Scattered pieces

These are two lines from the song I will not let you down by Don McGlashan.  This song has been going through my head all day, just little snippets…

You must try to believe
That I will be coming through
…
I have carried my cross at each step
Upon my neck for you
…
There’s a tear in my eye
And an ocean of swallowed pride
…
Ties that comfort
Ties that bind
…
And I will not let you down
I will not let you down
That’s for sure
…
I will not let you down
I will not let you down
Any more

Today, these snippets mean a great deal to me.  I’ve just finished one of the worst weekends I’ve had regarding self-injury since before the ex-husband left.  I’ve done many things which I’m not proud of, or can even fathom.  I’m still shaking and trying to work through what happened.  But the lines “Ties that comfort, Ties that bind” got me thinking… wondering about how much I hold onto this self-injury, destructiveness and my mental health diagnoses.

The weekend of self-destruction started on Friday when I was triggered by a couple of incidences which lead to me to repeat the old patterns of needing to please people – in particular the ex-husband.  It didn’t matter that he is no longer present in my life, it was all about finding ways to repeat old behaviours and coping mechanisms.  But why did I do this?  The threat of him appearing in my life was minimal to non-existent.  I no longer want him in my life, yet he fills my flashbacks.  These flashbacks and the stress caused by the memories of him, have lead to me not being able to function at work, meant I’ve had to take an increasing amounts of medication and resulted in me losing huge chunks of time.  But I wonder how much of this I have brought on myself?  There is a certain comfort in being able to explain away my behaviour to his influence and abuse…  What if I’m using all of this as a convenient excuse to get away with inappropriate behaviours?

I read a comment recently from a fellow survivor, they said that they can’t stand those who aren’t actively working on their issues… Those that use the past as an excuse, rather than a cause for healing.  This sort of argument has always worried me – whose to say that I am doing enough in this healing journey?  What if I am wallowing in self-pity and excuses?  Whose yardstick am I being measured against?  What does the yardstick even look like?  It’s the sort of argument that I’ve heard several times, but it does my head in.  I’ve been judged all my life, now I’m healing and I’m still being judged?  When does the judging end?

Another comment that hit close to the bone, was a good friend saying to me that I wasn’t sounding like the survivor he knew.  He’s right (you usually are Paul), I wasn’t a survivor over the weekend… I was a battered victim… like an addict looking for their next fix of self-harm.  All adult knowledge of consequences went out the window.  At times I could hold it together, but these were short lived.  The nights were especially difficult… looking for the ex-husband in each shadow… looking for ways to hurt myself and undermine all the work that I had been doing.  It wasn’t a deliberate attempt by any one within the system to cause harm, it was me coping in the only way I knew…  But what if the only way I knew was perpetuating that tie that binds me to this place of being a victim?  I know the role of being a victim… there’s a comfort in fulfilling a role I know well… so how tied am I to it?  How much of my energy is spent in ensuring I stay there?  I’d like to say that it’s not a great deal, but I just don’t know.

I know that I’m bound to the past in many ways… flashbacks and other PTSD symptoms indicate that.  My healing is aimed at breaking these binds.  This weekend, I failed.  I failed myself, the dissociative system and the people around me who count on me to be a survivor.  My trust in those around me and myself has been seriously shaken.  I’ve come out of this weekend distrustful and scared of people again.  I hate that this has happened.  I hate that I’ve put a great dent in my healing.  I’ve come out questioning everything about my motivations and what I am doing…  Is this healing really working?  Why am I doing this?

