Fuzzy confusion - What's really real?

Have you ever heard of someone receiving extensive treatment for DID with three inpatient trauma stays, a detailed system map, journals upon journals of communication between parts, several posts on here even, who then sinks into a chronic, life-threatening depression for several years with tons of memory killing ECT treatments? This is what has happened to me, or so it appears, according to the concrete evidence, but it's all foreign, like someone else's past. But all the horrible ugly "traumas" that my T says I reported, and that I've written about in the journals have to be made up stories that I'm deeply ashamed of having made up. I know I disassociate. I'm familiar with the rule maker, I just forgot his name is Christian, and I'm familiar with a self-destructive part, who is named Seven, and I know I'm often locked up in the back, unable to talk or sometimes even move, because the front is someone young and desperately afraid. I was aware of this, and aware of some emotional abuse from my sister, so we were calling it PTSD. But the stuff in the journals and on the system map, while parts of it seem familiar, it's like really far out of reach. I don't know what's real anymore. Have you ever heard of a memory lapse like this? What am I supposed to do with it now. The parts and the things they've said disgust me, and then some of them, while they're vaguely familiar, I really don't remember much at all. My mind, right now disgusts me. Where do I go from here?

-- Wed Jan 30, 2019 12:46 am --

Uh oh. I typed a post and it disappeared, so I typed this one, and now the first one is showing up too. Sorry.

Last time I was discharged from Hopkins, after another round of ECT, the SW at Hopkins told my T, at the time, that what we really needed to do was to focus on treating the depression. Far as I know, Hopkins doesn't treat trauma, as a specialty, anyways. So that's what we did. We focused on the depression, the self-harm, the rules, the eating disorder when it became a problem again, but all in as much as it related to the depression. We didn't talk about parts, because we weren't supposed to. Hopkins said to focus on the depression, and they had brought me back from the brink of death again. I forgot a lot from the ECT. Sometimes after that, I can't find my way home. When I started seeing my current T, back in April, it was a difficult adjustment and I had a hard time staying present during appointments, so she knew I was dissociating, but we didn't really delve into that. Looked like a symptom of the PTSD someone had diagnosed me with, but not worth focusing on. It wasn't until she started reading back through my chart, just recently, that the trauma and the parts were recognized. I just am not sure where to go with it. My T says now that we have this information we should probably do some work on the DID now, and I think yeah, maybe that's why progress lately has been so minimal, but what if in getting to acknowledge and know the parts again I'm opening up something that makes everything else spin out of control. I've been out of the hospital for over a year, now, and that's really good for me. I don't want to go back. I have another therapy appointment on Friday and I'm not sure how to approach it. Any ideas would help.

GKOKD wrote:My T says now that we have this information we should probably do some work on the DID now, and I think yeah, maybe that's why progress lately has been so minimal, but what if in getting to acknowledge and know the parts again I'm opening up something that makes everything else spin out of control. I've been out of the hospital for over a year, now, and that's really good for me. I don't want to go back. I have another therapy appointment on Friday and I'm not sure how to approach it. Any ideas would help.

Does this T have a lot of experience with DID? If so, they will know how to help you take it very slowly. Things don't have to be "opened up" quickly. The first phase is stability, safety, and developing a solidly trusting relationship with the T.

Have not had ECT.

"the twins" started to explain what it is and how it works and I Googled it to see if they were right but it just said no one knows how it works. So we'll just let them share their theory incase it's helpful. If it isn't please disregard and accept apologies.

The twins: Hi, this is our quick view of what you've written.

The journals and disclosures we would say are not made up. They are things that happened. Your brain or self couldn't cope and you became suicidal which then led to the archiac practice of electrical shock. Yes it does save lives but it's very haphazard and causes memory loss. Complete destruction of the neural pathways, hit and miss and excessive damage and causes loss of emotional response. Which stops the suicidal depression and looses memory but causes excessive damage as it is not accurate or specific in the pathways it attacks. We can't believe people still do this but they do and it does save lives. We were relatively lucky to have suicidal aunt so used that to make suicide abhorrent to us so fortunately we as a whole can have thoughts but they are quickly kicked into touch by the imbedded schema of suicide being abhorrent.

These journals and disclosures due to your ECT treatment are now basically irrelevant to you. They feel familiar but they are no longer connected to you - like de ja vu. The brain taking two pictures of a place at once and you feel you know it.

The connection to your past journals and disclosures you could viably seek is to read and take them on like they are actually someone else. Try to understand that person. All those things are real to that person. They are no longer relevant to you other than if any of the abusers are still in your life and you need to currently bare that in mind and protect yourself and anyone else you're responsible for from them. Ideally no contact. Take your past self's word for it. Or past part of you word for it.

