PTSD and DID and the internal Game of Thrones

Political intrigue as each tries to control the realm. Sexual intrigue as each use their bodies to create new alliances or express lusty desires. Twisted actions follow twisted thoughts follow twisted childhoods. Flashes of gore capture attention and punctuate the pure rawness of the landscape. If you watch Game of Thrones, you know of what I speak. If you have DID, you probably do too. If you have PTSD, it's all too familiar - no matter the trauma.

Trauma. My mind is broken by trauma. The Landscape of my memories is trapped in a variety of seasons with little to no security and absolutely no promise of a stable future. Aren't memories the stuff that makes a person? What is the relationship between memory and personality? If memory is stored with fluctuating borders, than it only makes sense that personality will fluctuate as well. Like the royalty in Game of Thrones, the people in my system fight for control of my mind, sharing memories at times and then walling them off. My personality shifts as their control shifts.

Right now, I have a dark prince rising to control my entire mind. He has blood red eyes and will sacrifice anyone to reach his goal. He has the anger and the drive of someone who has been traumatized, without the memory of the trauma. He is PTSD, he recognizes the other identities without compassion for them, and his game is to claim the Throne. THE Throne - the center of control, the memories, the limbic system, nervous system, rational thought. I don't know what he thinks will happen to the emotion. He doesn't want the emotion. Perhaps he seeks to destroy the emotion so that it is no longer a stumbling block to preserving the realm.

War is beginning.

"What If" History

I am a history teacher. As such, I hear the phrase “what if” many times a year. I used to tell the students “it’s pointless to play ‘what if’ history.” I used to steer the conversation to what actually happened. Something changed this year. As a class, we play ‘what if’ history a lot. What if the invading Europeans and Native Americans worked together to figure out how to peacefully co-exist? What if John Brown had been successful in his attempt to free the slaves, one plantation at a time? What if women were valued as equal partners in the world? What if we figured out a way to share the abundance of food our world produces so that no one anywhere went hungry? I used to always say that we study history to learn from the mistakes of the past so as not to make them again. Now I say we study history to understand the dynamics of cause and effect so that we can make choices today that will produce the effects we long for. We study history so that we can understand how we came to be where we are today, with huge national debt, continued racism, and poverty…as well as the high standard of living that enables us to enact measures to protect the environment, the freedoms of speech that allows us to question and protest and support what we feel passionately about, and the leisure time to blog and check facebook.

I’ve begun to play ‘what if’ history with myself, as well. So often I hear people with dissociative disorders say that they would not trade their life for one without parts. I used to say that as well. I used to say that the trauma of my past has made me who I am today and that I like who I am. I remember a woman in the hospital once get passionately irate about the term dissociative “disorder” because she did not feel it was a “disorder” at all – it was a logical and helpful way to cope with an illogical and painful trauma. All I could think was that she was sitting in a mental hospital, stripped of her rights, shoeless. If the “disorder” was so awesome, why wasn’t she out doing something she enjoyed???? Surely if someone is so fucking happy with how they turned out after being sexually and/or physically abused then they would be out fucking 3 year olds and making them eat dog shit so that they, too, could have “dissociation.” Obviously, mental illness is called an “illness” because it causes some kind of suffering. A disorder is called such because it puts the individual or society at risk in some way, it’s out of order, abnormal, pathological. It sure isn’t fun.

So I play “what if.” What if I had not been raped? What if I had been molested, but my parents found out and got me help right away? What if I had not been molested? What if I had grown up in a secure, functional, stable home environment and my intelligence and creativity had been nurtured and I never, ever, ever was sadistically tortured during the crucial childhood developmental stages, or ever? I bet I would have been happier.

What has trauma and the resulting pathological dissociation taken from me? Would I trade who I am today for someone who could have sex and enjoy it? Would I trade who I am today for someone who never spent weeks or months trying to convince themselves not to commit suicide? How about someone who could work a full work week, visit friends over the weekend, get their house cleaned, take walks, read books, listen to and play music, get a Master’s degree, a black belt, worship god with a clean conscience, bake cookies, and not worry about getting too exhausted and spinning into an emotional mess or having a psychotic break? Would I willingly erase the burn scars and knife cut scars on my arms if I could? How about never having to feel like I need to burn or cut myself in the first place? I would. I would trade who I am today for someone who functioned more within the “normal” parameters of American society. I not only grieve that there is a negative social stigma to being abnormal, I grieve that I am abnormal.