I know these are all questions that I need to ask Liz… but I fear she will give me an answer that is meant to soothe, rather than be truthful.  I fear that I have become comfortable in the role of a victim and that those ties are keeping me in this place.  I worry that being a victim has become my identity and way of life… I know that my life is so restricted by the different triggers that I sometimes can’t see past it.  I know that some of the things Liz suggests to change in my life, I can’t do… or I explain that I’ve already tried them and failed.  I’m not very good at giving things a second go, if I fail once, then I’ve often failed forever… especially when it comes to my healing work.  I cut myself very little slack in that area… is that another sign that I’m tied to being a victim?  I just don’t know anymore…

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Now playing: Cat Stevens – Where Do The Children Play?
via FoxyTunes

A good friend recently mentioned that she felt like she was going to fall, and fall deeply.  Part of her was expecting, and almost wanting the fall to happen.  Thankfully, her fall hasn’t happened, and I hope it doesn’t; but what she describes is a feeling I know all to well.  It’s like standing on an edge, waiting for that last push to send you over into a mental health free-fall.  The scary bit about standing there, is that you have an awareness about where you are.  You know that one more negative thing is going to push you over, and part of you wishes that it would come so that it’s over with; but another part of you hopes that you can still claw your way back to safer ground.  It becomes a tug of war between different parts of you…  This alone is so tiring that it can be enough to tip you over…

I know I’m also moving closer to the edge.  The stressors in my life have kicked into high gear and I can feel the pressure building.  At the moment, I’m far enough away to know that I’m in danger without being too close to it.  A part of me niggles that I’m thinking myself into moving towards the edge – why do I think of my ex-husband, why worry about the ACC assessments etc.  But the rational part of my brain knows that I’m experiencing PTSD flashbacks and my worry is justified based on past assessments.  This is the beginning of the tug of war that intensifies over time.  Soon other issues will come in to muddy the waters – denial, and a need for validation have already started to appear.  All of this increases my anxiety levels.  I’ve experienced this often enough in the last few years to notice the pattern…  It becomes like a dance, to and fro… ever closer to the edge…

The problem becomes, how do you stop the dance?  If I called a crisis line, they would take me through the individual stressors I am facing and encourage me to break them down into solvable chunks.  This would work for some of the issues I’m facing, but they can’t help with the PTSD symptoms.  I saw Jo today, and she was recommending trying to ground in the present, and while I agree with her reasoning, I also know that I can be very grounded in 2010 and still keep on dancing towards the edge.  Some of the grounding work can make the situation worse – repeating “it’s the 26th of January, 2010 and they are just memories” can morph into a denial statement about the memories all being made up.  The most effective way of keeping the anxiety at bay is to consciously breathe deeply – this also tends to by one of the first things I forget to do.  Like many survivors who experience anxiety, I have a form of hyperventilation syndrome, with my breathing being short and shallow.  It takes a conscious effort to alter my breathing pattern to a healthier depth and pace.  Changing my breathing will temporarily ease the anxiety, but often this isn’t enough to stop the dance towards the edge.  I’m not always sure what moves me away from the edge, I think this time it will be the formal dissolution of my marriage and completing the ACC assessment.  If this is the case, I’ve got about another three weeks of doing the dance around the edge.  I don’t think I’ll fall, but a part of me thinks I will…  A part of me wants to fall, because they think that this is what I deserve…

And so the dance continues…

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Now playing: The Feelers – Stand Up
via FoxyTunes

I’m on Facebook…  The big thing about Facebook is that it tries to encourage connections – connections with your workplace, interest groups, family, current friends and people from the past.  As a person who is fairly wary of friendships and making connections, I have only a few friends on Facebook – mainly people from the survivor community, a couple of family members and more recently a couple of people from my childhood.  One of the ways in which Facebook encourages connections is by suggesting friends for you based on the friends of your friends.  This means that you get a list of people Facebook suggest that you might like to become friends with, because one of your friends happens to know them.  This was all very innocuous, up until the point where I friended the people from my childhood.  These were safe friends when I was younger, so they weren’t triggering or associated with anything negative.  It just so happens that some of their friends are people who hurt us.  Last night, I logged into Facebook and on the right hand side of my screen were the photos of two of the people who hurt us.  These boys (now men) were part of a gang of boys that hurt us… One of them has a smiling photo of his family, which includes a daughter who would be about the age I was when he was hurting me.  It was such a shock to see these men smiling out at me.  They looked so “normal” and happy, you’d never expect them to have anything untoward in their past.

