Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Sometimes U Feel Like A Nut - Sometimes U Don’t

And today I'm feeling a little lighthearted! Hope you don't mind... :)

Many of you will recognize that phrase - "Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't" - from a candy bar jingle many moons ago.  I think I was a kid when that commercial was running.  And I remember how I totally understood what it meant for a person to be a nut and how I knew I WAS ONE most of the time, but hoped no one else noticed.  And time has not changed my self-image much! Believe me, I have my days... 

But I have to tell you that at least I now know why I felt this way most of my life, and at least I now know that it is not going to stay this way, this feeling I have about myself, because I am healing.

I mean, of course I am always going to have a nutty side to me, anyone who knows me will say that it’s probably one of my most endearing sides! lol   But as far as feeling like I am a total fruitcake, I don’t think I am going to have that self-image too much longer, it is slowly fading.  I have a much greater appreciation for what a miracle it has been for my mind to actually have done what it needed to do in order for me to have survived my childhood and adolescence, and to have gotten me this far in life.  And so how I feel about my disorder and about me having it is changing.  I am thankful that I had a survival mechanism!  And although it was starting to break down more and more, the older I got (as in it wasn't as effective), it still is something I am grateful for having had to get me here.

But one thing I have noticed lately is that with all the healing that HAS taken place so far, sometimes I get a little too confident as to where I am and then get knocked off my new position up on that pedestal rather quickly!  I will have some turmoil take place and then I have some rather obvious alter activity going on and I am back to realizing I still have a ways to go in all of this.  I am SO close, but I still have a little ways to go.

A year ago, wow, I could never have attempted to do a blog, I couldn’t pull my thoughts together enough to do this, my mind was all over the place.  And when someone who struggles with DID says this, it means something totally different than when the average person says it!  It was not just a matter of distraction, but a matter of having about a half dozen or so conversations going on in my head at the same time, most of them with completely different opinions on whatever the subject matter happened to be.  The confusion was overwhelming; the anxiety was really really high.

I have to tell you, there were times I was feeling as though this whole healing stuff was NOT working at all, because things seemed to be much worse than ever before.  I mean, in the past I lived pretty much in a state of dissociation just about all the time.  And the alters were operating very independently of each other (with no actual knowledge of each other), the switching happened according to what was going on in my environment, and I was totally unaware of any of this taking place. I had very little memory of what was going on from one day to the next, and yet there wasn’t as much awareness of turmoil either. I was pretty much just numb.

Once I started into this healing adventure, all the parts inside me seemed to come to the surface at one time and it was total chaos for quite a while.  I couldn’t pick any thought out from the whirlwind of thoughts all going on at once.  It was like having a cyclone of thoughts going on in my head and there wasn’t any way to retrieve anything.  Especially if I had any kind of anxiety taking place in my circumstances.  This is where the REAL FEELING OF BEING A NUT WAS HAPPENING!!!  I was like a deer caught in the headlights and there wasn’t much action going to take place, I was a blank stare all the time.  Not because I had nothing going on inside or was numb to it, but because I had too much going on and it was all stuck in there.
 
But I am so thrilled to say that perseverance in the process is paying off in a big way!  I am feeling more and more pulled together all the time.  And this is where the occasional overconfidence takes place.  Because as soon as I think I am almost there, some kind of turmoil in my outside world will happen, and then the turmoil inside kicks back in, and before I know it I have alters acting out.  And when all is said and done, I have to try to figure out what just happened, which alters were feeling threatened and why.  It can be a real challenge and a real downer too.  That whole two steps forward and one step back thing we all know about!
 
But as is the case with almost everything in the healing journey, it is all grist for the mill.  Always some kind of growth takes place in all of this, always new information comes to light that wasn’t out there yet.  It just takes some patience and perseverance, and the willingness to not allow what seems like little setbacks here and there to pull me into a downward spiral.  Because what appear to be setbacks are things that really need to happen in some way or another in order to bring more clarity into my process.  It has taken me quite a while to really ‘get this’ part of things.  It sure saves me a lot of heartache if I can keep perspective.  Everything is a learning experience on this healing journey. 
 
Sometimes I feel like a nut, sometimes I don’t!  All grist for the mill.

2 comments:

  1. Perspective and the ability to laugh - even with dark gallows humor or at the simple absurdities around us - those are two gifts which help us so much on our healing journey. Thank you for this post. Bright blessings!

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  2. Thank you Mystic Mom, for your comment. I was thinking today about how humor was the only real way I was permitted to express emotion growing up. Dry humor was a staple in our family of stoics. So it is something I have always had, a stress reliever for me. I've adapted to life through various types of humor, probably more of a crutch than I'd like, but a better one than others I've had off and on through the years! :)

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