Journey Thread - littledaria

It's okay to take breaks to regulate things that come up. You can "store" things for later.
Sometimes I like to imagine putting it in a safe for later.

Wishing you lots of luck with the (new?) T!

fireheart wrote:It's okay to take breaks to regulate things that come up. You can "store" things for later.
Sometimes I like to imagine putting it in a safe for later.

Wishing you lots of luck with the (new?) T!

We have a memory cabinet!

We're working on attachment issues with our therapist. It's very difficult, but worth it if it lets us learn how to be more genuine and present in other relationships.

He is the only one who sees all of us (or at least knows we're all here, even if he hasn't met everyone), and the fact that he likes us and cares about us "despite" that, means a lot to us. We still keep expecting his eyes to change and show dislike or even hate, but he says that will never happen.

We also have trouble tolerating so much good feeling and warmth coming at us from another person--tolerating that looking at us has made their eyes light up. We're trying to gradually increase our tolerance and acceptance of that, since feeling safely attached to him, in an ongoing way between sessions, is going to help us process trauma safely and effectively. I wonder if you can work on attachment issues more directly with your therapist and if that would be helpful?

I'm sorry to hear about your encounter with your abuser. That's an understandably re-traumatizing event. I wish you had had the option of getting off the bus, or taking back your power in some way. Maybe reimagining the event and having it go differently would be helpful?

And I'm glad your return to therapy went well!

We are feeling an odd cold anxiety of unknown origin.

Could it be Shadow?

It doesn't feel specific.

It's not like the dread.

Anticipation? Apprehension?

Okay. Let it happen. What is... it?
Just had a flash from our childhood, how we'd cry when we had to leave someplace exciting like a museum and we're struck by deep feeling of loss.

We keep having visions of the shadows, little Snippets.

It scares us. What's there?

We breathe, slow deep breaths.

We're listening to music which is helping somewhat but we keep drifting.

We drifted into littlespace for a period of time.

-- Sun Jul 05, 2020 3:46 pm --

TheGangsAllHere wrote:We're working on attachment issues with our therapist. It's very difficult, but worth it if it lets us learn how to be more genuine and present in other relationships.

He is the only one who sees all of us (or at least knows we're all here, even if he hasn't met everyone), and the fact that he likes us and cares about us "despite" that, means a lot to us. We still keep expecting his eyes to change and show dislike or even hate, but he says that will never happen.

We also have trouble tolerating so much good feeling and warmth coming at us from another person--tolerating that looking at us has made their eyes light up. We're trying to gradually increase our tolerance and acceptance of that, since feeling safely attached to him, in an ongoing way between sessions, is going to help us process trauma safely and effectively. I wonder if you can work on attachment issues more directly with your therapist and if that would be helpful?

I'm sorry to hear about your encounter with your abuser. That's an understandably re-traumatizing event. I wish you had had the option of getting off the bus, or taking back your power in some way. Maybe reimagining the event and having it go differently would be helpful?

And I'm glad your return to therapy went well!

What we underlined: yes, we face this challenge with our therapist, just the other day we had enormous difficulty disclosing to her.

We told her we were afraid we'd disgust her. It felt like if we told her she wouldn't like us anymore.

Weve been in littlespace a lot today.

Lots of childish impulses.

We've needed to cry but can't.

Felt desperate need

Want to die

Want terapist

Want... mommy

Hate mommy
She hurt us
Hit us
Yelled
Screamed
Lied
Hurt us

When we are in littlespace we can feel both great need for and anger towards our mother.

We suffered emotional and physical abuse at her hands from the moment we were adopted.

She is, so far as we're concerned, a covert narcissist, a cruelly manipulative monster.

She maintains a picture perfect facade of normalcy, has our whole life. Her friends have no clue.

We have considered outing her as an abuser but the repercussions are barely to be contemplated.

We have minimal contact with our family, though our mom texts us daily.

She knows we have DID and once, in an unexpected moment of openness, she acidly spat, "because you had a screaming mother" (something like that, we don't exactly remember). Otherwise, she refuses to talk about our disorder.

She's not the monster she was in our childhood, which is hard to reconcile.

Nobody but the protectors go to our parents place. The littles come out at Christmas every year, which has caused problems.

Often, when at our parents we get triggered. At such times we go to the bathroom and cry.

We once melted down at Christmas. Mother was pretty upset by it.

We have at least one, possibly two, suicidal alters. The one who fronts most often is Snow, who has a desperate need to escape her pain.

