DID Awareness Day

Sometime this week is a day like this post is titled. One characteristic often shared by us DID folks is a confused relationship with time. This is because we have inside lives going on in which the parts of our psyche are trapped in "trauma time," the months and years of their trauma. So it's …

Your invitation to dance with us

In Nonviolent Communication (NVC), connection is listed as one of the shared human needs. In polyvagal theory, connection is a hallmark of the regulated, safe ventral state. Connection is a human need, and one’s desire to connect and ability to connect can be signs of regulation, safety. We desire to connect. And our need is …

DID: how are we connected?

At times, we have felt confused about how we are connected to the people in our life. For example, we spend the most time with our Spouse. DID Therapist says it makes sense that Littles might think Spouse is our parent and even call her by a parental moniker. Littles are trapped in trauma time, …

COVID enters our house (finally)

Older Child had COVID twice at college. Spouse and we have not gotten it, nor had Younger Child. Younger Child was exposed on Friday; the person didn't have symptoms then. Today, YC had some congestion and tested: positive (faint line). YC retested: positive (faint line). So YC is holed up in bedroom with door closed. …

Unpacking overwhelm

Trying to meet our needs for progress and order are on our mind Younger Child moved home for summer this week. We do not keep a tidy house. Adding TC’s possessions is contributing to our sense of overwhelm. We want some order. We also care about YC’s needs, and YC needs some ease after finishing …

Latest goings-on

Spouse has 6 radiation treatments remaining. The final few will be more targeted to the area of the removed tumor. Spouse has been lower energy and has burning and flaking at the radiation site. The doctor said this will likely intensify even a week or two after treatments stop. Spouse has been somewhat depressed. We …

Caregiving and life updates

Spouse continues to heal from cancer surgery. We visited the surgeon this week, who said all is healing as expected. There is fluid around the surgical sites that surgeon said the body will naturally reabsorb. Surgeon graded the cancer at stage 1 based on size of less than 2cm. Spouse continues to be fatigued but …

Petition to spare a life in Texas

Arthur Brown, Jr. is a man who has been convicted and sentenced to die March 9 but (1) may be innocent, (2) may be intellectually impaired with fetal alcohol syndrome, (3) grew up with numerous adverse childhood experiences, (4) allegedly had evidence suppressed at his trial by the District Attorney showing that other people committed …

Best possible cancer news

Best possible news this morning from the surgeon: Spouse’s tumor was 1.5 cm: this means small Margins were widely negative: this means that surgeon took enough tissue out so that no more surgery is needed on this tumor The two lymph nodes taken were benign: this means the cancer has not spread to the lymph nodes …

Next phase of caregiving journey

Surgery is Wednesday morning. Spouse is nervous and relieved the day is finally here We asked our neighbor who plows thesnow from our driveway if he can make sure it’s clear before we leave because the forecast is for record amounts of snow Starting now, the next 48 hours have forecast 15-31 inches (38-79 cm) …

New journey

The river has a fork in it. We are going down a new stretch Spouse received a cancer diagnosis today. We don’t have all the info needed yet. So we can’t predict the future the way PJ wants The cancer was found through a routine, preventive screening. There’s our public service announcement (PSA) for you …

feelings are scary to us

We are having feelings and sensations we do not recognize. It's tingly and we are thinking of male relatives. We were raised to call these "vibes," and they sometimes foretell ill health. One of our parents tells of our childhood, when we woke up from a nightmare and said we were worried about our uncle …

Refocus on feelings and needs

Each time we cook (and we cook all our own meals plus most meals for the other members of this currently-full house), perfectionism is rendering the process painful The veggies aren’t all cooked the same; the rice is clumpy; the proportion of food components doesn’t fit the dietician’s recommendations; the fried egg yolk broke; and …

Action request: stop executions in the US

From Death Penalty Action: “On December 15, 2022, the United Nations General Assembly is scheduled to vote on a resolution calling for a ‘Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty.’ President Biden has articulated a position advocating the abolition of the federal death penalty in the United States and supports measures aimed at reducing …

inconvenient ghosts

We have been feeling Ashley's absence. How do you feel absence? Grief maybe. But more tangibly, we don't have Ashley's words to read, don't have a comments box to dump into. Don't have Ashley's reply with "love yous" and emojis of love. We describe this as grief. We would reply that we love her. Sometimes …

