Trying to "listen in" more & notice triggers

Lately I've been trying to "listen in" more often, which for me means paying attention to the first reaction things that usually happen in the "back" of my mind, like the first initial feeling I get, even if it doesn't "stay", or the first response I hear, things like that. I usually try to focus on the first response, emotional or verbal (inside), because I've noticed that usually the first response is uncontrolled or blurted due to it being the strongest reaction, and because for me, if I can catch and focus on the first response, it makes it easier to notice/listen to other responses as well.

I've been working on doing this more often for a number of reasons.

1) I'm trying to learn more about what/how my alters feel/think (especially the "new" ones), and thus learn more about how I feel/think, as well as why such reactions happen.

2) I've been having a hard time with emotions that seem to have no clear reason for being there, or reactions that have no clear reason for being the way they are, so I'm trying to find clues as to why these emotions and reactions might be there and be happening.

3) I'm trying to see if there's any triggers for alters that I'm missing or don't know about.


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Just a little bit ago, while I was "listening in", I head a voice in the back of my head say, "This place is cold. Just like daddy's house." And that was immediately followed by a feeling of confusion and anxiousness that would've otherwise seem to come out of nowhere for me. (To explain, we keep the heat off and rely on little space heaters, fires in the fireplace, and wearing layers to keep warm so we don't have huge heating bills during the winter. And usually during the day, as much is kept off as possible, lights, heaters, etc., so it's kinda chilly without a sweater or something). I began to walk about the apartment for a bit, trying to "listen in" to anything else that might pop up, especially possible triggers I was unaware of. Here's what I've found so far:


*Possible Trigger Warning*


-- Being cold inside a place like our apartment is triggering to at least one alter. It causes someone to get confused, wondering if we're at our old house, or why our house looks different, and causes anxiousness as well, wondering where dad is, wondering where they are if this isn't our house, and wondering why we're not at our old house.

-- We have a thing on the inside of our toilet bowl that's supposed to help keep it smelling clean and such. But the clean, chemical-y smell reminds someone of how it would smell when we'd help our mom clean the childcare room she worked at, and when we'd go with our mom to her job cleaning (real estate) houses to be rented/sold. The smell causes confusion for someone, wondering why the smell is there but the usual environment and mom is not.

-- We have a textured ceiling in our apartment (it has like, tiny balls of foam or whatever stuck all over it for decoration), and it looks exactly like the ceiling that was in our old house. This causes confusion and anxiousness for at least one alter.

*I keep saying "at least one alter" because I don't know who's having these feelings/thoughts and I don't know who is making comments about things either (when comments are made).*

-- We have a futon that holds both good and bad memories, unfortunately. For the most part, we don't want to get rid of it, and it's needed by the other roommates in the apartment to be a futon and be in the living room and such, but sometimes I can feel that at least one alter wishes to get rid of it and never see it again.

-- At least one alter does not feel safe leaving the room unless we are home alone. This is most likely because if we weren't home alone, that meant dad was home, and we usually tried to stay in our room (or he would stay in his room and we'd have the living room) as much as possible to stay out of each other's ways.

-- At least one alter is afraid? (don't know if that's exactly the right word I'm looking for, but it's close enough I think) to do anything alone or be left alone at all, and they will wait to do things, including getting up/ready for the day, until my boyfriend Mike is home and we are not alone.



As I found these things out, I was thinking, "No wonder it's been so hard for me to do anything lately. It seems at least someone is being triggered by something most, if not all, the time!" Hopefully now that I've learned these things and am aware of them, we can start working on them.


-Cassandra

Wow! You found out a lot! I may have to try this because it seems to have been really helpful for you. I'm glad you became more of aware of your feelings and triggers. Though it is unfortunate that someone is triggered nearly every minute. At least now you're aware of it though.

I'm happy you were so successful! I hope you keep on finding out more

Thank you! Yes, it definitely does suck to learn that someone's being triggered almost all the time, but at least now that I know about it, we can start addressing it and working on it.

I've found that "listening in" has helped me with a lot of things, especially realizing things like why I react a certain way. It can be hard to catch, hold on to, and focus on that first initial response, especially since with me it's often fleeting, but when I am able to identify that first response, it usually helps me either learn something important, realize something important, or notice something important about the situation, the environment, myself/an alter, or how an alter (and thus myself, essentially) is feeling.

I hope you're able to work on "listening in" and that it helps you!


-Cassandra

Thank you! I'll keep all of that mind! I had to actually learn emotions by charts my therapist gave me. So I may have to pull them out again and use them so I can be accurate! I'm looking forward to trying this out I think it's going to be extremely helpful!

-Rachael

This is great!!!

Thank you!


-Cassandra

I knew this was a trigger for Rain, but I didn't realize how big of one it was until last night.


