Sleeping Wolf's Journey Thread

sleepingwolf wrote:Oh wow, that sounds cool. Do you watch animal training shows, or rescue shows? Our partner loves dog training shows, like 'naughty dog' help shows.

We'll watch any animal show that doesn't have show animals preying on each other (too violent) or mating (eww).

sleepingwolf wrote:Ah, we're sorry to hear you can't have pets... yea, they take a lot of work. We wouldn't be able to care for one if it was just Us. Cats are our limit! Ah, Golden Retrievers are so nice though, like big and lots of yellow/golden hair right!?!

Yes, Goldens have a reputation for being a good "family dog." Also, part of our idealized life scenario, even before we knew we were multiple, included a Golden Retriever. No idea why a Golden specifically; we didn't consciously think about suitable breeds, but we may have had the information in our subconscious.

sleepingwolf wrote:Wow, that would be a really cool thing to do. Like a dog shelter, or cats? I guess you would feed them and play them right? Could you train them?

Well, animal shelters are generally not species-specific, as many rescue groups are. But we'd guess that most of the animals at shelters are cats and dogs. If we volunteered, we'd be open to doing whatever was needed as long as we were appropriately trained.

MDs

Thanks so much for the reply MDs, gosh that all sounds super awesome!
I wish you all the best of luck with the Animal shelter, wow, what a dream...sounds like something I'd like to do too...


It's Andromeda typing a little message today...

We're doing ok, had a really nice weekend, followed by a really challenging sleep Sunday night, with lots of emotions, flashbacks, challenging stuff... but we're doing ok with it...

The reason this message is short is because we've just got a big new fridge delivered...! So we have to go and sort that out, and it's right on our forum day!

Oh well...

Its not a fancy fridge, just our old one was kind of a mini fridge and now we've got a regular sized one...

Here's to an evening of moving heavy stuff and cardboard boxes...!

We'll message more next time, and on the forum and people's journey threads too...

Thanks all!


Andromeda
(and all of the Tribe)

Ok, so, it's Andromeda writing today...

It's just going to be another short one this week, which is a bit disappointing and annoying. We can only do fuller posts, and contribute and read others when we are feeling a bit better...

We weren't feeling too good from last week, with some challenging flashbacks and emotions we were dealing with, but we did really well and were feeling ok-ish by the weekend.

The weekend didn't go too well, kind of a 'usual story' for us... our partner was grumpy/upset/arguementative, not to a huge level, but enough to provoke arguments friday night, saturday and sunday... and we just couldn't cope with it all really. We ended up just dissociating heavily on late sunday morning, with our littles front the whole rest of the day. We just went and stayed in bed all afternoon and evening, and the littles ordered a take-away pizza...

We're not feeling too good now, kind of a 'Recovery' week for us, of 'getting back on track'... another one... groan...

I think we just weren't able to have our needed calm, peaceful space. Our partner wasn't overly mean, it was just relatively constant and meant we didn't have any proper resting time. Like, we would have a meal, she would have a little go, bring up something stressful, be negative...then on our walk she would do the same, and when we bought a coffee, and when preparing dinner, and when leaving the house... all weekend! Yea, it was just too much.

It's hard to get our own space at the weekend at the minute. Our partner is a bit controlling there... We walk the dog together both saturday and sunday, but if we're not feeling great, and our partner is in a negative or stressful mood, then it goes badly and we get sick. But we haven't figured out a way to say 'this is too much' and 'we can't go on the walk with you today'...because our partner doesn't like this one bit...!

It's also quite hard with DID, with our amnesia, knowing what our stress levels are really like, knowing what happened in previous days...

Anyways, it needs to be sorted somehow. We're getting quite tired of being poorly for the same reasons over and over again...

Well, here's to a good week of Recovery and feeling better for next week and our forum time next week too.




Andromeda
(and All of the Tribe)

Hi Andromeda (and all of the Tribe). We're very sorry to hear things aren't going so well lately.

We hope things improve for all of you soon!

Thanks for the message Ponyta and All, very kind of you! Yea, its been a tough few weeks, or even months, but we're doing a bit better now... thanks!


It's Andromeda typing today...

So, well...things didn't get too much better, they actually got a bit worse last week...and so we had to rest instead of our forum time...which wasn't too good... sigh...
But, we did sort some things out last weekend and so we're slowly on the mend now, hopefully for a while so we can get 'back on track'... it seems like a long time since we've had any balance...

We can just feel so stuck and trapped when our partner is in a low place, it becomes this horrible cycle that we don't have the knowledge or energy to get out of. Really, we can only take so much stress and then need to rest, which can cause problems in our relationship. I can see that if we had more resilience, we could perhaps argue and talk things out with our partner a lot easier...or if she was less negative and dysfunctional when low and stressed, then we could 'get back on our feet' a lot quicker. Our low tolerance and her negativity and dysfunction can create this horrible cycle...

