Dissociation as a Mirror

The chiropractor said something very affirming to me last week. I asked her if she treated many patients with dissociative disorders, or if treating me seemed weird. She looked at me for a moment and said, “It doesn’t seem weird to me at all. In a sense, all of humanity is dissociative. We see ourselves as separate people with separate lives, and even when we connect with someone else we still cling to our separateness. Really, though, there is only One, we are all really only One.” I was taken aback, and pleased, and enlightened. I believe that there really is only One as well, and that One includes people, animals, plants, the Earth, the Universe, and so on. I forget this, a lot, but I do believe it. The statement took all the freakiness I sometimes feel about my disorder out of the equation. My condition seemed suddenly to be a mirror of a bigger condition, and not some absurd and wacked condition way out there, but rather a byproduct of evil like the human condition of separateness from each other and the Earth is a byproduct of evil. (By the way, evil, I believe, is always a perversion of Creation. Evil is not creative or original. The whole Universe is only good creation, but evil can pervert that goodness and that’s all it is.)

So dissociation mirrors the human condition. In a way, I feel like that this gives me the opportunity to learn in a very personal way HOW to connect and how to APPRECIATE connection in a way other people may not be able to. It makes me think of how I became grateful for being an alcoholic. In working the 12-step program I learned so much about myself and was able to move beyond so much of my past that I actually appreciated the fact that the disease of alcoholism precipitated the changes. Other people, ‘normies’ as we AA members call them, sometimes have a harder time initiating change in their lives because there isn’t the loaded gun of alcoholism pointed at their heads demanding they do so or die. Disease can be motivating.

Dissociation, then, can be an opportunity in my life. Instead of focusing on it as a disabling mental illness, which I believe it is, I can focus on it as the precipitating factor in my life that leads me to learn to connect with myself which will open the door to learning how to connect with others and the Earth in a more intimate and personal way than I otherwise would.

Book information: http://inandoutoficeglass.weebly.com/

Dissociation, Flashbacks, Panic Attacks, and Anxiety Attacks: Differences Discussed

I have always called them anxiety attacks or panic attacks. But now I hear that clinically, these two events are different. Throw in the term “flashback” and I am genuinely confused. To add to the psychological soup, the DSM5 now claims that flashbacks are a dissociative symptom! I bandied these terms about in my head, thrown them out at doctors and close friends, written about them, but how do they apply to what I have experienced and so what?

A co-worker experienced chest pains and was having difficulty breathing at work and was rushed to the emergency room. Not a heart attack. Nothing wrong with her heart at all. But the stress of her 2 jobs, her advanced schooling, and life in general caused so much anxiety that in the middle of the day in the midst of her work she experienced a panic attack. She openly discussed it at lunch. Suddenly, everyone in the room was sharing their experiences – one had an anxiety attack while working up the courage to attend an extremely difficult meeting, one had thyroid issues and experienced panic attacks repeatedly until she got the physical problem under control, another vaguely described generalized anxiety at a certain point in her life. I said nothing, although the pink elephant in the room was trumpeting his horn, as I am the one everyone knows has a “disability related to anxiety.” What could I say? “Sometimes when Luke and I argue I switch identities and start crying uncontrollably, bang my head against the wall, hit myself, feel like I’m being choked, hallucinate, and wet myself.” I wasn’t about to share that. But it did get me thinking about what I was experiencing compared to the general public.

The co-worker who went to the emergency room was at first experiencing an anxiety attack as she was extremely worried about present circumstances that were stressing her. That’s the hallmark of an anxiety attack – the anxiety is related to life circumstances. Her anxiety turned into a panic attack, which can happen “out of the blue.” It became a panic attack as she began to experience physical symptoms and was focused only on those physical symptoms (as well as mental symptoms!).

The co-worker who was worked up about the meeting she was about to attend was experiencing an anxiety attack as her focus was on a present-time event. She was experiencing physical symptoms of a tightened chest, difficulty breathing, but it was all related to stress about this meeting.

So what about dissociative episodes and flashbacks? How are they related?
Let’s say Luke and I had a little argument about some trivial matter. If I am in an exhausted state from working, and unable to combat the emotional backlash of the “others” inside me, and those “others” begin to tell me all the messages that I grew up believing like “I am stupid, I am over emotional, I am unloved, no one is listening to me, I am in danger, I will not survive these next few moments” then I will begin to experience an anxiety attack. My heart will race, my throat closes up, my thought processes become jumbled and I have difficulty making sense of the world around me. Fear sets in, and in no time the anxiety turns to a panic attack as I fail to control my breathing and “get lost” in the physical sensations happening in my body. Sometime in this mix I will usually go to my bedroom and seek solace under the blankets as well as distance between myself and Luke- who I love and trust – but who now represents extreme danger.

