Scattered pieces

I’ve mentioned previously that I exhibit avoidance behaviours – this is especially true of my relationship with therapists.  We respect Liz and her abilities, but we don’t particularly like her and some of us actively hate her.  So any notion of becoming attached to her in any way, feels alien and odd.  Up until now, I’ve been dubious as to whether any sort of attachment or reliance is necessary – surely we can learn and heal without these silly emotional concepts getting in the way…  Well, apparently not.  Apparently, at some stage you have to trust your therapists strength to carry some of the burden.  We’ve reached that point and it’s terrifying beyond words…  What if Liz can’t cope?  What if she isn’t there like we need her to be?  What if she looks at the problems we’re bringing, and says it’s too much… that we’re too damaged?

I have an emergency session with Liz this afternoon to try and work on a safety plan.  I didn’t cope well with the ex-husband’s birthday and I need help.  My heart sinks as I write those words.  I don’t want to need help.  I don’t want to appear less than perfect.  I sure don’t want to rely on anyone else for that help.  People have a habit of being human and making mistakes or not following through on the things they say… What if Liz turns out to be very normal in her mistake making abilities and lets us down when we really need someone, how are we meant to work through that?  Carol is the last therapist who let us down when we needed her.  She had us sectioned under the Mental Health Act because of a misunderstanding.  This one mistake nearly destroyed Sophie and changed the system significantly.  We can’t risk something like that again.

So, I’m going into this session on tenterhooks.  I know I need help, but I’m not sure what help I need.  I do know that we hate needing to ask.

I noticed a very odd thing yesterday while playing FarmTown on FaceBook…  My issues with having a large personal space, seem to translate to my online avatars.  In FarmTown, you can go to market to sell your produce and see if someone wants to hire you to harvest their crops or plow their fields.  If you’re waiting to be employed, your avatar can be “standing” with a number of other avatars for a period of time.  There is a certain amount of psychology that goes into the strategies behind being hired – the “spammer”, where you repeatedly ask to be hired; the “dancer”, where you move around or get your avatar to dance on the spot; or the “loner”, where you get your avatar in a spot alone so they’re easily noticed.  I’ve always adopted the “loner” strategy, and have always attributed this to my game strategy.  I now realise there might be something more to it.  I can sometimes cope with another avatar being near or overlapping mine for a short period of time, but never long – even my ugly little avatar must have a large personal space.  For those of you who think I’m being cruel about the relative ugliness of the avatar, you obviously haven’t seen FarmTown graphics – they’re UGLY!

I wonder if this is an indication that I’ve been playing the game too long and are therefore personalising it too much, or whether I have extreme boundary issues.  When Carol (previous therapist) asked me about arranging the room in a way that I felt comfortable, we did an exercise about personal space.  In order for us to feel even mildly comfortable, we had to be in one corner of the room and she had to be in the opposite corner.  We would’ve preferred for her to be outside the room, but that wasn’t feasible.  During therapy with Carol, we’d often end up on the floor tucked around behind a cabinet that she had – this was mainly when the young ones were present.  They often felt a need to hide and create physical barriers between us and Carol.  During sessions with Liz when the young ones are present, there is still a pull to sit on the floor in the corner, but we’re too scared to do it in case it makes us look too odd.

We felt that need to sit in the corner today during our session with Liz, Aimee and SO were strongly present and felt like hiding.  It was a rough session in many ways – the main topics of conversation were denial and self-injury.  It brought up a very odd concept of how to cope with the denial.  We’d tried to construct a basic timeline of events to try and create some order out of the memories, but had found it too difficult to write them down.  We got about four events written, but then the derealisation started.  As this way of coping and “getting the memories out” hadn’t worked, Liz suggested something which is too bizarre for my very literal brain – think the memories or whatever is bothering me onto a piece of paper, fold it up and give it to Liz to keep.  This will mean that we don’t have to worry about those pieces of information again as they are being kept safe and separate from us.  To us this didn’t make sense…  How do you “think” something onto a piece of paper without writing it down?  How does giving Liz that piece of paper signify anything?  It was all too abstract and alternative for our very concrete, narrow way of thinking.

A therapist once told us that our education was lacking because we hadn’t studied any of the Arts.  That’s true, we don’t understand the beauty in art, music or philosophy.  In many ways we deliberately avoid studying them, because if the intellectuals amongst us get hold of the ideas they have this tendency to strip away the magic and enjoyment.  So we take photos because they’re fun… we listen to Beethoven, Foo Fighters, Brooke Fraser or any music because it moves us at the time… But when it comes to having to think through an abstract idea, we need the intellectual ones to come on board with some assistance.  This is fine, unless they get faced with something which they can’t dissect or reason through logically, then it sort of gets lost in their cynicism…

Tonight we have been triggered badly. It’s always a slap in the face when the angry ones step forward, usually we don’t have any memory of them or what they have done, but tonight they left the residual feeling of anger when they left. We’re still shaking from it.

It’s such a contradiction to have the daily functioning states which are usually happy, being so quickly overwhelmed by such darkness and hatred. The violence!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This has stirred up all the ones that have issues with running away and needing to escape. For the first time in a month we’ve been close to texting our normal therapist to ask for help. Tried grounding techniques such as breathing, walking, playing games, petting our cat… Nothing so far has helped. We’re trying this to see if it will dissipate the feeling.

In all the craziness we wrote this (poem????)

I am…

I am 3
Sore
No move
Run
Hide

I am 4
Why?
What I do wrong?
I sorry
I be better.

I am 5
I have the best daddy in the world
My daddy loves me
They all lie about my daddy
I’m the favourite

I am 7
Why me?
Did I walk wrong?
Did I look funny?
Need to be invisible.

I am 8
I am not your special girl
I hate you
I love you
I have to be ugly so no one will look at us again.

I am 13
How dare you
Don’t do that ever again
Dare you to try it again
I don’t care what you do to me

I am 16
No more please
Not again please
Noooooooooo
It hurts too much

I am 25
Hush little girl
I will do this
Go away
This is a mans game

These were the little snippets from parts at that age. Some are still at that age. They’re stuck in that hell, denial, protective state… This had better start getting better soon.