Racism in Minnesota

We recently finished reading Whiteness in Plain View by Chad Montrie, a University of Massachusetts history professor. He said he wrote about Minnesota because people believe it’s a liberal bastion without race problems. After all, the state’s unofficial slogan is “Minnesota nice.” He decided if he could document the history of ongoing white supremacy in …

S p a c e

This is our first chunk of time alone at home in weeks while we have some resources available. Aaahhhh. We thought we’d have more frequent alone time and have not. Or maybe we did and didn’t have the resources to use it. We are low on compassion, caring, and high on shame. So we’re trying …

How to turn judgment into understanding

Nonviolent Communication views all humans as sharing the same universal needs. While the lists of needs may vary from one organization or adherent to the next, the point is that humans are human—so their needs are the same. The differences in human behavior can be accounted for by differences in strategies used to meet those …

Connection and the link with Authenticity

What is our status of connecting with ourselves and with outside people? What is our nature? What are our needs? Status: we might feel so scared of being vulnerable and being hurt that we ensure a level of disconnection. We have felt wounded via interactions with outside people. It started when we were young. We …

Take our time

We are finding it challenging to use skills to cope with depression and panic. In addition to three times per week therapy sessions, we are in a weekly skills group that focuses on psychoeducation regarding trauma's effects on the brain and on DBT skills to change behavior. We have a history of unsuccessful DBT applications, …

Where is balance?

We are being asked to do more for someone we love than feels reasonable. We told them so today, in writing, and haven’t heard back yet. We described our feelings and said our unmet need is for Partnership. We described doing supportive tasks alone for them, and feeling overwhelmed. And we asked for sharing of …

Adulthood

We tried to keep our traumas hidden from you while protecting you from similar dangers. We wanted to wait until you started a family, if you so choose that, to tell you so that you could protect your kids We didn’t want you to know so early in life how awful the world can be. …

We don’t have to love ourself?

When we went in-patient for the first time almost five years ago, we wanted goals. Context (short version): We were drowning in shame from childhood trauma memories. Being productive while away from home for five weeks seemed important. Maybe from authors we read and therapists we had, we got the idea that we must love …

Call to action: petition

The USA needs compassionate first responders trained to deescalate mental health crises so that a call for help doesn’t become a death sentence, as it can especially for people of color. This is a call for reform to public health so that police trained to incarcerate or enact violence are not deployed in mental health …

Fourth of July celebrates violence, genocide

We are in the US living on stolen land from Indigenous peoples. White people stole black and brown people from other lands to be our slaves, killed the Bison, dug up the prairies, cut down the trees, and genocided the original inhabitants of the current USA. The oppression of non-whites continues today, this minute. What …

Taking action: George Floyd, one year later

May 25, 2021, marks exactly one year since George Floyd was murdered. A year ago, we realized the power of our collective voice as we took to the streets in the name of justice. We realized that when we refuse to tolerate oppression, we can make people listen. Today is a Virtual Day of Action …

Practicing skills when “calm”

Coping with big emotions is a challenge. For us, big emotions feel urgent and overwhelming. When we struggle to catch our breath, many of our traumas are triggered. Breath is so underrated. A deep inhale followed by a big sigh or prolonged exhale can feel so restorative. In fact, catching our breath is the goal …

Updates on life events

Spouse rode along with us to get our second vaccine dose. We recognize that the privileges of technology access, mobility, and family support allowed us to schedule this appointment and drive an hour to a rural pharmacy. Spouse has been reporting vaccine openings on a Facebook group in order to maximize people’s access to information. …

Anchors to humanity

We have unmet need for Safety. We are always looking for risks, dangers. Is there a way to look for evidence we are safe? The one person we’re not feeling safe about is us: we are worried our behavior will turn violent or will embarrass us or humiliate us. In that case, another unmet need …

Responsibility as a goal

If we do not attempt to meet our needs, who will? If we wait to be rescued, we are putting our agency on hold, staking our life’s fulfillment on others. If they are well-adjusted, they know they cannot be responsible for our existence or even our contentment. Thus, we will wait in anger. We can …

In Now we must trust

(We use plural pronouns) We are working with New T on sitting with powerful emotions. Feeling hopeless and despair is uncomfortable. We normally dissociate instead of ride it out. New T had us use bilateral stimulation to activate both sides of brain. Having T with us allowed us to just be in pain for a …

