Grem & Co Journey Thread

You really have the whole "expressing emotions" thing planned out for your future. Congratulations, it is an important aspect of your life plan!

I understand the feelings regarding therapists. We sought ours with a long mail listing all our dissociative symptoms, our therapy goals, links to the ISSTD Guidelines and other DID related books asking to specifically follow the 3 phases treatment plan, listing what we were comfortable starting with and what we needed more time before we even thought about it.

It worked. It helped us weed out the people who did not have the knowledge to treat DID nor the time to take up courses to learn the skills to help us.

I hope this can ease your mind regarding your ability to find a therapist knowing very well that you are dissociative and what treatment you need.
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David.

ArbreMonde wrote:You really have the whole "expressing emotions" thing planned out for your future. Congratulations, it is an important aspect of your life plan!

I understand the feelings regarding therapists. We sought ours with a long mail listing all our dissociative symptoms, our therapy goals, links to the ISSTD Guidelines and other DID related books asking to specifically follow the 3 phases treatment plan, listing what we were comfortable starting with and what we needed more time before we even thought about it.

It worked. It helped us weed out the people who did not have the knowledge to treat DID nor the time to take up courses to learn the skills to help us.

I hope this can ease your mind regarding your ability to find a therapist knowing very well that you are dissociative and what treatment you need.
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David.

that’s actually a really good idea, i’ll look into doing something like that when we can start safely looking for a therapist.

back to the journey thread thing for a bit, i’m really mad today because our keyboard for our ipad broke.

our laptop broke months ago and it’s at our uncle’s house so even if it were working, we can’t use it. instead we’ve been using the ipad with a bluetooth keyboard we got from amazon for like $20. it worked great, with an utterly impeccable battery life that would last for a *while*. like a month or so without dying. it was awesome.

then, today, out of nowhere and completely unexpectedly, it just kind of did what i call s###ing it’s pants. whenever i tried to type on it, pressing certain keys would also for some reason trigger the typing of other keys. for example, when i tried to type the “d” key, it would also type like 7 of the letter “c” and also end up bringing up the “search” function of our ipad as well for some reason. typing the “m” key would also bring up the “6” key and continue typing the letter “m” like 12 times. out of nowhere, too. it was functioning just fine when i was using it last night, and i think even this morning. i just took a break to draw for a while and all of a sudden it does this and i have no idea why. i didn’t drop it or spill anything on it, it’s just like this now. $20 wasted, and i only have around $50 cash right now, and $9 in my bank account with no way to get more. ugh. i’m so mad about this because i prefer to type on a keyboard more than anything else. i like the way the keys feel and i like being able to switch between programs really fast using alt+tab.

my autism is throwing a fit right now that i can’t do this anymore and yknow autistics and change don’t go well together. i got thrown out of my routine and i just can’t stand it right now.

part of me is hoping that if i leave it turned off for a while, it’ll somehow go back to normal and everything will be fine again, but what’s more likely is that its just broken for good, for no reason i can think of. i hate technology sometimes.

-grem

i’m here and i’m mad for a different reason.

i present as 16 in the inner world but obviously since our body is 18 almost 19 i’m not a literal 16 year old, i just look that way because it’s symbolic of trauma. but i have a friend who is 19 and treats me like a literal 16 year old, won’t even make some kind of slightly NSFW jokes around me because of it. it feels infantilizing because i’m in an adult body and want to be treated and respected as an adult. i have the maturity levels and capabilities of an 18 year old. the only difference between grem and i is that i hold trauma from when we were 16-17 and that’s affected the way i present in the inner world because of it.

there are child and under 18 parts that want to be treated as children and people under 18. thats fine. but there are also alters that go in the other direction, where they present as under 18 but want to be treated like adults because they’re in adult bodies. the only thing tying me to this age is trauma. i don’t want to be reminded of it all the time. sometimes i just want to forget i’m part of a system because of this. i want to be looked at with the age of our body being the most important thing before the age of our alters.

if it were my choice, alters wouldn’t be treated based the ages they present as but rather their based on their own personal boundaries, capabilities, maturity levels and the boundaries of the rest of the system.

it really ticks me off that this friend treats me like a literal 16 year old, and i don’t know how to assert my boundaries without them feeling bad about it, because they have really severe anxiety that can flare up really badly when people are mad at them because of their own trauma.

i’m just tired of being treated like a child. i want to be treated like the adult i literally physically am, and i don’t even know how to say it to this friend.

-kat

update: i’ve started by asking that one of grem’s partners who also has DID that they treat me like an adult. so far haven’t responded (did it over text/chat client because it feels easier to type this stuff out than say it).

[sarcastically] i cant wait until they say no or something. this is making me anxious.

-kat

gremandco wrote:if it were my choice, alters wouldn’t be treated based the ages they present as but rather their based on their own personal boundaries, capabilities, maturity levels and the boundaries of the rest of the system.

-kat

It literally IS your choice, and you don't need to settle for anything less. The body is that of an adult, so that's not an issue. Alters can be treated based on their capabilities and maturity levels, not on a number that doesn't even correlate to outside reality.

TheGangsAllHere wrote:It literally IS your choice, and you don't need to settle for anything less. The body is that of an adult, so that's not an issue. Alters can be treated based on their capabilities and maturity levels, not on a number that doesn't even correlate to outside reality.

i agree, it’s just that a lot of people in other parts of the DID community disagree, that friend included.

update on talking to grem’s partner though, and they say that they’ll treat me like an adult. i also explained why i was talking to them about this and they understand, so that’s great. i just wish i knew how to explain this to our other friend. i talked to them earlier but didn’t tell them i was fronting because i was just uncomfortable with them. i’m feeling a lot better after talking with grem’s partner though. now i’m just watching jojo.

also, the keyboard inexplicably started working again. weird.

