kinds of therapies not really helping and doing a lot of damage.
But it is wow.



Trigger warning - mention but no description of sexual abuse. Talking about child abandonement and neglect.






I did not write last time and today I am still not sure what to write or rather... how to make any sense of what is happening with V, in therapy, with and within us. There were some unfortunate things V did and said that must have triggered something somewhere and somewhen. This feels familiar in the sense that I have been doing nothing else in the past years before now, with V, with all her predecessors since P and that disasterous end of the therapy with her than letting this urge to try to desperately explain to them that they are hurting me and how to stop, run amock out of desperation, out of I dont know what exactly. And now these urges are here again breathing down my neck... all because something has happened with V that left me confused, dissociation kicked in and I have no idea how the heck I am supposed to answer even the simplest question like what would I like to do or talk about. But really? How the heck I am supposed to answer what I need when I dont feel anything and the last semblances of my sense of self have slipped out of my fingers?
HV was trying to be here for me, then with a very familiar turn, she just wrote an email to V - I have no idea what about exactly, but undoubtedly trying to tell V what to do and what not to do. Then we talked a bit with HV today, she apologized for not being able to be here with me and told me that she could not concentrate on anything else than trying to protect me and do something to make it easier for me. I get her. I wish she was successful.
And Three. She sort of has been keeping herself out of therapy lately. I guess, since Three was born when neither me or HV could deal with a real psychopath in our lives, somehow we needed to survive and save ourselves and severe the relationship and somehow Three was born. When I was started to go to P years ago, Three knew nothing else than anger, pure, unrelenting anger. As if she had only one language to speak about anything - the language of anger. She used to insist on that she had no humanity at all because that is a mortal weakness against a psychopath, to have any semblance of humaneness, but the tragedy is that it was never true. She has a soul and a very kind one - she only did not have the language other than anger to express herself. Only no one knew, because no one could experience what is Three like from where I sense her and of course Three never really gave a damn about what others thought about her. The very first time she came out and met with P, she offended P, then... years later, P's unrelenting kindness to me and us, including Three, and P's insistence that we treat each other with respect, took effect. And even though Three is still very harsh and crude sometimes, she started to be able to express herself a bit less angrily and in other ways as well. Although... I never minded Three's style or how she talked even about me... simply because I know her, most of the time I can feel what she feels and what are her intentions. I know what means when she says something about me in a really rude stlye that sound like pure abuse, and I think I learned her laguage, learned to understand that she does love me, she just has one language to express that love, and accepted her as she is now and beleive that she can grow. And to be honest, she has more unrelenting integrity and dignity than most people I know. Three was the one who was the first to give her trust to V. Maybe this is the most characteristic of Three: there are two people on the world who Three ever given her trust to. And when she does, it is final and simple and without much adoo. And she gives it for life. And now Three is here around again. And altough I missed her, it is very disconcerting, because she usually comes when neither me or HV is able to deal with the situation and that means serious danger - Three never concerned herself with regular abusers or everyday situations to be solved like having sex for example, those are HV's territory. Of course, in recent years everything got messed up, even the roles. But still, it is disconcerting.