I have very little memory of my past involving these people.  I have vague images of a wood sheds, boys, smells and the light coming through the window…  Seeing these men and their smiling families triggered switching and internal chaos.  I didn’t even think I remembered their names, but obviously someone inside remembered when it was combined with their photo.  The problem is, what do I do with this?  If asked about the past, these men would probably say that what occurred in the wood shed was natural experimentation amongst consenting children.  There is no way that I could do anything about bringing charges against these men, it was too long ago in a context that could be twisted too easily.

But now, one of my safe escapes has been invaded by their presence.  I could “un-friend” the people from my childhood, but the parts of me that remember the carefree times we had with these people are reluctant to do this.  I’m also not sure that I want these men to have power over me… but sitting here writing this, I’m starting to have memories around the physical pain inflicted by these boys.  I keep thinking that they’re just silly photos, I don’t have to look at them, but, they’re like a car wreck – you don’t want to look, but you end up looking anyway.

I’ve yet to find a way to turn off the “Suggestions” area of Facebook, if anyone knows how, I would appreciate them letting me know.  I could block these men, but that means going into their profile which is something I wasn’t strong enough to do at the time.  Maybe today or tomorrow I will have the strength to block them…  I hope so.

It’s now Christmas Day in New Zealand – 2.30am on Christmas Day to be exact.  Aimee desperately wants to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a safe holiday.

We know that this time of year can bring pain to survivors of abuse and those from dysfunctional families… Our hope is that those painful memories are eased and positive traditions are created.

Take care of you and yours this holiday season,
CG

Last night, one of the lives that one of us leads, intruded on our normal functioning.  This made us wonder how many lives we lead and what impact this has.  Everyone talks about having different roles or persona’s they present to the world, e.g. how you act and appear at work is possibly different from how you would act at a dinner party on a Saturday night.  It appears as if this sort of thing is usual for the singleton population.  As someone who experiences dissociation, I’ve often wondered whether my experiences are all that different from this sort of usual occurrence.  That is, until the way the two different parts run their life collide, then it becomes obvious that we may not fit “usual”.

As a singleton with various aspects of one personality, there seems to be some consistency in the way you interact with the world – that is, your ethics, morals and way of viewing the world don’t change significantly.  There might be more slippage in the way some things are viewed, but overall you are consistent.  Whereas I experience what I would consider more of a sliding scale, especially when it comes to morals and our way of viewing the world.  Our ethics seem fairly consistent – a desire not to intentionally harm others is one common denominator; but our morals especially, seem to be more variable.  This seems to contradict some of the research I have read where morals and ethics are consistent across the dissociative system – if one part performs an action then it is something that the rest of the system is capable of.  So, I as CG are capable of my usual shyness as well as Sophie’s outgoing happiness and S’s overt sexuality.  I’m also capable of the actions that occur from the way those parts view the world.  I struggle with this concept greatly…  Sophie’s outgoing happiness and innocence is a direct contrast to S’s overt sexuality; how can these be morally consistent?  Each part has their own group of contacts online and when there is a collision between these groups, the differences become obvious.  The other night, we were chatting online with a friend, during the chat we received a message for S from one of her online contacts.  The confusion and resulting anxiety lead to a dissociative switch with S coming forward to try and get rid of the person we were talking to so she could talk to her contact.

It is rare for all of us to respect or consider anyone a friend, but there are a few that S doesn’t feel the need to control, manipulate or please.  Does this mean that we are morally consistent?  Or, does it mean that S is healing and learning that controlling people isn’t always necessary?  I’m not sure of the answers.  What’s interesting, is that it’s our male friends that she is more likely to have contact with, but yet she doesn’t fall into the old patterns of sexual manipulation.  I’m not really sure if she considers them friends, authority figures or objects to be studied out of curiosity.  But it’s a marked contrast to our female friends, whom she expresses no interest in talking to.  Possibly because in some respects the abuse we were subjected to by women was physical as well as sexual and psychological, so there is a different dynamic going on.

I’ll take this to Liz on Tuesday and see what she thinks…  I’m not sure that I’m fully grasping the difference between a singletons presentation of different persona’s, and someone with DID presenting with different dissociative parts.