-kat (and grem kinda?)

Good thing the keyboard started working again!

It really bugs me when people treat alters based on a number rather than based on who they really are as a person. Pride, our Little, is very fond of true crime shows. He has the maturity to handle them. Why not allow him to? He is also able to have interesting conversations about politics and stuff, just with a "dumbed down" vocabulary. A good friend of us had conversations with him about politic stuff. She adapted, "dumbing down" her vocabulary, but keeping the subject intellectually stimulating.

A friends' Little has another spectrum of maturity. I adapt to her, both in vocabulary and subjects of conversation. There are subjects she is very mature about, others she is not. I treat her according to her maturity.

Even singlet should be treated this way (outside of the legal matters of course). Discussion should always be adapted to their maturity, rather than their age. The age is a clue regading their maturity of course - if the person is 5 years old, chances are they are far from being mature enough to talk about the sublteties of tax returns. But it is only a general rule. Maybe one day we will learn there IS a physical 5 years old who is well-versed in the subtleties of tax returns. They will be the rare exception, and will be treated accordingly on this subject.

If you are tip-toe-ing and walking on eggshells around someone because of their own poor emotional management skills, this might be time to reconsider the relationship. Maybe give them more space and suggest them ressources that could be helpful for them. (It is only a suggestion, there are many other solutions to this situation, I just did not think about them yet) But letting them walk over your boundaries is NOT helpful, neither for you nor them.
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Daniel.

Daniel@ArbreMonde wrote:If you are tip-toe-ing and walking on eggshells around someone because of their own poor emotional management skills, this might be time to reconsider the relationship. Maybe give them more space and suggest them ressources that could be helpful for them. (It is only a suggestion, there are many other solutions to this situation, I just did not think about them yet) But letting them walk over your boundaries is NOT helpful, neither for you nor them.
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Daniel.

yeah, thats probably true. we’ve tried to suggest things in the past but they usually just say that those don’t work for him or whatever, their anxiety is pretty severe. for now ive just resorted to not telling them i’m fronting or just not talking to them.

knowing our system’s relationship with him, he’ll probably notice and it’ll all come out eventually though.

update on asking grem’s partner to respect me actually went well though. so that’s nice at least.

-kat

we celebrated a very important thing on october 19th. it was the anniversary of an accident we didn’t die from when we were around 10 years old. mom took us to an alice cooper concert where ace frehley opened for him, and it was really cool. i had to stand on a folding chair because i was so short. i’ve been wearing the alice cooper detroit muscle shirt i got from there almost ever since.

weird thing though, later that same night my big toes inexplicably went numb and have been numb or have lacked most feeling ever since, with no explanation as to why. no discoloration except for a reddish-bruise like spot at the base joint of my right big toe, but it doesn’t hurt. i wasn’t wearing tight shoes, it doesn’t hurt to move my toes, i can move them just fine, they’ve just gone mostly numb for a few days. most feeling has actually come back over time, but i’m hoping to see a doctor about it soon enough. we just have to wait for our insurance cards to come in. i’m thinking that it may be related to arthritis, which we show several symptoms of in our toes. unusual for our age, but we have a friend who is in his early 20s with a nasty case of arthritis in his hands, so it wouldn’t be out of the question. i’m waiting to see a doctor about it to confirm anything though.

another thing is that our tics are getting worse. we have undiagnosed tourette’s or a tourette’s-like disorder with several verbal and motor tics. our sister likes to trigger them because she thinks it’s funny, when in reality it’s dangerous and uncomfortable for us and it’s awful. what’s worse is our mom doesn’t really care, she just yells at us to shut up or tells us to stop when it’s fully involuntary. it’s gotten better over time, but it’s still frustrating. especially since i have a new tic that’s just screaming, and i did it a couple of times earlier tonight to the point where my mom called me on my phone to tell me to stop, and i didn’t really know what to tell her.

i’ve been trying to suppress the screaming one specifically for a while, but it’s very uncomfortable.

i can’t talk too much more about the tics because it’ll trigger them again, oops.

another thing that happened: the other night i heard screaming in my head. i thought it was my imagination and tried to get it to stop by suppressing it, but that didn’t work. i realized that this may be an alter, so instead i tried to send them compassion and warm feelings and tried to tell them that they were safe and okay, and it made them passively influence me into tearing up because they weren’t expecting kindness or compassion. eventually they went away and i haven’t heard from them since.

that one was really one of those ‘oh s###, i have DID” moments. i’ve been thinking about it nonstop while i’ve been !@#@ these past few days. it reminds me that DID is a very messed up disorder full of horror and heartbreak. i only have a vague idea of what that alter was screaming about and what they were afraid of, and i’m terrified to find out more because it’s genuinely awful. but i know i’ll have to do it eventually.

i also talked to an older friend that has DID about recovery and such, talking about how horrible it can be to have this disorder, and how i was somewhat afraid of the trauma that would surface in the form of nightmares and flashbacks after running away from home, and they were very supportive, telling me their own experiences and telling me that it was going to be okay eventually. they told me i had a good head on my shoulders, and i don’t know why but that made me feel really nice. i’ve never really had anyone tell me something like that before, and i guess that feels almost validating. they’re a really good friend to talk to and i’m glad to have them.

in other news, we’re glad it’s getting cold. the cold weather is really nice and it’s one of the few things that seems to be full of relatively happy memories, outside of specifically december. i’m at the very least excited for the cold

-grem

I'm not sure I would call the event of the screaming alter, "horror and heartbreak" since you sent them comfort and compassion, and they were so relieved by it that they cried.

Quite the opposite: I would call it a very positive moment, since you eased up their suffering and showed them that safety and comfort are possible.

Good luck with the numb toes thing. I hope it's nothing serious.
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Daniel.