Considering options amidst our stuckness

Trigger warning: this post discusses lots of stressful, scary shit. We are in one of those cycles of building stress, panic, and urges to do something big to change the channel on our experience. We learn about ourself a lot based on what other people reflect back to us. We do this because we don't …

Mental illness stigma: action request

Minneapolis Star Tribune sports writer Jim Souhan today (July 17, 2022) published a column in which he wrote: “In early July the Timberwolves, ignoring Minnesota PTSD (Player Trades Spurring Depression), traded five players and four first round picks to Utah…”Jim Souhan, Star Tribune (Minneapolis) This makes us angry, sad, and worried about stigma. We sent …

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 …

The past is context. Now is now.

When we feel sad and lonely and depressed, we often blame ourself and want to escape (avoid, dissociate). We feel this way upon waking up. If we contextual it—we’ve experienced trauma—then we hope that context removes blame and creates understanding. One barrier is that it’s hard to stop there. When we’re triggered, we often flash …

Why does Dissociative Identity Disorder exist?

On the way to session, someone reminded us why we had DID. The diagnosis made sense with losing time and discontinuous experience. But the revealing evidence to us of the in-brain divisions was in the hospital circa summer of 2018. Our therapist there assigned us homework to document all the trauma we’d ever experienced. We …

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, …

Trauma Skills Group

We got into the weekly skills group! We need to refresh coping skills and are hopeful this will benefit us

How it’s different when we are missing some of the us’s

Yesterday, we were with our surviving parent (other parent passed away two months ago). This parent had surgery yesterday. Our only sibling provided pre-dawn transportation and was planning to spend the recommended 24 hours with parent to ensure safe recovery (it was a brief, low-invasiveness procedure but of a very serious nature). We were asked …

Goodbye, that life

Goodbye! You know you’re our best friend because we tell you that and you tell us that We appreciated your honesty this past week. We tried to be empathetic but often felt overwhelmed and wanted to fix it. We think you’ll get into a routine and find joy with your friends. Life won’t get easier, …

Facing fears, allowing pain

We are in the quiet room at therapy. We forgot our pen in T’s office so we’re writing this way instead We have lots of confusion! Experience doesn’t make sense to us. The minutes aren’t stitched together as “one thing.” To us they aren’t an hour, a meal, a morning. We are just surviving a …

Advice for challenging times, like the death of a loved one

This morning, one of our therapists emailed to support us. New T advised us to endure this experience with patience, to show up, and to fall back on our values This may be among the most useful advice we ever received. Spouse kept reminding us of it during the funeral today, and it did help …

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 …

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 …

What to expect from COVID-19 rapid test at CVS

(We/us pronouns) We had a Covid-19 rapid test today at CVS Pharmacy. We signed up for it online, which included insurance information and a photo of the insurance card (both sides). We got a same-day appointment (on a Sunday) very close to our home. Rapid test gives results in 15 minutes! The other test via …

As parents’ lives run short

Parents updated us by phone on mom’s cancer. It spread from lungs to liver and brain. So that is not ideal. Functioning of those organs is not yet impaired, so chemo and eventually radiation will be used (again) to slow it. It’s not curable but they’ll try to treat it to prolong life. She said …

Pandemic: prolonged mental health crises

Both children are in distress. Older Child has reached the point of 100% stress, 100% of the time. This is the point Younger Child reached last Fall. We are beside ourself with worry for them. We are recommending that Older Child consider mental health support. Spouse wonders if Older Child might move back home (classes …

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 …

Churning mind, tired Us

There is so much uncertainty regarding Younger Child’s mental health, especially since this child has shut us out. Because our tolerance of uncertainty is low, we risk guaranteeing the worst outcome in our relationship—withdrawing, getting angry, using power-over—just to meet our need for order. Finally got to see New-T after T’s two-week holiday. T did …

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 …

Be gentle and survive

Trigger warning: we are feeling oppressed and want to say painful things that may trigger those with ptsd We sense that the childhood sexual abuse ruined life for us. Spoiled us like freshly killed meat left to rot. We learned too much, felt sensations too overwhelming for our precious Little selves. It was overload right …

