Suddenly became aware of the others..

hi vortex!

im pretty new around here but I've been reading through some of the forums for support in my off time. you and your parts' lives' have been so vast and stressful beyond belief, and I cant tell you how nice and oddly empowering it is to see someone struggling so much, and also have accomplished so much.
despite everything, you've done more than I could've even planned for. and that's amazing to me!

i just wanted to let you know that your story helps, and i wish you all the best. you all can accomplish so much, so please take care.

ArbreMonde wrote:Welcome back! Lots seems to have changed and gotten better though you sound like you're under tons of stress still.

Medical transition here too! It helped me integrate and heal a lot of gender-related trauma. I still have a couple surgeries planned this year.

I hope that you will manage to comfort and heal the part of you who contains the anorexia related issues. Good luck with this. Stabilizing food behavior is never easy but you are strong you can do this! Healing the original wound(s) causing it really helps.

As for the sense of self, what helped me was to do a lot of grounding exercises and bring all my parts into the here and now. We now are all connected to the same sense of "me" which is weird and comforting at the same time. I'm "me" but I'm many "me" at the same time but it's the same "me" altogether but in many different shapes and it's very fun and very weird at the same time. A good kind of weird.

Hope you'll find some helpful grounding exercises somewhere.

Once again, welcome back!

ArbreMonde, so nice to see you again! and I'm really glad to hear transition has been so helpful.. I'm hoping that I'm just in a sort of middle ground and that things will improve as time goes on. it does feel like I'm headed in the right direction at least.

and thank you for the suggestions on grounding.. back in my occult days I did more of those exercises but it's been a while. I'll have to look some up. thankfully we've still got a part who's more in tune with that side of things. time to ask for her help again!

ViTheta wrote:Hi...

Transitioning is so helpful to how anyone feels and so glad that you're finding that being on testosterone is helping you feel better. Going on estrogen has helped us (and we've been on it for a long time).

We are so sorry that you are struggling with a lot lately, but we hope that things get better soon.

Take care,
Violette

hi Violette, I love your name. and I'm happy to meet other trans folks here.. somehow it didn't occur to me that I would, which seems silly and an obvious oversight now.

thank you for your kind words <3

meowblaster8 wrote:hi vortex!

im pretty new around here but I've been reading through some of the forums for support in my off time. you and your parts' lives' have been so vast and stressful beyond belief, and I cant tell you how nice and oddly empowering it is to see someone struggling so much, and also have accomplished so much.
despite everything, you've done more than I could've even planned for. and that's amazing to me!

i just wanted to let you know that your story helps, and i wish you all the best. you all can accomplish so much, so please take care.

hi meow, welcome to the forum! it's been ages since I was here regularly but it's always been a place I found safe and supportive.

thanks so much for what you said - it feels good to know someone else might get something out of this journey. makes me want to keep up better here. I hope that you are doing well in your own journey and please don't be a stranger!

.......

so I've been pondering the idea that Void is the one nearest the front lately.. it makes sense, given the confusion/shaved head/food restriction. and I'm relieved to have an explanation for the "no identity" feeling, but it also makes me nervous. Void is usually the prelude to a big host switch with a new part. they came before Keda, then before Rae. I'm afraid of having a new one. because what would they be like?

maybe it would be good, like someone who could do a better job? that's been the case in the past. but it's scary to let go.

plus, I'm trying NOT to be so fragmented. I'm supposed to be working on collaboration. so is a new host really a solution? I don't know.

forgot to mention in my update that we got diagnosed with autism as well. it's been very helpful and explains a lot, but adds a different dimension to a lot of past experiences. makes the slave situation especially painful (even more than it already was, which is saying something). oh well, more info is always welcome. it's not like it changes who we are and have always been.

on my way to work at the old laboratory.. I still go in sometimes to help out. but it's actually nice because I have no responsibility and I can just zone out, listen to podcasts, and see some of my old friends.

