Ideas for system mapping?

This mapping project hasn't progressed much.

When I read some other posts here about giving possibilities for parts to express themselves by leaving notes, keeping a journal and so on, I decided to make a conscious effort on letting everyone inside select and post pictures to my picture blog, and that way tell about themselves to me.

I've noticed they don't just reveal what they like and what they relate to, but it's like their basic moods are coming through from the pictures they've chosen, and they appear with their unique feelings and dispositions and evoke mild emotional reactions in me.
Not everyone posts pictures though. It's okay.

When I browse the pictures, I also feel things physically in my head and my chest. Like I'm discovering where the parts sort of dwell in my body, or, as funny as it may sound, what part of my head belongs to whom. Perhaps belong is not the right word. I wonder if this is something that other people have?

-- Fri Apr 13, 2012 11:30 pm --

Another thing that I must tell is that I had a long dream about my others last night. I'm not saying I entirely believe everything is just as in my dream, but it was peculiar anyway and I'm going to give it a thought.
In the dream I supposedly found out that there is a group I don't know about, who are hiding, and there's one part who protects them, but he is more like a prison guard than a protector. He doesn't let them out. The reason is he has seen some parts die, in the dream he was the only one who has witnessed that.
But it was only a dream...

Great job! I love have pictures and ages of those in my system even though it's a dynamic system. Most of all my Alters love it! They want me to know what they look like and most now look like the pictures they choose.

It sounds like your really making progress.

When I browse the pictures, I also feel things physically in my head and my chest. Like I'm discovering where the parts sort of dwell in my body, or, as funny as it may sound, what part of my head belongs to whom. Perhaps belong is not the right word. I wonder if this is something that other people have?

Yeah, definitely.
I don't know if belong is the right word either, but I have noticed a correlation between particular parts and bodily pressure/sensations. It's like their calling card.

Very new here...but has anyone tried creating a house/mansion? To create a 'room' for each ... even a yard or whatnot so that you can say "so-n-so" is in the library as usual....so-n-so is napping, so-n-so is flying a kite, so-n-so is waiting for night because he hates so much light...etc.... This is what I've suggested for my Son..newly discovering his alters...4 so far...the therapist thinks their may be more, or more will appear with time. Can anyone tell me why this is? Does that mean all of the unidentified have always been there too? Or that more develop to help cope with new emotions/memories/etc??

HopeIsHere, it might be a good idea to start a separate topic about a safe place/house for alters . It has been discussed before, but not quite recently. I remember one topic about inner worlds, but that one was also some time ago and perhaps difficult to locate.

I was about to post this to PTSD forum but changed my mind. It has nothing to do with system mapping but I just feel like I have to tell it now, and I'd rather do it here on this forum.
I'm not even sure where to start telling what's troubling me, yet I feel I need some advice since I don't know what to do about it.
I think I have a lot of things on my mind that I can't say and it has been that way forever.

My parents made a lot of mistakes when we kids were young and later too, they weren't okay.
I'm not sure what kinds of diagnoses my parents had or should have had, and I don't want to describe their behaviour in detail. What I've read about personality disorders, they both could have been narcs but there was much more to it.
Now, my problem is that every time me and my sister talk about those things she gets somehow aggressive towards me and half accuses me of what happened to her. Or at least that's what it feels like.

I feel like I always was aware of how not right our family life was, like I never neither understood nor accepted the way our parents took one favourite each (she was dad's and I was mom's) and were stand-offish towards the other, but it seems she only realized that after our father left us and that made things go off balance. The favouritism in our family wasn't simple like in fairytales where evil stepmothers favour their own kids. From my point of view it was just something that made my life even more horrible than it already was because it divided us kids, and made my sister turn against me, which was exactly what our parents wanted I guess.
The years when we were growing up and I was in my teens, my mother and sister were caught up in a competition about who is the biggest victim, and they kept ripping each other apart in horrible rows which eventually got physical. In between the rows they both lied to me about what the other had done and said. Each of them always wanted me to agree with her and support her. I just tried to be diplomatic or whatever, but sometimes I just preteneded I agreed with both of them because I didn't know what to do. I'm a few years younger than my sister btw.
In my opinion, when it comes to the vicious circle they created where there were periods of peace and closeness and then rows, they very similar to each other, using similar strategies.
I understand that my mother was responsible for it because she was supposed to be the adult... but she really wasn't like an adult.
Their rows mostly took place when they had been drinking, sometimes together.

Sister and I have acknowledged what happened in our family, but on some level we see things very differently. I've never been able to share what it looked and felt like from my point of view... there's just room for her truth, but it's not the whole truth. So every time we talk about it, she sees herself as the underdog who was attacked against for no reason at all and that's it, and then I feel the pressure from her I should "admit" that it was like that, and things were easy for me. It wasn't like that at all. I never ever accepted any of the stuff that happened. I had no special protection, only my coping skills were different, and the things that happened to me were different. I didn't provoke my mother when she had been drinking, but on the contrary I started to avoid her all the time and moved out as quickly as I could after school. My sister lived with her for several years and also let my mother financially support her for years.