Your mind was not disgusting. What happened was disgusting. You are free of it now. So you have options. The option above or the option to accept those things are no longer relevant and refrain from exploring them but still stay away from any abusers. You could try to do some mending of the damaged neural pathways and access those memories and emotions and make them real again but would need to be in a detached way or suicidal etc problems may represent and we don't know if that's possible because of the excessive nature of ECT.

Maybe in therapy focus on how to move forward, as you are now, build a life that is fulfilling? That seems like the best option. It seems very cruel to us that you would be dredging over something painful that is no longer mapped in your brain because it was shorted out by the ECT. It'd be re-traumatising not only by focusing on how terrible it all was or how terrible you felt but also the lack of connection to it, your feelings of disgust which also seems unfair and unnecessary and cruel. So focusing on moving forward would be our choice in this scenario but obviously you need to proceed how feels right for you.

We are incredibly sad that you had to have ECT but glad to hear it's improved your mood and quality of life. Much luck.

To access and unpick particular memory or emotions they would need internal smaller than nanotechnology directly targeting curtain specific frequency of brain waves that are woven around specific neural pathways. They'd need to know which neural pathways which would be different for everyone and also what frequency the memory is at which again would be more than minutely different for everyone. If its emotions they'd need to turn them down not off which again is a frequency thing - frequencies that are as yet undetectable let alone knowing which is which. They're at least 400 years away from this scientificly. Which all this would be completely unnecessary if people were nice to eachother. This is where we sound "crazy" but we know we're right.

If you want to access the memory then there is a spiritual side to this existence. There is Akashic record. We have been there. Accessing Akashic record takes a past life spirit being present and an outside event to force open the door or loads and loads of meditation.

We sound "off key" we know, but we're saying it incase it's helpful. Excuse or randomness of asserting that we "know" anything.

[quoteDoes this T have a lot of experience with DID? If so, they will know how to help you take it very slowly. Things don't have to be "opened up" quickly. The first phase is stability, safety, and developing a solidly trusting relationship with the T.
TheGangsAllHere ][/quote]

I don't know how much experience she has with DID, in particular, but I know she is open minded, takes it seriously and is constantly trying to learn more. She talked to my previous T about it and ordering a book to learn more, a nd my previous T gave her the book and said I had given it to her after one of my trauma unit inpatient stays. My current T gave it back to me and is ordering one for herself, so we can use it together in therapy. The book is, "Coping With Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists." It looks familiar, but I don't remember giving it to my previous T. My current T says we need to take it slowly and, right now, just focus on staying in the present.

As far as ECT goes, I hate it, but my depressions, over the last 30 years are often so severe that they go beyond suicidal, into catatonic, and ECT is the only thing they've found that will bring me back. I hate the memory loss, as it often leaves me feeling like a foreigner in this world, but at this point, it's the only thing that helps, so I usually, eventually consent to it.

As I've gone through the last few days, since the system map and journals have surfaced, I've become more aware of the primary parts that play a role in my day-to-day life. I guess I knew they were there. I know I dissociate, but I had been told to not focus on them, after my last hospital stay, and work instead on controlling my mood and behavior, so I kind-of pushed them to a place where I don't see them, and blame their influence on some defective part of myself. I've been reading books, privately, like, "The Body Keeps the Score," and "Sibling Abuse Trauma," but I've kind-of felt like I was doing something wrong in focusing on any of those things, as though they'd be detrimental to my recovery. Anyway, the parts that are with me day-to-day, are easier to recognize now, if recognizing them is allowed. The stories the little ones tell still seem like vulgar lies, but I remember hearing them before, and they are familiar in that I can remember being there, with those people, at that time. I just don't remember, and find it hard to believe that that particularly ugly thing happened. I know that a lot of the scars I wear are a result of angry parts who hate the little ones for telling those stories. There are still other parts described on my system map that, while they look familiar, I don't really remember at all, so I guess what I need to do right now is to focus on the ones that are real to me, inasmuch as they influence me in my daily functioning, and not worry about the other ones unless/until they come to the front again and need to be recognized.


My therapy assignment on Tuesday, was just an exercise in staying present, which is challenging because I'm supposed to say some things out loud and I get afraid to hear my voice, so I do it without talking. It's not too hard to ground myself when I'm in my room with my dog, but it's really hard at therapy, where I tend to get locked up behind a scared non-verbal part. I'm in the process of trying to get a service dog in the future, that might make it feel safer when I'm out in the world, but for now, I guess I have to find some other way of feeling safe in the present. (I take my dog most places with me, but he's not a service dog, so he has to wait in rhe car when I go into therapy or other public places that don't allow pets.)


Thank you to those of you who have responded to my post. It has been useful in helping me to sort some things out. It is reassuring to take the perspective that I have actually just completely forgotten some things, rather than believing that I had just made it all up for attention.

KK