SO and Inner wars

Hello,

I have been the SO of someone with DID for 10 years, and I have always read the importance of staying neutral when it comes to the inner wars.
But what should a SO do when your loved one is caught up in huge inner wars opposing 2 sub systems : all the protectors vs all the persecutors.

I mean when chidlren are involved, caught up by an abusive alter, calling to you, begging for help, what should the SO do ?
Hard to sit there and do nothing.

Thank you for reading this and for the answers, this may help some others than just me.



Larme

We ( the forum) have already told you that you are toxic to this person and to let them go stop trying to rephrase your question untill you get the answer you want you arnt going to get it. all you are going to do is trigger the protector of every system that uses this forum and ensure we all have crappy hypervigalent days.
Jonny Jack , snagga isn't there a rule about duplicate posts?

-- Fri Dec 11, 2020 2:50 am --

Ps YOU are the trigger for the internal war you are so concerned about. Once you have left they will stop fighting themselves. So leave.

Hello Eliseahorse,

You must be confusing 2 different people, I have been the SO of 2 different women dealing with DID.
I am in the process of saying goodbye to one of them, the one you consider myself toxic to.
But there is still this other woman I have spent 10 years of my life with, decating my life to her, and I would like tips about it if she ever was to show up (and understand what I may have done wrong + be useful to people facin the same situation).

Maybe Eliseahorse is talking about this thread, in which you were told that you can't be a 'savior' to someone, that these forums can't be like a 'savior' to you, and that some of your mentioned things were indeed toxic in the situation, and that the situation itself in one case was SERIOUSLY WRONG AND BAD.

This thread:
post2277407.html

Or maybe the other one when you were told you can't be the therapist and like responsible for someone else's healing. The alarming advice here was this comment from Arbremonde

& Ask. Stop overthinking. This is not about you. This is a dissociative person doing whatever she can to go through life. And sometimes, it means that old friends drift appart. That's just how life is. Because she is DID does not mean you have the right to force yourself upon her in a social relationship, just because you want to be the savior who will "fix" her.

& It's nice to want to help. But you cannot force her to accept your help. And your "help" might be doing more damage than good since you're not a trained professional therapist.

That is LITERALLY telling you what you are doing is toxic, even if not using that word- those things, if you are doing them and still doing them- IS WRONG.

Eliseahorse is right- No amount of asking here about this stuff will ever change that.

This one:
dissociative-identity/topic218152.html

{\Pixie/}

Yes, it's hard to "sit there and do nothing," but IF she was ever to show up and be in the midst of an "inner war," there isn't anything that you can or should do to help. As I understand it, you're no longer in a relationship with her, and as a friend, all you can do is refer her back to her therapist to help her. As an SO, that's all you should do as well.

The littles who might be calling out to you are not literal children, and an "abusive alter" is a part who is in a lot of pain and needs compassion, kindness, and understanding. These are all parts of one whole person. If you felt like she was in danger of harming herself, then you could call an emergency line to have someone go and check on her.

It seems to me that there is no way the posters here can answer much of what you, Larme, are looking for. The changes and turmoil in a DID system is rooted in that person's unique history and environment. Even therapists and DID clients working together don't get a full picture of what's going on within the system or among alters for years. Hosts switch, sometimes for years, and some hosts don't return as hosts at all. It depends on that person's inner world and current needs.

Being available as a friend is one thing. Sometimes trying to be more, such as putting out fires for an alter as they arise, can actually limit the overall person's capacity to work things out for themselves, no matter how painful. I probably won't suggest you not be available at times because I don't now either of you personally, I don't know the history, and I don't have nearly enough information.

I took a teen with DID into my home and later adopted him so I can't exactly preach not to help someone or not go overboard at times. But I also know well that sometimes my help, however well meant, has the opposite effect and limited his growth. There are whole areas that I know better than try to help with at all because I'm not a therapist and I could put him at greater risk. Well, that and I have DID so I have my own issues and triggers to deal with. I hope you can list some areas where you don't go, some boundaries.