Stress is a choice that takes lots of practice

We went into nature with Older Child all day yesterday. We woke up and hit the road long before sunrise. We birded in a national forest all morning. Birds were scarce; trees were abundant. We saw not a single person or other vehicle all morning on the forest roads. We drove with the windows open …

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 …

Time travel, map travel

On a walk with Spouse today, we stopped suddenly. Spouse is used to this: do you need to hold on to me? No, we said. Where are we? We were one block over, about a 3-minute walk from home. We just couldn’t understand what we were seeing. We had no previous perception of this angle …

Doomsday scenarios

COVID is raging in the US. Our local schools reverted to all distance learning this week with no notice. The schools aren’t transmitting infection; the community is. But so many students and staff are getting COVID (from community activities, such as restaurants and social gatherings) that contact tracing is becoming too big a job for …

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 …

Thank you, T-2, for trying

T-2 is committed to helping us stay alive. We told T-2 if we can make it to Thanksgiving, we can make it until the end of the year because we have something that will uplift us for those 6 weeks. T-2 offered to call a prospective T we found through calling, calling, and calling. This …

We don’t quit

Trigger warning: self-harm, blood, anger, despair We reached out to 3 mental health clinics and 3 individual therapists this week requesting in-person therapy. Five responses: no. We have not heard from one clinic. No one has referred us to anyone who is seeing clients in person. We are amazed people return our emails. We always …

Early Winter

All people do their best. Since we are people, we will hurt other people, succumb to base urges, like greed, and experience pain. Rolling with life is a challenge for us. The pain we are experiencing is acute, and we have so many voices in our head! Crying Littles. Judgments. Advice for how to act. …

Survival soup

Trigger warnings: blood, trauma, self-harm, disordered eating, etc. When we want control, our go-to is to withhold food from us. While it may not sound ideal to starve children, and it isn’t, please know it’s the children doing the starving of the body. When we get sick from hunger, getting food in us can be …

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. …

Learning to live with DID— again

Since we started weaning off meds, we have been dizzy and nauseous hourly. No abatement. Hunger—even a little—exacerbates the sickness. Now that we know that, we are trying to nip it in the bud as it intensifies. Eat as healthfully as we can. We used to have this level of vertigo, before our DID diagnosis. …

Planting seeds in life’s autumn

Withdrawal spiked yesterday and we were crying and inviting death. Spouse was attentive. That really helped us to survive. Spouse kept saying this is not permanent. It will pass. That is one fear: that it is permanent and won’t pass. We slept a lot during the day. Nausea and dizziness walloped us. We tried to …

Wait at the intersection

The meds that helped us get off xanax are themselves leaving our system. We have chosen no meds. Why? We don’t remember what we know and do not know. We know we are low on skills. But we don’t know what we need Now. We used to have energy. We used to have a fire …

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. …

We want to slow it down

These are forecasted to be the final warm days of the year here. Autumn has often been a melancholy time for us. Suicidal ideation often spikes as the leaves fall. We think the trigger was the annual return to school as a child, which augured suffering because we could not sleep at night. Summer allowed …

What’s going on with us

We usually write when we have something to say or if we want support. This post does not fulfill either of those. We are just writing so that people know what is going on in case they are interested. Older Child will return to college in a few weeks. All classes are online. So why …

What now ?

Tried another new therapist. Stopped after two sessions. Not a suitable fit. We received an ultimatum in the second appointment, and that did not meet our needs for Autonomy and safety. Going to try to drive the 37 minutes each way to see T-3 this week in addition to seeing T-2. Back to the basics. …

Start (resume) where you are

We have lost much ground in: Being in our bodyMeditating Feeling any contentment Physical strength Therapeutic relationshipsHealing our traumas Cooperating internally Having friendships Expressing our gender We have gained ground in: Being compassionate to Younger ChildGetting off benzosAdjusting to new normals Things may not go back to the old normal. There is no knowing. Even …