But “what if” history is only useful if it leads to an understanding of today and to choices that bring desired effects. “What if” history is fiction, and I am living in non-fiction. So I have to accept that I am who I am and move forward. Accepting who I am does not mean embracing the abnormal/disorder/illness and telling myself the lie that I would have it no other way. I would like it some other way. That’s why I’m working so fucking hard to have a “more” normal life. I am deeply sad that I will never erase the scars. I am deeply sad that what happened to me has made me who I am. I am crushed that the “I am” who could have been was murdered by trauma and you and the world and I will never know her. The choices I make today are not so that I can be some fictional “what if” person that is normal. The choices I make today are so that I can suffer less with who I am. And that is sad.        

To Cut or Knit or Med-Up

It had been a good week, followed by a good weekend. I was not oppressively exhausted. I was enjoying my time knitting. A few parts of me collaboratively engage in knitting and it’s a most excellent activity to pass the time and allow us to be doing something that feels good while being restful. I love the feel of the yarn, love to look at the colors. Rae loves to process the previous day, week, whatever while we knit. Amanda loves to create and feel productive. Prowler finds it relaxing, and Ray joins in with Rae in the processing. Of course, being such an addict, I knit at the expense of grooming and eating. But as Luke says, it’s better than sitting around perseverating on cutting my arm off or jumping off the bridge. So it had been a good week.

Monday came and school was tiresome and I had my weekly appointment with Craig. I’m afraid that the whole session could be boiled down into a few words: let’s work on co-consciousness, integration is the next step, and by the way – we should think of having a therapy vacation sometime. Trigger, trigger, TRIGGER. I translated that into: let’s work on the most terrifying issues you have, and then I’m going to leave you. My head was full of static Monday night, and by Tuesday morning I was able only to think of cutting my arm off. I was so pissed. “Therapy vacation” to me means “I’m leaving you and therefore you will have to deal with all those feelings of abandonment and loss and grief and you’ll be alone and too bad for you.” The backlash made my stomach sick. I questioned myself on why I turned to arm amputation immediately, and why that thought provided a shred of comfort to me. I don’t really understand… just know that it did. I wondered if somehow I thought that cutting off my arm would get me the attention I feel I need, would delay “therapy vacation.” Such a dumb answer to excessive emotional reactions to normal therapeutic processes gave me a reason to beat myself up. And the pit in my stomach grew with the anxiety and fear over the therapy session and the disgust over my reactions to the anxiety and fear grew and suicide seemed like the only way to make it stop.

Tuesday was all about chaos. I hated Craig and I hated myself. I hated the process. I hated the feelings. But then I heard a little voice, Craig’s voice, say “I won’t make you do anything. We’ll only take a vacation if you’re okay with it. It won’t be forever, it will be for weeks, or however long seems okay. If you need to talk to me, we can arrange that.” I didn’t want to believe the voice, I didn’t want to even hear it, because it represented a kind of anchor that I could hold onto while I “felt” the abandonment and fear and anger. But I heard it anyway. And I felt those feelings, all bloated and ominous and out of proportion and stupid. But only in little bits and punctuated with arm amputation fantasies and lost time.

Wednesday morning I forgot to take my medicine, abilify. All day I was a little tired, but amazingly connected to the present. That night I slept better than I have for years. I woke Thursday morning rested and happy. I never wake up feeling rested. I took the abilify that morning, and I haven’t had a day so bright since I first went on the abilify. I repeated the experiment Friday morning, not taking the med, and I found myself HUMMING at the end of the day. Tired but connected and peaceful and fucking HUMMING.

It scares me to be so emotionally all over the place. Did I have a good end to the week because I successfully dealt with something? Did I have a good end of the week because I gave my brain and body a break from over-medication? Did I actually DEAL with the therapy session and my feelings or did I dissociate from them?