You're getting feedback from some posters that what you're doing is part of the problem and is creating additional problems. I think it's important to sit with that feedback a good while, as some of it probably parallels or sheds light on your friends' systems' reactions to what you're doing and have done. Clearly you're pretty wrapped up in the chaos and drama and that's not surprising for some people who are in a relationship of any kind with someone with DID, we've read it here before. Not all DID relationships contain chaos and drama, just to be clear, but some do, especially if there's no ongoing therapy and an acknowledgement of the DID.

One question I'm having is to what extent do you have healthy boundaries for yourself? Waiting at a computer for hours (if I understood that correctly) so you'll be available if they want to contact you doesn't sound like very good self-care or solid boundaries. Are you seeing a therapist? It kind of sounds like you should be, for your own needs. This is sort of the "can't help others if you aren't in a good place yourself" thing.

Of course, sometimes helping someone involves just offering a limited listening or not offering anything. Sometimes all I can offer my son is food and shelter while one or both of us work through what we're in the middle of. I'd say I'm reparenting him as a whole but I'm a generation older than him and we live in the same house so there's context that makes that feasible. For specific areas, though, his system must be in broad agreement that he's open to reparenting. Otherwise, I've found I'm creating problems for him.

♥ Alright I have one question: are you forking kidding us?

♥ I did not want to jump in with my personal life but it seems there is no other solution to make you see what is going on.

♥ One of the relationship I/we have been trapped in, involved a guy who pretended to "help" us and "heal" us and "save" us.


***************************TW : abuses of all sorts*************************











♥ All he did was: manipulate us - especially me, triggering me into fronting - into behaving the way he thought would mean "healing". Refusing to allow us to express our "bad" emotions (such as, being angry at our past abusers, beind depressed because of the trauma, being stressed because of autistic overload), to engage into "bad" activities (liking Pokémon games, liking Tamagotchi ((he even searched our bag for our Tamagotchi and "confiscated" it until the battery died)), liking "true crime" shows ((he would yell at us for watching them)), liking unicorns ((he even had us throw away some of our unicorn plushies)) etc.), to have difficulties engaging into "adult activities" (driving is hellish because of autistic overloads, cooking is difficult because of dyspraxia and lack of parental teaching into cooking, a lot of us don't like to have sex ((which lead to him raping us almost on a daily basis while making us feel guilty for "forcing him to rape us")) ).

♥ He was angry that we needed an outside therapist and would calculate our respective shares of participating into the paying of rent, food etc. without accounting for the therapist payments, meaning that we could never buy ourselves nice things because we were out of money at the end of the months - making us dependend on him and his willingness to give us presents, in order to have clothes or shoes or furnitures or paying the cat's vet bill.

♥ Each time we showed signs of not being perfectly 200% happy about being with him, he would be abusive in all sorts of way, including guilt-tripping us for feeling bad or having trauma. He sometimes became physically violent if we reminded him of our past traumas. He abused us when we made our transgender coming-out.

♥ But when talking with people outside of the relationship, his point of view always was (and I'm sure it still is) that he was doing his best to help me/us get better, and I/we were abusively unwilling to get better and abusively refusing sex to him and abusively making him pay for our clothes. He also "punished" us for seeing his car had a flat, by making us pay for the tire replacement, as if noticing the flat was the same thing as creating the flat.

♥ He went as far as keeping our meds away from us because "if you keep taking them you'll become addicted" or "if you take more than 3 meds per day it means you're just as sick as having AIDS and obviously you are NOT as sick as AIDS therefore you have to pick 2 of the 3 but you cannot take all 3" (he included "vitamin supplements" and "painkillers when the periods are so bad I'm waking up in the middle of the night crying out of pain" in the "3 pills a day" count).












********************END TW************************************************

♥ All in all, he kept decided for me/us how I/we should behave, feel, take care of our health... All because he wanted to be in a relationship which for him meant that he had all rights to puppet me/us around.

