If you can't beat 'em, join 'em

We saw a new DID therapist on Wednesday this past week, and even though I don't know whether we'll see her again, or start to work with her, that at least gave us the strength to finally end things with our other T.

We sent him a long text on Thursday, to say that we weren't coming on Friday, and probably not ever again, and that he can use that time for someone else. We also made sure to ask him not to respond, since there isn't any response he could make that wouldn't cause us more pain.

Hopefully, we've internalized enough of the love and caring we got from him, and can hold onto that somewhat. It's confusing for the littles that he cares about us so much but isn't really able to help us any further, and that most interactions with him end up causing us a lot of pain.

Older parts just can't relate to him and have never felt understood, and our very young protector is also constantly triggered by the way the T expresses himself, with lots of big words, used imprecisely, and his inability to really understand our experience.

It's interesting that since we started to realize that we would need to end things with this T (which started to be clear in early September), we've been able to get unstuck in a lot of other ways also. We finally left the job we've been complaining about for months, finally told the outside kids in general about having a dissociative disorder, finally cut off contact with the father. We've made a lot of changes that we've been wanting to make, but were avoiding actually making.

It's kind of scary, but also freeing in a lot of ways. Some parts feel terrified and feel that we've been impulsive, and it's all been mistakes that we'll regret, but others feel like we're finally listening to ourselves and taking care of important needs.

Our last day of work was Thursday, so January will look very different. No work on two afternoons a week. No driving to see our old T on Fridays. We have the somatic T on Wednesdays, and next week we'll start contacting other DID T possibilities, as well as possibly scheduling a second meeting with the one we saw last week. She is certified in EMDR for people with DID, and said that she has seen it be very helpful. There are some discrete traumas that we'd like help with, so the idea of using EMDR is intriguing. And it feels like we're ready to do some trauma processing, especially as our emotional regulation and tolerance improves with the somatic work.

Lately, we've had a kind of mantra we've been saying to ourselves, especially when we're lying awake and anxious in the middle of the night. It's "we're safe and sound, and things are gonna be ok." We repeat that, and try to take deep breaths and relax with each slow exhale. It helps a lot. We've been much more aware of internal feelings that I think we've always blocked out.

For example, we're going on a driving trip for a few days, leaving tomorrow, so we needed to take the dog to where he's going to stay while we're gone. When we were thinking about that yesterday, we could feel how upset some of the littles were at having to be away from him for a week. We were able to let them cry about it for a little while, instead of just ignoring or pushing away those feelings. There's less fear about feeling a strong feeling, and more confidence that it will just pass if we let ourselves feel it.

It seems like progress is being made, even though it has been a very difficult past few months.

the progress is kind of impressive too. Since it is clearly not the result of someone else telling you smart things. You figure it out for yourself on top of all the relational struggles. I am glad about the changes you are making. new opportunities... our DID T is EMDR trained and there are cool tools for DID that are not exactly trauma processing, too. might be worth trying. a lot of them are meant to make communication inside easier and to support with difficult emotions.
We wish you all the best for the holidays and for the new year.

It's wonderful that things are improving and that you are sorting things out. I hope that your littles will come to understand the changes in routine.

Take care,
Vi

We aren't doing very well. The husband has been away on a long trip, more than a week now, and won't get back until Thursday. For the past day, we haven't been eating enough, I don't think. And we're very stressed out about the show we're in. We're not being given very much to do, and it feels like we're being overlooked in favor of other people. There are still more spoken and sung lines to be given out, and each time we don't get something, it feels like a rejection.

I think we were being more productive and in better spirits yesterday, but it's hard to remember right now. Today is just a very bad day. We didn't sleep well last night, and we weren't up to going to ballet class, and we napped a bit this afternoon, which is very unusual for us. So the whole day feels thrown off. It's also been very windy and dry, so the outdoors isn't very welcoming. We're still in our pajamas and it's 4:30 pm. Soon we have to take a shower and eat dinner and go to rehearsal for 2 1/2 hours.

I know we're perfectly capable of doing our own food shopping, but the husband usually does all of it, and the littles are really resistant to going. They hate the supermarket. But I think we need to go tomorrow, or maybe tonight after rehearsal so we can get something to make for dinner instead of resorting to takeout.

