Multi-faceted & semi-precious.

thanks Gang & thanks Daniel


we've had some more stuff happen yesterday / last night that maybe makes the past 2 months make more sense retrospectively

we found a new self who was kind of hiding among the fragments & voices. she hasn't really talked much to the rest of us yet but she gave us her name & we got a look at her. plus we already know some stuff about her by putting together a bunch of 'random' stuff over the past 6 - 8 weeks.

her name is Vanessa, she's a tween or young teen. we're guesstimating her age around 12 - 14. she's kind of shy atm i think but she's got enough of a sense of self to have her own name & she has a body self-image or whatever, like inside she has her own distinct body & stuff. she has her own hobby / interests, which she's been pursuing for the last like 6 weeks (we didnt know it was her till yesterday lol)

the rest of us were kinda surprised & stuff at first, cos like our internal colected of selves has been pretty stable for like 18 months or whatever. viola Em ciara & teg. and we remember whenever we've found a new self it's been kinda disruptive to the rest of us, but like in retrospect i'm pretty sure we've been really unstable the last month or so? which makes sense if Vanessa has been like around but hiding & lurking & stuff

oh & the other thing we learned yesterday... weve been referring to the collection of like unidentified fragments as "The Voices" because we experience them as just like, voices and thoughts that come out of the darkness? and they dont identify themselves with names or anything, they just feel like a whole lotta separate disconnected bits?

so anyways yesterday we learned that they actually identify themselves as two groups. there's "The Voices", and there's "the other voices"

"the other voices" say they're all littles, and they seem kind of upbeat and energetic & stuff. and according to them, "The Voices" are the sad ones, the grumpy ones, the pessimistic or cynical ones. maybe the ones who got hurt.

"The Voices" are collectively a bunch of blurry grey and black and white smears, while "the other voices" are points of pink light in the darkness.

and we got all that stuff cos Vanessa was hiding among "the other voices" and seems to have come out of them. so (speculation) maybe she was a little who's grown up slightly into a tween? or maybe a bunch of little fragments coalesced into a tween? idk.

as usual all this big stuff happens immediately after therapy so we have a whole week to process it before seeing our T again. we're gonna try & actually ttalk directly with Vanessa if she'll let us, otherwise we'll try talking through "the other voices" and see how that goes.

oh also - her apparent age & her hobby / interest match stuff in our outside life, like when our body was around that age we were into that hobby too. might be a coincidence, or maybe parts of her are from around that time in our life? idk.

viola & others

Just want to say hi and welcome to Vanessa! Hi, Vanessa! There's a teen thread and a littles thread if you want to talk to other kids your age sometime.

thanks Gang!

Vanessa actually fronted for the first time yesterday afternoon. and in what seems like a tradition for our system she got herself front stuck on her first time out.

we're all still getting a feel for her & the various voices & stuff, trying to get ourselves sorted out or whatever. get used to our selves & stuff.

we're kinda debating whether or not we're going to tell our T about Vanessa and the other voices

sometimes we just feel like we can't trust our T to handle things in a way that doesnt upset us, & we know thats a problem & something we should probably deal with but thats its own can of worms

we know our T responds to us differently based on who's fronting. our T doesn't always acknowledge or seem to realize who she's talking with but we can tell she's handling us differently

mostly its been Ciara who goes to therapy, for like idk almost 2 years? more than 18 months? and there's been some rough times when we really got frustrated with our T

then this past summer Ciara stopped going for a few months & Em had to take over, thats when we noticed the difference

our T frequently questions Ciara when she's relaying our experiences, asks her to repeat herself, or misunderstands stuff Ciara says. and worse, it comes across like T is challenging Ciara's experiences and doubting her word, and feels like she wants Ciara to justify stuff. like we say "it felt like X" or "X ahppened" & our T will want Ciara to explain what X is and how we know it happened or what we think it means or worse T rephrases what we said into something that makes no sense at all and we waste the whole session trying to get her to understand thats not what we said.

then Em goes to therapy & says the same exact thing & T accepts it all without question, doesn't challenge or ask us to justify. or Em says something that seems completely outlandish & unexpected & once again T just accepts it at face value & brings insight & stuff

so we know Em should just keep going to therapy since T works better with Em, but Em doesn't want to. Ciara's been our go-to therapy self & that works better for us.

