A nightmare...

I don't think this requires a TW b/c there's so little to it, but just in case...

So I guess a week or so ago I found out from one of my alters (Pixie) that she and another (Kitten), who both know basically everything about us all... that they were in disagreement about telling me about them, myself, the entire dissociative thing. As I've said before, I was surprised when Pixie revealed she knew and had always known, and that Kitten had, too.

So Kitten appears in my journal for the first time on the 5th and two days later I have a nightmare about something in my childhood... I think. I don't remember this at all. Anyhow, she writes telling me she and Pixie are at odds on this, and have been a while... And Kitten said she wanted to talk to me about some things, some things I deserve and need to know.

Two nights later I have the following brief nightmare- enough of a disturbance to wake me up in a panic.
I was a kid, very little in it, and I was begging a "Miss Dolores" to "stop" and saying "no". Over and over. I just remember feeling scared, hurt, and pain... ??? I had no idea who this was, but asked my mother days later. Apparently the person is real and someone we knew when I was in the 1st-3rd grade age range. Mom said she was "a good person" and "nice". She worked with my dad, and when my great grandfather passed away and Mom & Dad flew there for the funeral, my brother and I stayed with Dolores, for about a week.
I do recall the incident (staying with someone- but only that it was a woman), and that while there she tried to force us to drink tea, which we didn't like. When we wouldn't she got mad at us and scolded us... but that's literally ALL I remember of her- and I didn't even put a name to the person until Mom confirmed that, too, was Dolores.

Kitten, writing the day of the nightmare (I woke at 4am with it, she wrote around noon- I discovered it an hour or so later when _I_ went to write in my journal about it)... In that entry she asked if I remembered an incident about my brother having a tantrum and causing a scene and a situation where we, in first/second grade, basically hitchhiked home (on a military base, so it's not quite as scary and dangerous as that sounds), and if I remember being forced to drink tea I disliked, being scolded, and being hit... My parents, from abusive homes, NEVER hit my brother and I. Ever.

I don't remember being hit. I don't even really remember the scene about my brother's fit and that situation.

Up until this, I'd thought the worst stuff was the few months the foster kids lived with us and the likelihood of the oldest one, just a little older than I was, touching me would have been the cause of the dissociation- even if 11/12 is a little out of the common age range for it. I had no idea of this other stuff, and even if it is- the week we were with Dolores couldn't do it alone, could it? Maybe it's got more to do with the time my dad was drinking too much too often, the fights it caused Mom & Dad to have, and the short separation after months of this? That would have been when I was kindergarten to 2nd grade age...

IDK. It's a lot to think about though. Anyone got any thoughts?

I think it could be enough especially is there was an attachment disorder which is probably likely from what you said about your parents. Attachment disorders come from a disturbance in the healthy parent child relationship so the parents don't need to have done anything specifically to harm you. Just not creating an environment where you can turn to them when something bad happens can be enough.

So when something bad happens instead of turning to your parents to help you with it you had to do it alone. But what if you can't do it alone if it to traumatic? You dissociate from the memory and you build a wall between you and it or maybe you make a new you that can do what you couldn't or what you think you should have done.

And having an attachment disorder in and of itself can be traumatic as someone on here recently reminded me. For a small child that depends on there parents for everything not feeling able to can make the world a scary place.

https://www.counselling-directory.org.u ... order.html

-- Thu Aug 16, 2018 10:23 pm --

The link is about attachment disorder

So two things I know of that COULD contribute to that kind of feeling maybe. I was pushed into school early and held back at first grade b/c of maturity (my birthday is in Dec).

But the incidents I was thinking of was one my mom told me about that I have no memory of - walking home one day from school my brother and I were grabbed by some lady and held in her house for some amount of time before she let us go (mad b/c we cut through their yard to/from school).

And once I remember being bullied in the playground and the kid literally taking the back of my head in his hand and smashing my face into the concrete wall of the playground sandbox. This knocked out my top two front teeth.

I'm a bit confused by your response. I was thinking moving lots, argument between caregivers, separation from a caregiver even if only temporary, caregiver drinking to much and unresolved issues caregivers have can all contribute to an attachment disorder.

It's not uncommon to have no memory of trauma it is often suppressed and dissociated away. I wouldn't worry about the memories themselves there will be reasons you don't have them and it sounds like Pixie and Kitten put a lot of thought into if it's better to have the memory or not so I would trust them to tell you what your ready to know.

Pixie and Kitten disagree about that to some degree. Kitten says she has wanted to tell me about them, us, for a while but Pixie was against it; and even now they disagree on how much I should be told, what I should, and how/when I should be told.