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Now playing: U2 – Running to Stand Still
via FoxyTunes

Like many survivors, I learned from an early age that people weren’t to be trusted – a smile could hide other motives, laughter could mean that someone was heading towards drunkenness, etc.  I also learned that people I considered friends could, and would, set me up for abuse in order to save themselves.  These friends were also victims, but that betrayal of trust isolated us further.  A result of these early betrayals, is a range of behaviours that could be classed as avoidant – I avoid people, attachments and social situations.

These avoidant traits have been with me for so long that it’s hard to imagine a world without them.  I was described as a loner during my childhood, and now I have no one that I would consider a friend to share basic things such as go to the movies or to go for a coffee.  It is rare for me to feel any regret or worry over this isolation – which has made me question whether it truly is an indication of an avoidant personality, or just my natural inclinations…  The online world however, is slightly different.  I have people that I’ve known online for over two years and consider them friends.  Sometimes I help them, sometimes they help me – there is some form of mutual benefit in the relationship that goes beyond any tangible value.

This brings me to last night, which was a particularly rough night for me – I was sad, needing to self-injure and feeling lost.  Thankfully one of my online friends was available to chat.  As I’ve never had a friend who has understood me in the past, I’m never sure if the reactions I experience when chatting with an online friend is “normal” within the context of friendships.  Last night, my friend and I were trying to describe the experience, we decided that it was like getting a warm safe hug from someone – there is a feeling of being safe, protected, understood and as if there was a buffer to cushion you against any hurt.  This feeling makes both of us smile, with our respective younger parts feeling safe to come forward to play, tease and have fun.  I have other online friends who I feel a similar sense of comfort and safety that don’t trigger the presence of the younger parts, but this particular friend does.  The main result of the younger parts being present, is a sense of freedom and joy – something that is very foreign to me when talking to anyone.

I know that I have done entries in here about friends in the past.  But one thing I’ve learned is that you can never take friendship for granted.  It’s something to be valued, cultivated and be thankful for.  If they are good friends, then this will be reciprocated – not necessarily in blog entries, but in more subtle and meaningful ways – asking how you are and pausing for an answer… listening to what is being said and responding appropriately…  These little things add up to that feeling of being valued as a person with an opinion that matters.  This is also why I value the comments I get on this blog.  They a little snippets from people who have taken the time to respond to something that caught their interest.  I try not to take that for granted, but also not be fawningly grateful :)

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Now playing: Brooke Fraser – Scarlet
via FoxyTunes

Please note that this entry may trigger.

“Are you safe?”

This is the question I’m often asked by a friend who knows the extent of my self-injury.  I often hesitate in answering, not because I don’t want to answer, but because I don’t really know what “safe” means.  When you’re a survivor of abuse, your goalposts surrounding the concept of safety often shift – it could be that “safe” becomes not being physically assaulted, but still experiencing psychological abuse.  This is what most of my marriage was like.  He rarely hit me, so I thought I was “safe”.  This sort of understanding ignores the broader definition of safety as being secure from danger, harm, or evil.  Many survivors wouldn’t know what that sort of security means or feels like.

It was interesting when I was asked this question today, I hadn’t been safe over the weekend and I realised that I didn’t particularly care.  This isn’t because I’m suicidal or tied to a feeling of deserving the self-injury, but because I don’t have any sense of it being negative or being “me”.  Up until last week I was actively trying to work through the self-injury so that I knew what had triggered it and could potentially prevent it in the future.  That’s all changed.  I’m no longer worried about preventing it, because I don’t have any sense of it impacting on me in any way.  I know this is a dissociative event and compartmentalisation, but I can’t move beyond that knowledge into any solid concept of it doing harm.  I know that this is probably tied to the denial that I’m currently experiencing, but I don’t get a sense of needing to move beyond that denial.  This all could also be contributed to ACC still not approving any further sessions with Liz, I’m not sure.  I know that this is a potentially dangerous place to be in, but it also has it’s benefits.  I’m moving back to my high functioning at work, I’m enrolling for another qualification and am getting back to exercising regularly.  This is close to my functioning during the middle years of my relationship with my ex-husband, when I was considered high-functioning and an asset.