We're still really grieving the loss of the relationship with our therapist. It helped a lot to process it with a friend on the phone yesterday. She's a longtime friend, has been in analysis, and is also a therapist, so it's really useful to get her perspective. We went over some of the biggest ruptures with her, and it's really helping us to break things down, and to see which aspects were good for us and which ones weren't. For the parts who look at things in a black or white way, it's being able to see that the relationship was made of different black and white particles, in a way. That's what gray is. So instead of them flipping back and forth between "he was good for us," and "he was bad for us," they can see that there are smaller pieces that were good or bad.

Because of the show, we haven't looked for things to fill the time when we used to do our part-time job. There are some volunteer things we would like to set up, but I can't imagine taking on anything new until the show is over in mid-April. There will be a two week stretch before that where we'll have rehearsal every single day including the weekends, and then go right into performances. I think we might be kind of burnt out from the previous two shows. Maybe it was a mistake to do this one, because it's hard to enjoy it right now.

But it feels hard to enjoy anything, so maybe that's grief, or maybe we're depressed. I don't know. We're not really even enjoying the kittens.

This whole post feels to us like we're whining. We've been trying to take care of littles, but they're so stressed and distressed. I think the somatic therapy is helping, but that's only one hour a week. And older parts are kind of skeptical that an hour of lying on our side while someone puts their hand on our lower back is really making a difference.

There's so much anxiety and stress--any passing thought starts our heart pounding. Even something as simple as "I should do a load of laundry." I think the littles are feeling overwhelmed about any adult responsibilities, and I guess we weren't so aware of their feelings in the past. I don't know how to help them feel that we can handle things.

Ugh. That's all for now.

So now it's almost the end of April. We haven't been wanting to post about how we're doing because we were so stressed and not wanting be destabilized further by talking about things. So I guess wanting to post here means that we're feeling more stable?

We have a birthday coming up soon, but it's not going to work to go to Disneyland for it the way we did for the past two years, so we need to think of something else, and the littles are disappointed.

We did our show--it closed almost 3 weeks ago, and ended up going very well and being a good experience for us. We went to the cast party and felt more successful at that than we ever have before. We talked to people and we were included in conversations about conflicts that different people had in the cast that we didn't know about before.

And we went to another event with some of the cast last weekend, and did a good job with that also. It's hard because everyone is a lot younger than our chronological age--like, decades younger, so it makes us feel a little weird, but there's always been something that makes us feel weird. In the past we just felt like an alien, so even when our age was the same, it felt like we didn't fit in.

The whole experience of being in the show really shook up some of our core beliefs and showed us that if we expect to fit in and be a part of things, and act like we have a right to exist and to be there, then people treat us that way and that reinforces that it's really ok and we're ok. Being smiled at and greeted by people, feeling respected as a person--those are things that some of the parts never expect and that we were never open to before.

We had put off some home repairs until after the show, so that started up right away after the last performance, and meant moving all our stuff out of our main bathroom and using the other one for the past three weeks. And having workmen here most days, which was really disruptive. One of them has to come back and do some touch-up painting, so we haven't moved our stuff back in yet, and can't use the shower yet.

We're trying not to be overwhelmed by the lack of structure in our schedule right now. We're not working, and not currently in a show, so all we have is some dance and singing classes, and of course the dog and cats and all the house chores. We're trying to prioritize self-care and trying not to be too "mean" to the littles. Yesterday we went to a place where we could ride on a carousel and play pinball, so they liked that.

It seems like we've gotten past the worst of the grief about leaving our therapist. It's been over 4 months now. Although yesterday someone started remembering how much they loved driving to his office on Fridays and all the little routines we had around that, and they were crying about it. But it had been awhile since we thought about him, and we've never broken down and contacted him after our goodbye text in December. Watcher still thinks "I hate your guts" every once in awhile, but we've managed not to text that to him.

When we get the urge to contact him, we re-read our last text to him, and that helps, because it summarized why it wasn't working anymore and why any response from him would hurt at least as much as no response, so we didn't want him to respond.

