Integration - Prior to Trauma Processing - Category Triggers

This is just a very quick summary. If you want to see more then I just need your email and I can add you to the list to read my blog. If you do not have good communication between parts this could all be confusing and it can also happen without you even knowing.

1. We solved many internal problems - Mostly Fight Protectors found their purpose!
2. This began a chain reaction of reorganization
3. Understand that I have NOT processed trauma memory yet. My Fight Protectors would not allow it.
4. All Alters lost their bodies and all things in the internal world were just gone!
5. All those parts now look like one giant ball of glowing lights - multi-colored - this is described by the 4 ISH's..
6. Those alters ALL report extreme JOY! A bit of fear of the unknown but they are all together and closer than ever! They feel GOOD! Each Alter is still very separate though. They can still take over and I still loose time or can be co-anything.
7. None of these parts were joined with me yet.
8. I have 4 ISH's that joined together, but they too are still separate and can answer and function separate, but now they are together and FAR STRONGER and feel GREAT!!! These 4 ISH's were 4 bright white lights that went different places, now they are ONE bright light that travels together.
9. The next step was/is for Alters to join with me. I have over 300 of them and they are joining with me in 2's. They must find the right part to do what we call - make the jump - with. It's not a part they have needed for other things before. They only can jump so far while I sleep. I am exhausted. This is kicking my butt! just like any of the other re-organization has done.
10. Those in the big ball of multi-colored lights described me as a dark, round cell. Something like a red blood cell only darker - but hollish in the middle like a RBC. The first several Alters that joined with me stacked up one on top of the other. Then they started to make a more roundish figure - like a blastula.
11. Hope jumped first - she reassured others that it is a wonderful place to be. Since then they find their pair, and wait in line until they can jump. It's been interesting to say the least. Those with me still do not have a body.

*Prior to this. I did not have a body. The 4 ISH's did not have a body. ALL Alters did!

All the best with this process. It sounds like you are very organised for it.

Fab

Thanks to both of you.

My LC asks me what "jumping" looks like to those inside. My reply
[All the Alters Bodies are gone. All the Stuff in the inside world is gone.

The giant multi-colored ball of lights is dry inside - just like the light where the ISH's are. There is no fluid anywhere - it's something like electricity.

A flap opens and two at a time, the two that are prepared are engulfed in a fluid that comes from outside the ball - they travel like a blood cell among the other fluids forming blood and almost instantly they are deposited and become part of the blastula-like object. The blastula is moist. It is constantly saturated by the fluid they are being carried in.

So about an hour or less after I write the below to my LC,
I keep forgetting to mention that those that are with ME - the dark side, seem closer to the front. I am jumpy. Agitated. Easily frightened. More vigilant! The symptoms of PTSD seem less buffered. It's as if they are almost the one out.

.....this is his reply. I thought it might help some of you too - so here it is.


My LC: I'm still working to get out the door...and want to respond to this;

Dissociation is a defense; it is also an artifact of a deficient developmental environment. Those are the two hypothesized cases of DID.

I think something like this happened to you (and to many others):

Early childhood development (age 1.5 to 2.5) leads to emerging un-integrated parts of self - e.g., hungry me > goes after food (with a variety of developed skills); social me > seeks engagement with others (again, using a variety of emerging skills). Etc. One ego state is ON, then another takes over, etc., and there is little or no crossover of skills, memory, etc., between them. This is normal, if a bit "lurchy" at times.

Traumatic events and/or neglect intrudes, and overloads the young self-system with levels of affect/feeling that it cannot manage. The retreat/advance action system divergence, there from the beginning, is increasingly hard to bring together in any semi-integrated sense of self because the motivation to retreat is high, and the motivation to advance to find comfort correspondingly increases. The systems are separating rather than integrating.

As time passes, the self system has NOT advanced toward an integrated sense of self, due to its now containing unresolved (quieted down, processed) trauma memory. THEN NEW TRAUMA occurs (this is an oversimplification, but illustrates the process quite adequately). The un-integrated self system has to put the memory somewhere, and it goes over with the side that is retreat-oriented (EPs by now, or destined to become EPs). It may attach to an existing part of self or be the genesis of a new part, but it is NOT integrated. Amnesic boundaries, always there, are still there.