Anyways... we talked out a lot of things and we've been doing well for quite a few days now. We're slowly working through all the stress in our body now, which is not a nice thing! It's like feeling 'hung over', processing all those stress hormones... well, little by little I guess...

I know we've said this before, but a lot of us living with DID is to do with limits and boundaries, and keeping well within them. We just don't have the energy, movement or capacity of 'normal brain' people, and quickly get quite exhausted by certain events, situations, stressors... and we're seeing, this isn't likely to change for us either... we are this way, we just need to get better at protecting our limits and boundaries...

With that in mind, we'll have to leave the forum time for now. We've got to do 10 mins or so of relaxation techniques before bed. We've found deep breathing really works if we do it a few days in a row! Its nice to see that it works so well!

Here's to a peaceful week and being back next week with more energy and time to spend here and catch up with everyones stories too.

Thanks all


Andromeda
(and All of the Tribe)

It's Gothika typing today...

Well, things got pretty rough again for a few weeks, and so we weren't able to come on the forum either...which sucked! But we're doing better now, moved a few routines around and are feeling a bit better...

Things just caught up with us, and in our body, and we were properly exhausted for around 7-10 days, it really sucked. We still did our work and managed that, but pretty much nothing else. Just eating simple, doing relaxation stuff and going to bed as early as possible...and sleeping like most of the day on the weekends...it sucked.

We knew it was coming, and we're upset that we couldn't avoid it. It means now that we're a bit 'de-railed' and a bit confused and 'out of it'. We're feeling better, but still getting back into our normal life. Overall, it sucks!

It's nice to have some hobby time today and time to come on here and share. A bit more mental energy and a bit more motivation. It sucks when you don't feel well because you can't do things that are nice, or make you feel good, or give us motivation and meaning... its a hard cycle to come out of.

One positive thing is our partner was proper sorry and felt bad I think. She looked after the dog and really saw we were struggling. She's upped her game this past week and taken a lot more of the dog stress and doings, which we needed so much! She said she's going to do more from now on, as she saw that we were really struggling. Its good and nice, but its like, why did we have to literally fall apart before you took on board what we had been saying for weeks...!

Anyways, trying to dust things off and get back to balance and focus again. We've moved a few routines around to give us a bit more chill time, so I think the weekends we'll be on here I think. Hopefully more variety of Us too!

Ok, that will do for the review. Here's to a chilled and easy-ish week ahead...

Gothika

Gothinka@sleepingwolf wrote:It sucks when you don't feel well because you can't do things that are nice, or make you feel good, or give us motivation and meaning... its a hard cycle to come out of.

We totally relate. Especially me since most of my nice, meaningfull hobbies and past-time are also... work. (facepalm)

It's a good thing the next week will be better for you!

--Zami--

Thanks for the message Zami and the ArbreMonde System...yes we relate to what you've said too...!

It's Pastella writing today...

Well... I guess its been quite a few weeks since our last post, which isn't what we planned. We've had quite a few ups and downs, and have still been struggling to find a good time to use the forum and check in with ourselves online here. We're working on it...

There has also been quite a cycle that we're involved in, that has been quite difficult to stop. It just keeps on going round and round... It's a cycle of major emotional upset, from another person, then we are totally mentally destroyed by it, and spend the next week or so picking ourselves up and trying to feel better, in full recovery mode. We then have an ok-ish week, and then someone brings another major emotional upset...and we're destroyed again... and so on and so on...

We've finally said that we need to do something, as its gone on for most of 2020 now.

This last time we were actually feeling quite good and 'happy', then our partner came home from a bad day of work and started ranting about it, without any warning, and this lead to 3-4 days of conflict, argument, confusion, and us just being so so tired.

It's starting to affect our work and some of our core plans, which means its a major 'danger' sign now. It's quite sad really.

We can see that we really struggle to deal with high negativity and high, unexpected emotion like intense anger and intense anger with sadness. We just completely lose our own feelings and own good vibes, and just feel drawn into the negativity and high emotion. We don't really know why... It also always results in a conflict of some kind too, of the negativity and high emotion being around for days. We know we are out of our depth. Our mind is quite blank of how to deal with it.

We've also been looking more closely at our partner relationship, and although we get on with her, she is a nice comfort, she's just not relaxing and calming to be around at all right now. She's also no fun at the moment, and often quite negative.

I think we're going to need more space for a while, to relax on our own and have some fun on our own, to get our needs met. It's a tough balance, and we're not too sure what we're doing really. Add amnesia, mental health, DID switching into the mix...and yea, its a tough one...

Our partner has also raised issues about our Littles too, about hanging out with them, boundaries, what she is comfortable with...and we're not too sure here either. It's quite overwhelming to be honest. We've stopped the Littles fronting around her until we sort something out, but that feels quite sad too...

All in all, a bit rubbish right now...

But, we're wanting to move forwards and move to goodness again. It was only last Thursday that we were feeling great...!

Pastella