I have been siring here pulling my hair out trying to write an article. I have a wonderful opportunity to write an article for the magazine “Insights Into Clinical Counseling,” which is published by the B.C. Association of Clinical Counsellors. As you can imagine I am very excited about this. Never in my wildest dream when I was first diagnoses did I ever think I would be able to do something like this..
I know I can do this, that’s what drives me nuts. As I have said before, living with D.I.D. does tend to complicate one’s life as nothing is ever as straight forward as it might seem. There is no such thing as just going out to Dairy queen to get a Blizzard, or what colour of top would I like, or what chocolate bar am I going to get today. These are not straight forward because it’s not just “me” that makes the decision. Behind me are a whole cast of characters wanting to have their say. I have told someone it’s like having a whole daycare inside me; it’s always busy and there are many different needs and wants. To say this is a balancing act is an understatement, and as with all balancing acts, sometimes it does not take much to knock us off kilter.
I guess that’s where I am with the writing. There are many “internal” views on what direction and which way this article should go. Some who have had people tell them this condition does not exist and who were not believed as children want to get all the studies out and “prove” that it does exist. The time we were in emergency and told the doctor we had D.I.D. and he asked what that was and I told him they use to call it multiple personality disorder and he instantly pushed his chair (it had wheels) to the other side of the room like he was going to catch something or I was going to hurt him. If I was thinking straight I would have told him it’s not contagious, but I was not in a great state of mind- that’s why I was in emergency!!- - Others want to tell about how it affects the family and the people we care about. Others want to tell about how it makes life very complicated. One wants to tell them all about the times we were hospitalized on the pshy unit because we thought we were going crazy, and because we needed a safe place to reprocess what happened to us so that we could get on with life. About how before therapy the password on my computer used to be “fuck up” because that’s what I truly felt like I was and I knew that would not forget that word. How I always thought I was stupid.
Another wants to tell them about how it feels when we switch, how it is this all-encompassing feeling, but only one feeling, be it anger, sadness, joy etc at a time. It feels like this because behind every one of my alters , the happy ones or the very angry “get the fuck out of my face or I will beat the crap out of you" one is a very freighted little child, and little children can only feel one emotion at a time. They can feel anger because their blocks got knocked over, or sad because of it, but they cannot feel both anger and sad at the same time. Also, these alters were developed when I was a child so they are all operating form “kid Logic”. They do not have the awareness and ability to view the world in the more complex way and adult can. We want to tell them all that and more.,but we have 1500-1800 words…so, there also so inner resistance because we are once more going out onto the limb to tell people about this…
So as with pretty much everything I do in life- there is a challenge, but I also know I will emerge from this challenge a much wiser and competent person.
Therapy was a challenge and at times I felt like someone had reached down to the very bottom of my being and ripped my soul out and fed it to the dogs. I did not know if I could handle it and my friend told me that I had already survived it- which I did. But I needed to stay in the moment and feel the emotions and sensations from those times, now in the present to be able to lay it to rest and move on. And move on I did.
We want to tell them this and more, tell them everything we have written on this blog, …so I will be spending the next day or so processing all of this and figure out away “all” my voices, can become “one” voice.
We will keep you tuned in on the process.
Cheers and be well
Suzy
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