♥ Which is exactly what you are forking trying to do with your "SO".

♥ Which is exactly why her protector parts are pushing you away, you dense lump of Munster cheese!

♥ If you cannot be mature and adult and healthy enough to listen to people when they point the obvious, if you are immature and selfish enough to cling to your wishes and your desires and try to make the whole world revolve around your belly button... Then you have absolutely no business being around a vulnerable DID person who needs stability and respect. And you are the one who should hop into the nearest therapist office.

♥ Sincerely,

♥ A very angry and triggered abusive relationship survivor named Lust.

Gosh, I didn't see this one before answering to the other one.

There's nothing you can do. It's none of your business. Stop trying and start to trust her as a whole to take care of themselves. This will help.

Like others said, child alters aren't litteral children. They are parts of her.

She, as a whole, is either using you to keep hurting herself because you're making yourself totally available for her as you don't seem to have any boundaries + you don't trust her to take care of herself, so why not ? ; or using the child parts to disgust and/or scare you, in order to make you leave.

So I'm gonna say it again : learn how to set healthy boundaries and stop allowing her to manipulate you, you are encouraging her inadequate attention seeking behaviors.

And maybe find a therapist for you too. All of those things you're allowing from her and do for her are clues there's a lot going on inside of you.

I find this extremely triggering to read too.

Especially that you, Larme, seem not to hear what the other forum members tell you.
You cannot be her saviour. and you shouldn't be. if you are afraid for her physical well being in most contries there are services you can call to get her outside help. By trying to do what only a professional can do you make it worse. and the real problem why you do that lies within yorself.
maybe ask yourself why you tend to meet persons as your SOs that need a dependent relationship. Why do you exude that you will take care of another person like it is your child? what do you think makes you attractive for that personality type. is it maybe because you need deep inside yourself the insurance that the person can never leave you on their own? only you know the answer.
But I scent co-dependency.

Sorry for being so blunt. you have been told by other members that you trigger with your repetetive inquiries not being willing to listen and learn.
I tell you from my side again: YOU ARE TRIGGERING.
we come to this forum to find a peer group and some understanding. you are not a peer and you don't understand. please stop posting this kind of stuff and think about what has been said and then get help yourself cuz you clearly have some probs with interpersonal boundries to a point where it is dangerous for yourself and other at the least.

pls stop ruining our days.
bye
#13

To everyone,

I'm sorry to hear how triggering and toxic of a person I can be, all I wanted was to be here for them and provide support for their journey.
Know that I never forced anyone to do anything, ever, I was always welcoming of the new alters no matter how nice or angry they could be.
I never tried to change anyone's behaviour/personality but to give understanding and compassion.
I always knew I couldn't fix someone myself, I always tried to open their eyes on seeking professional help, which worked for K, But J never has, never will.

In my relationship with J, it was long distance, never met, I don't know her real name nor where she really lives for her own security. She lives alone and I couldn't call any emerengy number without ssuch infos so I tried to handle it the best I could since there was no one else but me.
I never wanted to be a savior or so, I'm just a simple human being, trying to be a good person, this is why I came here posting about it all showing how desperate I am to find elements/tips to help me do the right things, take the right decisions.
But I never expected anyone to tell me " you do this, it wil fix it all".
No I have not seen a T to help me in any way, that would have involved sharing personal stuff about J and she trusted me on never telling about her inside to anyone (untill a few years ago when she allowed me talking to my familly about it, so they know what I spent my nights doing).


I feel the forum sees me as some sort of abuser or so, when I have dedicated the past 10 years trying to be a good person. I didn't ask to go through it all but it happened to me and I tried hard to be a good person.
I'm sorry if it all was triggering for all,this was never my intention.

I think it's best I quit posting here not to make things worse, thank you all for the informations and helping me see myself for who I really am, no matter what my intentions are.


Larme