from the therapists tool box

for us containment is like putting something in a container to lock it away for some time.
we would never do that with a part.
we do raise dissociative barriers though. that is more like going into the next room and closing the door to get a break. lowering the amount of co-consciousness doesn't feel like containment.
when doing this it would be best if someone inside could actually take care of the parts who might be struggling. just throwing all the needs at one part who is too troubled to support them is not going to meet anyones needs. it makes that part want to withdraw even more, then the other pull even more, and the result will be major dissociation to reduce the field of consciousness, including that for the inner experience. host goes numb and into shutdown.
so it would be wise to negotiate a break or generally situations when someone might need a break from the others and turn responsibilities for inside action to someone else. at least for us it helps when we signal that this is a break situation so everyone knows to leave me alone for a while. they know I will just spin out of control if they keep pushing. I am not sure if this works for every system though.

TheGangsAllHere wrote:I may be missing the whole point of this or completely not understanding what you mean, but to me, it sounds like those in distress are confusing containment with repression or dismissal of their feelings.

Correct. Those in distress (at times, me included ) become destabilized to the point of not knowing (or refusing to accept) the difference. Being ignored by someone significant, including headmates, is a big trigger for us, because it reminds us of being ignored by our mother.

TheGangsAllHere wrote: If someone feels like their feelings are validated and accepted, even if they can't be dealt with right now, that is a calming process. It's only when someone feels like their feelings are being dismissed or blocked, or their need for comfort isn't being understood, that they get louder in an effort to let someone else know how important and urgent their feelings are.

Yes. I/they/we get louder and more resistant to any attempts for the others to reassure us.

TheGangsAllHere wrote:One can tolerate a lot of pain if they know that someone understands that they are in pain and feels sorry that they're in pain, even if the means to alleviate it isn't available right then--even if they have to wait.

We have to figure out a way to sufficiently stabilize in a way that doesn't get us into the kind of trigger loop that I mentioned above. We're still trying to figure this out.

Charity (with input from Mary)

-- Mon Sep 09, 2019 3:55 pm --

birdsong87 wrote:for us containment is like putting something in a container to lock it away for some time.
we would never do that with a part.
we do raise dissociative barriers though. that is more like going into the next room and closing the door to get a break. lowering the amount of co-consciousness doesn't feel like containment.
when doing this it would be best if someone inside could actually take care of the parts who might be struggling. just throwing all the needs at one part who is too troubled to support them is not going to meet anyones needs. it makes that part want to withdraw even more, then the other pull even more, and the result will be major dissociation to reduce the field of consciousness, including that for the inner experience. host goes numb and into shutdown.
so it would be wise to negotiate a break or generally situations when someone might need a break from the others and turn responsibilities for inside action to someone else. at least for us it helps when we signal that this is a break situation so everyone knows to leave me alone for a while. they know I will just spin out of control if they keep pushing. I am not sure if this works for every system though.

Thanks, L. We don't know if we can intentionally raise the barriers any more now that we're this far into the system awareness process. It's as if we've passed a "point of no return" in terms of co-awareness.

It does work for us to have the helper teens watch after the children inside, but only if none of the children are triggered. So I suppose there's some way to work out a solution, but we're probably going to have to work on it with our T.

Charity

the stupid thing about the textbook answers is that they never fit everyone and systems are so different that it sometimes feels like folly to approach things with a textbook answer

birdsong87 wrote:the stupid thing about the textbook answers is that they never fit everyone and systems are so different that it sometimes feels like folly to approach things with a textbook answer

Not to worry, L. We appreciate the fact that the birdsong folks are such a font of helpful information , but we also know that it's best to talk to our T about tailoring this sort of thing to our own needs.

Charity and Mary

Our bigger people have been talking to our T alot about the brain. And what it does with big feelings and stuff. And we found this really good diagram that somebody who knows alot about the brain drew. And we sent the diagram to our T and she wrote back that she has a puzzle of it in her office. And we got to play with the puzzle!

(Making a link instead of a picture in case brains gross people out.)
http://gathering-place.org/images/psyf/brain_diagram_puzzle.jpg

And our T said that she was glad to see us.

So we learned more about the brain from the diagram and the puzzle. Like how to help with really big feelings.

MD Kids

I love brain stuff


this isn't really a tool but a story our T told us.

she said that we should imagine a huge sailing ship that is about to cross the ocean. there are many many workers on the ship, all with different jobs and different talents. like maybe there is a cook who makes sure everyone eat well but she doesn't know a lot about sailing. some always working on the deck or in the sails, others working under deck. some always work the night shift and sleep during the day. some who only get on deck when there is a mighty storm and others only when there is no wind at all.
at the end of the journey, when someone asks them to share about their trip, everyone will share a very different story.
Cook will speak about peeling potatos, some will speak of great storms all the time, others know nothing about storms, but they feel like all they did was cleaning the deck all the time, some would say that the stars are marvelous and others would deny having seen stars at all.

it is like that with our own history. everyone of us is right. whatever we remember. yet it is also just a part of the story.
we hosts struggle to come to terms with some of the memories some parts share. like, how can that be real, how does that fit into our reality of the journey. but the thing is, it doesn't have to fit in, we only know a piece of it too. it all becomes a bigger story then what every single part thinks is the reality of what happened.
L&Asti

I like that story, and the ideas behind it. Thanks for sharing.

V2

That's a really good way to allow everyone the reality of their history, no matter how different it is. It's similar to using the blind men and the elephant parable for current perceptions, thoughts, and feelings that are completely different or even contradictory.

I feel like I want to let everyone out but I need to have a therapist to do that. That's going to take time. It feels urgent to just let everyone out - because I've heard them now on recordings my bf made. Like I just want to let them all out.

The reverse of keeping Dissociative barriers raised. I know though that I can't, that many of them can't function and it would massively impact my life to just suddenly let all these traumatized unfunctioning parts out. But I feel like that's what I want to do. Maybe I should do some art, that might help.

We love the ship story. It is how we try to function. Doing our best to make the ship sail. We also try to teach some of the everyday-life skills to a bit of everybody so if Zami or David (he signs his messages X but his name is David) is not available for the everyday stuff, anybody can pick up front in emergency.

The "time of war time of peace" is also something we experienced. We still have a lot of "time of war" behaviors that we need to change for "time of peace" behaviors, but becoming co-conscious and co-aware helped us a lot with that: we can comfort whoever is triggered and remind them that it's no longer needed to behave like that, it's okay, the context has changed.

What works well for us is, using journalling prompts, making art, writing, breathing exercises (there is an app named RespiRelax+ which is great for that, it's in french but we find it intuitive to navigate).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis seems to be an interesting self-analysis tool too, that we plan on looking into further. By better understanding what each of us do in this big personality depiction, might help figure out how to function better by putting our respective skills at the best use.

We function better with self-work - maybe because we have not found a T suitable for our needs, maybe because we have trust issues regarding the outside.

We also use "self mythology" a lot: telling our own "personal legend" or "personal mythology" about why we are here, why we are who we are, making sense of the burden we carry through other means than the trauma sustained by the body, in order to transform it into something different. We do not forget what happened to the body, but we decide of what we do with what was done to us, with what we were forced to be. We do not know if it exists as a therapy per se. We got the idea from reading books by Boris Cyrulnik.

If you wish to have a look at the art of a DID system, that we guess they use as a form of therapy, there is Kim Noble https://www.facebook.com/Kim-Noble-Arti ... 615960937/ (WARNING: some of the painting can be triggering regarding child abuse).
_____
-X- --Zami-- ~Theia~ (and maybe others?)