Our Life Journal Thread. :D

Thank you Abremonde! It has been, and it makes things make more sense. I may not remember the stuff that happened back then, but at least I better understand the system. A little (Ashe)

5/3 Quick note

Mom got angry. My heart beat increased, and I feel it in my temples. Feeling like theres a lump in my throat and upperchest. Feel sick. Headache.

5/4/22 Update

'Reminder to check on the spoon theory stuff we were advised of'
symptom discovered: Talking over someone else who wanted to talk. (not aware I was doing this)

Ashe (host) [unsure]

"What's wrong with my brain that it makes all these little things suddenly become too much to do"

It was an errant thought that ran through my mind as I struggled to get up. The simple act of getting up. Drinking some water. Brushing my hair. Taking a shower. It's all just too much. Is it physical? Is it mental? Both? I can't take care of myself and my family seems shocked when I struggle do things for them. I'm too young to feel this way, and yet I know it's always been like this. I've always had less energy then my peers. I was muscular, but a sprint wore me out. I did cross country despite feeling like I was going to throw up.

It shouldn't be this way. I shouldn't feel like everything is so difficult. I should want to brush my teeth. I should want to get myself a drink. I should want to right? Why?

Even worse, how do I explain it to the ones I love? How do I look at my parents with health problems and tell them that it's hard for me to do things they do? How can I explain to them that I have been pushing through and making myself worse? You've worn the mask of 'I'm happy and not a problem' so well that they don't believe you.

Symptoms of Autistic Burnout

1. Problems with executive function and struggling to get started on tasks and make decisions.

YES! I struggle do things regardless of what it is. I really enjoying writing and my laptop can be literally a few feet from me and I can't convince myself to do it. Decisions are hard because I don't like doing something just for myself. I am constantly considering how my choice affects other people. If I say I want to eat here, will it make my mom sick? If take a mental health day, is it going to add stress to my family. If stay in the right lane of traffic and I don't plan to turn right, is it going to inconvenience the person behind me?

2. Difficulty with self-regulation

the fact of something such as an organization regulating itself without intervention from external bodies? I have hard time finding exactly what self-reegulation is but my basic understanding is controlling how your emotions and actions. I have a hard to recovering from stress, anger, or despression. I have physical reactions to these emotions that can last anywhere from an hour to days later. Even my happy tends to be to much for the people around me. It's hard for me to control my excitement.

3. Difficulty with activities of daily living like cooking, cleaning, dressing, or self-care

Self care has been an issue my entire life. Our parents and previous host both mentioned we had issues taking showers and brushing our teeth has been a battle. Part of this I think was sensory issues, but it's more than that. I don't know I'm thirsty until I'm parched. I don't know I'm hungry until I'm starving, and getting up sometimes isn't worth the energy. I'd rather wear by bed clothes all day then spend the extra energy to go to the dresser and closet, select an outfit, undress, dress in the new clothes, and walk the clothes to the hamper. It's all just... to much.

4. Difficulty with speech and communication

This hasn't happened much. I have had a few times in my life where I suddenly couldn't speak, but for the most part, the scripts in my head have held. I will randomly develop a stutter, but it's not all the time. Communication is different. To me communication is conversing with people in a way they understand you. I very often say something and people take it a completely different way.

5. Difficulty with social interactions and potential for social fatigue

Social interactions are always stressful and take a lot of energy. I cannot remember a time of it being otherwise.

6. Increased sensory sensitivities

I have issues with smacking, and any food related sounds. Also as of late, I have struggled with too many sounds, or too many people talking will cause a feeling of panic.

7. An increased need for stimming or sensory input

I only recently allowed myself to conciously stim. Before I was stimming without realizing it. (i.e listening to a song on repeat, skin picking, watching same youtube videos over and over, etc. All stims I could hide from people around me.

8. More difficulty with eye contact

Eye contact has always been an issue with me. I don't think it has changed.

9. Having meltdowns or shutdowns more frequently

I'm not sure what constitutes a meltdown or shutdown. The closest I can think of is crying in the toliet on the bathroom because I'm overly sad, or overstimulated. This is usually paired with an overall hatred of myself and thoughts of self-loathing.

10. Increased emotions

It's hard for me to know if I have increased emotions. I either feel them or I'm detached living in a sort of autopilot. I don't know.

11. Needing more time alone to rest and recharge

I tend to be very solitary. It's not that I want to be alone, but I don't want to worry about unintentially hurting someone else.

12. Difficulty with cognition and memory

My memory is all over the place. DID and all. But I can remember stupid stuff like the capital of every state in america, but not where I put my water bottle.

13. Needing more sleep and rest, but also possible difficulty sleeping

I struggle with feeling extremely tired without caffeine and insomnia, but physical exhaustion is common.

I'd say I'm feeling it >.<

5/18 Host (Ashe)

Time has passed faster than I thought. It feels like I have posted recently, and yet I look to see it's been awhile. My theory is when we write more, I lose time, but weirdly I lose the feeling of others in my head when life at home gets stressful or I physically feel sick. I feel detached. I only remember pieces of the last week. I know I was present. I couldn't tell you who all was with me, or if any one. I think I should start remembering the things I can and writing them either here or somewhere more private like google docs.