When we have talked about this stuff and her attitude gets demanding, I get headaches and other symptoms for days afterwards. I'm also confused like I should decide who was wrong, right, etc.
It's like she offers me a problem that I can't really solve, like I should take responsibility of what happened. She keeps ruminating and retelling certain events to me and saying things like "you don't know what it was like during the years you had moved out", and I don't know how to respond because I feel like saying why the hell did she continue living there, she was never a prisoner, but I won't say it because that will only get her going. Naturally she has told me what it was like, but of course I can't relive it from her point of view. I feel like she controls me somehow, and that too is something that reminds me of my mother.

I wish I could be immune to our conversations about the past, but then she says something that hits a vulnerable spot in me and I feel like the good connection of trust we have suffers a rupture.
For years I pushed all emotions that reminded me of our home to the back of my mind and I told her I don't want to talk about it if she took it up. Things changed after our mother died, dad had died years ago. After that I started to get symptoms that eventually made me find this forum and so on.

As you can see this is irrelevant in this thread and on this forum but I just had to tell it and now after trying to decide for two hours where to post it or if to post it at all, I might as well post it.
I know it's useless to ask solutions from you. I dunno, this is just something I've been trying to cope with and it seems like it consumes my energy... I guess I just wanted to share my view of things with someone.

UnderIce, I just wanted to let you know that I've read and I'm sorry you're going through this. Maybe she wants to blame someone and you are the only one left. Maybe she wants validation. I'm really sorry you have to deal with it when you have enough of your own stuff to deal with.

Ashesoflife, thank you for your reply... I needed that.
She definitely wants validation from me, she probably doesn't blame me anymore, I'm just easy to guilt-trip when it comes to anything. I do that to myself all the time.
She's just a little unfair, and the way she seems to need me accept only her truth creeps me out and makes me feel cornered. It's all so black and white again, like the way everything was classified in our family back in the day. It distorts truth, if there is truth.
Again, I realize that what I need to work on are my reactions, not her need to get validation. I can't change her, I'm just trying to find some way out of the trapped feeling and the headaches etc. I get from it.
I could tell her I don't want to talk about it, but it still makes me less alarmed to talk about it than it did when I still refused to discuss it. Then I had no words to reply with if she still decided to talk about it. My main reason was that I always disliked the way my family badmouthed each other all the time, and I just didn't want to continue the tradition. I wanted to do the opposite, but it wasn't the sensible thing to do. So I decided to try to talk at least, and it seems that perhaps some healing has happened.
I've always tried to protect myself by being very different from everyone in my family, but like I said that alone doesn't help, if it helps at all. It mostly means that I take care of my own business and try to express as little emotion or need as possible, but when it comes to healing it's rather counterproductive.

It sounds like at times your sister wants you to play therapist, and may be displacing her feelings about your parents onto you. Both of you have been through alot,

The years when we were growing up and I was in my teens, my mother and sister were caught up in a competition about who is the biggest victim

Do you think she's trying to perpetuate the cycle with you?

on some level we see things very differently. I've never been able to share what it looked and felt like from my point of view... there's just room for her truth, but it's not the whole truth.

Support goes both ways. Support is like a battery, you give till your all drained, unless the other person reciprocates and gives you a charge every now and then.
I had a similar problem with my younger sister, I asked her to allow my to talk every now and then. She tried but after a week said it was to difficult to not turn everything about her, so we parted ways. Some people are incapable of seeing another perspective, or dominating everything. It sucks when that happens, but at least for my sister, the best thing for me was to let her go. Love her enough to let her be as she is, love you enough to not let it drag you down.

It's like she offers me a problem that I can't really solve, like I should take responsibility of what happened. She keeps ruminating and retelling certain events to me and saying things like "you don't know what it was like during the years you had moved out"

That's annoying. I hate being strapped over a barrel, darned if you do, darned if you don't.
You aren't responsible for HER decisions. She decided to stay, she may have thought that was best for her but in retrospect may have decided she made a bad decision and refuses to take responsibility. Turns out it sucked, and she can't take it back. There might be a hint of jealousy, as to how you are stronger than her, or how you were able to leave, where she believed she was powerless to, or less able than you.

Irregardless, you decided what was best for you, there was and is nothing wrong with that. Sometimes, we take different paths, there is nothing wrong with that, there is no one way, there is only OUR way, one's own way, Your own personal truth. You following your truth does not negate hers, nor hers to yours.

Anyway, It sounds like you are in a rough spot, I hope all goes well with your sister. The legacy of abuse runs deep and far. I'm sorry.

Borg, thanks.
You asked if I I think my sister is trying to continue the pattern they had with me. Now that you asked it, I often used to feel that she imposed it on me in our interaction. Mom was enmeshed. I hated and resisted it as much as possible, but I felt that my sister somehow accepted that I'm an extension of mother, especially since dad had that attitude after he left, we were just minions of mom from his point of view.
It's agonising for me to think of it. I wasn't immune, far from it.
In the end I loathed them all, although I loved them too. Love and loathing were kept by separate parts, and they still are for the most part. I realized only after mom died and all the old wounds were reopened, how bad feelings and bad attitude I had... partly.
We've managed to work things out with my sister, but what I told in the original post is still there. At least I can respect her now, and it seems to go both ways, but sometimes we fall back to the old pattern.