trauma therapy uncovered things we don't want to see

Trauma therapy tonight was a real journey. We learned a few things we hadn't been aware of before. It may be that our recent issue with food and our somatic choking fits are related directly to as yet uncovered young child Alters from before we were adopted. We had given our therapist copies of the letters from Social Services _____ a while ago (actually, we had forgotten we had) detailing the first few horrific years of our life.

We also learned that so much as bringing up the of the as yet unknown child alter (who has been crying pretty consistently in recent weeks) evokes an instant fear response. Our therapist had asked a question related to this and our body went cold instantly. We told of this physical reaction and her response was to say, 'good!'

This gave us a moment of levity for her comment took us by surprise and she was careful to clarify that it was 'good' that we recognized our fear and its source. It is also a complex fear. We are afraid of a number of things. We are afraid of remembering things this amnesiac alter remembers, we fear that the younger pre-adoption alter(s) will similarly arise (and they may already be near the surface, more about that in a bit), and we are afraid of the flood of emotion that is already occurring to one degree or another.

Now, recently we have been having issues with our appetite. We barely ate over the Christmas holidays. We also have a cold but this has been going on before that. It seems that an early childhood alter (or alters) are manifesting something akin to somatic memories due to the neglect which we were subjected to in our early childhood. One effect is that things we would normally enjoy we, well, don't, such as the homemade bit & bites we received for Christmas. Another example is the beans we had for dinner last night. We were able to only eat two spoonfuls before our anxiety made us stop eating. We kept worrying the beans were past their expiry date even though they were not and the sight of two rather fatty pieces of bacon floating on top of the beans was no comfort. They also tasted funny, or at least we thought they did. It had not occurred to us that something so long ago in distant the past could affect us in the present so acutely. Wow. It is, in fact, a frightening proposition and we see no way to escape it.

We have received contact information about the eating disorders program at _____ and plan to contact them. We need to be able to eat regularly.

We seem to recall mentioning in a recent blog entry that if we had to name one emotion that is a daily factor in our lives it would be fear. Given what we learned about ourselves tonight that is no surprise. Other than reading the letters from Social Services _____ we hadn't really given our early childhood much thought, other than feeling that it was pretty horrific and we were grateful to have no clear memory of it.

The prospect of remembering our early childhood is, to put it simply, chilling. Our first Alter, Denise [who we'd called little daria briefly], is around 4-5 years old, too old to recall a time before we were adopted This new one (we think it is only one, so far anyways) is clearly younger. We had explained to our therapist that, sometimes, for a period of time not only can we not contact a specific Alter but we can't even remember their name, or worse still, have had brief (thankfully) periods when we don't know our name, and you can imagine how much fun that is.

It is strange that we can understand a concept on a purely intellectual level but the same concept can be emotionally crippling. This new Alter cries almost constantly, if our current very frequent tears are an indication of her emotional state. There is fear too, and something else undefinable thus far. Feeling lost? Alone? We think it is something like that.

It is also strange to essentially have no appetite. We are pretty sure we have been losing weight, but we don't feel any thinner. We do not particularly look forward to having any sort of an eating disorder, which is what we fear is happening.

I'm sorry you're going through this. I understand the lack of appetite...thouhh I have struggled with that always. and alot of food making me feel sick ... having a couple bites and feeling full...with periods of eating okay now and then. my therapist keeps asking if I think I have an eating disorder but that's just how I've always been. she had me start taking vitamins - multi, b complex, amino 3-6-9, as well as a good quality protein powder every day. if I can't eat. that made her a little happier but she still worried about the eating thing.

I had a memory come up. well idk if it's a memory. it feels like a memory bit that it doesn't belong to me? i haven't been able.to talk to her about it. as its a subject matter I have only suspected but never had any evidence of.

star0dust wrote:I had a memory come up. well idk if it's a memory. it feels like a memory bit that it doesn't belong to me? i haven't been able.to talk to her about it. as its a subject matter I have only suspected but never had any evidence of.

currently we are terrified of past memories surfacing. Apparently our past trauma is manifesting itself via somatic memory and non-specific flashbacks which seem to be lingering moments of intense fear/panic/anxiety. We, during our most recent therapy session, were able to articulate a particular memory/incident which we had not previously been able to talk about at all.

