How are you today thread (trigger warning)

Thanks, Marcella. We're glad that you and your others are doing well and getting back to creative things. We're a bit tired now and don't have much more to say, but we hope that your writing goes well.

MDs

Thank you, MD's.

We have been editing our website, mostly correcting and slightly expanding our glossary. Still not sure what to write about ... maybe communication? a list of meds that mess with DID? (We would need to ask the forum for help there.) Although, I'm afraid the latter might be used by mean alters who want to "get rid of" their fellow alters. I hate when people do that. I'd really mean it for people to learn which drugs to stay away from. Should I even risk it?

We got our new tablet today. I'm posting with it right now! This is so much easier than using our phone, although it's just as portable. It comes with this cool little pen that magnetically sticks to the side. We bought the same brand as our last one, which meant we could transfer the data from the old one to the new one easily. I forgot how many pictures of our alters we made on the old tablet. Ooh, it has a much bigger screen, too!

Tank (one of our alters) worked on some trauma today (and yesterday) and made a lot of progress. I think he should be lauded for that. It was not easy for him. Good job, buddy!

- Marcella

Good job Tank! You did well!

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All of us.

Thanks so much, all of you! It was hard because it was experosure therapy. I'm afraid I may have to do it again, too, because the effects may be wearing off. I'm surprised it worked at all. Usually exposure therapy does nothing for us but trigger anxiety. I'm actually doing better!

- Tank

One of my abusers is visiting us at our house right now. Yay ... Two of my alters are hiding from her. Anyway, she's here because she is family and Mom doesn't know she used to abuse us. We can't tell Mom for a number of reasons, so we just have to endure this.

One reason why we can't blab is because we seriously believe that this person has DID and we do not know if she/they are aware of it. (We know the person who abused us said her name was something other than her legal name, anyway. She did not behave the same as the host, nor did she do things the host would do. We also had a brief conversation with this alter about our systems some years back. This was part of the trauma we recently dredged up.) Mom could not even keep our DID a secret, so we can't trust her with this knowledge, either.

I DO love this person and I'm very afraid for her if she finds out about her DID, how that may affect her life. I don't know. She has a child who is having a lot of issues right now so I don't think now is the best time in her life to learn she has a major mental illness ... or that she has an alter that did horrible things in the past. She loves us, too. In fact ... she will likely come to our room for a hug before she leaves. I hope that goes well. I know one of my hiding alters expressed the will to hurt her ... not sure if he really would, but still ... that possibility bothers me. ... He just promised he won't hurt the other person's host. We keep our promises in this system, so I feel better about the good-bye hug.

Stay safe, all of you.

- Marcella

Tank posting, just because I want to.

So the visit from the old abuser went well. She asked us if we wanted a hug before she left, which surprised us, but it was very nice of her to do that. Someone in the system (in our mind) said "yes" to that question, so we hugged her without incident.

In other news, I'm experiencing a relapse. I think other alters may be triggering it, but I don't know. Io has been struggling with his trauma and has now split off a couple more alters, so we have gone from 30 up to 32 alters in two days. Don't get me wrong, we love Terry and Gary, and I especially like that they are littles. It's just that the memories they have are similar to the ones I have in ways and their struggle may be hindering my success, I don't know ...

That's all for now. Be well.

- Tank

A lot of heavy things happened!

It is always complicated to confront abusers. Especially if they are themselves dissociative. At least two of our abusers were clearly DID, aware of most of the symptoms, and in deep denial. But, THEIR DID is THEIR issue to deal with. We offered hints about therapy plans, they did not pick up, their problem now.

I am not sure that what you experience is a "relapse"? More like a "surprise, the system assumes we are able to deal with that part of the trauma now, let's dig it out!" Or maybe it was triggered by interacting with the past abuser? Maybe some parts are OK interacting with her now, and others have not yet "digested" (psychological term for that is "trauma integration" in case you wanna look up stuff through Google) what happened and feel betrayed?