It's been an argument that I've had with my dad. I will feel like I've done chores or done a certain thing every day and I'll take a couple of days because I'm not feeling well. In the past, I have felt like it was unfair, but I may not be remembering things accurately. What if it has been a weeks since I did the dishes? What if I really haven't taken a shower in 4 days. I feel like I wrote last week, and yet it's been awhile. I went to a family member's house, and I was there for 4 hours, but I couldn't remember everything we talked about.

Why do I feel more detached the more present I try to be?

If you are living in an unstable, stressful environment, it's a normal defense/protection mechanism to try to "run away from it" by dissociating/being less present.

The stabilization phase can take a lot of time. Easy does it. One thing at a time. It's okay if it takes time. Try to find things that helps you feel safe here and now, it helps to stay in the present. Who would want to stay in the present when the present is painful? Try to make it safe and pleasant. It helps a lot.

Thank you!

Ashe (Host)

Proud of our system today. We went on a stressful trip, and it went well. I always feel overwhelmed after coming home from that. I feel so behind in the things I need to do.

5/25

Ashe (Host) [Phoenix?]

Is it normal for a family to remember things very differently? My mother has PTSD, and my father does not have any diagnoses. I don't think he has ever gone to therapy. I have gone to therapy several different times, but I have never had a good therapist.

This would likely have been more Phoenix then me. My understanding of the times back then, is that I was going through a lot. We informed the therapist at the time that we had a tendency to exaggerate in writing, but that was just a cover for the fact that we feel emotions really hard. Especially in teenage years, emotions would hit us like tsunami's. It must be interesting and painful to feel emotions like this. Now, they are muted. Stifled. Almost like I don't feel our emotions the same way as other alters do.

1. phoenix said the therapist told dad it was an act of defiance to not meet my father's gaze. My mom denied this happened.

2. The group session was held after our parents read a private journal which stated my parents were abusing me. Mom claimed they were ready to pack me up and send me to my abusive biological father. [Not what I remember. I remember her using my words to twist them to something they weren't]

3. Therapy ended because they recognized the therapist was a bad therapist. [They complained about the costs of gas back and forth, I was angry with therapist for her diagnosis and her lying to our parents so I told them I didn't need her anymore]

I know they tell me what I'm thinking, and say I'm 'easy to read' when they are wrong most of the time. Could this be my parents projecting their own beliefs and issues on me since I never told them how I was really feeling?

Also marks another time we were apparently threatened to be sent back.

People who are dissociated tend to remember things in a way that is kinda crooked. I'm not meaning only you, but also your PTSD mother - she might have more dissociation than just PTSD.

Our memories are tainted by our emotions. If we go throught something that makes us feel big emotions, we can remember the event as bigger (more happy, more scary...) than it objectively was. And the other way around: if something did NOT give us any emotions, it will be remembered "toned down".

Moreover, dissociated persons can have protection mechanisms such as amnesia or denial or even "negative hallucinations" (believing strong as steel that something traumatic was "completely fine and normal").

To top it all, there are psychological abusive manipulation techniques called "gaslighting" which means the abuser denies the feelings or memories of the victim in order to confuse and manipulate them. Often, abusers do not remember "abusing" their victim, either they think the victim "deserved" the abuse, or that what they did was completely fine and unabusive.

All of this can lead to abusive parents recalling memories in a very different way from their abused children.

I know what I remember. If I remember things one way, there is a reason, at the very least because it was so traumatizing for me that things are remembred in a very dark tone. The axe can forget but it does not mean the tree is still standing, if you allow me the metaphor.

Ashe (Host) [not sure]

Hey. I really don't think my parents are abusive. I think they don't understand how my brain works. This coupled with the fact that our mother was undiagnosed through our early years and has a very fragile mindset makes it hard to talk to her about anything.

[Growing up we never told them how we were feeling because they never understood anyway] Our biological father was abusive, but we don't talk to him.

I think a lot of the suppressed emotions have come from the feeling I needed to protect my mom because she went through Hell to get where she is, but now that I'm an adult it's translated into my parents not knowing who I am, and unhealthy coping mechanisms. I also think my facial expressions don't match what I am thinking, so there are a lot of misunderstandings about 'attitude'.

Having said this, I feel like abuse is something done on purpose. I can't really call my mom's symptoms as abusive because it would kill her if she ever knew anything she did hurt me or my siblings, but when triggered she could say things she doesn't mean that can have lasting effects. She's compared us and our actions to her abusers in the past, told me I was a compulsive liar at two, and said horrible things otherwise while in a triggered state. She then calms down and gives us things almost as if she is guilty but doesn't really remember what she said. (or at least not that I can notice.) It's one of the reasons I've decided despite our fear to start writing things down. Because other than basic feelings we don't really remember the specifics of what happens.

