Multi-faceted & semi-precious.

last night we were having a flashback and suddenly a bunch of seemingly random stuff came together & dots were connected & stuff

i dont know how to sdescribe it, its not like we recovered memories but feels like we recovered information? and it was really painful & upsetting but we dont know how to process it or what to think about it



*** trigger warning, child abuse, suffocation, cruelty ***



the stuff that came up last night with the flashback left us fairly certain our mother used to smother us to keep us quiet / stop us from crying when we were small

the biggest clue came from her, she suggested that once, like literally suggested smothering a child to stop them from crying, in the context of what 'someone else' might do.

(in that same conversation she told us she thought about smashing our head in because we woke her up crying. like she was holding us trying to make us quiet & there was a brick wall nex to her & she thot about just smashing us into it)



*** end trigger warning ***



anyways when we figured that stuff out last night it was overwhelming U& its still really hard to process & stuff. like theres fear and horror but mostly just shock? we ended up crying for a while last night & hugging a plushie to keep the littles calm

we just dont know what to do or what to think or what to feel

That sounds really difficult. I hope everyone's feeling calmer now and that your day goes ok.

thankyou Gang

we've been mostly feeling numb & haven't been able to achieve much of anything today

It is always hard to connect the dots. Dissociation helped us carry wounds without connecting the different elements together (sensations, words, emotions, contexts...) and when the puzzle pieces fall into place, it can be quite a shock.

I hope that you will manage to appease yourselves. Remember there are many anchoring exercises you can try: putting cold water on your face, breathing slowly following the rythm of a "breathe in breathe out" gif, the 5-4-3-2-1 (name aloud 5 things you can see right now, 4 you can hear etc.), the 3-3-3-3-3 (pick an item up and describe 3 qualities it has for each of your senses - of course if it is NOT safe to put it in your mouth, avoid the "taste" one), "brain gym" movements (you will find infographics through a picture search on Internet) and so on. Depending on the situation and your sensibilities, this or that exercise will be more or less efficient so do not hesitate to try them all and see which one feels the more right at any given time.

I feel for you. We, too, used to get mistreated when we would cry or seek care at times when the mother did not want to "play doll" with us (there is no other way to put it: she really did see us as a "doll" she could "play mom with" whenever convenient for her and only then). We have been through similar shocks in the past, hearing the mother laugh with her friends telling all the awful things she would do to us and convincing her friends it was okay to do this to a child. It is heart-breaking. Our societies really need to teach proper child-caring to every of their members.
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The Mirror.

feels like the last few hours of the year are a good time to summarize what we've done & learned & figured out this year



*** trigger warning - idk everything? proceed with caution ***



it took a few times over of us uncovering / discovering / realizing stuff then forgetting it again, but it seems to have stuck for now.

we understand now that a lot of the ways our mother interacted with us when we were little would count as mind control nowadays & those patterns & stuff she established in us when we were little are still there for her to use against us now

we *kinda* understood that on a vague level for years, like we knew dealing with her could affect us but we didn't have any real framework to describe or explain how or why that happened, we just knew after the fact that she could change something in us. now we know.

we also know she doesn't do it intentionally, she's almost definitely repeating her own trauma stuff with us. we're pretty sure (positive?) she is undiagnosed DID & when we manage to resist one of her control methods she switches selves & styles over & over till she finds something that works.

we think that rapid switching she does causes similar switching in us until either she gets us to switch to someone who will do what she wants, or the rapid switching gets us too confused to maintain a defence. either way it disrupts us for days until we get stabilized again.



knowing this stuff doesn't actually make it better. it helps in the sense that we're like, more aware of that happened in the past & can put it in words & a framework or whatever, but it doesn't make it go away. and it doesn't make us any more able to deal with her. all we can do is avoid her.




in less-upsetting news, we finally accepted / realized that we are waaay more fragmented than we wanted to believe before. and that only hapened because we were able to let go of the stygma that some of us had before (like they thot more parts meant more screwed-up or whatever, more parts = more broken etc)

we dunno if thats true or not but it doesnt matter. knowing we're not a dozen or 2 dozen fully formed individuals but instead we're a few thousand fragments & tiny pieces that sometimes form clumps & the clumps sometimes get names... helps us understand our experiences better. knowing this hasn't had real-life benefits yet, but we feel better knowing than not knowing? idk.