Good luck sorting it all out and finding what helps getting the peace back and "digesting" the events! It's never fun to solve one issue and discover that, surprise, there is another one hidden behind! AND ANOTHER ONE BEHIND THE SECOND ONE!

But, you can do it! You have achieved a lot, you can keep going! Yay for you!

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The G/Hosts.

Thank you for your feedback.

Whoa, two of your abusers have DID? BOTH of my abusers had DID, too! One is dead, though, so no worries about him and his system anymore. Just what the alters did to us ...

"Relapse" means he got better, then he got worse than he was before. Hard to explain how or why. Basically, his inner-world body reflects the trauma. His body became a normal male body when he seemed to get better, then became even more abnormal than before. Feeling so sorry for him because he is self-concious.

We helped an alter that recently split off and he fused back into Io again. Now I have three alters to work with because two more split off, too. I'm afraid they will keep splitting faster than I can work with them and we'll have a huge system again. I'll try to get in more trauma work today. We'll see how this goes.

- Marcella

Marcella@Truly_happy wrote:Whoa, two of your abusers have DID? BOTH of my abusers had DID, too! One is dead, though, so no worries about him and his system anymore. Just what the alters did to us ...

I guess it is the phenomenon that "10% of victims become abusers and 90% of abusers were previously victims". (Do not trust my numbers as being the exact ones; if you want to know the exact estimations according to different sources, do not hesitate to double-check!) Victims become rarely abusers, but abusers rarely start abusing others out of the blue. (With the exception of systemic abuse such as racism or homophobia, because these are taught. They do not appear out of the blue and they are not pattern repetition either.)

After all, our family abuse stems from a history of abuse. Pattern repetition, once again. I am unsure how dissociative they were though because they did not show any explicit symptoms.

Marcella@Truly_happy wrote:"Relapse" means he got better, then he got worse than he was before.

This "relapse" happened to us a few times, then we realized, we were not "becoming worse than before". We were "coming into contact again with traumatic material we had forgotten about". Which means we were technically becoming "better" because the dissociative amnesia was easing up, even though it hurt.

I hope I helped clarify what we meant.

Marcella@Truly_happy wrote:I'll try to get in more trauma work today. We'll see how this goes.

Good luck and a lot of support.
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This being said, reading "The Haunted Self" is some sort of signal for traumatized parts to stop dissociating some of their traumas and sharing them a little bit. Yesterday evening, some sensations in the throat due to pollen allergy (nothing serious, just the throat being itchy from the nose running backwards; it was NOT the throat closing from allergy) lead to Reyna being triggered into relieving some very specific aspect of an event that she retains in a traumatic way.

I did my best to comfort her, aknowledge her emotions, welcome them, tell her the emotions were legitimate even though other in the system have different emotions about the same thing (conflicting emotions can co-exist) and encourage her to anchor to the here and now, where she is safe and the bad things will never happen again.

The night was a bit difficult but we ended up getting a share amount of sleep and absolutely no nightmare. It was a pleasant surprise.

This is one of the nice aspects of DID: being dissociative enough as to be able to provide help to the traumatized alters without getting submerged by their distress. Of course, a professional therapist will do better - but caring for each-others by mimicking the therapist, is the next best thing. (The sad aspect is that the whole drill is needed in the first place).

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Isaïa

Thank you, Isaïa. What you said made sense and is helful indeed.

Tank has trauma that has mostly been processed but a lot of it has not. Many of the memories are like hundreds of repeats of the same thing happening to us again and again. I think way back when we first encountered it, we thought we could take on that trauma in one fell swoop and be done with it, but we were wrong. He can hold his normal body shape when he thinks about it but not when we is distracted by the outside world, which he is most of the time. Not sure how we're going to proceed. At least we talk to the therapist today.

The four people who split off have fused again since we processed their trauma. Back down to 30, but I am not sure if people are still hiding. I'm afraid to search, in case there is more unprocessed trauma out there. I don't want to mess with any more trauma until Io and Tank's are under control.

- Marcella