Feeling Fractured

[spryte]

I do not have dissociative identity disorder. (split personality)
That doesn't keep me from, at times, feeling very fractured. I've become more integrated than I was...at least now when I'm with different people in my life, I feel a continuity in myself across those situations. I am no longer a "different person" when I'm with this group, or that person.

I am still very compartmentalized.

And, the more I delve into myself with this healing homework, the more "parts" of me, I find. And, I'm utilizing them as healing tools.

But man, there are days like when I'm having to negotiate with my inner kid so that I can eat a healthy meal, and negotiate with my inner teen to get off the darn internet so I can do some work, and I'm "talking" myself down off ledges, and...

...sometimes it just feels like it's very crowded inside my head. Too many captains of this ship and they don't want to let me have the wheel. 

[schrödinger's cat]

Are you okay? I re-read your post and I'm not sure if you're more discouraged or more just simply p*ssed off. I'm trying to dredge up something helpful to say, but I can't find anything, it's so late here and I'm so tired. So:     Hang in there, spryte. And kudos to you for having come so far already.

I had to laugh about your inner teen. But I sympathize about the sheer amount of sodding time it takes to manage things sometimes. With me, it's different; less fractured, more like the whole of me just clunks out of joint and disappears. It's like every single day, I have to purposely do things that make me remember who I am. I have to write myself into being. Then I get too confident and skip it for a few days, and I begin to disappear again. It's getting better, but wouldn't it be brilliant if it could get better a lot faster?

[spryte]

I'm ok Cat, thanks for asking. Just having a down day. My anxiety was really high today, and I'm having a h*ll of a time fighting through this fog that I find myself stuck in. Yesterday and today I was trying to negotiate with myself to get some things done, and I didn't quite make it. I'm in the first stage with that. Passive observation. It's good to know that I'm there, I meditated on that earlier...but it is a long road. And you're right, no matter what we're each struggling with sometimes it just gets frustrating and yeah, I really wish that it would happen faster.

[JoannaSunshine]

I have been feeling that way too lately Spryte. All the time, for weeks (months? Years?)on end. I understand what you mean by fractured, and feeling like a different person depending on the group of people you are surrounded by. I feel like who I am in my personal life, and who I am when I'm at work are completely different people. Like the person I am in front of my coworkers is who I want to be, the person I feel deep down I "should" be. Then there's me outside of work, marginally functional. I am so exhausted when I'm home that most of the time I don't have much motivation, I smoke weed to dissociate and escape into my computer or my TV. I have the energy and motivation to play with my son, love and nurture him and make sure he is well taken care of. Sometimes that is all I can muster though. There's no will or energy left to get to the dishes, or calling to get my health insurance reinstated, or vacuuming, but especially socializing with friends or family. I feel so much pressure and anxiety when asked to go out with a friend, or have a playdate with my Sister and her kids (even though she lives 3 blocks away and we have a good relationship). Things that should be a nice way to spend time on your day off seem so overwhelming, exhausting, even scary. I always feel anxious that whomever I am visiting with will know I'm high because my eyes will be red, or I'll say something dumb because I've been smoking weed and they'll think I'm an idiot, or just a stoner, or a bad mom. I want to spend time with these people, and I'm sure they don't really judge me that harshly, I know my family and friends all think I'm a great mom.
I just have this anxiety about being in public, being outside of my house, because I feel like I am not a functional adult but a traumatized child or emotionally stunted teenager and everyone will see that just by looking at me. I don't feel safe when I feel others might see the things I feel ashamed of. So I have to alter my persona. to be different than myself so no one will see the true me, the one who is marginally functional. It keeps me safe, they can't see my fatal flaws if I don't show them myself at all... I don't know, I'm just beginning to understand all of this. I just keep telling myself to be gentle, love myself, try not to judge, and self soothe in whatever ways I can, try to live mindfully.

My life is better now than it ever has been, things were a lot worse when I was younger. I am raising my son the best I know how, and learning more everyday. That's the most important thing to me, to take care of him the way I wish I had been taken care of. And to take care of myself the way I wish I had been taken care of too...
I must say I find so many familiar thoughts and feelings in the posts on this forum, but your words really resonate with me Spryte. It's funny, I never thought anyone could really get the way I think and feel but it's obvious to me now that some people do.

[spryte]

Aww Joanna, I get it. I so get it.

About last November I "woke up". I'd been deluding myself to how my level of functioning had just dropped lower and lower. In November, a couple of things happened, I don't even remember what now, that kind of served to highlight how my life was starting to unravel. Still not to where anyone would notice anything, but I was really invested in everything looking "ok" and I think like one of them was my boss calling me out on the sloppy way I was dressing and how I was falling behind in some of my work. Enough to really shake me and show me that the threads were starting to show in how I was trying to portray myself in my "real life" as opposed to how things were when I went home...which was me laying on the couch, watching hours and hours and hours of netflix, eating whatever required the least amount of effort, wearing dirty clothes, not showering, and the last straw for me...sleeping with dirty dishes in my bed because I couldn't make myself get up and take them to the kitchen because that would also require washing them (I was living with roommates at the time).

So, I've been working on, and picking apart these behaviors for the last year. Like you, I've come back around to the dissociation (although it isn't nearly as bad as it was a few years ago). For me, it's not dissociation actually so much as just distraction. I have progressed to the point where when I am NOT distracting myself, I am fully present...so, it takes work but there is hope!

I also see myself in what you wrote about your son. I have always found it interesting how much more energy I can muster up to take care of my boyfriend, to do things with him, to cook him dinner...there's a component that definitely has to do with motivation. It's important to you to take good care of your son (which it sounds like you're doing amazingly btw!) but not so much yourself.

I don't know. I still haven't figured it out completely, but maybe a few things here and there. I'm pretty happy to have found others like yourself who get it. Maybe we can hang out here and figure it out together!

[pam]

I used to think I had DID back when my littlest inner child who woke up after a few decades. Then a few yrs later there was an older child, 9, and another recently made herself known who carries the despair from when I was 12. They seem like separate people inside me, but I am only now more able to clearly see they are more like "dissociated pockets of feeling" (I just made that up, but it's true)  that have been out of my emotional awareness. Just feelings and memories, but they all belong to me and I actually have known about them in an intellectual way, but not a feeling way. I truly believe things get dissociated when they are unbearable. Now, as part of healing, these feelings are coming back as I am able to handle them. It's weird because most of the time I feel like it's just happening on its own, but I do things that have helped it along too. Mainly the thing that's helped is inner child writing. That made me stronger and able to feel more of my past hurt.

[schrödinger's cat]

Aaaah-HAH. That's it. Thanks for describing this so succinctly - I've now got an explanation for what's been going on within me. Yay!     Dissociated pockets of feeling. That's precisely it.

And this idea that this could be connected to some inner part of ourselves, some inner child or inner teen, some ego state or part we can then try to get in touch with - that's brilliant. I'll keep that in mind.