Feelings we feel but aren't ours

We were doing paperwork in therapy today, to get financial support for the second year. People who will do decisions if we get it or not don't understand anything about systems, so we needed to put things on paper the way they can understand it. So we need to talk about us as I and think the whole.

T said one goal in therapy is to create safety. I answer I don't feel unsafe. She says and I know I don't, but it doesn't mean it's not there. She needs to remember what kind of part she's talking with, who is the one making the paperwork. It's not the one with problems we are trying to write about. I need to remember when we are talking about "me", we are not actually talking about me as a part, but still that is the only view to this I have.

That is so challenging. How am I supposed to tell how I feel, when I'm not allowed to talk about me, but need to ques how we all are in general. Who counts most? Are we anxious as a system? Fourteen is anxious. But I can not write it on that paper to those people and tell them I'm feeling well, but this other one is not, so I wanna keep coming to therapy for him. They'll have no clue what it means. So what is the right answer?

T got the right answer to put it the way they'll understand, it's all the most basic, generic stuff to say. That we need to work to understand dissociated parts of personality and create co-operation to make us more functional. Integration is too big word, it's not realistic, and secretly I'm happy about it.

I would want to have all their traits as mine, but still keep them there as people.

Then I started thinking how weird this condition really is. Like it hit me it's so weird. It's normal in here, on the forum, but like in real reality. When someone is triggered, I feel the feelings. I feel the anxiousness or sadness or some overwhelming feeling of being so bad from a little one. I do feel them all, all feelings when they are there. In real reality it doesn't make any sense, that I feel feelings, but am totally in denial of feeling them. -because they are not mine. - because they just come thru.

I do feel those feelings when I feel them. I wouldn't feel them, if I wouldn't feel them. Nothing else makes real sense, it's obviously true I feel it all. It only makes sense in DID that I can say I didn't because it wasn't mine.

I don't mean others would not feel them too or that it wouldn't be more problem to them or anything like that. I'm just saying it's so weird there are others so that I don't have to admit a feeling is mine or feel it as mine. Because that's why they are there, to keep me as ANP. And I keep up being main front for them.

Have you ever thought about how you actually do feel other's feelings when you do, and realized it's just weird denial to say you don't have those feelings, because you just did?

Hi Floralie,

I hope the paperwork goes through ok and you get the support stuff ok.

I sort of understand what you're saying, but I don't know that I'd call it a wierd denial as you put it, to say you don't have those others' feelings. For us at least, I think the thing is that we frame it a little differently?

We definitely feel those other feelings. I think we'd describe it as yes we can feel those feelings but we know they don't originate with whoever is fronting, if you know what I mean?

Like, earlier today one of our other alters got upset about something and I could feel her feelings very clearly because she was very close to front. But I knew those emotions originated from her and I was also aware of my own (very different) feelings at the same time.

Further complicating it, we've had some very dark feelings going on for nearly 3 weeks, as a constant background feeling of dread or whatever. So it's like, I feel this way about X, she feels the opposite about X, and also two others are feeling really bad and we don't even know why.

I, fronting at the moment, am aware of all these different feelings at the same time. But I can only really explain / feel connected to the ones that are 'mine'. The others' are there too but I know they aren't 'mine' specifically.

It all reminds me of something I read on twitter this morning:

a really fun part of having a dissociative disorder is that you can have PTSD flashbacks despite having no consious memory of whatever [the] trauma you're flashing back to is

Most of our flashbacks are emotional or somatic, so it's a big case of feeling those 'foreign' emotions, but not knowing where they're coming from or why they're happening.

So we do absolutely feel them, but we aren't connected to them, don't feel ownership of them, don't understand them.

Arin

good for you to realize that there is something weird in all of this.
when you feel a feeling, how is that not yours? you feel it!
there is the rarely talked about problem of trance logic that DID is based on.
trance logic means that we are in a mental state where we believe 2 contradicting things to be true. without noticing that something is off.
like noticing a feeling in myself. and totally believing that it doesn't belong to me.
whose should it be? it is caused in my brain thru neurotransmitters and hormones. I can sense it. I can't sense the feelings of another person. not like they are my own. so these have to be mine.
breaking thru the trance logic and realizing that we are one big thing, and actually NOT separate people having their own lives, is a big step. we cannot not influence other parts, because we belong together. they feel things for us as a collective, what they have beongs to the collective.
one of the big revelations in healing from DID is "this is me" or "we are me".

I think the sense of "not mine" comes because *I* don't have a reason to feel that way. It's not MY feeling (even though I am feeling it) because whatever is causing that feeling is either inaccessible to me, or because *I* don't feel that way about whatever it is.

A singleton can hold all those mixed feelings as "mine," but we have them parceled out into different parts. So Nadia can be very worried about an event, while Meredith is looking forward to it and can't wait. Yes, if there weren't any divisions, those would be the feelings of one person who was looking forward to it and was also worried about it.

I don't know that it's really trance logic though, because a similar thing can happen between two outside people if they have a strong empathic connection--like a (good) mother and baby or young child. If one of my kids was sad/upset about something, I could sort of feel it. I wasn't sad myself that a toy broke or whatever--but I would feel their sadness.

If I have a part who is very sad, I can feel it, but it's not "my" feeling (the part who is in front or whatever). It IS our feeling (the system's), but at this point, that is not a useful way to approach it. That knowledge isn't helpful in an immediate way, it's only background information about the big picture.

Good luck with all the paperwork, Floralie--it sounds stressful.

I think that's a big realisation, Floralie.

For me if I call all the feelings 'mine', it becomes very confusing very quickly. I think it's like the Gang said, that sometimes understanding where it comes from is key... and when you don't know that answer, it's a lot harder to regulate the feeling.
But maybe it can be similar when you are fused, that you'd still need "introspection" (rather than inner communication) to find out what's going on.
Not feeling all feelings as your own can be very protective. That's what it feels like to me. So then of course there is some resistance and concern inside about letting go of that.

When thinking of this thread I thought about how I view my system. I see it as though we are a little like the forest Pando. It is a whole forest of trees connected through the roots - which makes it one organism. So the "I" (not my personal I that I feel as a part, but the bigger I) would consist of all of us. That's the "It is all me" that birdsong mentioned. And yet every tree developed in it's own particular way because it's sprouted in its own particular environment.
We're separate and yet inherently connected.