Attachment issues

Something we've been running into as a issue that I haven't felt is something our current T can handle is these attachment cry episodes some of the kid parts have in evenings nowadays. It's nearly every night.

The kids will cry and cry and cry for either a) a real person we know who's a friend of ours or b) a fictional person we collectively like. And they just. Yearn and plead and cry for one of them or both of them to be there and caretake. I try my best as do our caretakers in system but it seems like we aren't enough?

I've emphasized to our system "we can not ask our friends to be a parent, we don't get a do over-- if we get a parent it will be ourselves". And we all know this logically I think but emotionally it's. Really bad. Hurts bad I mean. They desperately want someone outside of us. And I guess I do too. It's hard and hurts.

I would mention this to the T but she doesn't have DID as a speciality and her trauma informed stance comes from military trauma so she hasn't been super helpful at all. I really think we need a DID specialist for this one.

Any advice on like. Developing secure attachment to ourselves or dealing with this in any way would be immensely helpful. Also I apologize if I've asked for help on this before - memory isn't serving well. Thanks for any assistance anyone can offer.

Oh, dear. That sounds super painful! I'm so sorry you're going through that.
We are somewhat familiar with this struggle and unfortunately we don't have the perfect solution or something like that.

I guess for us the thing that came to mind reading this was that words may not be enough. You can say that you will be the one reparenting, but really it's also about doing it. That's what tends to help a little bit for us.

We really like to use the "hands" exercise, where one part's attention goes into one hand and the soothing part's attention in the other one. And then you can sort of hold the part that's hurting and show them that they're not alone and you're there for them and listening.

The other thing that helps us a lot is asking: "What is the smallest thing that would help right now?" That is a bit less dauntingto us than asking what a part would need. So then their wishes can be very concrete: a warm blanket, soft lights, a snack, etc. It can feel really empowering to then be able to provide it.

And for us it also helps to have some people to be around. Trust that if we were to fall, there would be people. Even if they're not parents or caretakers.

To some extent it may be normal/good for the part to cry about not being reparented by an outside person. It's a big thing to grieve over ans that grief will likely take time.

We also came up with a tool for ourselves a while ago. We imagined holding a magic stone and it put us on a crossing with paths towards all the people who we have ever connected to in our life. We can then imagine to go to them and get a hug/support. It can decrease the longing somewhat.

I hope this gives you some ideas and that you know you're not alone in struggling with this.

I agree with everything fireheart said. And the hand exercise helped us a lot too!

Another thing that helped some of our young parts was to hug their favorite stuffed animal, while imagining it was them we were hugging.

But yep, with very young parts, it can take a lot of time and reassurance from inside, before they are able to grief, then accept they will not be able to have an outside parent. Building a strong sense of safety help too.

In my system, for a long time, we thought that what we were doing wasn't really working, until one day, something hard happened to us ; our adult parts handled it very well and that event didn't become a new trauma. Our child parts saw it happened, and we also talked a lot about it with them, and all the efforts we made before "clicked" with the way we handled that event. After that, our child parts stopped looking for an external parent.

So yep, like fireheart said, they also need to see it happen, to see the adult parts taking care of the outside life, of the body, and the inside life too. They need to see, again and again, that the inside adults are able to take care of them, of their needs, and to keep the whole system safe. When you do nice things for the body or the system, don't hesitate to take a minute to share the positive feelings with all of your parts, it might help too.

You can think of it as a balance : traumas put a lot of weight on one side for your younger parts. Now, they need to experiment a lot of new positive experiences to put weight on the other side, until the balance is flipped toward the positive instead of the trauma.

I send you all the patience and courage I can, I know it's not easy - for the caretakers inside as well as for the child parts.

i have definitely had this issue with young parts. it has taken time and a lot of repeating things like "i will help you as best as i can," "i am sorry you are hurting," and just trying to do what i can. it takes patience and mostly time.