Still going

We have been doing the work of survival. It makes sense we haven’t been in our body. Perspective is hard to find. We don’t recognize our experience because the meds are new and withdrawal is ongoing So we injured the body twice. This fragile container is healing. We haven’t gone birdwatching for a few weeks. …

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 …

Medication withdrawal

Bodily functions warning ⚠️ Have been tapering down Xanax for more than a month. Stepped down to zero last night. This was not the plan. We were having withdrawal symptoms already. We needed several more days at current dosage. We didn’t crave it as much and thought we’d just get it over with. Slept very …

If social distancing ends

We have been in COVID long enough for Younger Child to exclaim last week, “I just got upset because the people on the show [“The Office—US version] weren’t social distancing!” We all had a laugh and we were all a little fearful. In about 90 days, Younger Child has an adapted worldview that now recognizes …

Gentleness for cravings

Friend Eliza wrote about an experience that resonates with us. Her blog is here. She wrote about the need for reassurance from a friend that the friend is still there. We have that kind of urgency with T-1. We would urgently need to text T-1 because we panicked T-1 had forgot us. T-1 told us …

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 …

Electrifried brain: meds

Have brain zaps. Am so hypervigilant that doors opening and closing in our house are sending us up a wall. Tried to nap. No luck. It might be Xanax withdrawal. We are poor at tapering meds. We have apparently been on it too long. Years. Dangerous. New meds still has us sleepy. Not as much. …

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 …

War scheduled tonight

[Update: it is morning and we are safe]

Love as a guide during civil unrest

A message today to our neighbors, near and online: Some People feel unequal and some are resorting to violence. These are two separate things. We acknowledge feelings of inequality. Remember: Hatred never ends hatred but by love alone is healed. Gandhi learned it, Mandela learned it, MLK learned it. Peace alone doesn’t necessarily increase people’s …

Self-care amid healthcare chaos

We need an increase in our take-as-needed medication. Our doctor is very responsive to our needs, as we have a history together and we never have abused or misused a medication. Wet have adjusted the dosage down in the past, too, which indicates we are not always wanting increases. We had an appointment scheduled in …

Declining teletherapy before it was cool, and now the risks to life

At one of Dr. Ross’s hospitals, we had the opportunity to have a public (in front of all patients and staff on the Trauma Ward), one-hour therapy session We had seen this session before starting in 2017. Dr. Ross would fly into town, visit the ward, and hold a public therapy session once per week. …

Stop waiting for the rescuer

Dr. Colin Ross* uses a triangle to show the roles that trauma survivors tend to replay in their lives. At each point of the triangle is one of these roles: VictimRescuerPerpetrator Sometimes, we were a victim in real life, as with abuse. Sometimes, we suffer a medical emergency that is no one’s “fault,” and still …

Love is the best we can do

Love is probably the best we can do In general We like our thinky brain. We use it. It will help on this journey. And our feeling brain is probably where we need to heal and grow and experience life We live our life in fear. So moving to a point where we can ever …

Rewiring a brain: 16.5

We see some of our thought patterns, we think. We think that the content may change and the thought patterns persist. In other words, we could complain about missing T-1, that Ts in general are harder to get help from, that a Child or Spouse is or is not doing X or Y. It is …

Update on needs: therapy and meds

Some of our needs for therapy session needs are starting to get met. When shelter-in-place began, we had four therapists whom we were seeing 4-5 days per week total. We terminated our relationship with T-4 after one teletherapy session (we saw T-4 at least twice in person after other therapists stopped meeting in-person, so the …

May is rushing

“These are days you'll rememberNever before and never sinceI promise... ...When May is rushing over you with desireTo be part of the miracles you see in every hourYou'll know it's true that you are blessed and luckyIt's true that you Are touched by something That will grow and bloom in you” “These are days” —10,000 …

The therapists are gone

Are there any therapists out there who aren’t too scared to help heal the long suffering? Are there any therapists who connect at the human needs level and are able to use love as a guide post instead of fear? Is there a therapist out there who, when times get tough like now, won’t retreat …

Seeking resources, not quitting yet

We met with T-2 in cars yesterday. T-2 is holding face-to-face sessions in clinic wearing masks, and we are too afraid and uncomfortable to do that. We pulled our cars next to each other, and T-2 wanted us to talk on the phone, so we did that. There is a lag in the phone so …

Who is caring for the therapists?

