Going into the pain

I have no specific advice or lesson for this entry. Just thought I'd share some of what's going on with me to help survivors see how confusing and emotionally raw things stay stuck long after reaching the point of having your life back. "Life" meaning you can function day to day and maybe have a career or have a job or get to know joy and happy and calm.

After releasing the long ongoing memory relating to Halloween and other things, I did not feel a whoosh of relief or change in clarity as often happens after something that huge is processed. In fact, I have been hovering just above a very sad and dark place. I guess thankfully I can't work now so that I can have therapy more frequently during this crap. So of course, at my session today, I went inside and a deep ache was felt just under the left side of my ribcage kind of down and to the left of the heart.

This aching "feels like death". Very sad tormented fragment. There really wasn't a voice to it. I was getting messages in my head about it. The message of this feeling of death was "I have to be dead to live." Well, there's a classic doublebind perp message. My therapist is very good at speaking to what is going on and unraveling the un-logic of the message. She also led me through what I recently blogged about--the dreaded self-nurturing. As she spoke of releasing the grief and sadness, I let out a sob. Possibly some of you can relate to the experience of hearing others inside--patterns of speech, age clues, body sensations, tone of voice. It's odd and interesting to me. Interesting from being a therapist and trying to process both as a client and as someone who might use the knowledge of the moment to help another.

The sob and subsequent crying sounds were that of a preverbal child...a baby. I had recalled that "feeling so tired I wish I would die" sadness since high school. Apparently it's been there since before I could talk. It was about feeling abandoned and unloved and afraid and wanting to just go away. That's how bad it is for all survivors of DID. It was THAT bad. I have words accompanying one of my collages that say something like "A child sees and recognizes long before she has words to express". I recognize this fragment as part of an adult alter who desperately wanted to die several years ago. Living was just too painful for her. I guess she left behind this fragment. The baby is now rescued and I hope will join with the rest of her who has integrated into my inner wisdom so she doesn't have to be "in" the body.

Following the therapy session, my mind tends to keep processing. And I realized there was another very f**ked up childhood story that went with this part of me. Is Brer Rabbit still a story read to children? My wounded adult alter was first called Tar Baby until I learned her name. One of the children's stories is about Brer Rabbit and Tar Baby. I don't remember the plot. The confusion was wrapped around Brer and my pronouncing it Bare. Bares were bunnies or rabbits and bears were bears. That's what I was taught. So hearing the words, I learned bunnies (bares) and bears were the same thing. Interestingly, on Twitter, I use a bunny icon with a background of teddy bears. I just went through a bunch of teddy bear stuff lately too...after I blogged about "the reminder object", which for me was a teddy bear.

This is how the puzzle of past keeps building on itself. I call it "clue talk". Here goes. The message was that the teddy bear went with boys. Back to the male/female split in my system that overshadowed all other confusions. Yesterday I decided I needed a stuffed animal brown bunny. I found the one I wanted online and put in my request. This morning I got the rest of that message. Bunnies go with girls. Bares are girls and bears are boys. Did that just give you a headache? My very sad death part is a bunny. She was rescued today. I will have a representation of her to hug and nurture next week.

I accomplished much of my "self-nurturing" by having littles who related to certain animals. My stuffed animal collection is rather extensive. But I managed to do a lot of healing hugging stuffed animals since I was not so good with internally nurturing of wounded selves. It works and I often taught self-nurturing to others by suggesting they adopt a doll or stuffie (owned, borrowed, or purchased) and designate it as "little me" to become bonded to their inner child. That's how it would work for a singleton.

Hares, bares, bears. Confusing language. Fractured fairytales. Such was the stuff of my life. It took a lot of planning to do this to me, which is why sophisticated levels of organized pedophilia rarely change the formula. I think there a variety of fractured fairytales to choose from as diversion. Who could make this up? I can't think complicated. But what I unravel is this confusing. It's answers coming one at a time over a long period of time. It's been 11 years for me. But I needed all the pieces to make sense to me up to this point before I could possibly understand the meaning of the hurt little bunny. My dedication to healing and integrating was my promise to one of my first littles who went with sad bunny pictures. Her job was to hold my pain. I vowed to integrate so she could know good feelings too.

Every survivor has their own story and own system and own way of unraveling the mystery that was their life. And we all start with a single thread that is given to us the day we "wake up" from the amnesia. I have no idea if this answer is the last big answer I'll get. It was worth these weeks of depression to find that long hidden feeling of death. I would dearly love not to live the rest of my life fighting that deeply sad message of wanting to die.

The dreaded self-nurturing

Healing from those devastating messages and inflicted trauma that cause a child to skip developmental stages and cause them to view their bodies as a betrayal to their very existence is an extraordinary ordeal. This is the part of healing that, to me, sucks the most. While, as adults, we do not need to directly go through a safe, caring, loving childhood, the wounded littles do. What we didn't receive from protective primary care givers when we were children, we are able to give to ourselves.

This sounds logical and doable and it is. But for the survivors, it's a huge "That's Not Fair!" We were entitled to protective caring parents but were denied. Now, as adults, we still inherently want to unconditional love due to a child but feels vastly unfair that we have to do it for our own littles. Granted there are usually internal protectors and gentle caretakers whose job is to "reparent" littles. That does not fulfill that need of always wanting to have been loved. It is different for all, but I tended to be a cuddly person always loving holding hands and curling up and being held--oblivious to my doing so to "to do it the right way".

I didn't have too much of a problem allowing this reparenting to happen internally. I was rarely a direct part in it. I was busy holding myself together without worrying about fulfilling nuturing and safety needs for the littles. But I still never had the loving parents I see in movies and in real life. With a supportive significant other, it is possible for the adult self to ask to be held and hugged with safe touching as a little or an adult. SO's who are supportive and take the time to understanding at least on a basic level what is going on with their multiple spouse are open to such requests and often know the littles by voice and behaviors soon after their appearance.

Having an SO or friend dictate several children's stories onto a tape is another good reparenting technique. Depending on sex of main abuser(s), you may have a preference as to male or female voice. And the voice is known to the littles and is a secure feeling.

Taking special time to do something just for the littles can be a fun activity. Your going for icecream, for example, can be a littles outing by allowing some kind of voting process inside for the final order. In fact, a means for internal cooperation is for littles to promise to stay inside during a certain event in exchange for a fun outing later. My littles loved to go to the Disney store.

This doesn't erase the abuse that happened. It allows for the littles to go through a normal developmental process in their own healing. Some littles stay littles, others grow to be another age. So many variables. Also, the internal healing is a much faster rate than externally. A little who has moved into a healing place inside is terrified and not wanting to be around others may show up again in a few weeks curious about playing with other littles. It's amazing to watch them heal.

Does that ache of never having had a loving, protective, mother or father ever go away? I don't know. It hasn't for me. But I'm past wanting to change my birth parental units into the good guys. My wish would be to have been born to a loving family. In my internal world, I am loved and nurtured and accepted no matter what. I wouldn't change that.

The world I want to change and that needs to change is the one that allows so many pedophiles to go on unchallenged in this world.