Repetitive thoughts

fireheart wrote:She was very, very surprised by my kindness. It felt like it was WAY too much. That is why she cried.

And for me it felt like I was connecting to the "I am bad" feeling. I could feel her burden, pretty much for the first time.

Since then she has not been repeating the statement anymore.

Wow. That sounds like it went really well. And it's very helpful for me to hear. We have a part that is convinced that she is bad and carries a lot of worrying and hopelessness for us.

I think she may be the one that cries (or feels like crying) when someone outside (usually a stranger) is unexpectedly kind. I knew that is was because there's an expectation that people won't be kind, but I never connected it before to her beliefs about herself. (Or maybe I did and then forgot... )

fireheart wrote:Thanks for the responses everyone!

It's reassuring and helpful.
I do not have the time and energy to write a proper reply now, but will do so when I do get the chance. The replies are very interesting to me.

For now, this is how I ended up handling the situation:
I made an effort to be kind to the part who was repeating the statement.
She was fronting with me at the time.
I showed her that I would take care of her by arranging dinner and she shared some memories that I didn't know about but were OK.
Then I talked out loud to her. I directly addressed what she said, in a reassuring way. ("There are a lot of people who are bad, and a lot of people who are not. You are not bad, I know you are not.")
And I also explained that she can see for herself that things are different now by looking.
Then I told her that there was a nice meal for her, that she didn't have to cook if she didn't know how to, and that she could pick what we would watch during the meal.

Then I suddenly connected to her feelings.

I/she cried.

She was very, very surprised by my kindness. It felt like it was WAY too much. That is why she cried.

And for me it felt like I was connecting to the "I am bad" feeling. I could feel her burden, pretty much for the first time.

Since then she has not been repeating the statement anymore.

That was great to read. You cared for a part of yourself really well. I've cried when people are kind. There is alot of unkindness in the world but there are kind people too. All we can do is strive to be kind to ourselves and others without kindness being taken advantage of. Kindness is a great strength and as an elderly lady said to me "if you don't look after yourself then how can you look after others"

Glad to read you tackled it with such compassion.

I feel like it's more that the negative thoughts we've struggled with for an extended period of time had to do with self-image. And, in retrospect, those negative thoughts weren't repeated over and over in a short period of time, but they were consistently felt over periods of time ranging from months to years.

***Possible Trigger Warning: Origins? I don't know what to tag this but I felt we should put one.***

Our system couldn't come to terms with the fact that boys were treated differently than girls, but we acted like girls did and wanted to do things girls did and were a boy, so we got Katy.

Our system couldn't come to terms with the fact that so many people pretended to be our friend when they weren't, so we got someone who doesn't understand who is a friend and who isn't unless they are told how close they are, who I realize we need a name for.

The guy I mentioned above doesn't have a name yet, and I was gonna say he is Worrywart, but Worrywart came from our inability to process the fact that we had never had any bad moments between us and our closest friend. In a way, Worrywart came from a place of "How am I not a bad person? I swear I've made mistakes, I swear I'm a bad person," but they never said that, specifically.

I'm not 100% sure where we got Emo from, but there was a period of time where we constantly thought we were fat and ugly and worthless, and I think Emo came from that period of time.

Viola kind of came from consistent negative thoughts, she was stuck for a while because we never got to learn how to play the Violin as a child and never got to process it, but she's no longer stuck in that time period.

I... can't think of any others who came from negative thoughts in that way.

***End Possible Trigger Warning***

After Excel typed that all out, I kind of came to realize that I can't think of any moments where we had "repetitive thoughts" in the way you meant. Sorry if we hijacked your thread:|

Sarandipity wrote:The course also said to give the negative voice in your head a name - but I didn't like that idea. I just tackle each thought and also have a positive mantra stuck around the house: "I love you, you're worthwhile..." to give self love.

If that works for you then I think you should keep doing it:3 But, it may be worth giving the negative voices names if you feel they are more than just a repetitive negative voice~

Sarandipity wrote:So when you have a negative repetitive thought it's coming from another persona? Not the same persona who is generally negative?

I think we might have addressed this above our response to your reply, but it's more that we have so many people up here that there's more than one persona who is generally negative. A good portion of them came from our Seven Friendly Sins, but we've resolved a lot of conflict we had between us and them.

Sarandipity wrote:None of mine are particularly negative as such. Karen will do stuff seen as negative if she considers it necessary. Beth used to cry at every horrible part of life - the environment, how people are horrible to eachother, who society is discintigrated. It took alot of philosophical consideration to quell that. She'll feel awful over something Karen feels fine about because necessary or not it was negative.

The solution for all of us was to do some helpful with our lives, to aim at bringing joy, to help others (and to help ourselves because we deserve it too). To formulate a code of conduct and morals that minimise potential negative impact and maximise our positive impact. Hating ourselves would be counterproductive and we like to avoid hating others so if we can do that for others - have compassion and forgiveness and kindness then we can do it for ourselves. If we come across a nasty outside individual we avoid them not out of fear but because we would get caught up in stopping them and we gave that up to pursue doing as much good as is possible in our own small way rather than stopping negativity - if that makes sense.

