How to deal with Suicidal Alter *TW*

We have a suicidal alter that cannot stand for us to hear anything positive about ourselves or for us to think positive thoughts. It is making therapy really difficult for us. Tuesday after our session it was so angry about our T talking about our improvement and how well we had done on a recent trip that it hurt our body. It will try to yell over the T when she is talking to us.

We told our T about it and on Thursday the session was really strange because the T was trying so hard to not trigger this alter. The T thinks we need to re-name this alter because we call it "It" or "Doom & Gloom". It is an exiled part and lives separate from the system. How else have you all found to work with these very scary alters?

Thanks

Amy et al

Hi Amy et al

I can only tell you what has worked for us. We have journals. A private online one at livejournal.com, and a regular handwritten one. Everyone is encouraged to express their thoughts, concerns, happy, sad, mad, etc., in these journals.

Our angry and aggressive part, whenever she is on a rampage and wanting to do harmful things, it usually means there's something on her mind that she needs to talk about. Once she feels like she's been listened to she calms down again.

I hope you can find something that works for you too.

Katarina forgot to add that if it came to it, I would be able to step in and restrain this part from doing any real damage. Journaling or no journaling. This is how it works with us. - Strength

Sorry for the double post.

Amy, here is a topic I found that explains the journaling much better than I can. And it also offers alternative ways of having everyone express themselves. Art, drawing, or even out loud.

dissociative-identity/topic131183.html

I hope it helps,

Katarina

I (the host) try to keep a journal/be creative in other ways (like drawing) to let myself and other alters express themselves. When an alter is angry I encourage him/her to write it down. It's like he/she is yelling at me, but writing it down (usually there's some alter who "messed up").

I hope this is at least a little help for you. I've found talking to people I trust about this "dark" alter (or whatever I should call it, the alter who is affecting us in a bad way, I hope I explained it good enough) helpful, too. Letting the alter who's feeling these strong and (often) negative emotions is good to let out as well, to let him/her show to someone what they're feeling.

We're trying hard within our system to make sure that all alters are being listened to and cared for no matter what they're like, but of course it's hard sometimes (like when someone gets angry with Another one). Sorry for writing such a long post, I guess I'm a bit off the topic now, rambling on about our system (sorry)... Well, I hope you found some help in what I wrote! If there's anything you're wondering feel free to write here again and I'll check the thread every now and then to see if I have anything helpful to contribute with.

Good luck!

Thanks Katarina and Little. We do have a journal we all use and some of us love drawing and painting. Our T even allows all of us to email her if we need to. But, we have tried having D&G journal or draw but all It did was write mean things on the body. Today It communicated with us for the first time in a non-negative way when we were looking at possible names. Maybe that is a start. The host is really scared of working with It because It says It hates her.

Does anyone have any experience with making a safety plan so that we can make sure we are all safe?

Amy et al