Is it okay to just not know what to think

I feel like I am finally winding down after weeks of being worked up into this frenzy, like I am finally feeling defeated and exhausted, like I am finally out of breath with all of this. My feelings and perceptions and thoughts and even what I can remember, changes so often and all the time. I can't figure anything out. I can't figure out what is wrong with me, or what happened, or what I am experiencing. I can't map my system or figure myself out. I can't tell if I get psychosis or disassociation or something else. I don't know how to feel about people. I don't know who I am. I try so hard to figure it out, spend an hour or a day convinced and then lose it all again. Over and over and over. I just don't know. I don't know how I feel or what I think or what I am. I can go all over these forums and read hundreds of articles and research dozens upon dozens of symptoms. I can be anything because I am everything which means that I am nothing at the end of the day. And so the same is true for the world around me. It is whatever I think it is at any time. It makes everything feel like it isn't even real. Like I am just dreaming all the time. Everything makes sense sometimes, because nothing makes sense overall. It's just a giant pile of puzzle pieces that I can put together in different ways, but it will never be the right way. Maybe that is just life. Sometimes I feel like am a mental illness cake or something, with different layers. Something biochemistry-based like bipolar, then a personality disorder of some type, then a trauma layer, maybe mild substance problems as the icing. I feel most comfortable in the DID forum most of the time, because it's like others here know what it's like to be so confused and not even know yourself very well. It's like everyone else on the other forums knows themselves at least. They can identify their symptoms and analyze their behaviors and themselves. I can't even do that. I don't even know myself. I can't even make a timeline that makes sense. I think that's the hardest part of everything. I don't ever mean to belittle the struggles of others. I know every disorder and illness is hard in its own ways. But I see people in other forums like the BP one or the BPD one. I see issues of how to tackle this symptom or how tough it is to take that medication or how frustrating is to leap that hurdle in therapy. It makes me scream inside that I don't even understand what is happening, so I can't even get to the part where I work on making myself follow treatment. I don't even know what to do.

Don't worry, it's ok. Going through all those thoughts is normal for us. Eventually it becomes easier to just realise that you are not going to know what to think about stuff almost all the time and to sit with that discomfort.

Once you can eventually accept that things are going to be confusing it becomes easier to get less distracted by all the contradictory thoughts and feelings and start to just observe what is going on. Having said that though, it's taken me basically four years to get to that point personally so maybe don't count on being able to sit with the contradictory feelings particularly quickly. It will take time.

I understand what you are saying. Well at least for now in this moment.

Sometimes I really, really don't want to have something like DID. I would rather have something far more manageable, something far less frightening.

And then it both concerns and amazes me how easily I can create that reality. How I can fit myself into any shape.

I realize that I've "done it again" and try to step back. I take a deep breath and try to tell myself not to be a coward and make things worse.

But then I realize that I do have a history that shows other types of issues. So then I wonder if I am trapped in some kind of disordered paradoxical thought loop.

At least I know that it really does boil down to having no real sense of self. It really does all boil down to being able to be anything, because I am nothing.

It's easy for me to embrace something, an idea, at the beginning, but as soon as the real work starts, I shift onto something else. I do this more and more rapidly until I am extremely riled up and confused. I guess that is when "everything" becomes "nothing".

I am just finally exhausted for now. I am too exhausted and confused to keep spinning my wheels.

I normally try to be good about responding to everyone's comments in my threads and I do enjoy the conversations. Plus it is important to me to show appreciation when people have taken the time and empathy to put forth the effort. But lately I don't even stay on the same track long enough. I make a thread and come back to it the next day and can't relate to it or even remember half of what I had written. Then I don't even know what to say.

This all just feels so disorienting. It sucks.

I can't even stay on the same tracks long enough to keep up a proper appearance, not even as easy as it should be anonymously online. I even compartmentalize this website. I post in one forum as though I belong there, then hours later in another forum as though I belong there. Like in my mind they are each separate worlds unto themselves that don't interact with each other.

When I have a rare moment of clarity like right now, all I can do is look back on everything in my life and think oh gosh I am crazy.

