"Electrical" issues.....

Has anyone expierienced problems with electricity? We kill batteries within hours, lightbulbs blow when they have only been in for a couple of days (we replace at least 5 a week...and the house isn't so big that there are thousands to change) we cannot physically hold cell phones, iPods, any sort of battery operated device. We have numerous vehicle electrical problems, all unexplained. We can't wear watches....

The further we go into therapy, the worse this becomes. We know and undersatnd why this happens, but we often have wondered if there are others with the same frustrations and inconvieniences.....

This happens to me too. Anything electrical around me dies quickly. I don't wear watches (although I have one that I can attach to a belt loop for when I'm at work), cell phones die on me for no apparent, and I seem to sap the life out of cars. I've always wondered if this was just me. I wonder if it's a commonality we all have.

We don't have electrical issues, we operate just fine with electrical machinery.
However, we do tend to make lights flicker a lot when we're very upset.

Similar phenomena are mentioned in memoirs of Truddi Chase (When Rabbit Howls)and Cameron West (First Person Plural). This has been discussed here before:

dissociative-identity/topic64610.html
dissociative-identity/topic64620.html
dissociative-identity/topic66026.html

I mentioned before that almost always I get shocks from car doors. I also get shocks when my husband touches me at the computer, and sometimes the computer screen flickers. I don't turn lights on or off very often, but I'd say when lightbulbs die more often than not it was I who flipped the switch.

Whoa, spooky. Yes, electrical or electronic devices, anything with batteries, big problem. I've bought a stash of devices in my lifetime -- digital watches, travel alarms, iPod-like devices, cell phones, laptops, thumb drives -- and so many either started up and soon after 'broke' or never worked for me at all. I periodically throw out drawers full of these things. At one point, I just gave up on digital alarm clocks and went back to the stupid, loud wind-up ones.

I've thrown several of these things against the wall or floor in frustration overwhelm and I never throw things otherwise.

I know that around the time these things break, I sometimes get into fist-to-head-pounding mood, which is my own self-anger, not another alter's. Now I'm wondering if maybe I wasn't already in a frustrated mood and that tension came before the break of the item (and caused it) rather than after it. The Sphinx is telling me this is a truism. To protect me from these frustration whirlpools, Jonathan tells me that at least once a year he's had to wake up and switch to take over like lightning, then make me amnesic for the little bit of lost time. Hmm, Jonathan, you used the word lightning?

I am sleeping and suddenly I'm zapped wide awake and fully in control of the body, so I know it's an emergency and I have to figure out what to do and put you back as quickly as possible, just like when I first came for you. I have not enjoyed that but it's my job. The zap feels like a lightning bolt or so I imagine one might feel.

Yes, for years now, I'm already in a bad state when I have to buy one of these devices. I'll sit and stare with dread at the new, unopened package and think "oh, no." I know that odds are there will be a problem, but it seems an irrational worry. This never seems to happen for other people, I've asked them. So I feel I must be making it all up. This time it will be different. And that state of mind, "I must be imagining all of this" or "these things don't seem to happen to other people" or "it won't happen again" already puts me in the fragile state. The same thoughts I had after losing time as a child.

Zap is a word I've often used in describing how things happen to me and the word connotes electricity for me. This has been so useful, thanks, intentional~breather! Maybe I need to start wearing rubber gloves? Actually, that's not a bad idea!

Yes. I was surprised to learn that there is an assumed connection between DID and this. Light bulbs and fuses used to blow all the time at my house in 2006, and sometimes they would just bang, especially when I got mad over something.

Una+ wrote:sometimes the computer screen flickers

I should explain the flickering is so severe that I have to stop using the computer. My husband has seen the computer doing it, so it is not my imagination. We had been thinking the computer may need to be replaced soon, but now I am thinking the problem may be me.

I don't wear a watch, so I don't know if I would "kill" watches. I don't like anything on my wrists, not even rib knit shirt cuffs. Trauma trigger there. My cell phone lasts far longer than normal, but most of the time it is parked on a shelf, not on my person.

I didn't even want to mention this in my post earlier, it just seemed too unlikely, like are my fingers sending electricity through the keyboard? I actually asked a colleague at work about a month ago how often his computer crashed. Not just programs crashing, the whole dang think freezing and you have to manually restart. He said his computer freezes up a couple times a year maybe. And I'm like, wow, a few times a week for me, sometimes multiple times a day. I've always thought I must be doing something weird on computers -- it happens with any computer -- like typing or clicking too fast or something. For me sometimes the screen just flashes and the computer shuts down and restarts by itself in the middle of something.

I just can't believe how so many disparate, seemingly unconnected pieces of my life that I've never been able to explain now have some context.

I know my fingers are sending electricity through the keyboard because when my husband touches me I can feel and hear and sometimes even see the spark between my fingers and the computer. We try to practice electrical grounding but sometimes we get nasty shocks anyway. My computer also sometimes emits loud discordant squawking noises from its speakers, as if receiving random electrical currents.

Shooting electricity through the fingers, building up static electricity in objects from the body. This is pretty silly, but I always thought/hoped as a kid that I might have super powers. I knew I was somehow different from every other kid I knew. I was addicted to reading about Superman and other comic book heroes with powers that might have protected me and my little sister.

I could withstand great cold, fly away like a bird, bend space and time (I ate breakfast and I'm heading out the door, moments later I'm seated for supper), see through bad people (detect liars), and dissolve and become invisible (dissociate). Maybe I was also electricity man, except I'm not sure how to harness this new power for good. Apologies for this childhood fantasy. My 11-year-old's presence is bringing this all back to me.