see y'all soon

things were dark for a while.. The Void was front for sure. at least realizing that helped it seem less scary and confusing. but there was a lot of dwelling on trauma stuff and agonizing over food and then just feeling numb and empty. it was bad.

not sure what caused the tide to turn, but the Void started to dissipate a little and I felt different. I hesitate to say "the new one showed up" but it was something like that. maybe I started recognizing him. he's been in dreams for the past year or two, so I had thought he represented an aspect of me, but didn't give it much further thought until recently.

in my journal, the Others described him as "the boy-shaped space in the Venn diagram where Keda and Taty overlap." it's almost like an integration of those two, except switching genders as well. but I don't think they've been replaced, it's more like he is revealed in the space between them and can manifest their individual traits simultaneously and in a healthy way.

it's exciting because they are the two parts responsible for sexuality, but they are both pretty traumatized and prone to destructive habits.. but he is able to take their positive aspects and hold them all together. I'm intrigued and so far it feels good and stable. he has a name but I'm not ready to use it.

with the Void stepping back, we FINALLY have stopped restricting food again. trying to read a book on intuitive eating right now and be really proactive about taking care of us. it makes me nervous because our eating disorder has always been there, but I just don't want to live like that anymore. and I hate knowing that I'm hurting parts of us if I do those things.

--------TW: ABUSIVE STUFF, BDSM, FOOD ISSUES-----


.. some of the worst things that happened to us as a slave had to do with food. we had an ED since our early teens, but everything the "master" did to us made it so much worse. he forced

I want to write what he did but I don't know if I can, it feels so exposed. and then I'm like.. have I already written it somewhere in this thread? idk. I doubt it.

he made us do eating disorder behaviors in front of him and he watched and sexualized it adggfffggghh

that's all for today

------END TW---------

this stuff came up in therapy today and I wasn't expecting it. we were discussing why I don't like to eat in front of people. I hadn't realized that a lot of it started with those experiences. I don't talk or think about it often because it's too ###$ up and I don't think people will understand anyway.

and trying to talk about it set off a lot of stuff inside and suddenly I was aware of several parts at the front at once. something I rarely feel anymore. and trying to "air traffic control" them and relay their messages and feelings and stay present and just. ###$. gave me a headache, even though it feels like important progress.

I'm tired.

That was definitely not BDSM stuff but abuse stuff. BDSM is consensual. Abuse is not, no matter the guise under which it hides.

I'm glad it's over now and you can rest and recover.

I totally get your "Venn diagramm" thing, that's how integration / partial fusion feels to me too. The "me-as-a-whole" is the Morwane-shaped overlap of all or almost all of my alters/parts, if I use a similar metaphor.

It means some things are healing. And it's good. But it's weird because it's new. It's weird-good.

Just like your "air traffic control" metaphor. It IS progress but argh, so exhausting! It gets better with time and getting used to it. But before it gets better it's frustrating, like that step in the KonMari decluttering method when everything is out and piled on the floor.

...aaaaaand over a year since i was here last. i came back to download my thread for use in my memoir project, then realized how much i enjoyed posting here and interacting with some of the regulars back then. i rarely see familiar usernames on the occasion i log in. if anyone is still around from 2017-2020ish please holler!

we were right about the new boy - his name is Kit (Keda+Taty --> K+T --> KiT --> Kit). he was only showing up in brief bursts (usually sex-related) until a recent crisis with M. we are working it out and i think things will be good in the end, but it was hugely traumatic and my trust was broken badly. spent a couple weeks barely eating or sleeping, so distraught we could barely function at work or even talk. suicidal at times - woke up to a browser tab on our phone with a zillion google searches about "fatal dose of ___" for all our meds. that freaked me out a lot.

thankfully, things have gotten a little better. and part of it is that Kit seemed to take the front. First with sex, but then moving into other parts of daily life too. i feel like being on T is part of it - my body is sooo much more androgynous/masculine than it used to be, which feels immensely satisfying to him and i think makes him want to "drive the bus", so to speak.

