May 16, 2012
A Painful Mother’s Day – the Cards Not Written
Posted in Depression, Dissociative Identity Disorder, emotional pain, Family Members of Trauma Survivors, Prevention of Sexual Abuse, Self Injury, sexual abuse, Trauma tagged Angry, cards not written, Celebrations, childless, cutting, Discussing Dissociation, emotional pain, Feeling alone, Grief, Grieving, Hallmark Cards, hate, Heartache, Hurting, Intense Feelings, Jealousy, Kathy Broady, Loss, lovely mothers, molestation, Momma Trauma, Mother's Day, Mother's Day cards, not celebrating, obligation, Over-eating, Painful, protecting kids, protection of children, Sad, Self Destruction, Self Injury, sexual abuse, unable to have children, unhappy, very alone, worst day of the year at 4:33 am by Kathy Broady
Last week, I couldn’t find the words to write about the struggles that so many dissociative survivors have on Mother’s Day.
In response to that, a dissociative survivor emailed me, and has given me permission to post their thoughts about the painful side of Mother’s Day.
Maybe you will relate to these difficult thoughts and painful feelings.
.
Every year on Mother’s Day we as a society get inundated with movies about mothers, sappy Hallmark card Mother’s Day commercials, endless rounds of advertisements on ways you can show your mother that you love her by buying her something. On Mother’s Day many churches do tributes to moms – handing out charm bracelets, giving out flowers, and preaching sermons about how families are wonderful things to have and how you need to be so thankful to your mother for raising you and putting up with you. Mothers are celebrated as though motherhood is the be all and end all of existence. It’s required that you show appreciate to your mom, grow up to be a fantastic mother, or show tribute to all the mother figures in your life.
But what if Mother’s Day is just full of pain?
What if just the thought of your own mom brings on fear and anxiety, or what if you have lost a child, or what if you are unable to have children, or what if you don’t even want children of your own? What if while reading praises about other people’s lovely mothers just brings you to tears filled with jealousy or an aching in your heart? Or what if thinking about your own mom doesn’t conjured up love, but perhaps obligation or hate or even terror?
This is side to Mother’s Day that just doesn’t get discussed very often.
If you’re blessed to have a good mother, that’s wonderful. But not everyone wants to hear about it – especially on Mother’s Day. The day brings up too many intense feelings, especially if you want to be a mom but cannot be, or your mother hurt you, or your mom has died.
There are mothers out there for whom you can’t find just the right Hallmark card. “Thank you for being such a precious mom who I am so grateful for” just doesn’t cut it. How about cards that say “You were never there for me.” Or how about “Thanks for never stopping dad / your boyfriend / your brother from molesting me in the bedroom next to yours.” Or what about “I know you never even wanted me.” Or perhaps, “I never even knew you.” Instead of thankfulness and love and gratitude, there should be cards that express fear, anger, stress, and hurt.
Instead of spending Mother’s Day taking your mom out to dinner and to the spa, some people spend it curled up on the couch, just trying to survive the day. Some spend the day trying to cope with flashbacks; giving into painful behaviors such as cutting or over-eating; feeling lost and very, very alone. Some people spend the day aching over the grief for children they can’t have, for the mom they always wanted but don’t feel like they deserved.
What if Mother’s Day is one of the worst days of the year for you?
What do you do then while it seems that everyone else in the world is celebrating?
.
Ouch.
Well said. That is exactly the kind of emotional pain I was thinking about, but said so much better by this trauma survivor. Their pain is palpable.
How do you relate to these words?
How would you answer these difficult questions?
How difficult was your Mother’s Day?
And what ideas do you have for Mother’s Day cards that haven’t yet been written?
.
Copyright © 2008-2012 Kathy Broady and Discussing Dissociation
April 22, 2012
Don’t Touch My Stuff !!
Posted in Compulsive Hoarding, Depression, DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, emotional pain, Hoarding, mental health tagged Angry, Anxiety, Attachment, Attachment Issues, Boundaries, Breaking boundaries, cleaning house, Compulsive Hoarding, Depression, DID / MPD, DID Survivors, Disaster Survivors, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Don't Touch My Stuff!, Emotional Freedom, emotional pain, Emotional Protection, Estate Sales, Flood Victims, Floods, Garage Sales, Hoarders, Hoarding, Hoarding on A&E, Hoarding: Buried Alive, Invasion of Boundaries, Isolation, Kathy Broady, Lack of privacy, letting go, Liquidation, Losing everything, Memories, Privacy, Professional Organizers, Remembering, selling your things, Stress, Throw out the trash, Tornado Survivors, Trauma Survivors, Violations at 6:16 pm by Kathy Broady
Through the years, some of the most popular articles of the Discussing Dissociation blog has been about compulsive hoarding: Compulsive Hoarding and Dissociative Disorders and Land of the Free?