Sometimes I am able, if left alone, to re-connect with reality and eventually will fall asleep after much crying. Sometimes I has more to go through. If Luke tries to console me, touch me, or even be in my presence the feeling escalate into terror and panic. I will begin to fight myself – banging my head against the wall, hitting myself, screaming and writhing like I’m being attacked and tortured. Indeed, that’s how I feel, like I’m being tortured. It’s at this point that I can really lose contact with the present and all my focus is pinpointed on the terror and the incredible need to escape the terror and the life-sucking realization that I cannot escape the terror. At times, I wet myself, after which I seem to “switch” and surrender to my surroundings, allowing Luke to help me change clothes and crawl into bed. A sad, deeply surrendering, nothingness ensues. I don’t know for sure what happens after this. At times, I switch and make feeble suicidal gestures – grabbing all the sleeping pills, cutting my arm. This results in either a call to the therapist or a 911 call, either of which will pull me into the present enough to manage my behavior and allow Spider-Man (one of the “others”) to run damage control. At times I enter a horrible dual state during which time I am immobilized and experience a few moments of numb peace followed by a few moments of uncontrollable crying, each state alternating with each other until I am so exhausted I fall asleep or enter a dissociative state that is misty primordial fog.

I think these last examples are flashbacks. They are extreme emotional states unrelated to the present circumstances, though usually triggered by an event. It’s as though I am reacting to a past event(s) even though I am having no thought memory of that event, just emotional and physical memories.

If these are flashbacks, then I can see how flashbacks are a dissociative symptom. I seem to have these emotional flashbacks coupled with dissociative episodes. So what is dissociation? I think I have “levels” of dissociation. The misty primordial fog is a dissociative state, switching to another personality is a dissociative state, entering the flashback phase is a dissociative state, and even experiencing the panic seems dissociative to me. Dissociative can denote a split from reality, a split from self, a split from emotion….the fog is a split from emotion, the personality switch is a split from self, and the flashback or panic is a split from reality.

So what? So…..I have developed a number of coping mechanisms for this psychological soup of symptoms. I’d like to be able to now organize those coping mechanisms into which ones help in all circumstances and which ones help in only one circumstance. Additionally, I’d like to be able identify early on which state I’m entering, or in, so that I can use the appropriate tool. I don’t know how possible that is. I’d also like to educate Luke so that he can better determine how best to react and help.

Finally, I’d like for all my parts to meet at the Waterfall, discuss these states, and come to a place of understanding and compassion for us as a system, so that when we are in any of these states we can cease the negative judgment and harsh attitude toward whoever is experiencing the state. That, I believe, would be a big step toward healing.

Book information: http://inandoutoficeglass.weebly.com/index.html

Ouroboros and Phoenix

God made the world and then Adam and Eve fucked it up. Then God came again and the Romans killed him and he rose from the dead. People continue to fuck up the world, but somehow the world keeps revolving, around and around and around. In the midst of it all I am sad and I hurt because some kind of trauma happened to me. Poor me. Every now and then I rise above the sickness and feel joy. Every now and then something cool happens in the world, like a man walks on the moon or a man walks across the Himalayans to honor his commitment to non-violence. But mostly there are earthquakes that kill tens of thousands of people (innocent and evil), or a handful of soldiers die in a battle, or someone gets raped, or a kid doesn’t share his cookie with his buddy. The world is an Ouroboros, revolving around itself, eating its own shit and needing nothing beyond what it produces. The world is a Phoenix, continually arising from ashes of destruction, bold and beautiful and free. I am an Ouroboros, trapped in a pre-ego state because I split off from myself before I could differentiate myself from “other.” I am alone and unable to connect with anyone but myself. I revolve around myself, meeting my own needs, eating my own tail. Likewise, I am the phoenix, survivor of trauma, child of the Earth, child of Love. I rise from the ashes of my grief, over and over again, a testament to the healing power of time and the healing power of mind and the joy that is Life. While I eat my tail and rise from the ashes, faceless masses starve, nameless children are abused, and the human race turns on itself and kills for land or power or oil. While I orbit myself in autistic self-absorption, someone kisses their lover, a company funds research for a cure for cancer, nameless and faceless masses sing songs to their dead/risen God, deep and soulfull eyes gaze on the beauty of a mountain/river/tree/butterfly.