Her immediate reaction to a trauma response is to express a desire for self-harm or death, rather than face it.

We feel her influence frequently.

She can have a cascade effect on the system, sending the littles scrambling for cover, activating the system's rage holder Simon (who's been missing), and generally causing chaos.

Depending on the size of our window of tolerance she can take over. Snow has taken us to the river, cut us, and stockpiled pills. Fortunately she's not fooling our protector Aloysius

Her responses feel autonomic, programmed. It's like when we hit a certain level of distress she pops out.

There is great fear in her too.

Anger, of any kind, can bring her to the surface.

Often, when we're out and about, we find the world surrounding us sort of goes away. It can leave us blind to visual cues.

When we're with our friend she is forever pulling us back from the roadway when we're out walking with her. The thing is though, that when we are alone we are very careful when crossing streets, almost obsessively so. Why the disconnect?

When we're riding the bus we have to focus strongly so we don't miss our stop. If we don't focus on our surroundings it's as though they don't really exist. We have walked past people we know without greeting them on countless occasions, because we literally didn't see them.

People often have to repeat themselves for us to hear them. Conversation can be an exercise in staying in the moment, and we're not always successful. We don't know how many times we've heard, "Are you listening?"

Sometimes we wish we could live only in our inner world, leave the real world behind. It's an odd impulse.

When the world doesn't feel quite real we can feel somewhat unreal ourselves, as though we are in a movie. We call it The Truman Show effect.

These episodes can last anywhere from a few minutes to over an hour. Our instinct is to, if we're out, return home immediately, return to safety.

Fortunately, we are nearly always with our friend when this happens, and this isn't by mistake. We don't like going out alone.

Her presence acts as a shield for us. She nearly always knows that SOMETHING has happened with us, not exactly what, and tends towards protectiveness towards us, or at least that's how it feels.

Unfortunately, our friend has often been the cause of our distress, as she can also lash out unexpectedly, at those around her. Her compassion vanishes during such episodes.

We don't think she realizes what anger does to us. We, having been triggered into a trauma response, become helpless to function, unable to speak, other than to mindlessly apologize to her, even though her anger doesn't really have anything to do with us. We somehow understand this, but we are still left paralyzed.

Our body will feel cold and hollow, we can feel dizzy, even nauseous. Inside we are wailing. We blink, repeatedly, for some reason. We will not maintain eye contact.

We can shake our head repeatedly, as if this will shake the intrusive thoughts from our head.

Sorry, not sure where this is heading but we're becoming pretty f***ing anxious so we'll stop here.

When we are out and about there are things that will trigger us into littlespace, such as when we go to Toys'r'Us. Fortunately, we can prepare for this, and will talk to our littles ahead of time, setting boundaries.

Unfortunately, this switch can be caused by a negative external trigger, which will cause us to enter a different kind of littlespace.

During such times we feel we have retreated within, and will exist in a sort of haze, receiving strong childish impulses and emotional input. The desire to hide can be strong, the desire to cry too. This is littlespace, but not safe littlespace. This is littlespace in public. This is frightened, triggered littlespace.

Our body shrinks in upon itself, trying to appear smaller. We become silent, assessing our immediate surroundings. Everything around us feels too big.

Simply crossing the street can be challenging. We had been triggered the other day, while out to eat with a friend, and when we had use the POS machine it felt totally strange, like we were doing something wrong.

Being a triggered little when alone in public is scary. What will happen though is that we can shift into a dispassionate state, that of our protector, Aloysius. This happens seemingly automatically.

We become emotionally cold, dismissive of all feelings, or is it that we are just separated from our emotions?

Our motions become slightly robotic, our gaze, a blank stare.

It's as though we are watching ourselves from a spot just above and behind our head. The world around us becomes somehow muffled.

We, if it occurs to us, and if nobody can hear us, may whisper affirmations to the inside; "we're safe.", "we're on our way home."

The aftermath can be rough, requiring self-soothing to say the least. We will be exhausted, wanting only our beloved Duffy bear and the comfort of our bed.

We will almost cry ourselves to sleep, though our medications prevent actual tears from flowing.

When we were eleven our neighbor, a boy four years older than us, began to abuse us.

This abuse continued for seven years, with incidents occurring three/four times a week.

We were made to submit to his needs, to please him. He raped us, several times.

As time went on we became convinced we were to blame somehow for what was happening to us.

We felt if we were to become better at what he made us do he might stop hurting us.

What were WE doing wrong?

The shame, the disgust, and self-loathing grew.

Eventually we came to believe that sex was all we were good for.