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.

Being True to Myself in D.I.D. Recovery

I am currently in the recovery/healing process from Complex Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, and within this kind of 'umbrella' or 'cluster' of disorders, I have Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.), formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder, and before that, Split Personality Disorder.  The name of this particular disorder has changed over the years as the understanding of it within the mental health community developed.  Its current name was given to reflect the dissociative nature of the disorder, the root coping mechanism in the mind that allowed the splitting of the personality with a result of the feeling and appearance of having multiple personalities to happen.  Without the dissociation part, the splitting of personality could not have happened. 

 

Dissociation is a way of stepping out of your circumstances in your mind when your body doesn’t have that choice.  Dissociation protects the person from trauma, from events that are too overwhelming to safely deal with in the moment without ‘losing your mind’.  You ‘check out’ temporarily so that you don’t ‘check out’ permanently.   It is in a sense, a self-hypnosis, and most trauma survivors experience some level of dissociation during their trauma, no matter the age or type of trauma.  If the experience can be processed in a safe way, the emotions worked through safely, in a timeframe that is close to the event, the chance of the trauma not causing long term mental health problems, such as PTSD or other disorders is greatly improved.

When trauma happens in childhood on a regular basis, the coping mechanism of dissociation is absolutely necessary for the survival of the child emotionally.  They have no control over their physical world, they have no way out of their ordeals, they have to survive in the mind if they survive in the body.  And this dissociation can take place without morphing into other types of disorders.  But many times the trauma events and the memories of those traumas start splitting off, kind of like little compartments form in the mind so that the memories won’t be accessed by the whole child, it would be too overwhelming to have to remember all of these traumas and still move forward in life trying to survive.  It is a very protective mechanism and it works quite well for that purpose.

I have done a good bit of research on this disorder since coming to terms with its existence within me. How D.I.D. starts to take form from the original dissociation is very complex and very unique to the individual. It seemed I had to know everything there was to know about this in order to fully come to terms with it, in order to have some kind of peace about facing it, in order to not feel doomed in being trapped in this for the rest of my life.  I had to have hope, and knowledge is power when trying to go the distance, and that is just how I operate, I have to know what is in front of me and that there is a way to heal and overcome, a way to become whole. 

 

I also know that not everyone who has D.I.D. is the same.  As a matter of fact, there are no two of us alike.  It’s not going to look the same in every person, it’s not going to feel the same in every person, it’s not going to be healed in the same way in every person.  We each had our own unique history that put us here, our own unique traumas at different times in our lives, different people responsible for those traumas, and our sense and depth of horror and betrayal will have been unique for each of us during these times.  And so the path to healing is going to be a bit different for each of us.  It is a challenge for all of us, and that is a huge understatement.

One thing I learned early on after discovering this in myself was that I had to go with the flow according to what was going on in ME and not become distracted by how things looked for other people with the same diagnosis, and not become distracted by how their recovery process looked either.  What works for one person might not work for another, especially in the way it is walked out and in the timing or pacing of the process.  We are all unique, unique in the way we got here, unique in the way our minds work overall and in how the disorder manifests in our lives, both past and present, and unique in the way we will respond to treatment and to the healing journey out of this fragmentation of the self into wholeness of the self.

I guess I just wanted to use this post to encourage anyone who is in recovery from trauma, who is in recovery from any disorders that have arisen from trauma, to not get caught up in some kind of discouragement about what feels different to you as opposed to what you are learning about other people who have been through similar circumstances.  Because the operative word is ‘similar’; no two people are exactly alike, nor are their histories, nor are their responses, nor are their recovery processes!  And although we can gain tons of encouragement and tons of great tips from others who have gone before us, we can make huge leaps forward by finding all these awesome tools to help us learn and heal, and we can discover basic truths that are absolutely common to all of us in recovery, we still are going to have to allow our journey to be our own.  And it can be scary at times, it can feel overwhelming at times, it can feel lonely even.  It is our own unique struggle and we have to honor this in order to honor ourselves.

Be true to yourself as you always keep your eyes on the prize of recovery and wholeness.  Don’t try to copy someone else to the point where you lose sight of the uniqueness of your own journey, because you may miss something very important to your own process, and your healing is way too important!!!  YOU ARE WAY TOO IMPORTANT AS YOU!!!

You Get What You Need

“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.” Rolling Stones

This song has been playing in my head for a few days now. I’m gonna say it is one the great rock n roll truisms. And what I mean by that is there is a great deal of wisdom in this. But as I was thinking it through, I came to the conclusion that the completed truth of it goes more like this: You can’t always get what you think you want, but if you try you will find you get what you need, which in the end is what you really do want. Because bottom line is, sometimes what we think we want is not what we need. And what we really need, deep down, is what we really want to begin with, we just can’t figure out what it is, or we go looking for it in all the wrong ways or places or people or ideals or things.