Bring it home, to what really matters. As trapped as I am in the cycle of the Ouroboros and Phoenix both, as drawn as I am to total withdrawal from life and total surrender to death and total one-ness with Earth and all that is Samsara and Nirvana and Resurrection, I still have a heart that beats about 70 times per minute. In that minute I feel emotions, think thoughts, and of my free will determine action. Like Adam and Eve I fuck up. Like Jesus I rise from the dead, eternally committing suicide and eternally choosing life. Like people everywhere I am selfish and self-less, giving and taking sometimes consciously sometimes impulsively. I kiss my lover. I laugh with my friend. I cut my arm. I lie to my mom. I say kind and then unkind words to children. I might as well have walked on the moon or killed an Iraqi soldier for all it matters. But it does matter, doesn’t it. It certainly mattered to me that I was traumatized, and loved. It matters to him that I choose to live, or bake him cookies, or touch his hand. Inside the Ouroboros eternally revolves and the Phoenix eternally rises, my heart beats. Externally I inhale and exhale, a timeless gate swinging open and shut on nothing. Yet it’s everything.

Book information: http://inandoutoficeglass.weebly.com/

Real Memories, False Memories, and All That Is Inbetween

Trying desperately to make sense of a mix of emotions arising from a mix of memories and my thoughts relating to those memories. What a fucking mess. It's Christmas, almost, and that means lots of family time. Up from the ashes of my dissociated mind rises the black phoenix of what I experienced at the hands of mom. It is memory in all its forms - thought, emotion, sensory - but it is not integrated memory. I know what happened. I stand outside the memory and judge it objectively - not particularly traumatic but confusing as hell. I have feelings about the memory - strong and diametrically opposed. I judge my feelings from a distance as over-reactive and embellished. I tell my little child self that I am mistaken, that I have made more out of a simple thing than I should, that the physical sensations I apply to the events are evil and do not belong. I tell myself that any difficulty I'm experiencing in my adulthood related to these memories is because I've mis-interpreted the events, both as a child and as an adult. Another objective "me" replays the events, and determines they were indeed abnormal and painful. Quickly he is "shushed" and shame creeps over my soul and I reach for a hammer to hit myself. I simultaneously think my memories are false and real, as well as embellished and mis-interpreted. I question and question and question all the therapists who have placed such an important label on these memories, question why they think what happened is "traumatic." I wonder if in their zeal they hold up these memories as The Source and help me embellish them. And I embellish them to please my therapists. The Objective One refutes this thought, proclaims that the memories are Real. The shame spreads into my blood and is the air I breathe. I used to ask her to tuck me in. I cling to my shame and all that tells me it was my fault, and I cling to the ideal that I am innocent, was always innocent. How will I ever navigate this Christmas????

Book information: http://inandoutoficeglass.weebly.com/

The Gnawing

I'm sitting on my couch, home from work for the second day in a row. A friend asked me “What do you think is gnawing at you?” I didn’t have a reply per se, only echoes and whispers bouncing around in my head uncatchable, undecipherable. That gnawing became an itch and the itch became a burn and the burn became a hurt, a dull hurt, non-cataclysmic really. An ordinary hurt. The deciphering began with thoughts of my school guidance counselor. We had an affair when I was senior in high school. I thought he loved me, thought he would make good on his promise to disappear over the summer in the BWCA so that his family would think he was dead. Thought he really would run away with me into happy-never-land. I didn’t know that he was doing the mid-life crisis thing. He was 40 (I remember our first kiss – his birthday in his office at school with black balloons floating about). Even after he told his wife about his secret feelings for me (he didn’t mention the actual physical stroking to her) and he dumped me, I still loved him. I also still believed he loved me. I believed in his love until recently. I’m 40-ish now, and a teacher. The thought of kissing or touching or promising a student I’d run away with him makes me sick. I’m just now beginning to transfer that sickness onto my view of what the guidance counselor did. He was sick. I was vulnerable. But that’s not the hurt that’s gnawing at me.

The guidance counselor was a kind man, a pillar of the community, respected in his school and in his church. He had two lovely daughters, one vivacious and outgoing sweet-heart and one beautiful and precious child with special needs. He was compassionate and nurturing. Truly, he was. I looked to him for help with my extremely confusing mental health issues – described my dissociation to him – turned to him for support in my effort to stop doing drugs. He tried to help me with all of it, by turning his comfort sexual. In no time I ceased going to his office for legitimate help and began going to his office for butterfly inducing kisses and thrilling sexual touching and to make plans to finally consummate the love. As upsetting as this story is, it’s not the hurt that’s gnawing at me.