I don't know how that will play out- but I am letting them sort it out... Partially b/c I can't force it, not in a practical or real sense... and they both are there to help and protect me- I have NO doubts about that and that their actions have been for that reason ultimately...

As for my response... I guess I never considered that specific idea, an attachment disorder. I've always thought I was close to my parents and like we could talk about anything- but that's not entirely true. I mean, since moving away from them, we've had very limited contact most of the time. Even when in High school age and some of the peculiar things happening and the strange "not me but me" thoughts I couldn't tell them about and I felt isolated- I was the morose teenager that wrote poetry...

Looking back at incidents like those I mentioned, I think maybe there's something to be considered there. That's all my response meant.

OK I'm following now.

As a kid I was to close to my parent and because of it most people dismissed the idea that he was the cause of my problem and almost every adult I ever interacted with realised that I wasn't a normal child. Lack of emotional range or any behaviour that would have been typical of a child really (thank you Z.) Anyway being close doesn't mean it was a healthy attachment.

NyxX wrote:Anyway being close doesn't mean it was a healthy attachment.

I am certain there was SOME level of unhealthy attachment there. Maybe it was me, maybe it was our family being military and being isolated from the rest of our relatives (all the way across the continental US at the closest in all but a few years of my childhood- and that was before I was even in school). When I got out on my own, my plan was initially to go back with my parents at some point (not in their house of course, but that area) even though they didn't live where _I_ wanted to live. It took time to get myself to accept that and to begin to explore moving to Alaska (we'd lived there and it is where I call "hometown" to this day, 20 years after we moved from there).

Even after I had begun to get close to someone (we're married now)... for a while there was too much influence from my parents and our connection (specifically with my mother) was a bit of a problem for a while, even causing some issues between my wife and I. It took some time to get beyond that. So I think you're probably on to something with the connection being "close" but not the kind of closeness it could or maybe should have been.

***possible trigger warning--unhealthy closeness***

When I first met my now-husband and he came home from college with me for the weekend, he was surprised to see that I often sat on my mother's lap. Neither of us can remember if he said something to me at the time, but even if he had, I still would have thought it just showed how close I was to my mom. It was more due to her own attachment need than anything sexual--it was like I was a large stuffie, or perhaps a pet, that she could hold whenever she wanted.

***end trigger warning***

When parents use a child to meet their own emotional needs, it's very hard to view it as "abuse" but it IS, just as much as a parent screaming insults, just in a more insidious and confusing way.

I learn things in nightmares too. it makes me sick to my stomach.


the thing is....there isn't -one thing- that causes DID. it's not like breaking your leg. it's cause by chronic prolonged trauma.

if there's a history of dissociative disorders in your family
if there's a history of trauma and abuse in your parents family (children of raging alcoholics don't know how to be parents)
if there's substance abuse
if there's neglect
if there's abuse

this $#%^ is a complicated cocktail. you can't find the one ingredient that caused it. there's enough in your story to indicate a variety of factors.

ps ###$ THAT ######6 BITCH ######6 DOLORES EVIL ######6 MONSTER BITCH I ######6 HATE YOU FOR HURTING KIDS YOU ######6 BITCHFACED SWAMP RAT.

BeccaBee wrote:I learn things in nightmares too. it makes me sick to my stomach.


the thing is....there isn't -one thing- that causes DID. it's not like breaking your leg. it's cause by chronic prolonged trauma.

if there's a history of dissociative disorders in your family
if there's a history of trauma and abuse in your parents family (children of raging alcoholics don't know how to be parents)
if there's substance abuse
if there's neglect
if there's abuse

this $#%^ is a complicated cocktail. you can't find the one ingredient that caused it. there's enough in your story to indicate a variety of factors.

ps ###$ THAT ######6 BITCH ######6 DOLORES EVIL ######6 MONSTER BITCH I ######6 HATE YOU FOR HURTING KIDS YOU ######6 BITCHFACED SWAMP RAT.

Honestly, aside from the period of time my parents were having trouble- Dad drinking too much, getting drunk; Mom & Dad fighting; to the point Dad put his hand through a piece of glass on a china hutch (and I saw this as a kid and remember it- vaguely), before they separated for a period and went through counseling... Aside from this period early in my life, IDK there was anything major except the 6-7 month period when I was 11 or 12 with the foster kids.

I know it sounds like I'm trying to talk down these things to make it sound minimal or something... IDK this is just so massive and hard to come to terms with still.