over the past year, we have felt more cohesive/less fragmented in general, but this relationship crisis really made things get...weird..again. when we were in the distress place, i couldn't initially tell what parts were present. over time (and letting The Others draw a lot of pictures in my journal), i figured out that it was an "outer crust" of the Knife Brigade as defense, then inside were Rachel/Rachel Joy in extreme emotional distress/detachment modes, trying to ultimately protect the Kid, who was fully locked in a box (not unusual but not good). Mostly it was Rachel's distress coming through and Rachel Joy's detachment. ######6 awful. but THEN, when Kit took over, i just felt this calm and confidence and like.. what's the big deal? felt straight-up HOT, which is not normal for me at all. honestly, it was a relief. but when he was at the front, i could barely remember what happened during the distress times or what i felt - clearly an indication of dissociation and compartmentalization. which is also not good. we're not trying to be integrated, but we DO want to be collaborative and healthy.

anyway.. there's still a vacillation between those two modes. i'll feel confident and charming and sexual (Kit) and then a random comment or reminder of what happened with M will come up and it switches out to what i'm calling the 'distress configuration'.. and hard to recall stuff from one side when i'm on the other. ugh.

other than that? let's see.. decided to exchange some letters with the Dad, then some texts. still won't call because i can't handle hearing a voice. also i'm self-conscious about my own, even though i finally told my parents i'm trans and about taking hormones, etc. to be fair, i came out to them as agender and using a different name and pronouns and getting top surgery like... a decade ago? but they never registered it, i think. not that they acknowledge it at all now either. if i do go see them again, it will be very strange for them to see/hear me as i am now. i do want to see my mom. she's had some health stuff and i worry about her a lot.

really happy with our job we're at now. trying to maintain friendships and stay active - doing lots of climbing, biking, pilates.

been restricting food again for several months, but trying to harm reduce by not counting very strictly and still trying to be 'intuitive' where i can. i admit that i like my body much better as it gets thinner. except this time it's sooooo much more muscular. i ######6 LOVE IT.

i could ramble for ages (and maybe i will, since it's my own thread anyway) but for now just wanted to update where we're at and say i miss my old homies from this board. love to all of you if you see this!

Hi

I saw your first post mention you’d had seizures but were told it was not epilepsy ..was about to answer it then relaised it was an old post and there were pages after it!

Haven’t read every single post/page but wondered if you had since found a cause? …or had anyone (your specialists) considered Functional Neurological Disorder?

Don't think we’re allowed to post direct links? But if you look up Functional (Dissociative) Seizures ..a site for good info on that is the FND website or Neurosymptoms.org also gives a good explanation.

We were mistakenly diagnosed with complex partial seizures many years ago (our late 20’s) and put on epilepsy meds and it really messed us up..I think if anyone had known about FND back then (late 90’s) and spotted it and also knew of the connection to DID we may have been diagnosed years ago as we had much more severe memory gaps between alters coming out back then.

As it was they never discovered it until we had many years later also developed Functional Movement Disorder (also originally misdiagnosed with MS, then Fibromyalgia/ME then eventually …may years later FND!)

We haven’t gone down the DID diagnosis route I don't think we’d get it now as we have much better communication and much less dissociative amnesia between us but just wanted to mention it just incase no-one had ever mentioned the possibility to you.

LK

hi shadowlands,

we never got any official dx for the seizures, they suspected "non epileptic seizure disorder" but when I questioned them further, they basically said it's when you have seizures due to traumatic mental/emotional stuff and the treatment is just therapy and/or meds. since I was already doing that stuff, I didn't pursue it further.

it does seem like my seizures were related to severe dissociation, as they've virtually disappeared over the last couple years of improving our self-understanding and communication.

I don't know much about FND but I'll give it a Google and check it out, I appreciate the suggestion!