We are feeling very much stressed and low on resourcefulness and energy. We told Spouse. We vented. It is hard to say much at this point for Spouse. We have boxed ourselves into a corner. We want to practice Nonviolent Communication, and we know nobody who knows it. We found an online, yearlong compassion course …

Internal meeting

T-2 is going to start seeing clients again. Therapist and client have to wear a mask at all times and stay six feet apart. Our Littles do not want to do it. They are too scared of the masks. Scared of being contagious. Of being feared. Of being afraid. Afraid of being afraid is common …

Practicing love

We are pausing our therapeutic relationship with T-1. This is scary. T-1 has been one of our strongest tethers. Will we ever see each other again? If not, thank you for trying to help us. We learned many lessons. T-2 will know this week if T-2 can begin seeing us in person in some capacity. …

Socially distanced mental health therapy

T-1 agreed to our first socially distanced mental health therapy appointment. We have had two such sessions with T-3. T-1 had many concerns and objections that were voiced to us. Spouse was not thrilled with this level of sharing. Spouse worried about how much T-1’s objections were stressing us out. We accepted the specific objections …

New therapy, same as the old therapy

We sat in our car next to T-3, who sat in a different car, and, as weather was nice, we had our windows down and held therapy that way in T-3’s parking lot It felt like being near T-3. It felt like therapy So now our body and mind are wondering if we want to …

creative vs delusional

Love gets confused. We forget how Older Child is related to us. Some of our me’s see Older Child as our parent, some see Older Child as our sibling, some as our friend, some as our offspring This awareness is itself startling and dispiriting. If we can notice and not judge, maybe we will have …

Liberate us while we are young, or now

It’s getting close to our worst right now We tried to help Younger Child. We see the suffering. And Younger Child thinks that fulfillment lies outside us This is what society teaches Young People: Your value is assigned by teachers as grades, by the number of followers and likes Do what adults say to you, …

Toileting and hygiene with trauma and OCD

This is not an easy post to write, because it feels embarrassing and triggering. And we feel isolated around these issues and wonder if other survivors and those with OCD might also share some of these struggles. If not, it was worth a try. Urinating is highly triggering for us because of sexual trauma. There …

We must get to compassion

If we cultivate compassion within us, we can learn that our contentment is accessible anywhere and even under difficult circumstances For this to be true, we must practice states of mind that allow compassion Honestly, this feels almost impossible for us. Almost. Little wants compassion. So we seek it. Our cup has been empty for …

Cultivating Love

When we feel Love, it is as if our heart wants to touch other hearts. It is a desire to spread inclusion, welcoming, acceptance, celebration, peace, equanimity This is not romantic love, though it is definitely a gateway and so we have to be careful. We were sexually abused and so we have shame about …

End punishment

Somebody left our body and noticed we were lost in delusion. They came back in and invited us into the actual world. The actual world scares us. So we make other worlds. In these other worlds, we are usually being hurt. Usually emotionally. The premises are: Predictability is bestWe should suffer These are easy and …

Let love lead

“Until I found the way to love, it's harder said than done” “Now I know the secret: there is nothing that I lack. If I give my love to you, you'll surely give it back.” https://youtu.be/M15y9NL3ANQ

Another try at blogging

We keep writing and deleting drafts. Family gave us space for about 45 minutes last night. Littles came out❤️. They colored. Then we did Shaking and Dancing. Then we meditated on our family. When they came home, we crashed back to this new, high baseline of hypervigilance. Felt awful. Feel awful So is experiencing anything …

Practices to calm frazzled nerves

Hypervigilance, as most experiences, has shades, gradations. Many people feel a heightened sense of fear in times of high stress. If you have experienced Trauma, that increase can push you out of your window of tolerance. We are finding our baseline is now out of the window of tolerance. Practices to get back into our …