The situation. Wish I knew what the situation is. I just found myself yearning for one fleeting moment... for how simple it was when I was in therapy with P. I mean, it was hard as h*ll, but I was sure of that basically my most important task is to follow what feels right for me, follow my fealings, my healing instinct wherever it takes me and - most importantly - no matter how much the "voices" are punishing me for it. (I call "voices" those mostly feelings like shame, fear, pain that come from those who were supposed to love me, take care of me, help and support me, yet all they did was leaving me alone, failing me, letting me down when I most needed them and abusing me in almost all the forms humans invented to abuse each other.) When I was in therapy with P, it was so simple... I felt I desperatly wished for P to hug me - the voices brough all the h*ll down to me - and I know I was on the right path and did all I could so that the my voice, the voice of my heart could be heard through the voices of my abusers. When P did something that made me feel safe and brought enormous sense of hope and of course the voices did everything to ruin it, I knew that it was the right path toward healing and I am safe with P even if it is hard to feel safe.
Now... it is so messed up. I think I even said... or cried today to V something along the lines that I have no idea anymore who I should listen to... to my own feelings or to all the therapists who said as many things as many they were about what is good for me. And it resulted in an endless tug of wars between us and them... in years of hellish rollercoaster between flight and fight taking over... between unbearable dissociation, emptiness and complete loss of sense of myself and panicky attacks from... well, HV, Three, and the new one who came to be during the past years, during these tug of wars somehow. She calls herself N, for nobody - and she always insisted that we can call her simply N, but our therapists should call her by her full name: Nobody. None of them did. It was this bad. It was war. All out war between my alters (and until I could bear, me) and them.
And today again it all got so messed up and confusing. It seems like... at least about the basics we thought and beleived the same with V... and now it seems that no, V is telling me something that just does not feel right. And there are these urges again to try to explain, to go right back into that tug of war with her again. And I have been trying to build up the courage to at least write down what this whole thing is about, at least here, at least in English, but... it is not that simple anymore that my only task is to try to listen to my own feelings and follow them against the voices. Not, since the voices were joined by P and other therapists. But... what the *...
There is this little girl, who was just abused a few minutes ago, made to promise not to tell anyone and is about to go home to her parents who always told her that if anyone was hurting her she should tell them so that they can help. So she is going home and she is going against that promise she never intended to keep just promised so that she could get out and go home to Safety, to her parent, who will make everything allright again and she will heal. But she never-ever arrived home. She is there in that moment, right after she was abused and right before she got home. Just recently for the very first time I thought of her as a true hero, who saved me, saved HV, saved all of us from a world where there is no home, no Safety, no parents who will help, no everything will be alright and no chance in H*ll for healing. We know what was awaited her if she had not stopped and gone home. She choose to be frozen in that moment and stay there so to protect us, to stubbornly and completely alone wait for the world to make true on its most fundamental promise that there is hope, there is healing, there are good adults who are taking care of children who are in trouble, and there are no children left alone to deal with * itself on their own, nobody is on their own. If she had gone home, her parents would have told her that what happened wasn't a big deal, he surely was just playing and joking and her parents would do everything and anything after that to deny, to ridicule, to make it disappear.
And there is only one wish in that little hero and me, and HV and Three... that there would be someone who would hug me (and that little girl), who would be willing to listen to her, to answer her, my questions, to... protect her just a little while until we can finally rest and stop taking care of ourselves even when we never had a chance to learn how to do that. With... P... there was only one answer to this wish (or need?). With much uncertainty and care but P did answer to me and to that little girl - she quite literally showed that there is hope in the world and there is healing and not even that little girl is left alone and on her own. Once we even went back to a memory and I showed P what happened, and at the second time we went through together that memory and P took that little girl I was to have an ice cream and to a playground where we talked. And it was this simple. That little girl deserved an adult who would hug her and try to help her so she got one.
But now... there are two answers: It is good for me. It is bad for me and it should be me or HV or Three or one of us taking care of that little girl. And I have no idea whose answer is which anymore. All I know is that I never ever could let go of that tiny battered and beaten voice that is the voice of my heart, no matter how P went over to agree with the voices and how many therapists seemed to say what. I just could not let go. I could not let that little hero down and be the one to give up on that world she is waiting for to continue and grow up. At least, it feels like this, it feels like this now. But what is sure is that it meant basically all-out war - I am not even sure about the parties. I just know that it was all out war and I was the casualty. Me and my trust in my own feelings and in them - the therapists.

[Armee]

 

I'm so sorry that happened to you and that little girl got frozen in time rather than face what awaited at home. I truly truly believe there is healing, there is a time all the parts of you will exist in a way that works and brings peace. But I also know part from my own experience and part just from reading what you've written that is is so very complex confusing and at times quite hopeless feeling. It sure isn't easy. The tug of war is awful feeling. I hope the tug softens a bit over the next few days.

[Papa Coco]

I'm sorry this all happened.

It's a lot to handle, especially when therapy begins to shake things up and pull old hidden memories and feelings up out of their hiding places. Healing is happening, but that healing can feel overwhelming at times. My therapist says that facing the confusion "shakes my snow globe." But by working with a good therapist, facing these parts of ourselves begins to merge our parts back together. PTSD is a fracturing of our parts. Healing is merging them back together.

I hope that writing about it to us is helpful as you sort through all these parts.

I am glad you found this forum. I agree with you that it feels good to have people to talk with who have similar experiences. It's nice for people like us to be able to talk with other people like us who don't need to be convinced of how confusing the healing feels. I'm so glad you found us and are using this forum to air your feelings about all that you're going through.