How do you dealwith it all? So many new voices

It's literally been just a month since this all started for me, when I realized I was separate from our former host, and realized that the voices in our head weren't just imagination.

More are starting to come out. Last night I had a first encounter with a bully/persecutor part. When it happened, everything went surreal first, like a dream, the world was all fuzzy and my head filled with fog. Then I started to 'see' him trying to hurt me, like he kept appearing behind me trying to kill me. Then when I made tea to try and get calm, he was trying to put my hand on the stove burner.

When I tried to talk with him, at first I couldn't hear him because there was a din of voices. Like being in a loud restaurant or busy mall. So many voices...

He did finally speak up and everyone else got quiet. He said he wants me to die, he thinks I'm weak & useless, nothing but a burden, a waste of space.

FWIW I told him I wasn't weak, and that I was going to work with him to heal us both / all. He completely backed off at that point and the world and my head went back to normal almost instantly.

Actually dealing with him didn't trouble me. It was the... idea that there's that many other voices, and that they seem to be getting more noticable, coming out now. Like at first there were just 4 of us, 2 of whom were silent or dormant.

Now we're up to 9 and they're getting more bold or more... strong? It feels like the walls are crumbling, or the floodgates opening, or soemthing along those lines.

How do you deal with this?

at the risk of repeating myself: you slow down.
you actually don't want the amnesia walls to crumble so fast.
it will just overwhelm you.
it would be wise to invest in stability first, grounding, emotional regulation
and take things so super slow its a pain in the @$$.
how about simply enjoying the holidays for now?

Thanks birdsong87. I agree with you, I don't want the walls coming down so fast, and I'm not trying to make this happen. I'd rather it slow down or stop for a while just so I could deal with what's come up already.

As for holidays... we've never liked xmas and this year I'm feeling more aversion to it than we've ever had before. Will try and focus on work, or find a hobby or something and focus on that.

If you have any suggestions on how to slow things down, how to keep the walls from crumbling, that would be much appreciated.

you can use your imagination to support the structures that are not down yet.
it is a delicate question if you should rebuilt things that came down. my T works with this option. it could be misunderstood by other alters. so this is up to you and your own responsibility.

you can also speak boundaries. like making appointments with parts who press you for attention. and not just let yourself be run over by demands. and those appointments could be after the holidays. you can be on vacation and use the time for whatever you like. almost like demands going to voicemail.

you could limit the work to those parts that you can easily handle. then ask the others to help each other or imagine a helper for them to take care of them. you could also leave them with care packages until you have time and strength to come back to them.

if they have something like a home inside, like a safe place, they could spend some time there, the way they like, while you spend time the way you like.

(when we get attacked by someone we usually choose one of these answers "I know, I don't know, could be, probably so, nice try" taking turns, always responding what seems to fit. it is a way to stop every attack as you are not a target anymore. the attacker is turning in circles and will soon give up)

this is just some brain storming. maybe you can come up with something that fits your system best.

Thank you birdsong87. These sound like good ideas, we'll see how it goes.

Our first therapy appointment isn't till January 5th and this all started in mid November, so we're sort of flying blind most of the time, and getting by with what information and resources we find online.

VioletFlux wrote:He did finally speak up and everyone else got quiet. He said he wants me to die, he thinks I'm weak & useless, nothing but a burden, a waste of space.

FWIW I told him I wasn't weak, and that I was going to work with him to heal us both / all. He completely backed off at that point and the world and my head went back to normal almost instantly

I'm so impressed! I find that kind of powerful feeling so hard to manage--to stay calm and interact with it. Until I realized that those feelings came from parts (just a few months ago), I thought they were my feelings (me as surface person, or host) in the sense that I couldn't separate and step back from them. I could try to distract myself from them or wait for them to go away, but that was it. It was a revelation (and felt so counterintuitive) to stand back from the feeling (aka part) and talk to it, and then feel it recede.

Birdsong has great ideas! I have been somewhat flooded by parts competing for attention over the past day or so (a big project ended yesterday and they want the time and attention that were taken up by that until now). So I will definitely be trying some of them out, and brainstorming with the parts for other ideas that they might like.

Thanks TheGangsAllHere! I remember when our previous host had those feelings come up, she believed it was her own self, and she gave in to them a lot of the time. Either through self-harm, or self-medicating with alcohol (which was another kind of self-harm for her). I'm not blinded by her denial, and I know that these 'alien' thoughts and feelings are separate but still part of us as a whole, so I try not to let them scare me or overwhelm me. Sometimes I don't succeed but at least I try!

birdsong87, I managed to use one of your suggestions successfuly! I was driving and I felt that 'surreal / dreamlike / fuzziness' sensation come over me. (I don't know if 'derealization' is the right word? where reality feels wrong?) Anyway, I think that feeling is someone either trying to take over, or come out to talk?. So I said it wasn't a good time right now and could we maybe do something next week instead, and the sensation went away!

birdsong87 wrote:at the risk of repeating myself: you slow down.
you actually don't want the amnesia walls to crumble so fast.
it will just overwhelm you.
it would be wise to invest in stability first, grounding, emotional regulation
and take things so super slow its a pain in the @$$.
how about simply enjoying the holidays for now?

Our T has been emphasizing grounding and the like in the face of newly surfaced alters. Our visualization exercises and self-soothing are KEY to our literal survival. If we hadn't basically rehearsed calling the crisis line we likely wouldn't be here today. Our T also steers away from things too painful and has a supernatural ability to be able to tell where/who we are at any given moment in session.

Its like once a team always employed always family, several doing several things u begin to learn like cojoined twins always being the boss. U talk with everything in certain times with other times u get glimpse of quietness we know that guide u into funtioning and the cooperation that you get albeit a little bit. Convo to functioning to hiding based on what you might need to get remember ask for what is needed even if it is the miracle of complete quietness