She is a beautiful, funny, outgoing, compassionate woman. She is respected in her community and in her church. She has three successful and charming children. As a child I turned to her for comfort and safety and to meet my most basic needs. Indeed, she did meet some of my needs. I had food and shelter and clothing. She “enriched” my life with camping and ballet lessons and trips to the ice skating rink. Our extended family went on snowmobile trips and cooked hot dogs over open fires and drank hot cocoa from thermoses. But she hurt me.

There is a hole into which I peer sometimes. The blackness swallows me and my stomach twists in knots. Sometimes I see things that are like a movie to me. Sometimes I make up horrible stories to go with the blackness. This is what gnaws at me. I don’t know if the hole is the reservoir of feelings in which I dumped my reactions to my mother and the guidance counselor, or if it is another abomination, darker than the others. This blackness that pours from the hole and swallows my soul is shame, even a deep hatred for my self, a desire to be nothing for I hurt so badly I can’t survive. I have harbored this hole inside for as long as I can remember. It’s who I am. I believe it is beyond what mom did. I believe something happened when I was very young. I know Sarah has some knowledge of it, but even she only has vague shadows of foggy memories.

I remember being pre-school age, and wanting to play in just my underwear because I wanted to be an Indian. And as I paddled my canoe down the hardwood hallway, I was ashamed of my nakedness and felt dirty for wanting to play naked. I remember being 6 or 7 and having a fever and walking into the living room and announcing to my mom and dad that I hated myself. I remember always wondering why my parents loved me, because I was such bad girl, so I had to keep up the act I was performing so that they would continue to love me. I remember sitting on the couch with my sister playing a game and she explained to me that she was the best and I whole-heartedly agreed with her. I remember crying myself to sleep in fear that I would go to hell. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and creeping into my parents’ room to check to see if they were still there or if the rapture had come and taken them away from me, knowing I’d be left behind with my sin. I remember at age 5, singing in church, wondering if I was really the only one singing and everyone else was pretending or if it was me pretending. I remember how easy it was to please my grade school teachers. I remember walking on rocks at a campground when I was 3 and wishing I was dead.

Forty years later I still wish I was dead. That’s what gnaws at me.

Forever Finality - Couldn't It Just Be For Awhile?

I'll start out by saying I'm basically safe. My husband is aware of all this, as is my therapist. I am in contact with both on a regular basis. I feel a little guilty dumping this on any readers who will be tweaked out by it - like I'm a drama queen stirring up shit - but then again I'm not twisting anyone's arm to read this. I'll be honest, I'm an exhibitionist and I want to expose myself, and you get to be the voyeur.

My boundaries within have crumbled and the shame I try to hold in seeps out into every bone, muscle, tendon, nerve, and thought that is me. I am shame. I am deep, ugly, hateful, depressed shame that comes from before I was old enough to know what shame was. I feel like I was born evil and although my adult brain can comprehend the flawed reasoning, I still feel the shame. I worked it all out with my therapist last night - how as a child it's not ME who did anything abnormally wrong, the shame actually comes from the messages I received as a child from THEM and those ugly messages became internalized and here I am, 40 some years old, and shaming myself. Shame on me. Shame on me. Shame on me.

I have no place to go, now, to escape. I am steeped in shame. As usual, I turn to the Final Solution that comforts me, the ultimate escape from which there is no return. They have taken away the guns and locked them up, and I'm beyond the passive suicidal gestures of popping pills or slashing wrists. I want to do the real thing with no chance of survival. Guns, I know, are the best, but what if there are no guns? I've thought about this conundrum a lot.

I figured it out. It's about -15 F here, fucking cold, and there's a huge lake in my hometown that is not frozen. If I jumped off the bridge into the freezing water I can't imagine any rescuers could reach me before hypothermia sets in and my body quits responding to my brain's messages to swim and I sink. My guess is that it would take about 5 minutes.

I still have a hard time justifying the Final Solution. On the one hand, it represents a final peace and resting for me. But does that sweet ending justify the sadness on the other hand? I have learned that people love me; my husband, my children, my friends....As much as I'd like to think they would quickly and easily adjust and move on, I know the truth is that there would be some grief. My sweet ending would result in their grief. But there grief would not be forever, so what's the proper balance? Is my forever ending worth their temporary grief?

I've been here before. I've traveled this road. I know it's twists and turns. Somewhere in my head I hear a voice telling me that my logic is not sound. Another voice tells me that this in not a matter of logic, but rather a matter of the heart. Yet another voice tells me that the I'm not looking for a Forever Finality, I'm looking for some rest for awhile. But the loudest voice right now says I should jump.

