The Haunted Self

I started reading it. In the first chapter it talks about integration as integrating memory not integrating parts. I like this. That seems helpful. Integrating the memories and facing them etc. This seems much less threatening somehow, at the moment anyway.

Sarah

Sarandipity wrote:I started reading it. In the first chapter it talks about integration as integrating memory not integrating parts. I like this. That seems helpful. Integrating the memories and facing them etc. This seems much less threatening somehow, at the moment anyway.

Sarah

That is a book that has been on our radar for some time. We'd love to hear a little more of your thoughts on it as you go through it, and/or finish it.

-Kitten

That's what I was gonna use this thread for. So I could keep a track of what I'm reading and things that leapt out at me in the book.

The next thing that didn't leap out at me but did after I experienced it yesterday was how EP emotional parts are stuck actually living in that time - whatever time it is. Even though my partner says to me Alot "you live in that past moment" when I talk about something from my past he says I talk about it like I'm there I couldn't quite get what he meant.

But yesterday I was speaking to someone who I knew well a long time ago and it also happened when I was talking to my sister. My mind or emotions go backwards to how I was or felt then. Like a part of me still lives there. The ANP normal part changed as I spoke and it was like being paralysed. The emotions and actions were different with the two different people but they were from the past. I stayed on the phone to my sister all day and felt #######5. I felt teenagerish after talking to the person from years ago. Also a person I only just knew called me and I felt adult in that and boundaried. I felt less boundaried with the other two.

If I didn't just read that bit in that book of how EP can be stuck in the past I wouldn't have known what was happening. Now I know what was happening. I couldn't stop it at the time but I noticed it. Which is the first step to doing something about it.

I can now see what my partner means when he says it's like I relive past stuff when I tell something that happened. Before him saying that just confused me. But since I read that book and it explained it about emotional parts and Action parts I und it.

I haven't got to what to do about it but I at least noticed it and gained a deeper understanding of myself just in the short bit I read.

Sarah

I'm probably just gonna see noteworthy stuff all the way through this. Anyway it said survivors have internal phobias. Mine is jealousy. I have none. I must have it as an emotion, I explored allowing myself to feel it so I can feel it. But I'm terrified of it.

The psychotherapist pointed out some years ago that my mother is a jealous immature mother. This was devastating at the time in its self... It's still causes a temporary black out, just now.

Jealousy was integral in my abuse.

**TW MENTION OF SEXUAL ABUSE**

My mother is jealous. Deeply and pathologically jealous. In everything. Our father was allowed to abuse us but not allowed to show normal care. In the abuse he would say "make mummy jealous" In normal things like making my room not damp for example, even him suggesting that would make her jealous and she would say its OK I sleep in a damp room with black mould. She would then take me to the doctors to get blood tests of why I was ill, aching and had swollen glands. This went on for about 4 years and only stopped because I got old enough to say to the doctor "there is mould" Then she blamed my father who kept saying he should do it and made him do it. He still says that's his fault but I heard the conversations of "I should sort out that damp" and "no leave her she's fine"

So not only did she participate in sa, allow and enjoy the father to r us but she didn't allow him basic levels of care at other times due to her pathological jealousy.

**END TRIGGER**

So I have a massive fear of jealousy to the point where in relationships I don't care if the guy cheats.

I never saw this as a phobia or a problem before reading this book. I saw it as jealousy is a weakness and at the same time it's something to deeply fear in others because if someone is jealous they will do diabolical things. I didn't process it at that level when I was a child. I processed it because I made my sister a birthday card and she made me one. I was jealous because my card was better than hers and it was the first and last time I remember feeling jealousy until last year when I decided to try to let myself feel it. When I did this the abuse memory started to flood. I didn't put the two together at the time but as I write this it makes sense that is why it happened like that. The memories last year.

Sarah

So I just read its important to distinguish Ep from Ap. It said the AP can be overwhelmed by an EP. I don't know who the EP was but I was definitely overwhelmed at the time of those convos with past people by emotions. I didn't I feel, act appropriately to now. I'm a bit swishy so it's hard to think clearly but the emotional part is still living in that past and effected me in the present.

Sarah

The book says that structural dissociation continues when event phobia causes the event to be dissociated and that if you integrate traumatic events then structural dissociation ceases to be necessary.

When my parents said they would drown me in the bath, for example: I have an outward fear of being drowned in the bath. But I know the event happened. I don't feel like it happened to me so even though I know the event I haven't integrated it? Or I have because I remember it? I can't work out if I've integrated that event or not. Also how do I integrate that if I haven't - I think I have to get in touch with the emotions of it but I can't. EP apparently hide from AP so how to do this I do not know.

The book is useful and informative but it's starting to cause me more questions.

Sarah

Hi its Karen, in the flotation tank I cried loads about the fear of drowning in the bath. I had to turn the lights on and off, check I could open the lid a few times, work out what I would do if someone tried to drown me. I got in touch with the emotions of that. You know about the threat and the fear but the emotions are mine. How we would go about sharing them I do not know. Integrating you and me could or couldn't be possible. I don't know because we are very different. You don't even really have the fear of that, you just know about it because practicing to pull the plug out of the bath with our toes is a regular thing. You didn't even know where the fear came from till recently. So I think the event has become part of shared memory but the emotions haven't and the fear hasn't but the action of thinking "I might get drowned, practice taking the plug out with the toes" is a common action and your action also but the event and the emotions are not shared. That's my thoughts.

Karen

This is a really interesting discussion. In here, we too have noticed that some of us carry the emotions (Lust, Reyna, Pride, Envy...) and others (Zami and Theia mostly) carry the knowledge of the events. While some of us carry close to none of this (me, van H., his wife...).

This book really sounds like an interesting read, we might add it to our wishlist in the future.

-David-