We met a new alter today and things feel looser, freer since then. We're almost relaxed, not a word I use to describe myself. The name Mxyzptlk rose up. What?!? Oh, Mr. Mxyzptlk from Superman comics. A kid might take this name, pronounced Mix-yez-PIT-uh-lick. (Reading unpronounceable words is annoying.) Mr. Mxyzptlk, in a Wikipedia article, is an impish villain. But ours is just a traumatized kid.
In recent therapy we've sensed times when we played as a kid, filled with rising anxiety. Our host alters were oblivious but we collectively knew abuse from one of the parents was just a matter of time. EMDR sessions gave us flashbacks of this anxiety, worse than some actual abuse. Anticipating abuse to come was awful.
It seems Mxyzptlk came to contain that anxiety, to keep us focused on playing or doing a repetitive task. When anxiety rises at work, for any reason, we can ignore the adult job-related things that we must do (and he doesn't understand or care about) and focus on a mind-numbing, pointless activity.
I watch us procrastinating and I'm powerless to stop it. Even knowing about the DID and how passive influence or subtle fronting works, I didn't figure it out. But I've looked at this behavior a lot. It's self-soothing and feels trance-like. I didn't think "this must be an alter" because it still felt like me.
It's not like little Mxyzptlk could identify himself and his purpose. He was and is traumatized. Plus it doesn't work like that for us. But we feel much calmer tonight, it's unmistakable because it's so...new. He's had a burden lifted off his young shoulders. I feel great about making that happen.
This is why I spend time, money, energy on therapy, why I fight a tendency to avoid remembering what my mom, dad and others did to us. Because things feel nice this evening and we've given a young innocent guy a break, though he's a part of us.
I write this to remind myself and others how this can work, why the pain we experience by remembering the abuse done to us is more than compensated for by the freedom that lies beyond.