triggered by your own body?

*** possible triggers, discussion of the body ***

I've been used to the behavior of virtually everyone avoiding looking in the mirror. As soon as Luke arrived, the others made sure to warn him not to look in the mirror. I'm used to the littles not wanting to touch certain parts of the body. Showering for whoever is out is pretty tough because the alter has to avoid looking down and you have to touch your body to effectively wash it. So the body can kind of stumble around going through machinations in order to avoid seeing in any way the body we have. I'm realizing more and more that many of us are just triggered by everything about the body. We were abused by at least four different adult men and the body is adult male. Adult male bodies are bad and scary. Some are basically comfortable with being an adult male, like Aaron or Jonathan, but Jonathan still has a problem with mirrors in that the body doesn't match what he expects to see. I'm really at a loss as to what to do about this. Clearly part of this all is that the body is older than anyone except Marc-Dominic and Sphinx, maybe Aaron, want us to be. The shock of Jack accidentally looking in the mirror once puts fear into everyone, including me somehow (to protect them?). But it's also that an adult male body itself is triggering and I just don't know how to get around it. I mean, we can't get a new body.

*** end trigger **

We don't have any female alters so our issue here is not about a gender mismatch, though I would think that would be tough or tougher to deal with. It just makes me very sad and I'm at a loss for how to move beyond this. Obviously, lots of therapy focused on the abuse that causes this is needed.

We definitely relate to this.

Showering is a nightmare. Mixing our OCD with having to actually see our body is just.. too much. We're not comfortable with the body at all and many of us are scared by it. We are triggered by young adults, and we are just that - so I'm not overly surprised that the age I am now is of the more triggering in terms of the body.

What we have done is the same as with any other trigger: work on the basis (trauma) of it and do exposure. It's taken quite a while but we can now shower without too much fear, though a deep sense of being uncomfortable, wrong and a general feel of muted fear. This is a lot better than the panic we used to have, especially when we had a mirror on the wall that made us see ourselves while showering.

I hope you figure this out. Best of luck & thinking of you all.

(Also, congratulations on the newcomer - I don't think I've heard of him yet )

We have issues with the gender difference, but your experiences are something that are very relatable to us.

I wrote this blog entry about discovering Luke this week. The fact that they warned him so quickly about mirrors and that he listened really brought this issue into focus. I get that the age and body size don't fit, there's lot of confusion about that. We are about average height so walking past most adults, half of whom are shorter, surprises the littles a lot. A super tall guy walked past Max yesterday and he seemed to feel really good, like, yes, I'm supposed to be this small. Then he was out in the grocery store and got spoken to so he had to respond. When the lady called him "sir," he got a silly grin, then giggled about that for a block after leaving the store. So some of the body issues are more lighthearted. But there has been a lot of panic and fear about the body, many emotional meltdowns and crying, as if our own body is the equivalent of that of an abuser and it's just not fair to whoever is in the body. We've never done bad things like that. I myself am triggered by the body but I can't figure out how, or maybe it's their influence?

I guess this isn't that much different from gender issues. What you expect your body to be doesn't match with what you find.

In general, most of us are fine with the body we have, or at least that's been true for a while... Up until we got pregnant. Each of us has had a completely different, and sometimes too strong reaction to it.

Me, Kat, as the host... Even I was really surprised. I literally went into a state of shock and wandered bump and dazed through the rest of my day. I'm not even sure if I switched out and just observed that period of time, but I couldn't even hear any of the others.

Taking a moment to swap out, as Kat and I can do it with relative ease... I, Naurore, took it in stride. Very little ruffles me, and yes, I did mostly take over for the rest of that day. I think having a baby is a good thing in many ways, and knew it was going to happen sooner than later.

Puki only resurfaced again within the past few weeks, her response was, as usual, rather on the silly side. She hadn't even noticed our belly has transformed into a watermelon until the baby actually kicked. At first, she comically spazzed about it being an alien, then a few seconds later realized it was a baby. Now when she comes out, she rather enjoys talking to and playing with our bump.

Yamai isn't interested in commenting. She has accepted the baby grudgingly as a fact of life, and no longer even mentions the idea of abortion, though she did all through the first five months. Mostly, I think she considers the child to be another restriction of sorts and disapproves of it as such.

Aleck/Atsuro had a rather obviously predictable response, being the only clearly defined male of our system. He has always experienced confusion over "his missing parts" when he forwards, though has gotten used to it, and he has a certain admiration for our feminine form, particularly finding our breasts entertaining... But pregnancy is clearly where he draws a line. He has not fronted since the pregnancy began and refuses to front until our body is "back to normal".