Salted lipstick's reply is both comforting and scary when I apply it to my own situation. I feel similarly confused about what's what and can't imagine how hard this would be if I were living with an abuser and didn't have the grounded force of my husband and kids around me.

Years before my diagnosis I was feeling frustrated because I felt like who I was was very limited and had to fit in the very narrow confines of a box in my mind. Sometime's I would feel myself pushinging against the walls and it was so limited and claustrophobic. Other times I would see my body acting in and someone experiencing what I longed for. A sense of being enthralled with life, of being alive.

Sometimes the box disappears and I disappear and it's total chaos. I'm not anything. I'll thing I got myself mapped out somehow. Then it all rearranges and what seemed so prominent and obvious two days ago is far away and doesn't seem relevant.

And my "self," as in who I feel I am, is in flux. I hate it when I am the androgynous teenager, which who I am so much of the time since this crisis started... I don't remember how I felt before. As the teenager, I feel in a mental straightjacket. I can't figure out whether I am the teenager and sometimes feel other influences strongly or if the teenager is a separate thing that often overshadows me. I am more strongly aware in situations when I have to talk about myself or reflect on myself. Other than all these changes I go through, it feels like there is no center point to hold onto. It's the constant search for something to grasp that wears me out. I am so busy with childcare that I can't give myself totally to this obsession, and maybe that's a good thing.

Today my therapist (after I made a most kooky sounding conjecture) said that in her experience, DID is less about "figuring things out" and more about listening and receiving understanding through being open to other parts. She also recommended the whole "meeting space and weekly meeting" concept to help mr get more familiar.

The whole thing about presenting yourself differently in different forums. It reminds me of what happens to me with religious paths. So confusing.

Anyway, forgive me for rambling. Despitr some progress lately, I have been feeling trapped in DID today, wishing for a real way out other than through.

Oh and it's okay and good to take a break. You've going so fast, pushing yourself so hard. Self-care means stepping back and taking breaks. I'mnot good at that with my obsessive mind. Been trying to read a novel instead of DID or trauma related stuff this week.

CopperMoon wrote:Sometimes I really, really don't want to have something like DID. I would rather have something far more manageable, something far less frightening.

And then it both concerns and amazes me how easily I can create that reality. How I can fit myself into any shape.

I realize that I've "done it again" and try to step back. I take a deep breath and try to tell myself not to be a coward and make things worse.

It's ok to be frightened you know. I mean you don't want to let that feeling become like a runaway train but it is a normal feeling about your DID situation and it is a feeling that needs acknowledging and accepting. Perhaps you can use these times when your fear peaks to work out what has triggered it and work out what that fear might have been related to in other situations (because it's unlikely you are having that trigger for the first time ever).

For what it's worth, even though it is completely a struggle, I try to take comfort in the fact that DID is one of the most treatable mental health conditions that one can have. There is hope for a better life and that spurs me on to push through. I also think that even though it is a difficult journey, I feel that it has grown me in a way that I might have skills or empathy in situations where other people might not know what to say or do. So maybe as you journey through it also you may realise that you have gained something unique and positive that, even though it was hard earned through these difficulties, has some value that helps to define the positive aspects of the strong person you are and are continuing to grow further into.

CopperMoon wrote:At least I know that it really does boil down to having no real sense of self. It really does all boil down to being able to be anything, because I am nothing.

Are you sure you mean that you are nothing? I would have thought more of the situation as one being more "a little bit of everything" and a transitory state and hence nothing particularly consistently defined. Generally I find it helps to think of the fact that I am actually in the process of creating who I am, just like a child learns a consistent sense of self through developing safety and positive interactions with people and learning about how the world works in healthy and safe ways. It helps me personally heaps to think of the fact that I am actually in the process of creating a defined me, I feel like it's something positive that I can do for myself rather than focussing on what I'm not.

CopperMoon wrote:I make a thread and come back to it the next day and can't relate to it or even remember half of what I had written. Then I don't even know what to say.

That's me most hours, let alone days. You don't need to respond to what you don't remember, you can let the part of you that does remember do that later if you want. It is helpful to read though as you start to get a sense of how your others are thinking also.