What I think is basic to every human soul, what we each really need, is love and truth. And love that is true, not love that is false. And a love that is true is one that sees your value and accepts you without impossible expectations or limitations, but doesn’t stop there. A true love always wants the very best for you and will strive to help you get there. And it may not always be pleasant, this love that wants the best. But in the end it is exactly what we are looking for regardless. A love that sees your value and all that you can be as a whole, thriving person. And this true love starts with ourselves. Loving and accepting ourselves and wanting what is best for ourselves.

As is true with many people, I spent my whole life in the horrible cycle of looking 'out there' for what I thought I wanted. I looked for it in all the wrong people and places and ideals and things, and always ended up terribly wounded, and terribly empty, and then finally in complete despair. And one day, I will never forget that day, I was driving on a country road and this deep anguish came over me, and I was looking for a reason, any reason, to not drive my car at high speed into the nearest tree. The tears were pouring out of me and the sobs were coming from the deepest place, and I couldn’t find a reason to not drive into a tree. And in that moment I had a choice. And even though I couldn’t come up with a reason, I chose to try one more time. And I cried out, “God, I need help. If you are real I need help because I can’t fix what’s wrong anymore and I have tried all the Christian religions and doctrines and advice and all that I know from every other place and it’s not working. None of it is working. But I need you to help me or I am not going to make it.”

It was the choice that opened up the door for me to get what I needed. And what I needed was healing. And I didn’t even know it at the time. I didn’t know what was wrong, I didn’t know anything. But I tried one more time and it opened up the door. The door of some kind of plan, one in which I was totally unaware of, but one where each step was laid out for me one by one. And I just took each step as it appeared before me, some of it didn’t seem to make any sense whatsoever. And some of it still doesn't, not while I'm in the step. But I can be assured that because I made that choice and have embraced the process with intention, it is going to work out in my favor. It actually amazes me, time and time again.

It has been just about 7 years since the day I made that choice, and I am so thankful that I tried one more time. And I can say to anyone who will listen, my path has been a miracle. It has been a miracle, I could not have invented this path, from that moment in my car until this very minute, not in my wildest dreams. And through this path I am being healed with each passing day. And I would never in a million years have expected to have to go through this kind of a process, this kind of a journey, but it has been the most awesome journey toward self-love and self-acceptance, which will in turn open the door to more love and more acceptance, in truth.

Which in the end is going to be what I needed and ultimately what I wanted all along.

If you try sometimes, you just might find...you get what you need.

Respect or Fear? A Foundational Truth

Definitions of Respect:

-noun

1.  esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability: I have great respect for her judgment.

2. deference to a right, privilege, privileged position, or someone or something considered to have certain rights or privileges; proper acceptance or courtesy; acknowledgment: respect for a suspect's right to counsel; to show respect for the flag; respect for the elderly.

3.  the condition of being esteemed or honored: to be held in respect.

Definitions of Fear:

–noun

1.  a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid.

2.  that which causes a feeling of being afraid; that of which a person is afraid: Cancer is a common fear.

–verb (used with object)

3.  to regard with fear; be afraid of.

My last post,  Sorry Seems To Be the Hardest Word,  was about not having been respected in my life in relationships, and not having had any self- respect.  I came to the conclusion that if I didn’t have any self-respect, then that would draw disrespect toward me in my relationships.  And in my mind I felt that even though I had given and shown a great deal of respect toward others, it never was reciprocated, because of my lack of self-respect and having chosen the wrong people with whom to be in relationships.

I received a comment on my Face Book page in regard to that post that was a real eye opener for me. The commenter said  “really, if respect is an unknown entity to somebody - how can you expect to get it from them? that includes yourself; so please acquire a good dose of it & spread it around liberally. you're sure to find some deserving targets.”  Angie L.

I had to do a double read on this, because it was so profound for me.  How could I expect respect, give respect or self-respect if I did not even understand what respect was?  Because it hit me at that moment that I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT RESPECT WAS.  My sense of respect, that which I had always given and shown to others was not respect at all, but was fear.  And this was a real moment of truth for me.  And the way in which I feared those I thought I had respect for, varied greatly depending upon the person and the circumstance.

If I had what I thought was respect for authority, basically I feared that authority because I had always experienced abuse by those in authority over me.  My fear was based on pain and humiliation and fear of death.

If I had what I thought was respect for friendships or others with whom I was in relationship, basically I feared being rejected or abandoned by them.

In each of these cases, my fear is what drove my behavior in those circumstances, whether it was submissive behavior, or deference to their wishes or opinions, or even whether it was that constant apologizing I was always doing.  It was all based on some form of fear, not due to any form of respect.