I’m not sure of what to make of it all and I get a sense that I don’t want to analyse it.  All I know is that the screaming inside my head has gone.  Everything is back in the boxes behind the wall.  I don’t even get a sense of that having occurring,  I just get a sense that this is what has happened.  It’s both confusing and totally clear at the same time.  When I saw Liz on Monday, I mentioned the denial and she responded that I wasn’t wanting to look at the past.  But I don’t have any sense of the past, I don’t need it or want it.  All I have a sense of, is my life becoming a tickable list of things to do – mow the lawns, check FaceBook, go to bed and read for an hour, etc.

Not quite sure what is happening, or how long it will last.  But it’s an easier life than the one filled with anxiety, flashbacks and suicidal ideation.

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Now playing: Brooke Fraser – Lifeline
via FoxyTunes

Please note that this may trigger.

The husband of our cynical friend was buried today.  It was an amazing service which showed how much he was loved by those around him.  The eulogies were funny and heartfelt.  Our friend held up well throughout the funeral, she cried and was supported by her youngest daughter… the love within the family was obvious and honest.  One of the graphic designers at work did a montage of photos of his life, it was amazing to see how much he had changed, but not changed over the years – the laughter in his eyes was there all the way through.

We were close to not going to the funeral, we don’t find funerals easy things to attend.  They tend to overwhelm us with too many messages… but we were fine today.  Our friend also said she was looking for us when we went to give her a hug afterwards, so I’m glad we went.  She deserves all the support she can get.

After the funeral there was a wake held at a working men’s club.  We didn’t particularly want to go to this as we knew there would be lots of people, but everyone from work pressured us into going.  We were fine driving there and parking… it was when we got to the door that the trouble began.  This club is like many throughout New Zealand, they have a similar feel and design – a big open space with table for standing and drinking at while you watch the big screen TV, and another area for dining.  The smell of alcohol greets you at the door.  What also greeted me at the door was the first flashback.

The father managed a working men’s club as we were growing up.  Our lives revolved around that club, sport and alcohol.  We were abused at that club.  We were forced to drink alcohol for the first time in that club.  Some of us still live in that club within our head, they’re stuck there.  Walking into the club today triggered them all…

M took control as best she could, but she has problems with alcohol – she uses it to drown out the noise in the head.  As we walked to the bar all we could hear is the noise of the crowd becoming fainter and the internal screaming getting louder and louder.

“Raspberry and chips… raspberry and chips… raspberry and chips…”

This is all M could hear, so she orders a drink to drown out the sound.  The screaming gets louder as she takes the first sip of beer.  She always drinks beer as it makes us drunk quicker.  The first beer doesn’t deaden the screaming, time for another…

Random flashes, snippets and sounds from the past come through… some good, some not so good, some horrific.  Still the screaming…

“Raspberry and chips… raspberry and chips… raspberry and chips…”

M tries deep breathing, but that doesn’t calm the noise…  Time for another drink.  No one around us is aware of anything going on.  M answers all the questions and shows an interest in everything as she continues to drink. I don’t know how much she drank, it’s always hard to tell as the dissociation seems to mask the effects of the alcohol… or maybe we’re just immune to the effects, I’m not sure.

We all know what “Raspberry and chips” means… it was a reward for being a good girl after the abuse.  We hate raspberry soda and potato chips…

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Now playing: Crowded House – Better be home soon
via FoxyTunes

I’m struggling…  struggling to maintain the feeling of being alive and being an adult.

Tomorrow I go to the funeral of my cynical work friends husband.  He died on Sunday after a year of battling cancer.  I unsuccessfully researched the guilt associated with someone who is suicidal continuing to live, while someone who was in love and loved life dies a horrible death.  There seems a great injustice in that scenario.  When I mentioned it to Liz on Monday, she came very close to talking about religion again, but squeaked by with the “there must be a reason” line.  I’m at a loss as to what that reason is.