The plan for today is probably a lot of yard work, since the littles like being outside and "playing in the dirt," and older ones like getting the chores accomplished and making the front and back yards look better. If we work in front by the street, then it can be social also, because people walk by, including neighbors. And if we do it for enough hours, then it can count as our exercise for the day.

Time to get started while it's still cool and overcast.

Things seem to get better and I'm happy for you! It's awesome how you discovered that you DO have the right to exist in a social setting and how it can turn out a nice experience!

Hope the bathroom work gets completed soon!

These are significant developments! To have the experience of fitting in, especially for some that don't get to feel that way, wonderful! Moving on from a therapist can be so difficult, even when the overall realization is that it's the best thing. Congrats to all of you.

Playing in the dirt is awesome. Do you grow your own vegetables?
Well done for the restraint around the old t, watcher is valid in feeling the way he does so its great you guys acknowledge that feeling its also great that you don't act on it. The longer you keep your distance the more routine it will become. Could you maybe have a Friday drive to a park to appease the little that miss the driving?

Thanks ArbreMonde, Johnny-Jack, and Eliseahorse. We appreciate the support.

@Eliseahorse--
we have a lot of citrus trees, flowering succulents, and bamboo, but we don't grow our own vegetables. There are a lot of rabbits around, as well as squirrels and raccoons, so I'm not sure we would get to eat any of them.

A Friday drive to a park is a good idea. When we went to the little amusement park on Thursday, that helped, since it was more about having a fun destination than having to drive a lot to get there.

And we have a fun trip planned for next Friday. I think going forward we'll plan something specifically for littles at the end of the week. We have the time to do that right now, and it definitely helps.

Just want to catch up this journey thread, especially because we had a big success this evening. We went to an audition that we hadn't been planning to go to, and it went really well. We had tried out for something else on the weekend, and didn't get a callback, so Monday and yesterday we had to battle against feelings that we should just give up on any performing, and that we don't have any talent, and it's ridiculous to even try out for anything, etc. And of course that spirals into feeling like we're worthless, and like we shouldn't exist, etc, etc.

But there's a group chat with the cast of the last show I was in, and last night someone asked who would be auditioning tonight for the next one (different from the weekend audition I had, which was at a different theater). About 5 or 6 people said they would be auditioning, and I wrote that I probably would, so then all day today was spent deciding whether or not to go, and preparing in case I did go.

I went back and forth about it all day--I don't really like the show, and still feel kind of burnt out from the last show, but it seemed that the disappointment of "chickening out," would outweigh any upset that could happen from auditioning, so we went there. And then it turned out that a lot of people showed up, and we had to wait about 2 1/2 hours to be able to perform the audition, when in the past we only had to wait about 15-30 minutes. So while we were waiting, we thought about leaving and not even doing it. But there were a lot of people there we knew, and we didn't want them to see us giving up on it.

Eventually it was our turn, and it seemed to go pretty well, and the directors seemed to like us, and even laughed at something funny we said. So the whole experience was a big success, and we even handled the long wait well, by finding a place to sit alone and relax for a bit whenever it was too much to keep talking to the other people who were also waiting. (But when we did talk to them it was helpful, because they also talked about spending a lot of time during the day thinking about the audition, and being nervous, and that helped us feel less weird.)

The husband helped us debrief when we got home, so that we weren't perseverating about different things that we said to people. That's something we do a lot--we'll think about what we said and how we shouldn't have said that, and why we shouldn't have, and then we beat ourselves up about it. But if we take time to go over it with the husband, that helps. We also listened to his heartbeat for awhile to calm down, and that helped a lot.

So even though we got very little done today in order to prepare for the audition, it seems like it all worked out ok. And people seemed to like us and were nice, so that was good. All in all, a big success for today, and I hope we can hold on to this even if we don't get a callback, because I think we did the best we could, so we don't need get stuck on anything that we might have done wrong and beat ourselves up about it.

We can just be proud and happy, and plan some fun and productive things to do tomorrow for parts who hate to perform, like go for a bike ride, and weed the backyard, and listen to a book (we're going through the whole Sammy Keyes series again), and watch Bluey episodes, and maybe give the dog a bath (Oliver likes to do that...).