So, before I can get down to the business of learning how to respect myself, I have to get down to the business of learning what exactly respect means and how it translates into self-respect.  I looked up the definitions, now I have to really take a good look at them and try to imagine them applied to ME.  Because until I ‘get this’, I won’t get respect from myself or anyone else for that matter.  This is an important foundational truth for me and important for my healing process.  And I’m kinda stoked about it!

Thank you Angie!!!

Sorry Seems To Be the Hardest Word

About 15 years ago, my father told me he was sorry.  He apologized to me for the way he had severely beaten me throughout my childhood.  And at the time I was so unable to face any of the pain of my childhood, I kind of hurried through the whole thing and didn’t really take it in.  My father was sincere, I know this.  Apologizing doesn’t come easy for him.  It was a big deal, a first in our relationship, and I wasn’t able to absorb it at the time.  But I can tell you that at this moment, I so understand the almost miracle it took for him to realize how harmful his treatment of me had been, and he owned that, he owned it.  And I know that if he could go back in time and change it all, he would.  He would change the way he had abused me and the affect it had on the rest of my life to this point.


I was driving home from work yesterday evening, a long commute, and I am in the habit of using this time for reflection.  The day’s events, the week’s event’s, my life’s events, they all kind of take turns coming up into the front of my mind so I can look at them.  Yesterday evening I was in some turmoil, trying to sort through some patterns that keep taking place in my life.  And what it all boils down to is not being respected, and bottom line, not having self-respect.  I realized that as much as I have learned about abuse and its effects in the life of a survivor, about how our minds get so twisted up into believing that we deserve to be treated poorly, I still have not somehow ‘gotten this’ down in my soul.  Because what I know in my head has not helped me to change the patterns in my life. Not yet.

I still do not have enough self-respect going on in me.  For some reason, even though I understand in my head that I am deserving of good things in my life, that I am deserving of friends and relationships that offer me kindness and respect and really good things, I have not found this to be true deep down in my soul yet.  I am still willing to accept less than what I even minimally deserve as a human being.  And when a person really feels this way about themselves, other people will pick up on it, through our own actions and words, they pick up on the fact that we are willing to be treated poorly, and if they have the inclination, for whatever reason to do this, they will do it.  And it doesn’t matter if we are kind to them, if we are accommodating, if we go out of our way to show them respect and understanding, none of this really matters in the end, because we have also in some way or in many ways conveyed to them that we are willing to be treated in a lesser way than all of these good things that we have given them in the relationship.

I have issues.  I guess you could say a lot of it has to do with attachment anxieties and abandonment fears, and this comes through in a glaring way in relationships, friendships and in work relationships.  And I will go out of my way to make sure that I have not ruffled any feathers, that I have not stepped on toes, that I have not annoyed or offended.  And I spend half of my time in these relationships apologizing for my behavior if I feel I have miss stepped in any way.  And there are times I really do misstep.   And if I have discovered this to be the case, I will apologize and try to make corrections. The problem is that very often I am apologizing for things that are not even my doing or responsibility, but I do this in order to appease, in order to keep the peace.  And I realized today that there has only been one time in my entire life where someone has EVER apologized to ME for their bad behavior TOWARD ME.  EVER.  And that was my father, and that was about 15 years ago.  Never before and never since have I heard the words, "I'm sorry."

I say all this to say:   I have been in abusive relationships all my life, believe me, there have been plenty of times where an apology was minimum of what should have happened and...NOTHING.  And the reason this is so, is because I keep getting myself into the same TYPES of relationships over and over again.  I choose people who will take out their frustrations on me, who will transfer to me their anxiety and fear and anger from the past, who will use me as the scapegoat and try to rewrite their past through me - by exerting control over me in the relationship, by mistreating me, by humiliating me, whether it be physically, sexually or emotionally, we are never living in the present, but always in the past.  And because they are not seeing ME, but seeing someone from their past who they feel DESERVES this kind of treatment, they feel a sense of entitlement to be abusive (often this is at the unconscious level) and they NEVER feel the need to apologize for their behavior, even if at some point they do realize they have done wrong. At this point, they usually end up ignoring it, or shrugging their shoulders, or making excuses.  And I just stick around and take the humiliation of it all, as if I deserve all of this.  And THIS is because I am still stuck in MY past, where this is what I was taught about myself.  It was my role.

In order for me to be able to choose healthy relationships, ones in which I am treated in the way I truly deserve to be treated, which is with RESPECT, I need to find it in my own soul, this truth needs to happen in my own soul, that I am a good person, that I am kind and have a heart that loves, and wants to give and receive love, and that at the very least, I deserve respect.  And I need to somehow gain some SELF-RESPECT - because no one is going to respect me if I don’t have self-respect and therefore EXPECT to be respected in the relationship.

 

People will give you what they think you want or think that you will tolerate, they will test the waters and know.  Or I should say that as an adult who really does have power over your own life, abusers are more than willing to use you as a scapegoat if you feel that is your role in your life and theirs and find ways to convey that to them.  And self-respect goes a long way in making the right choices so that you don’t have those types of people in your life to begin with.

