Anchors/Anti-Triggers

I don't know what else to call them. I'm looking for better solutions to become myself again. So far the anchors I have are:
-cutting ( dangerous, promised to stop so I can't)
-driving (very dangerous)
-punching a wall (could break a fist, and doesn't always help)
-long, hot shower (doesn't always work)
-talking (only 3 people I can talk to, and doesn't always work. also don't want to hurt them)

What do you guys use?

Currently I just ask everyone inside to calm down. When someone inside gets triggered badly and I don't understand but can feel the flood building, like when I tried to stay at work more than an hour later tonight, I beg them to help me control it. The bigs understand that means to sidle up to a little and hug them or talk to them calmly.

As a kid, when I knew things weren't right and I felt like I was going crazy (with no idea why), I needed a sanity anchor. If I was inside the house, I would grab a book, any book, and start reading. It made my mind focus and I could disappear into the book, which was itself an escape. If I was outside, I focused on the memory of a knot in a tree in our yard where some ants lived. I would instruct myself. Think of the knot. Remember how the ants crawled there on the ground up and down the tree to find their way home?

Well, I guess it was my way of finding home, back to concrete reality, away from the weird stuff happening in my head. Yeah, and ants are all nearly identical to their brothers and they don't seem to care.

This is an odd experience because most of my memory is blocked. I can't verify that that's true (except remembering I used to envision the knot to prevent something bad mentally) but somehow I can pull most of the memory out and it feels mostly true. But it's not like I used to be able to remember. It's like trying to verify something by reaching my arms over a barrier, filing through a filing cabinet that I can't see, then trying to read a paper from the file which I still can't see by touching it and trying to recall what I wrote on it.

I understand your dilemma. I would try to really just listen to your feelings and behavior instead of trying to mold them and shape them in anyway. I got back into cutting a couple days ago, haven't cut since then though, but ever since, my need and desire for my stuffed wolfie have gone away, not to mention I feel like the "little" has gone away! I don't know if I really like that.

My therapist's favorite self-help workbook for her clients with DID is Growing Beyond Survival: A Self-Help Toolkit for Managing Traumatic Stress by Elizabeth G. Vermilyea. It is published by the Sidran Institute (sidran.org) and you can order it from their website or a regular bookseller.

When I was younger, we all had different anchors that we would use depending on who was most "out" or depending on who was influencing me the most. We have slightly different anchors now due to trying to find other ways to cope with things and finding different things that help us "hold onto" reality.

Past anchors:
-Kat: cutting, hitting "me"/the body, listening to loud angry music, throwing things/damaging objects, playing with her knife (practicing her handling).
-Rain: Reading, writing about her/our feelings, listening to calm/relaxing music, watching the outside world (animals, trees, stars, moon, clouds, etc).
-Myself: quick slaps to my face, talking to myself (calming myself down), listening to loud music, watching an intense movie (made me focus), going for a walk (while listening to music usually).
-L.C.: cutting, writing poetry, listening to loud "emo" music, reading manga/anime/fanfics and writing her own.
-Cassie: hugging/holding her stuffed animals, drinking chocolate milk (calmed her down), watching a funny movie.

Current anchors:
-Kat: quick "shakes" of the head in an attempt to re-focus, listening to loud angry music, playing with her knife, smoking a cigarette.
-Rain: focusing on calm breathing/meditation, reading, listening to calm/relaxing music, watching the outside world.
-Myself: focusing on breathing, talking to myself, talking to others (doesn't happen often), writing about how I feel, listening to loud music/favorite songs, going for a walk, smoking a cigarette, smoking pot (helps calm me down).
-L.C.: drawing designs/pictures to show her feelings, writing poetry, writing about her feelings, drawing "tattoos" on her/my arms in washable marker, drawing "cuts" on her/my arms in marker, snapping a rubber band around her/my wrist, smoking pot.
-Ray: chewing on something (like a plastic soda cap, a pen, her/my bottom lip, etc).
-Cassie: hugging/holding stuffed animals, drinking chocolate milk, talking to someone (on here or in real life), watching a funny movie.

The biggest change is that I replaced cutting with drawing for the most part. It allows us to focus solely on the drawing and "escape" into it, especially when we're drawing "temp tattoos" on ourselves. It also helps with wanting to cut because we're still doing something to our arms, there's still something physical there for us/others to see, it's just a design instead of a cut/scar (or it's a drawn/fake cut). Perhaps you could try similar tactics? I know when L.C. wants pain, that's when she snaps the rubber band around her wrist (you can get bruises from that), or she pinches herself with her nails instead of cutting now.

Kat's the only one who really likes cigarettes, but we both try to use that as a "last resort" tactic so we don't become addicted (we go through like a pack in a month). I've found that the older I got the harder it was to keep things "together" and to calm down, which is where smoking pot really helps us. For some it increase anxiety/feelings of dissociation, but for me it helps me to calm down and relax, which helps me to stay "here" and not dissociate. It also really helps with our PTSD, but like I said, it's not for everyone.