Little and animals. **Trigger**

I took some time away from the focus of DID. I watched some of a show I love called How I met your mother and calmed down. Now a new problem has arisen, though. I'm ashamed to even post this, but it concerns me.

I feel the little girl, Lulu. Now I keep picking up my cat and the dogs and holding them too tight and won't let them go. (I used to do this as a child. I had a problem with accidentally killing baby chickens by squeezing them too tight.)

The main issue is that I feel this HORRIBLE urge from her to want to hurt them and scare them a bit. She seems to really like them, but this urge is there for some reason. I don't recall wanting to hurt them as a child. She seems very overwhelmed by their cuteness and has the urge to squeeze them, smother them, scare, and hit them. She doesn't seem to have malicious intent, though...This is so confusing....

Would a stuffed animal help?

Sometimes younger alters can get confused on how to express themselves or treat others or animals depending on what they've experienced, what they've been taught, if they're triggered in some way, etc.

I don't think Lulu has malicious intent, but perhaps she simply wants to "love" too much or too "hard"? Perhaps she can be shown/taught how to be gentle and such? Or maybe she was shown/taught to express love through being hurtful or something? Maybe you can help guide her to be gentle and such?


Best of luck with this.


-Cassandra

Wow, does your post ring familiar. Some of this behavior or emotion may also be a playing out of what happened to you. When our body was 9, Dan did something similar with a little black dog. Unlike other events where I lost time, I always did recall this event as a set of snapshots, and thought it was something that I must have done. But it was one of those memories that was vague and just never made any sense to me. It didn't seem like something I would do.

A puppy from the neighborhood kept coming up to us. I'm sure I and maybe some other alters treated him the way a regular kid would, petting him and hugging him. But there were things going on in the life that were confusing. One of them was that I, the host, kept walking into situations where the father abused us. Jack took over for that abuse and his rage at me and in general was painful and unacceptable to him. We were dissociated and I couldn't see coming what Jack could from inside, but it wasn't like we could have stopped the father.

Daniel arrived, in part, to take over that rage. Dan was drawn to the puppy but was also infuriated by its innocence. I seem to recall some squeezing but I don't think he hurt it badly. He did put it into an open barrel in the garage for what I recall as three days. An afternoon makes more sense since the parents or someone surely would have heard him. He poked a stick at it as "punishment" for being stupid. We kept leaving and coming back. The puppy always seemed happy to see us and that, I think, made him madder. At some point, I took over, took him out of the barrel, fed and petted him. I do remember setting him on his way and he didn't seem mad at me/us at all.

I would definitely try to talk to Lulu and I'd be as nonjudgmental as possible. Little children, like Lulu and Dan, can get confused when their models for behavior are poor. I would try to give her a chance to change her behavior. Like Dan, she seems conflicted about what to do. I'd give her a chance to pick the nice alternative, if possible.

Hornet339 wrote:The main issue is that I feel this HORRIBLE urge from her to want to hurt them and scare them a bit. She seems to really like them, but this urge is there for some reason

Wanting to hurt them and scare them a bit might be her needing to feel some power over something vulnerable, like she was, a replication of how she felt, perhaps? I say this because we have that dynamic in the system. It's not being malicious as you say, it's a communication of sorts, perhaps she wants to show you how things felt for her.

-B

My Danny has a near constant urge to hurt animals, because that is what he was taught. What we've found useful is giving him entertainment outlets like certain movies and such that have bloody scenes in them.We also have started teaching him that you are gentle with good animals, and he's learning pretty fast to be nice to our cats.

Maybe you should try talking to her and say if she wants to do that, she should only do it to a stuffed animal? Communication might be slow but it will help.