we wish T would act with Ciara like she acts with Em. but we're afraid to discuss all this with T, especially if its Ciara there trying to explain it, because that'll just make everything 1000x more difficult.

these are the thots that make us think we should just quit therapy. the most progress we made in the last 6 months was when T was on vacation & we figured out abunch of stuff on our own. T helped a bit afterwards, to like put stuff in perspective when Em told T what we'd figured out.

idk. feeling down about therapy atm. back on topic, we have a new self & more voices & stuff but we dont' know if we're comfortable sharing any of that with our T. probably gonna try to deal with it on our own for now instead.

edit: ps. Vanessa wanted to be added to our signature thingy so we put her name on it. we're not sure about her age but we feel like she's in the 12-14 area, like maybe middle-school? so we're not sure she's actually 13 but like give or take a year or so she's around that age. we'll update it if we figure out more accurately.

We feel sorry for you that things get messed up with the T. We completely understand the thoughts of "stopping to see the T" because they make sense in the context that you describe.

We hope that things will either get better with this T, or that you'll find a better replacement T. Good luck.

And congrats to Vanessa for appearing in the signature!
__
Daniel & Pride.

I'm sorry that you're having issues with your T. Would it ever be possible for Em to go to therapy and explain the situation? It seems like you explained it very clearly in your post. Maybe Em could bring that with her for the T to read and then you could discuss it?

I also wonder how much different sensitivities or ways of saying things play into it. I know that for us, some of us can let something the T says just slide by when it would really upset someone else if they were fronting.

I'm not saying that the T doesn't change how she reacts or what she says--I'm sure she DOES respond differently, but I wonder if there's ALSO a difference in how confidently Em says things, for example, vs. maybe Ciara is more tentative or seems unsure, as well as how differently they might react to what the T says. Our ability to express ourselves clearly changes drastically depending on who's fronting.

If you did discuss it with the T, having specific examples might be useful, since the goal would be to get the T to recognize her part in it and to try to change.

We can TOTALLY relate to not trusting the T to handle things in a way that doesn't upset us. He just completely screwed things up for us on Friday and there are parts who are furious with him right now, as well as parts who are devastated.

thankyou Gang & Daniel

we / Vanessa spent most of the afternoon yesterday crying. this morning we had a lot of anger at our present situation and pat abusers and the world in general, for the injustice and unfairness of it all.

we also have some anger at our T but we're not sure about confronting her. we don't do confrontation, parts of our brain shuts off & we can't remember specific examples, sometimes its hard enuf just to talk straight.

we've wondered if Ciara isn't as clear or if it's something she's doing that makes the T unable to follow, but Em has paid close attention since we noticed in the summer and she doesn't think the problem is on our side. the single biggest difference between the two is body language, and probably eye contact. Em is just that much more confident while Ciara isn't.

one thing that this situation with Vanessa & the 'other voices' has really brought home over the past 4 days is the whole dissociative parts thing. like i guess after 18 months or whatever of mostly me fronting, with help from Em & Ciara now & then, we kinda got complacent & used to our little group?

now i'm finding stuff Vanessa wrote, conversations she had on discord, stuff the voices wrote, and it's like...

not only do i not remember writing all this stuff, i don't remember having those feelings and those thots, and the writing's not like my writing. it's just so different & not-me lol.

and i'm not like scared or freaking out or whatever? but like, idk it reminds me of how V1 did kinda freak out about this stuff. like it feels in a way we're going through some of this stuff all over again, like discovery & understanding & stuff

idk

we had a big revelation thing yesterday that boiled down to like, system solidarity. like our system, we all support & look out for each other, & we're gonna do what we can to help Vanessa to find whatever joy she can.

we're all individuals, we each have our own interests, opinions, likes & dislikes. & we wanna celebrate that, we value those differences cos they make each of us special & unique. we all have our own strengths & weaknesses too, which is what makes us better as a team.

we have reached the point where thinking about work, opening our work email, dealing with work stuff, causes our stomach to clench and our hands to shake

it feels like we're in an anxiety attack that has lasted 3 weeks and is still going

all i want to do is write.

-viola

That sounds awful.

Is there any way you can break it down into smaller tasks? Like can you make a plan to look at a small number of emails and then stop? What if you only looked at one each day?

Then you could choose to look at another, but if you didn't want to, that would be ok. And as soon as you finish with that one email you can write.