CopperMoon wrote:I can't even stay on the same tracks long enough to keep up a proper appearance, not even as easy as it should be anonymously online.

Why do you think you need to do this?

CopperMoon wrote:I even compartmentalize this website. I post in one forum as though I belong there, then hours later in another forum as though I belong there. Like in my mind they are each separate worlds unto themselves that don't interact with each other.

I had been wondering what had been going on with that seeing as I'd noticed you in a lot of the other forums I visit here.

Nondescript wrote:Salted lipstick's reply is both comforting and scary when I apply it to my own situation. I feel similarly confused about what's what and can't imagine how hard this would be if I were living with an abuser and didn't have the grounded force of my husband and kids around me.

Again, fear is ok to feel. I'm inclined to think that people still in abusive situations would likely still retain their amnestic barriers between parts so strongly that they would probably likely have less of a confronting awareness of the contradictory nature of their thoughts and feelings. It's probably because you have the grounded force of your husband and children that allows you to be in a safe enough situation that your mind doesn't feel the need to maintain barriers between the contradictions nearly as much, you have more of an opportunity to heal in a good situation and hence it is safer to release previously unknowable awareness of thoughts and feelings being contradictory.

Sometimes I just feel resigned.

And I do mean it when I say that I am nothing, because I am everything.

I don't think the main issues really come from my mother, but rather she is just the most clear-cut example I ever have of what I experience.

I can sit with her over coffee and have a very pleasant conversation. I know that I love her, and that I like her, and that I enjoy her company. I know that if anyone ever tried to hurt her, I would fly into a terrible rage.

But within the span of hours or days sometimes, I am plagued by other intrusive thoughts and feelings. Parts of me that hate her, parts of me that fear her.

I can't decide how I feel, and it's not only that I can't figure it out, but it's also literally that I can't control it. I don't have the power to decide it.

When I try to analyze it, I can't. All of the 'thought trains' I experience at once, are incompatible.

If you trust her, then you are ill. You're not acknowledging the reality.
Your feelings of rage and hatred are part of your illness.

If you trust her, it will bring you pain when she betrays you.
If you push her away, it will bring you pain because you love her.

Nothing is "right" and nothing stays consistent. I can't make any decisions or act without negative repercussions.

Because I think and feel everything at the same time, I can't trust myself, my thoughts, my emotions. Everything will lead to pain inevitably because everything is always changing and no parts of me can agree on anything.

The only way I can avoid pain is to freeze, to shut down and be nothing.

It's not like one thing counts more than others. The best example I can give, needs a TW for mention of violence:

When my father slammed my head into the kitchen table, my mother did nothing. She was standing there and didn't react at all. She never mentioned it afterwards. She never reacted to such things and never protected me, or even tried. But after I was thrown in my room and the door slammed, I fell asleep in a sea of sunflowers. My entire bedroom was heavily decorated in sunflowers, because I had mentioned that I liked them. And my mother spent hours decorating the entire room with them, just because she knew that I liked them.

And that's why the situation didn't make sense. It wasn't just that I couldn't accept she loved me. It was also that I couldn't accept that she didn't love me. The sunflowers counted just as much.

So it's not as easy as listening to the other parts and whatever they think or feel. I am a part, too. I count, too.

And to say this only happens regarding my mother would be delusional in itself. I experience this with all the bonds I ever have, try to have and lose. And with all sorts of other things.

And then on top of all that, I can't figure out what is being caused by unresolved trauma, and what is being caused by other types of illness / disorder sources. So when I try to do therapy work, I can't trust anything. I don't know if what I wind up feeling makes sense or not, if it is 'good' because I need to feel it, or if it is 'bad' and potentially even dangerous because it is coming from a biochemical sort of illness. So in that regard I also end up freezing.

For now I feel my best shot is to guinea pig myself for a while and try some psychiatric treatments. I can find out what difference it makes, if it does nothing, or if it clears some things up leaves what is actually trauma-based left over for me to focus on. Perhaps this way I can end up knowing for sure what is rational, what is simply in need of being processed and accepted. I don't really know any other way to approach for now.