Multi-faceted & semi-precious.

thankyou Morwan

we're not sure if depression is our biggest problem, it feels like only some of us are depressed. but its definitely something we need to address.

we think our 4 main issues are physical health, depression, anxiety, & loneliness.
and some of us feel like dealing with physical health may help with the depression & anxiety.
not much we can do about loneliness, but if we can work on 3 out of 4 thats not bad

viola & others

the average age in our system is 13.

like our body is lots older but the five of us who do the front stuff, if you add up our ages & divide by 5 then the average age is like 13 + a couple months.

and thats assuming Em is really 22 like she says. some of us think she's younger & lies about her age lol. like she wants people to think she's older & more mature than she really is? but don't tell her i said that lol.

this stuff probably doesnt matter but i felt like mentioning it cos i just figured it out a little while ago.

the voices say we used to have an older person in our system who was like 30 but she couldn't handle being part of a system. voices say she had a lot of internalized ableism & couldn't deal with people thinking we were 'crazy' & stuff. so she left, she went to her own world deep inside where she wouldnt have to deal with the rest of us & she could just be a normal person.

Vanessa

Sending moral support your way. It's not easy dealing with grown-up stuff when you are a teenager.

I am also sending my thoughts and support to the grown-up, wherever she is. Ableism is awful. Being a system is not bad nor crazy. It is a normal reaction of the brain to an abnormal amount of stress when growing up.

If she wants to show up from time to time to discuss or recieve support on here, she will be welcome. It is difficult to accept the wounds of the past and I completely understand her need for normalcy.

Good luck to you all.
__
Morwan.

yeah depression can be a hard thing. and loneliness and anxiety. i relate to having those as well. i hope you can find something to help. for me, i try small things to help me through the days. or also just i try to stay busy and productive cause it keeps me from sinking too much. i don't know if it's the absolute best. but yeah. i hope you can work on these, cause i know they can take a big toll. i know for me anyways they also come in cycles, sometimes being better and worse, so for me it's about getting through the cycle. till it can get better. i don't know what that means as far as did, if there are certain alters that feel this and come through. it's something to think of.
Sorry to hear you are feeling overwhelmed by your therapist. too.

loneliness has been really bad lately. we're ok when we're busy, like when i'm lost in writing all our problems disappear. but then we stop writing & the problems come back. & loneliness has been really bad the last few days i guess.
its been > 6 months since the last time we had physical contact with another person & its really starting to affect us i think.

I'm sorry you're feeling so lonely.

For what it's worth, we can have as much physical contact as we want with another person and we STILL feel very lonely often. So it may not be only about that.

But I think getting out and being around people can help. Do you still have that really nice neighbor who was accepting of your little?

thanks Gang,

the neighbor is still around but we havent visited with her in 2+ years. covid basically stopped everything social here.
we're going to try to talk with a friend on the phone today if she's available. maybe we can even plan to meet in a month or so.

we were supposed to meet our friend tomorrow for a meal & maybe go for a walk or whatever but the weather is snow & rain & cold. neither we or our friend want to walk in the snow/rain/cold. she doesn't want to drive in it either, so we won't be meeting for a meal after all.
we could have driven all the way to her house & visited with her there, and a year ago we probably would have done it. we've done it fairly often over the last several years, probably 5 years? she hasn't visited us in the that time tho. it's like idk 75 minutes drive so we either meet in the middle or we meet at her house but she doesn't come out here.
anyways we need to do some stuff with our car, like check tires & clean it up & get gas & stuff, & its too cold out to do that so we decided not to go all the way to her house.
we'll talk on the phone tomorrow probably.
not sure if all that is us having boundaries or just being kinda lazy & petty.

earlier in the week our mother called & used a different phone so we didn't know it was her, so we answered & had to talk to her for a while. 1st time in maybe 6 months. it went better than we expected but still not happy about it.

and wednesday we had another online therapy. didn't really connect with our T this time. we can tell the difference now, like some times we kinda vibe with her & it feels like a good session, other times it's meh. this one was meh. maybe because it happened the day after talking to the mother, we maybe still had all our defences up.

otherwise we feel like every other week is working ok for therapy, & we're sticking with online cos a) we're lazy & b) its less disruptive. online means therapy only takes an hour, but going in person dominates our day because we have to make plans & worry about travel & we stress about traffic & being late & stuff. we leave an hour early, then come back & take time to unwind. inperson is like 3 hours total, online is 1 hour.

we also had a bunch of workstress this week too. might have been exacerbated by the contact with the mother, putting us on high alert etc.

its really hard to be objective about a lot of stuff. kinda wanna say overall we're doing better? like more good days, fewer bad days? but we can't rule out the possibility that we're forgetting bad stuff because that's how we deal with it.

You do look like you are doing better.

Opting for online therapy is not "lazy" it is "efficient" and "economic". It is smart.

Opting for NOT driving in this "April Fool's" kind of weather (I find it ironic that the whole of it happened in April 1st at least in my country) is smart and wise, too. There will be other occasions to meet with your friend. You are not lazy, you are realistic.

Despite all the workstress and the phone call, you managed to take intelligent and self-preserving decisions. You can be proud. This is progress IMO. Moreover you are better able to understand the mechanisms behind some therapy sessions feeling good or not. You are aware that some are nice and some are meh. And you said "meh" instead of "catastrophic". This is progress too!

Congratulations!

thanks AbreMonde we appreciate that!
its good to be reminded now & then that even tho we automatically put ourselves down about those things that doesnt make it true.

--

a few days ago (maybe it was last week) something triggered us & it took a couple days to kinda calm down. then once we'd calmed enuf we kinda revisited the experience in small doses to try to understand what happened & try to figure out exactly what aspect was triggering.

we didn't quite get to the bottom of it but we kinda narrowed it down to a couple possibilities, but while we were working on that we encountered 2 possibly new selves.

one was a little who was the one that got triggered, they were scared & upset & stuff. the other was a bit older, maybe a young teen & we think they were kind of a protector, paired with the little. the older one carried a lot of anger & outrage about whatever happened to the younger one.

so we sent them both messages and feelings of love & acceptance & safety & stuff, told them we're safe now & theres no danger here & stuff like that. they maybe didn't believe us, & kinda faded back into the darkness. and at one point during all that, we got a really brief flood of memories, like images & feelings. it was too quick & too short to really get anything, other than some of it was disturbing.

but after that experience was over we felt better, like the lingering effects of being triggered earlier seemed to be gone after that.


we dunno if all that was the right way to do stuff, but it felt better than doing nothing or trying to ignore it. and theres still some unanswered questions about the specific circumstances & trigger, we dont' feel like its fixed or gone or whatever, but maybe when it happens again it wont be so bad? idk.