we have made an appointment with our NP for next week. Had a hard time keeping three pieces of pizza down last night but managed to do so. We've been having somatic memory intrusions frequently also. We had two flashbacks while out with a friend yesterday and if it hadn't been for her presence we'd have been in a far worse state. She is very understanding!

littleDaria wrote:


The prospect of remembering our early childhood is, to put it simply, chilling. Our first Alter, Denise [who we'd called little daria briefly], is around 4-5 years old, too old to recall a time before we were adopted This new one (we think it is only one, so far anyways) is clearly younger. We had explained to our therapist that, sometimes, for a period of time not only can we not contact a specific Alter but we can't even remember their name, or worse still, have had brief (thankfully) periods when we don't know our name, and you can imagine how much fun that is.

Little Daria thank you for sharing parts of your story. I know it must be very frightening. Above sounds like something that happened to my son recently. A part came forward that was very very scared, panicked, and he just would say his name is Little Austin. The same name of one of his other alters. But he did not know us, where he was at, or any other of the alters, he had no memory of anything or memory that he was willing to share at that moment. This is some place I never want to go again, as you said it is very frightening. I am curious though how has your therapist and you started to address this? Now I know that it is there it is not like we can pretend it is not, I am not quite sure though how to address it without sending him into a complete tizzy. Right now he thinks he had a night terror and I am not willing to open pandoras box so to speak at this moment but I also think that the parts that are deep down also have a huge influence on his current overall moods.

Your thoughts?

littleDaria wrote:It is strange that we can understand a concept on a purely intellectual level but the same concept can be emotionally crippling.

Quoting a single sentence from your post is taking it way out of context, so apologies for that. But I'm wondering if are generally okay knowing about your past trauma on an intellectual basis, as in knowing or understanding it in a conceptual way, as you said. I don't think most people want to feel, see or re-experience trauma memories, or flashbacks or any return of painful emotions, thoughts or sensory memory. I hope not.

For myself I can't even say I want to know most of the traumas or awful events that happened to us. But I also can't say accurately that I don't want to know. I guess I'm reacting to your post, especially the above.

It really comes down to me how much do you want to know who is represented it builds what is it building from what is on the map. I'd say all day PTSD by itself is a very horrifying journey , but if you want to understand what happens to folks from all walks of life then that is fine. I'm very understanding what is sacred is sacred if you plan to work up to it then it is also fine. I think just making people know what can happens helps me to know what to loook for because just like us overwhelmed, so can normal people doing a job they get overwhelmed. Most folks aren't going to let you in their life like that it isn't socially normal behavior, so you can't compare someone's journey to that. It takes as long as it takes to share. Yes will your alters see and know things before it gets out sometimes it is right down to the moment. I think you got to make sure your T understands that they get guilty too anxious scared for you and the alters.

our intellectual alters get us in trouble as they like to research our past which then re-traumatizes the rest of us; we do not see a solution to this. our short term memory is swiss cheese. Our T is working on helping us to bring our most recent and suffering alter into the present but it is taxing work that isn't particularly successful thus far; success is fleeting and short-lived. It is also emotionally exhausting. We ended up in Emerg late last week which was an ordeal.

we are, honestly, sick of living in fear.

some of us used to do that, research stuff and overwhelm everyone.
it got better when we agreed to do the 3 phase work and stick to it. and that has memory work in the second phase.
phase one is all about stability and resources and managing daily life.
this has to come first. otherwise the memory work will find you in a place where you are already unstable.
so when we have memory coming up we don't look at it too much. we place it in an inner museum until we have reached phase 2 work.
sometimes it is important to do things in the right order.
maybe your intellectual parts will be able to see that as well.
I am glad you are taking care of yourself and get help!! good job!

birdsong87 wrote:some of us used to do that, research stuff and overwhelm everyone.
it got better when we agreed to do the 3 phase work and stick to it. and that has memory work in the second phase.
phase one is all about stability and resources and managing daily life.
this has to come first. otherwise the memory work will find you in a place where you are already unstable.
so when we have memory coming up we don't look at it too much. we place it in an inner museum until we have reached phase 2 work.
sometimes it is important to do things in the right order.
maybe your intellectual parts will be able to see that as well.
I am glad you are taking care of yourself and get help!! good job!

we shall have to learn more about this '3 phase work', it sounds useful

I am working on something about it for the blog.
if there is nothing on the forum I might post parts of it here this week or next week.
I will first check if someone has posted this already...