back to the upsetting stuff, we (those of us in the 'front team', who are blissfully ignorant of the trauma stuff) have been getting closer to realizing some of the trauma stuff. not exactly like remembering details or whatever, but like, emotional memories / emotional flashbacks, connecting dots, & we've had several experiences over the past year wehre my writing has been coopted by trauma-holders to allow us to explore & contextualize some of those trauma experiences.

otoh sometimes it does get really really scary cos like, despite what we jsut wrote a couple paragraphs ago there's that knowledge lurking just below our awareness that some truly horrible stuff was done to us. not like evil supervillain kinda thing, but that'd be easier to deal with we think? more like, terrible stuff because of ignorance, because of our parents reliving their own traumas thru us, & because our mother (maybe father too?) has a boatload of her own issues going on & has never been capable of providing us emotional support or understanding




so there's probably more stuff but we can't remember now lol.

oh, good news? i'm still writing, tho been having some problems lately with focus, like we feel kinda adhd, but other than that its good. making actual real money at it now too, still not a full-time income but like part-time money. and we have a plan in place (just gotta follow it lol) to continue to build & grow that.


viola, ciara, teg, & Em

Sounds like a lot of good progress. Difficult but worthwhile.

Glad the writing is coming along!

You really made tremendous progress, congratulations!

We understand the feelings of realizing that the bad stuff happened mostly NOT out of vice but mostly out of ignorance, mental health issues and trauma repetition. We find it heavy because, how can one keep being angry at the bad stuff if one accepts that the abuser was themself a wounded soul? But the thing is, you CAN feel together compassion for the abuser's wounds, anger for their actions, and keep yourself safe from their repetition of trauma by disengaging from interacting with them. Which is exactly what you have started doing with the mother, because IMO, unless she starts working on her behavior, there is no other issue to the situation than to disengage from it.

Glad to hear that you keep on writing.
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The Mirror.

thanks Gang, thanks Mirror


some random thots of the morning...
our T is off for winter break, we havent seen her in over 2 weeks.
it'll be 3 weeks when we do have our next apointment, & we dont know if that'll be in person or on camera cos of all the new covid stuff etc

anyways

the point is, we havent seen or talked with T in over 2 weeks, and we dont miss her. we're not freaking out or worried or whatever.
we're not thinking about quitting therapy, but noting that we don't feel that worried or anxious or whatever about seeing her.

we *remember* feeling that in the past. we remember being upset & anxious & booking extra sessions & stuff to make up for the 'missed' ones. (tho we dont remember how long ago that was lol)

otoh we also remember 6 months ago, when our T was on vacation for a couple weeks, we didn't realy miss her then either. we actually made some huge breakthrus on our own, then just like reported them to her when she was back.

no big breakthrus this time (not yet at least) but no panic or problems either.

actualy the other notable thing is we can actually *remember* 6 months ago. we can't say for sure if it was july or august when she was off (or maybe it straddled the two months) but we remember that it happened & roughly when it happened & that we had some breakthrus ourselves at that time. that's a big deal for us lol. being able to remember & put stuff into context i mean. normally we can't.

its not all perfect & stuff
yesterday was difficult
in retrospect we can sorta see what happened, but when it was happening it was hard to know
it felt like too many fragments were active all at once, too many conflicting desires & thots
overwhelmed us & sapped all our energy so we wanted to do a dozen things at once & achieved nothing at all

in the moment we (some of us, maybe in the front team?) were aware of all that conflict, but we were unable to think thru it or figure it out till after things had subsided

actually i'm gonna call that progress cos we were aware of it as it happened, even if we weren't able to fix it at the time. that awareness feels like a new-ish thing.
maybe next time we'll remember this stuff & recognize it & be able to act sooner.

so thats our thinky thots for this morning lol

That's great that you have a solid enough connection with the T that it doesn't freak you out if you don't see her for a couple of weeks.

Being able to remember and put stuff in context sounds like great progress!

And having awareness of something that you weren't aware of before definitely counts as progress, too, even if it sometimes seems like things are worse because now you're aware of them.

I have the same opinion as The Gang. So, just re-read their message I guess?
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Daniel.