Mouth Fucking Causes Nirvana

Muddled messages from inner space eek out in intellectual visions jam fucking packed with emotion. Shit. I see this little girl up against the wall getting mouth fucked. I’m not even going to sugar coat it. Mouth fucked. Then, back on earth, my back hurts. Then my head. I try to figure out if it’s a fairy tale. But my therapist, he says to maybe just leave the “why” hanging. But to know if it’s a fairy tale or not, is that a “why?” I want to know if something like that happened to me. But maybe I’ll never know. But that’s not good enough. I want to fucking know what happened. It really freaks me out the stuff I see in my head. There’s stuff I know, like the rape when I was 18, but I was dissociative well before then. Big split as a baby – 2? 3? 4? When stressed beyond capacity I go to a place where I can’t really talk, but I think. The stuff I think is basic, like “this soft,” or “make myself small.” I'm not thinking in words, more like pictures and senses and the action. No words. When I’m that way, I feel….I can put words to the feelings in retrospect but not when I’m there. I identify fear. I identify terror. I identify despair, hopelessness, and being alone forever and ever and ever. I experience giving up in that place, a surrender that is complete and not of my own free will. A surrender that brings me to a place of no suffering. You know, we humans are supposed to have free will, but there comes a point as a little one when complete surrender to terror is mandatory, because there is no way out. That suffocates me. It fills my mouth and throat and chokes me. It makes me pee my pants. And when I look back on it, makes me feel aroused. Kinda. Not normal arousal….more like an uncomfortable stimulation in my privates coupled with a sick feeling in my chest and my throat closes up. Right now, my back hurts and I feel panic. Panic and arousal. That doesn’t make a lick of fucking sense to me. Sometimes I look back on the birth of Sarah. I’m 12, and cannot integrate the deep shame and depression I feel with who I act like. You know, it’s not like I could label the feelings shame and depression back then. No. I hated myself. I loathed who I was. I made myself sick. I did everything I could to portray a different person to everyone else. That’s how Sarah was born. Grown up at 12, hateful, angry. The anger protected me, I see now, from the self-hatred. I was 12, and didn’t know what to do with the hate. So I gave it to her, she turned it on Amanda inside and everyone else. What about all those years between 2 and 12? Barren? No...I was such an outgoing child. Adults liked me. I was full of energy and wit, full of ideas and desires. I read. I read everything I could get my hands on. I performed at school. I performed at church. I spent every waking hour in a book or watching the adults watch me, deciphering their reactions, so that I could manufacture the best performance. When I could. Sometimes I holed up in the closet, playing with marbles. I played with Barbie dolls too, acting out the dreams in my head. Acting and performing for myself. Working it out. Playing. Playing. Imagining. Children imagine stuff a lot, right? So that’s normal. And I had friends. We imagined stuff all the time, and acted it out. I like playing with Kim and Sherry and Bella. I like pretending with them. I liked them because they knew how to play with me. And every night I put my self to sleep by touching myself. Every night. Couldn’t stop. Deeply ashamed. Which, as an adult, makes me wonder if I’m a born sicko. Born fucked up. Born with no self. Or something happened, something ike ‘trauma.’ Only I don’t know what it is. If I don’t know what it is, then that means maybe it didn’t happen and that means yes, I’m a born Fuck Up Psycho Twisted Yuck. If I’m a Yuck, then yes, I should just go ahead and drink until I blow my head off. Because if I’m a Yuck, then I can never trust myself. And if I might act out the fantasies in my brain then I’m better off dead as is the rest of the planet. Oh, and then, the 3rd major break – took on the Rae name and persona. I renamed myself. I was drinking a lot. Rae drank a lot. Rae got treatment. Rae goes to AA meetings. Rae teaches. Where is the "core self" Amanda in all this? Still very ashamed, I can tell you that much. Still hating herself. Still a little baby. Still terrified. Still hoping to make herself small. Getting fucked in the mouth in a corner, that’s where. Only, I think I’m fucking myself. That’s why I hate myself so much. Sure ain’t no on else fucking my mouth. No one else makes me do anything I don’t want to do. So I fuck my mouth. I choke my throat. I press against my chest and have to pee. Always, that fucking having to pee. I can’t hold the pee. Surrender. Surrender to terror. It’s awful, empty, and zen beautiful, this sense of surrender. In his book Essence of the Heart Sutra, His Holiness the Dalai Lama defined Nirvana as the "state beyond sorrows," or a "state of freedom from cyclic existence."A child can reach nirvana. I know I reached Nirvana, but only when I was two and getting fucked in the mouth.

Book information: http://inandoutoficeglass.weebly.com/