Having said this I don't really know. Can we remember things worse than they were? Can things feel overexaggerated to us? It's just hard. I can't rely on her to validate how I was feeling back then because they have no clue what I was feeling because I didn't tell them. That and her own diagnosis (which she was actually diagnosed with PTSD and DID, but she doesn't really talk about our fully believe that diagnosis) makes her not a hundred percent reliable on certain stuff. I would think my father (stepdad) does, but he agrees with her about everything. His entire world revolves around her, and I'm so happy he is there for her. His memory is also not the best. Sometimes my siblings memories match with mine, other times they have different accounts of things. A lot of the time they will tell stories I have absolutely no memory of. I'm the oldest.

It's hard. When I can't trust my own memories and everyone seems to remember things differently how do I figure out the truth of it?

The most helpful thing writing and learning about DID and ptsd has done for me so far is understanding triggers. I'm having an easier time when I'm not dissociating recognizing when my mother is triggered. It's easier to not take things she says personally, but it does have me worried. She can often be triggered without even knowing or realizing she is. I've heard her tell me I'm abusing her and I'm a master manipulator when I have no idea what she is talking about and I literally wrap a majority of my day around her needs. How many other people has she done this too in her adult life. Did she cut someone out of her life because she projected abuse from her past on to them too?

My entire life is dictated by what my mother can handle. I moved out and was still at her house everyday. I moved back in. I can't go on trips without stressing her out. Even going to a dr out of town is stressful because 'we don't know about the world' because we didn't go through her childhood and lived very sheltered childhoods. Every friend I have ever brought home or even talked about my parents didn't like. They jump to the worst case scenarios for everything. I work my daily routines around them. I walk on egg shells for her. It just sucks.

Having said that, I know she can't help it. I love her. She needs help just doing daily things, but where do I draw the line? The more I realize about myself the harder it is to function daily. How does it work with multiple people with mental issues in the same house? Sometimes I just have to get my thoughts out on paper so I can feel better, you know?

Congratulations I think you are on the autism spectrum. Do not hesitate to double check of course, because dissociation can give autism-like traits without being actually autistic.

I know that everything trauma and abuse is tricky to talk about. Parents who know nothing about how their child work, can have the best intentions in the world and still traumatize their children without realizing it. The parents can remember things as everyday and normal and happy, while the traumatized child remembers a nightmarish childhood. Because it is what the child experienced: traumatizing nightmare. Even if the parent had the best intentions in the world.

As an example, when the child needs to be the parent of their parent, it IS traumatizing for the brain. Even though everybody involved is merely doing their best to survive.

Your mother can have undiagnosed issues which are traumatizing for a child to face, and it is not your mother's fault and it is not yours. (Though it is her responsibility to take care of herself and make sure her own issues do not impact others around her. Not a fault but a responsibility. There is a nuance here.)

The "truth" of memories is a very tricky thing. I have experienced for myself that the more I heal my traumas, the more my memories match the objective truth and the less they are tainted by emotions. Until I reach a point where I know I remember things the way they happened, and my gaslighting / manupulative / in denial parents are the ones in the wrong. On the contrary, when I discuss with my girlfriend (also DID) and we both remember something different about something we experience together, we both know that any one of us or even both of us, can be mixing a few memories together, and we shrug it off and laugh about it (unless we absolutely need to figure out what objectively happened, there we try to fish out other ways of figuring things out such as, text messages archives etc.)

I can relate to being called abusive and manipulative by a triggered parent. The parent does not realize there is a difference between a child being a child and having child needs - and the past abuse they experienced. So the parent turns abusive towards the child, not in an "I want to hurt you" way but in an "I want to protect myself from the memories you trigger in me" way. Still not healthy and still traumatizing for the child though. But there is no ill intention, just trauma repeating itself. (This is also called "transgenerational trauma")

When the child's life is dictated by the parent's traumas and their triggers, the child is traumatized by it. Not the child's fault, not the parent's (though it is the parent's responsibility to heal their own traumas and do their best not to pass it down to the child).

Moreover, loving your parents is not a good indicator to know if they hurt you or not (willingly or by accident, ignorance, or as the consequences of their own traumas). When I was dependent of my parents, I used to love them to bits - because else how could have I survived their sadism, transgenerational trauma, and ignorance of how to care for an autistic and ADHD child? Part of me was aware of how bad they made me suffer (does not matter if they did so willingly or by mistake), another part of me was denying it all and loving them because my survival depended on it.

It is very difficult to see that both sides of the relationship were true at the same time. My parents hurt me because of their own, unresolved issues, because of their ignorance, because of a fudgeton of reasons. And I hated them for hurting me, and loved them for caring for me. And that's how DID started. I could not at the same time hate their mistakes (and sadistic abuses, coz in the case of my mother, she was also a sadist, but it does not mean everything she did was sadistic, there is a lot of her own traumas in the mix too) and love the fact that they kept me alive. A child's brain is not mature enough to experience both at the same time. So, poof, here comes dissociation to helps dealing with the confusing situation.

It's tough to learn as an adult everything we needed to learn to do as a child, but could not learn because the parents' traumas taught us something completely different from what we need as an adult.

I love the exercises from the book "Coping with trauma related dissociation" to help build self confidence and everyday abilities to deal with things.

I hope I was better able to explain what I meant in my previous post.