I think we all think that that's a good mindset to have:D You can't fill an empty hole by pushing the bottom.

Sarandipity wrote:Still struggling to get over each negative repetitive statement having lead to another alter? - That must be terrible

I realize, coming to the end of our response to your response... all of the negative repetitive statements came from the Seven Friendly Sins who we've reconciled with and are all pretty chill now (which I think we said already). They just don't repeat negative statements anymore so we forgot they ever did, whoops xP

Sorry if this was a bit long...

(I think Worrywart is getting easier on the system now that I'm treating him as a separate person and considering his thoughts and feelings equally as valid)

-- Tue Jun 26, 2018 4:23 pm --

fireheart wrote:(Cut out part of this reply for Worrywart's sake xP)

Then I suddenly connected to her feelings.

I/she cried.

She was very, very surprised by my kindness. It felt like it was WAY too much. That is why she cried.

And for me it felt like I was connecting to the "I am bad" feeling. I could feel her burden, pretty much for the first time.

Since then she has not been repeating the statement anymore.

We didn't know what to say in response to this, but reading this gave us happy fuzzy feelings:3

The repetitive verbiage in my head was not negative. Usually it was something along the lines of "I love him" over and over again.

Okay, I have some time to write now.

The part has repeated the statement a couple of times more, but less frequently... which I am already glad about. I don't think it would count as being a negative thought, it seeems to be more akin to what birdsong and Una wrote about a part not being able to communicate in another way. Sort of being stuck.
Una, what kind of psychodynamic therapy did you do? How did it help? (if you want to share).
I started by searching online for strategies to deal with repetitive thoughts, but what I experience seems quite different from those thoughts in OCD, because those tend to be about paths of action or worries. This is pretty much gibberish. Not quite, but almost.

I think I'm starting to learn that there is some kind of message behind it anyway - even when it seems so... random. Like, this time it was a part who needed my reassurance. I've also investigated the "help me" I get a lot. It turned out to be a reference to a movie, the Lion King. I watched the scene that it referred to and found out that the scene is almost the definition of betrayal. It makes more sense now. Less random... But yes, still like you said about the boundaries maybe not being solid enough.

Sarandipity, I'm glad to hear that the approach of saying "thank you for sharing" helps for you! Your conversation with DozensOfDenizens reminds me of when I was in therapy before I knew about the multiplicity. I would have repetitive negative thoughts, e.g. "I am a bad person" (ironically, similar to what the part is saying now), and after trying to 'talk back to it' without any reducement, I would respond to it by saying "No, I am a CAT person". Only changing that one letter felt way more doable than "Just not having that thought anymore" which was a goal of treatment. I thought that it was just a random pathway in the brain being activated easily, and if I could change it into something else, that would be fine.
However, doing that would make me feel very uncomfortable. Angry, frustrated, uneasy. As if I was making fun of it or something... I was just desperate for it to stop, and SO much didn't believe it... probably because it was an alter who held those feelings.
A couple of months ago I figured out what was behind it. (This is YEARS later than when it first occurred).
I tried to be curious about it. That was the most important thing. I asked a lot of questions and drew about it and then I got my answer... It was meant to be a warning. A warning that I was doing something that would have gotten me punished when I was a child.
That made it way easier to deal with, because now I knew how I should respond: indeed, saying thank you - a genuine 'thank you', and then trying to reassure that things aren't like they were then.

Reading through your most recent reply, one phrase stuck :^) out to me:

fireheart wrote:I don't think it would count as being a negative thought, it seeems to be more akin to what birdsong and Una wrote about a part not being able to communicate in another way. Sort of being stuck.

Lately we've discovered a lot of us that have been like this, but most of them have given us feelings, and not repetitive statements. Now that I think about it, most of them can't talk, or at least couldn't when we met them. Erin was like this, and when we gave her a chance in therapy to come out and write and communicate how she knew how to, she became unstuck. She's still 8 years old, but she can do more than cry.
-Mike


***Possible Trigger Warning: Reliving memories of rough elementary school experiences***

We didn't realize it until earlier today, but another one of us came out during therapy who was also stuck in another time. When we let him out at home, he was stuck in a memory of Katy having just gotten a tear on the paper, and him erasing the tear in order to fix it, and started stomping a room and throwing a tantrum. He said, "Why was that teacher so nice to us when [the other teacher] wasn't? Why did we have to sit outside during recess when the other kids got to play?" and when this one of us (whom we have come to name Mark) came out of the head and released these feelings, he started growing older, and the image we have for him now is about 28 years old.
-Elder

***End Possible Trigger Warning***

Also, tangent, but one thing I noticed while Mike was writing his response is that he's had gas ever since we had Cafe Rio yesterday but none of the rest of us have. xD