Now, this turns out to be handy. An existing un-integrated system has a built in capacity for dealing with new trauma. Not only is support for integration lacking, there is increasing reason NOT to integrate, or to put it a bit differently, it is increasingly hard to achieve integration. The barriers are becoming higher. The need to contain the trauma memory grows with each new memory acquired, IF THE PARTS OF SELF INVOLVED IN NORMAL DAILY FUNCTION ARE TO CONTINUE FUNCTIONING.

Let's fast-forward to now. The functional parts of self now have adult capabilities, which are very impressive, in truth. For whatever reason, you seek help dealing with the consequences of being DID. You talk with experts, you read, you dialog with others in your situation.

This does two things: [1] it acts to reduce your social isolation, one consequence of which is an ever-increasingly more normal sense of self (which we get from our interaction with others, remember? but they have to be supportive and accepting of you for this to happen, and with DIDs this is a tall order, for laypeople), and [2] it presents to you new, more constructive and useful and optimistic representations of your situation.

Over time, your sense of danger reduces, your sense of safety increases, and your seeing your fragmented self reflected back to you from outside you starts to give you a stronger sense of being a single self. You are getting stronger over time. (In your case, this appears to have been happening with what is, in my experience, unusual rapidity).

At some point, the amnesic barriers, and the overall sense of needing to be defended against reality, start to become permeable, and to be less effective as defenses. THIS INCREASES CONTACT WITH YOUR LIFE AS IT IS HAPPENING IN REAL TIME, and particularly WITH YOUR SELF-AS-PROCESS IN REAL TIME - with your feelings.

What this means is critical: It was in real time that you were originally hurt. It is in real time that any real risk in life is to be found.

Remember that there are two kinds of dissociation:

1. Structural dissociation of the self: we all start in this state, and some individuals never progress (because, we think, of trauma which overloads the child self-system, and of bad attachment relations - which fail to provide the necessary environment for self integration).

2. Focal dissociation - a term I just made up. It is the removal from our awareness of stimuli in real time which we otherwise would be aware of. This happens many ways. I pass from one room to another, and can no longer see the items laid out on my bed for packing for a trip. I put down one list of to-dos and take up another. I hang up on one phone conversation and take up another. I am thinking of a troublesome person in my past, then shift focus to a event about to happen in a half hour which I am eager to experience. This "putting things out of mind" can also be employed as defense against noxious feelings, and we see children use it often; their mothers also deliberately engineer this process, as an affect-management technique (we see this very commonly, with all mothers).

All DIDs with whom I have worked have had real difficulty attending to real life in real time. They appear to me to be employing some degree of nearly constant focal dissociation, as if they might have to fly off to another place at any moment, or as if they are prepared to flee should a new trauma begin. This makes sense, if one has been repeatedly traumatized.

It is critical, now, to understand that part of this focal dissociation defense is a dissociation from self, and especially from feelings-in-the-moment. I can endure anything if I can just not feel it!

So what happens when, due to a radical change in one's situation (new, safe people, and new more constructive and hopeful ideas about self and situation), the defenses start to come down? Your awareness opens in new ways to present time, including your own internal dynamics. You enter reality with a new, unaccustomed vulnerability (this is strange, and that alone leads to fear). At this point you have yet to affirm, in the context of this new awareness, that you can adequately protect and maintain your self. You are necessarily fragile, and you can FEEL this fragility. This is real and sensible, and also something you probably can handle. Defenses are likely not needed.

It will also pass. The first time we enter a swimming pool we're unsure and hesitant. We soon discover that we can self-maintain (especially if we are well-managed). Soon, there's no holding us back. But first, there is fear. THAT is where you are right now, I think. One does NOT need to have achieved full integration for this condition to come up.

Finally, as you put it so very well, your unresolved PTSD, which is certainly one serious source of distressing feelings, is simply far less "buffered" (perfect term) than before, because of your increased sense of self in real time. You're going to experience what it really means to have PTSD like you never have before.

Now it is useful to attend to the advice I give all my PTSD clients: You have been burned. You will be hypersensitive to "heat". Avoid it. Protect yourself intelligently. Also, build your inherent stress tolerance by attending carefully to getting adequate rest, exercise, and nutrition. Take care of yourself - and that includes getting appropriate treatment for your PTSD! All this attention you will now be giving to self-care is part of "becoming normal", believe me. I do it, and so should you.

So...I have rushed this out, but it makes sense to me upon a quick read through.

I'm obviously available by phone if you need to call.

After talking to my LC today - I will call this re-organization. My system desperately wants to integrate so it's taking great steps to get there, but it is not integration.