Messy life (redundant)

Older Child returned to college yesterday. We are bewildered and morose, funereal, weepy. First Covid case in our extended family, a niece. She and her friends tested (negative) before going to a resort together. Niece is the only one so far with Covid. So far very sore throat, taste and smell gone, fever. We hardly …

Goal setting

We started _Peaceful Living _, a Nonviolent Communication daily meditation book (author Mary Mackenzie). January 1 is goal setting, with the parameters of being (1) specific and (2) positively worded (what you want, not what you don’t want). We also revisited important unmet needs of ours so that our goals are aligned with meeting important …

Brave enough to cook a turkey?

Lots of energy in our house. Feels crowded. At night, we feel oppressed by it, threatened because we think people are scheming against us. They are absolutely not. This is delusion and trauma. It is morning. We are preparing the turkey before we cook it. We can see our lack of compassion to self and …

Disorders, thought distortions, and new therapists

Super depressed. Younger Child’s health struggles are hitting us hard. We are paralyzed with resisting and craving. We continue to feel responsible for most things that happen—especially everything others in our life find unpleasant As Younger Child struggles, our cognitive distortion’s mount: YC will be unhappy forever. We can’t live like this. We have to …

White privilege: Established by force. End date TBD

We use we/us pronouns. When trying to grasp the concept of white privilege in the United States and Canada, and even anti-racism as we see it, it might help to consider the colonization of the land and genocide against the indigenous inhabitants. So much of colonial perspective is taken for granted by the colonizer, in …

Nerves. Practicing flexibility

Younger Child started php for mental health. This could improve all of our lives. We have been saying life has many paths: school can wait, college isn’t required for living. Focus on health and well-being. Relieve suffering. Now, there is a chance to relieve suffering. You know us: we feel other people’s feelings, especially pain. …

Eyes closed until the ride stops

Is “try harder” possible? We are feeling trapped. OCD might play av party because we like rules. Breaking rules—or seeing with fresh eyes—helps get new ideas. Energetically, we cannot seem to keep boundaries. We feel other’s feelings. We aren’t sure how not to. That is why we like being alone. To recharge. Practice. Be free. …

Is the pandemic over or continuing?

COVID-19 pandemic is not over in our house. We are still social distancing. Some people act like it is over, and we do not want to judge a view as right or wrong. We walked with Spouse this weekend and saw elementary school kids playing organized American football—close contact among players, coaches, and parents with …

Inclusive Patriotism

USA Fourth of July is almost here. Patriotism means different things to different people—maybe more so this year with the prominence of the Black Lives Matter movement and some resistance to it. In our home, we will all be wearing black—instead of red, white, and blue—on July Fourth in solidarity for ending systemic racism. The …

Puzzling over exclusion

We have stopped solving The New York Times crossword and stopped using our USA Today book of puzzles

Closing the empathy gap to enact social change

The empathy gap seems to be a primary barrier to widespread acceptance that institutionalized white racism exists.

Using love to end racism

Our family continues daily to discuss white racism against People of Color, the role of anti-racism, white privilege, and white fragility. We try to include nonviolence in the discussions with family. We try not to judge people. Instead, we extend empathy when possible. It helps us in our desire to improve life if we lead …

Why we demonstrated

We left the house. Someone got killed. A police officer met some of his own needs without meeting George Floyd’s most important needs. Others watched and did not meet their needs to help George even though they feared he was being killed. It happened very close by. And worlds away based on how we are …

transforming enemy images

We are drained. Are you, too? Can we lean into it? If you are someone benefiting from white privilege, can you see how your black brothers and sisters cannot rest? Can you use that to keep going? For peace? If you have trouble empathizing with others, can you examine your enemy images? Whom do you …

Compassion for change

Maybe take in a deep breath Maybe let it out slowly Maybe repeat this a few times. Maybe sigh if it feels like a release Can we have compassion for ourselves to start? For how we were raised, for what we believed, for questions asked and unasked? Now can we have compassion for those we …

Change you, change the world

We are not well positioned to tell anyone what change is being born. We are not well positioned to name all the ills. So maybe we can suggest how it’s a time that would seem opportune and reasonable to question everything. Every single thing. For those of us who freak out when the co-op sells …