Now, how to get that deep down inside my soul where I need it?  I’m working on this.  I’ll let you know.


My soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak. I call you–are you there? I have returned. I am here again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you again. ~ Carl Jung

Trauma, The Amplifier in My Body

Trauma really does a number on a person.  I’ve read a lot about the effects of trauma on the brain and the nervous system of a trauma survivor.  And it’s almost impossible to really describe it to someone effectively who has never experienced what it’s like to live with PTSD.  The best thing I can come up with is that it’s like having an amplifier buried in your body.  And any kind of sensory input gets fed directly to this amplifier and it gets processed at about a gazillion times of what it actually is.  Whether it’s visual, or sound or often even physical touch.

You know how it feels to your body when you are at a concert, listening to some band that is really jamming, the sound is cranked and you can feel it through your whole body?  And then after you leave the concert and return to the outside world, your body is still experiencing the sensations of all that amplified sound?  That is pretty much what it’s like for a PTSD survivor with sometimes what other people would think the most mundane experiences.  There is an amplifier and it exaggerates every sensory input until the whole body is vibrating with it and it takes a while for the body to rid itself of this overload.

Of course the problem is that it doesn’t take long for a person who suffers in this way to realize that not everyone around them is experiencing things the way they are, are not suffering in this same way.  And so you try to hide this from not only yourself but also from everyone around you. Often people will try to numb themselves through drugs or alcohol, many for years and years, just to get through life. Just to hide from what is going on inside.  But it is really hard to hide from something that affects you so profoundly and so often.  And what starts to happen is that you start to avoid people and places that are going to cause this kind of thing to happen to you.  The ones you know about, anyway.  And then through a survival process that you are often not even aware of, you start to eliminate more and more people and places until you are pretty well isolated from life, period.

Trauma places this amplifier in your body and it is really really hard to get rid of it once it’s there.  Some of us have never really known anything else, we’ve always had trauma and we’ve always had the amplifier.  But after so many years of dealing with it, we run out of coping methods, or we get kicked in the ass by the coping methods that we came to depend upon, and then we are left with trying to find a way to deal with life, without those methods we have always needed just to get through.

It’s a tough spot to be in.  And lucky for us, there is help for us out there now.  There are people working very hard to find ways to help us heal from this part of things.  I haven’t actually started on this leg of the journey yet.  I think it is coming soon though.  I think I’m getting to the place where I will be able to take it on.

Life is waiting for me.  And I want to live it without the amplifier in my body, another freedom I want real real bad.

Uncovering Strength and Courage to Live in Truth

I was just thinking about how much strength it takes to get through the process of healing from child abuse and child sexual abuse.  How much COURAGE it takes.  Things I never saw in myself before now.  I always saw myself as weak and cowardly. Why did I view myself in this way all these years?  I mean, looking back and seeing the things I actually SURVIVED, it is clear to me now that I was NOT weak and cowardly or I wouldn’t have made it to here, regardless of my current healing journey.  It was FEAR that warped my self-image, being hounded by fear all my life that made me FEEL weak and cowardly.  But the fact of the matter is, I had very real reasons to have been carrying all that fear around with me all these years, it was all I knew as a child and I had no way of ridding myself of it until now.  And the fact that I actually kept going IN SPITE of all that fear is a true testament to the strength and courage that was with me the whole time.

 

One of the lies we absorb into our minds and souls as children of abuse is that we are powerless to change our circumstances.  Now, as a child we WERE POWERLESS, we were at the mercy of those who were abusing us, but that feeling of being a powerless child that we carried into our adult lives is the lie. Because as adults we do have the strength, the courage and the power inside us to change our view of our reality, to take that changed view and actually change our circumstances, we often just don’t realize it.  It is there, it is in us the whole time, we just don’t have the understanding of that truth, we are still stuck in our childhood fear and powerless mindset.

Tapping into this new truth is not easy.  It requires that we look at ourselves, look at our history and find out where the lies were embedded.  This is the really painful part of the healing process.  Most of us have buried all of that hard stuff, we had to bury it just to keep living.  Going back and facing the abuse in all its ugliness and pain is part of that process of finding out where this fear and this lie took root in us.  We have to find it, we have to dig it out, we have to destroy it.  The lie needs to be destroyed and replaced with the truth that we are not destined to be at the mercy of abusers.  IT IS NOT OUR DESTINY TO BE ABUSED.  This is so key.  This is the lie that needs to be replaced with the truth that we are actually destined to LIVE OUR LIVES IN FREEDOM.  But it is up to us to grab that truth, to claim it, to make it our own.  And the road to this takes strength and courage, and we ALL have this inside us.  The healing journey is not what gives us these things, it is what uncovers them.