So, as you can see, we also have recently had a very great variety of reactions to our own body. For the most part, we either like, or at least accept how we look. I feel overly short when fronting, Puki feels tall, Aleck feels girly and strange... But we all adapt.

looking into the mirror is a torture, but i stare
in the shower or bath my ocd also kicks in, i scratch myself so badly
not recognising it, i think only rosalinda felt good but she is not here now so i am murky and sad, i keep staring and i find nothing that would console me by familiarity

I can so relate to this. I hate looking at our reflection for what feels like millions of reasons. The features are too fluid and it’s mystifying in that i rarely see myself if it, it’s always the expression or manner or energy of someone else, if that makes any sense. i cant ever identify myself in it. There is lots of deep and resounding panic and distaste that will nag long after i see the body. i used to get really nauseous when i saw it… kinda dizzy-like and sometimes id be sick for it. The body belongs to all of us and none of us and seeing it really emphasizes that.. For the kids it's too big and that's bizarre, it has curves where they dont and all that, and bodily experiences that kid bodies dont have, so they struggle with it. For some i think the face is worse because it's just so wrong. And the wrongness is felt by all of us. Somedays we should be darker, paler, freckled, tattooed, pierced, the eyes are the wrong size, shape, color, and full of alien emotions, the height is taller or shorter than it should be, the limbs are too weak or too strong or too big or too clumsy, the hair is the wrong shade, texture, style, legnth, and the bone structure itself is this template of someone who doesn’t exist... it adapts to who is present but still feels very unreal and frightening and unknown… we never know what we will see if we look upon it and it's this endless chimera of mismatch.

and then in a trauma sense… it's a whole different thing of terribleness. Like the womanly way of it is scary and reminds of certain abusers, and for Ell being a woman instead of a child is this very wrong and awful thing itself, a thing to be discarded and hated, so they struggle with it. the face looks sorta like the mother, which is scary, and sometimes the resemblance is confused for actually being her, even just for a second its disconcerting. There are the scars and other markings that are from the abuse itself, obvious tokens of it, and they really freak me and some others out, especially the household kids... but then Ell and the Ells love these markings because they are like trophies of these experiences they had which to them were beautiful and spiritual and stuff. And then there is the gender factor. The monthly curse really drives Demian nuts because it’s a reminder that he is in fact inside a female body but it’s not as bad as when we were pregnant and nowhere near as bad as being in labor when there was blinding pain in a place that for him shouldn’t exist. That was his most traumatizing outside experience ever… So there are lots of emotions and fears and PTSD things, and the body becomes a terrain full of landmines.

i dont have any advice but im right there with you and i hope we find a way to be happy in this canvas we are forever strangers upon.
seeya, cleo

I find that sometimes Id like to escape the body-

I ve come to terms that I have breasts and started to like them.

But some experiences. At times I can t get air. At tims I fall down. It makse me feel as if i can t trust my own body.

As for washin and clothin that goes fine. I m thnkin how you ould make that easier?
I find showerin less dificult then a bath. In the shower you can close your eyes and let the soap wash away without too much washin moements.

Not sure how helpful that was?

Love

Nina11

dont think there is trauma associated with the body, but the uncomfortable to the point of causing problems, the obsessive avoidance of mirrors - this is common with us as well.

for myself, i do work with mirrors rather frequently, as i am the one who wears make up. my makeup is my way of putting something familiar in my reflection. and its fine in such high detail - i knopw the shape of the eyes, and which parts are odd,but just looking at one eye and focusing on where to put makeup to make it look more like me is fine. the lips, etc. my problem is looking at the whole thing. i get both disgusted and pissed off - disgusted because its unnatural - not me. pissed off because for all the effort i put in, i cant change the basic features that make everything look so wrong - the bone structure, the body shape, etc. and yet the only one who feels comfortable with the body - jess - has rather large problems with showers, so im the one who has to suck it up and take them - all of them.

janice is here as well - she says that for her, she refuses to look in the mirror at all because it freaks her out to not see herself. she starts feeling switchy and it starts up the denial $#%^. she doesnt mind changing clothes or anything, and she can look down at the body itself and zone out enough to get a task finished, but its unpleasant. james cant stand the body at all. he goes through major denial when hes out, taking much time and effort to convince himself that he looks like himself. janice has to keep an eye on him when hes out because if he gets an itch in one of two areas, it will make him extremely pissed off, and if he needs to use the toilet, that falls on janice. he cant take it. hell get pissed and flustered, and intentionally go inside and let someone else come out.

and all of us are wondering who the fuk wants a mirror in their shower? who wants to watch themselves bathe? that seems odd even for a singleton. what kind of person installs a mirror in the shower?

***TRIGGERS***

We do have one problem with the weight gain reminding us of the body of one same-sex abuser, although she was much heavier than us, and it was really subtle abuse, not overt like you've experienced.

We have a hatred of being a female in very many parts, so from that perspective, a lot of things about the body are triggering.

However, we have very little issue with mirrors or showering, because most of the time, we're so depersonalized from the body or something, it's almost like it doesn't belong to us. When I look in the mirror to make it look decent in the morning, I might as well be looking at some sort of dress-up doll. It has about that much meaning to me. I like things looking nice, neat, etc., but not because I'm attached to the body as mine, but just because it's how I like things. Like putting my towels all facing in the same direction when I hang them up. If a little is very far up front, the body being too big is hugely triggering. That is usually a realization with the arms, hands and feet more than anything else.

T had me start paying attention to my body the other day, and it was strangely integrative, and triggered a huge crisis. So, I think maybe the reason the body isn't as triggering as it could be is because I am so disconnected from it to start with...?