We’ve been asking M to do a majority of the work and I think this might be part of the reason why we’re struggling.  M is incredibly functional, focused and driven; but she comes with the baggage of addiction issues which can harm the rest of us.  I’m not sure how to break through this barrier that we seem to have up.  I’m not sure if it is the time of year causing the problem (Wedding Anniversary, ex-husbands birthday and Christmas are approaching).  It could also be the work environment which is still negative and emotionally draining.

I suppose the big problem is that I was hoping the time off work would help to ease these issues, but it hasn’t.  Maybe I was hoping for another quick fix…  I’m realising that quick fixes don’t seem to exist within mental health.

“Unfit for work…” those words sting, they really do.  They’re the words used to explain why I won’t be able to work for the next 12 days.  They’re part of the standard form that the doctor fills in, so it’s nothing personal, but it means failure to some of us.  We know that our functioning at work has been so poor that there was no other choice, but it still cuts us to the core of what many of us perceive as our self-worth.  M in particular, is struggling with being put off work, yet she was the one who made the appointment and mentioned the problems we were having, knowing full well that enforced sick leave was the likely outcome.  M couldn’t hand the medical certificate over in person – it would be like admitting failure and having to face the disappointment of those around us; so we left it on the team leaders desk with an email message apologising for the inconvenience we were causing.  Some of us consider this the wimps way out… failing to face up to our responsibilities and the repercussions of our actions.

This morning we got a text message from our cynical work friend asking how we were.  I wasn’t sure how to respond, I know that in some ways I’m trying to protect her – she’s got enough on her plate without hearing my sob story.  So I sugar-coated what was happening.  No one at work was expecting us to have this time off, so it probably came as a shock.  I suppose this is one example of how we can appear so high functioning, but really be a total and utter mess.  What I fear the most is the reaction when we get back to work… will people alienate us, want to hug us, avoid talking about it?  At their core, the people that I work with are good and kind people, but they don’t understand mental health issues.  This means that I will odds are lie about what has happened when I get back to work, I’ll find some acceptable lie that doesn’t make them squirm.

This week we’ve also seen Jo and Liz…

Jo became quite worried about our safety after we did a collage with her.  It can be quite amusing on one level to see Jo’s art work which is all about love and happiness, while ours is dark and full of violence.  We both had mindless woman’s magazines to use as base material for the collage.  I had words like key, disappear, invisible… Jo had love and rainbow.  I had a picture of a puppet running through a door… Jo had a smiling woman on the beach.  She was concerned about our safety to the point of contacting Liz.  Poor Liz also now realises how much we were testing her when we first started seeing her – with Jo we go with the flow, but with Liz we resisted and argued at the beginning.  This wasn’t deliberate, but rather an unconscious way to see whether Liz was going to be able to help us heal and put up with what we could throw at her.

When we saw Liz, it was what I would consider a disaster.  Little Michelle came forward and made it almost impossible for us to speak.  She has such a problem with words and forming them that it’s like she is stuttering, but I don’t think it’s a true stutter, I think it’s more about not wanting to tell the secrets.  At one point, we were stuck on one sentence, and in particular one word… “I’m not special“.  We were so incapable of saying the word special, that we ended up having to write it down.  Little Michelle stuttered through explaining that she wasn’t “that word” to anyone, because if you were “that word” you then got hurt.  She wanted to runaway so that the pain would stop.  Liz offered to runaway with her, but Little Michelle said that no one else was allowed to come.  All the time this was going on, there were ones in the background yelling that she was telling lies and it’s all rubbish.  This was the first time the messages about it all being lies were so closely tied to someone saying anything.  Little Michelle shared no abusive events, but her presence alone was enough to stir-up the denial and nay-sayers.  That probably means something in psychology land, but to us it just felt crazy.

So we have 11 more days before we are allowed back to work…  We’re meant to relax and unwind…  This is terrifying!  Work is our structure, our safety.  Suddenly we’re meant to do this thing called relaxation and rest.  We’ve actively avoided doing either of those things for about 20 years…  Today we survived by going down to the gardens and taking pictures with the new lens’ we got the other day.  Not sure how we’re going to cope with another 11 days of this.

Here’s a random photo we took today…

Cherry blossom

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Now playing: Shihad – Pacifier
via FoxyTunes