*Trigger Warning, talk of babies, motherhood, mentions of abortion, talk of depression, mention of a r*pist*

We've had two abortions in our life. The first was a definite necessity, it was most likely that the father was our r*pist, and we were too young to have a child (especially to ourselves, we were 17). Not only that, but we would've been disowned by our father if he had found out, and at the time, we had no other place to go.

The second abortion was also a necessity, but not as much as the first one. We were still too young for ourselves (we were 20), we had no way to give the baby a good and stable life, it was an accident (missed the pill one day), we were not able to go through with adoption (know too many people with bad experiences and we don't think we'd be able to give our baby away after having it), and we were very unhealthy at the time as well (smoking more cigarettes, eating unhealthily since we were more poor and struggling more back then (yet we were working- explain that one. Duh, we were living on our own. Oh yeah), and yeah, we just weren't ready to have a child, nor was our body. The father, though, was our current boyfriend Mike, and Rain was devastated that it was, despite how she felt and what she wanted, illogical to keep it.


Last night I went to hang out with a friend, Em, who had gotten pregnant shortly after we had our second abortion. She chose to have her child (and is now struggling to be a single mother and give her baby a good life). There was a friend of Em's there as well, who also had a child, though younger than Em's was. Seeing the two babies made most of us glad about our choices, hearing about the expenses, the struggles, the annoyances, and experiences some of their baby's fussy-ness. All of us know that we made the right choices for us, as we would not be able to handle that right now, and we are much happier that if we do have children, it will be at a time when we are stable, when we are able to give our child a stable and healthy life, and when we will be able to give them a good life as well. But despite knowing that we made the right choices for ourselves, watching their kids, looking at Em's kid, and listening to Em say things like "I'm so happy I chose to have her", was killing Rain. I felt her leave her room on the first level, and go deep down onto the second level, far away from everything, hoping that she wouldn't see or hear anything anymore. I felt horrible, but there wasn't much I could do, and I can't exactly ask Em and her friend to not have their kids around since 1, they don't have a place to go and I know they can't afford babysitters and 2, I can't exactly tell them, "so just by the way, an alter of mine is triggered by your kid", and 3, I was trying to help Rain by focusing on why our decisions were best and how they indeed were best for us/our situation.


After we left to go back home, Rain came back up on the first level with Marie, Marie took Lynn for the night (and I think still has her now), and Rain stayed locked in her room last night (and apparently was crying all night as well). Today, Rain has at least been out of her room, but right now she's back in it, and I think Marie's going to keep Lynn until Rain asks for her back (Rain takes care of Lynn and is Lynn's "main caretaker", but Lynn also triggers Rain when she's sensitive to babies and such, so sometimes Rain can't handle taking care of her after being triggered).


This has been an issue before, Rain getting triggered and getting depressed over our second baby not being kept and such, but I have no idea how to help her with it... I suspect she needs to mourn and grieve, but I don't know if I just let her do that on her own or if I should help her somehow or what... I'm pretty sure we all have grieving problems (we still need to work on grieving for our mom), so I have no idea if Rain can work through this herself or not, and even if she could work through it herself, I'd like to help her if I could, but I'm clueless... The only thing I can think of is to not have her around if/when I seem Em (if it's at her place/she has her kid), and help her "stay inside" when around other kids for the most part as well, but I think after a certain point that become avoidance, so I don't know where to go from there...


At least I know now that this is still a huge trigger, and how much it affects Rain so that I can be more careful in the future, I guess...


-Cassandra

I unfortunately don't have any experience in this area but I found some sites that may be helpful to you. Rain might be suffering from PASS (Post Abortion Stress Syndrome). It's controversial about whether or not it's real but I personally believe that it is.

This website has a lot of information and resources
http://www.afterabortion.com/faq.html

This website is for Project Rachael (Catholic Based) it has a lot of stories of other women who have experienced this
http://hopeafterabortion.com/?page_id=216

This one is a short article on abortion grief and the recovery process
http://psychcentral.com/lib/2011/unders ... y-process/

I hope these help and Rain feels better soon. Best of luck to you guys!

Thank you so much! I'll definitely be taking a look at those!

(I've heard of Post Abortion Depression, or something like that, and I'm pretty sure Rain has it. I haven't heard of Post Abortion Stress Syndrome, but if it's similar to what I've briefly heard/read about before, then it wouldn't surprise me if Rain had it, and I can certainly see a condition like that being real).

-Cassandra

Thank you for sharing. This listening is actually a very good idea. Especially because you seem to have (had?) similar issues with staying in the room all day long and addiction.

I know it's an old question/thread, but maybe it helps to just ask Rain how to help? (Maybe it's irrelevant, idk, with all the things that are going on now).