LEARNING TO LIVE WITH MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER
SELF HARM ISSUES
Having been hurt so many times as children, we all develop ways to handle pain that feels unbearable to us. But the physical pain that accompanies memories is horrific. I'm told that this is because the memory is a child's memory, and therefore very raw-extremely intense, as the child felt it. For us, the most terriffying and incapacitating pain is emotional. In recovering memories, we recover the emotions that accompanied the trauma. Children's emotions are very pure, and undiluted by years of growing up hurting. When we experience the emotions of our littles, it is a raw, bleeding chasm of pain that cuts to the bone, and beyond. It tears at the mind, soul, and heart of the person who is remembering. The intensity of childbirth pales compared to this! And at least childbirth has a usually pleasant outcome-a baby! The outcome of remembering these emotions is to get us ready for even more memories of them.
Sometimes when we are having a hard time for a while, and we feel hurt, or abandoned, the old feelings of the children rise up with our current ones, and become devastatingly overwhelming. When we are going through overloads of emotions, or the times of numbness, it is very hard. To feel numb, cut off from all feelings, isolated, alone, no one to understand, or talk to, so far detached from ourselves that even we know we are in a dangerous place- Both these reactions need help or we "help" ourselves.
If we cannot get help from our therapist to feel better, we then help ourselves the only ways we have found out work for each of us.Some people chose some of these ways
scratching our arms or legs,
picking at little bumps on the skin of the arms, legs, face or back,
using penpoints to break the skin surface and make ourselves "tatoos",
using things like erasers to erase the skin, leaving raw weeping wounds,
cigarette burns on various parts of the body,
small slightly deep cuts hidden from view,
cuts on arms and legs causing bleeding,
headbanging
punching walls, etc.
and there are lots of other ways of causing significant harm to ones self.
The one thing that is common to all of these things, is that it redirects us from the pain we can't handle, to one we can. It redirects us from emotions that are beyond our control or tolerance, to physical pain, which we can all handle from years of experience.
We, in this family system, dwell on suicidal plans. We know we don't have to act on them, but they have had to remain an option for us as a way out of this world of pain we must travel through. We have safety agreements with our therapist about this, and we will do what we agreed to do. That sometimes pisses us off when we really feel a lot of pain inside, cause the last thing we want to do is call our T and tell her that. So we do a lot of things to reassure us and our littles that it will get better. We try to refocus our attention, like reading (if we can concentrate), coloring, painting, drawing, playing computer majhong. Sometimes it works, lots of times it doesn't. We still have a very hard time calling our therapist if it gets rough and we are thinking of self harm. That is a problem we are working on. Our previous bad experiences with bad therapists and psychiatrists interfere alot with trusting our new one, and confiding these feelings to him.
All of this makes you feel depressed very easily, and it continues. Sometimes its too hard to get out of bed. Going outside for anything but necessities is unthinkable. Housework doesn't get done. Eating is sometimes forgotten.
The depression is a kind of spiraling circle, because all the bad thoughts we have about ourselves, our self hate, and our despirate wish for this never-ending pain to end.