I can’t explain their popularity on this blog, other than the way a rash of television programs have increased the awareness of the complications about hoarding. However, hoarding issues are typically accompanied by extreme anxiety, depression, isolation, family conflict, self-hatred, chaotic thinking, eating disorders and other problems also common with DID / MPD / trauma survivors. Many emotional struggles are certainly not limited to the Dissociative population. Hoarding is probably one of those disorders that the Dissociative community can potentially share with thousands of people more suited to other mental health communities.
It appears that hoarding is a much bigger issue than once officially recognized. As a social worker who has done many home visits over a span of 25 years, I can say that I have seen hoarding issues repeatedly and yes, in my experience, hoarding is a consistent theme within various mental health populations, including dissociative trauma survivors.
How do we address these issues?
Does the professional “helping” community understand the depths of what is involved?
Do the mental health professionals really know what is needed?
On the various Hoarders shows that I’ve watched on television (such as “Hoarders” on A&E, and “Hoarding: Buried Alive” on TLC), most of these processes are expected to be completed within a matter of a few short days. The interventions are quick, intense, and highly dramatic. The hoarders have obvious struggles, and the gains made in their homes and living situations are typically significant and impressive, even if only one or two rooms demonstrate the successful changes.
Over the past few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about the groups of people that experience the anxiety, stress, distress, personal gains, relief, and emotional freedom from having professional organizers empty their houses. There are many groups of people, in addition to the hoarder community, that may require assistance in emptying or reducing the amount of items located within a specific property or home. These issues could surface in extremity, for example, after someone dies (especially when there is no one to inherit the stuff), or during a divorce settlement, or after a bankruptcy, or prior to moving to new home, or downsizing from a large home to a small home, or for any other reason people may decide to liquidate their possessions.
To me, just cleaning out a messy closet is a big job! Emptying, or organizing an entire property is an enormous job! It’s an overwhelmingly huge job.
Recently, I hired some professional sales assistants to help me to downsize / sell many of the items from my home / office in order to prepare for a new phase of my life. My children are grown up, and each has moved into their own homes as adults, giving me all kinds of options for what to do with the physical space that lives around me. I don’t particularly like the “empty nest” phrase, and yet for the first time in dozens of years, I have more freedom to do whatever I want to do, wherever I decide to do it. It’s exciting, and yet very weird feeling all at the same time. That’s all a long story, of course, and it has taken several months (years?!!) of hard work to sort through those kinds of things, including what to do with all the leftover “stuff” that everyone has grown out of.
I took weeks of time to pull out the cherished treasures I wanted to keep, and then left the rest for the organizers to pick through, and to present in the way they created a sale for the masses of people they invited to come dig through my things. As much as I thought I had already selected my most important items, it was never that easy, or that clear.
“Wait! Wait! Maybe I want to keep THAT afterall!”
Or, “Wait! Where did you find that? I didn’t SEE that before. Give me that back!”
Or another rough part was seeing my things just tossed in the trash. Can you believe that my favorite coffee cup ended up in the trash?!! My FAVORITE one! I thought I was going to have a melt down right then and there!
Breathe, Kathy, breathe!
Count to 10.
Ok, count to 100, lol.
The whole process was not anywhere near as fun as I had thought it might be.
In fact, it wasn’t fun at all.
It was really painful and horrible, to say the least.
And I chose to do it. It wasn’t forced upon me. It was MY IDEA. ( yeesh, lol).
This changing, transitional experience has been much more complicated and emotional than I ever expected it to be, giving me all kinds of fodder for blog articles, and a much deeper understanding of the intensity felt by hoarders as they go through their housing changes. Even though I had lots of time to prepare prior to my professional organizers arriving, and I was not forced into making these decisions in any way at all, I found myself having far more struggles, and feeling intense emotional turmoil, and frequently overwhelmed with memories (both good and bad) while sorting through the rooms of stuff. Wow. Yeeesh. Gee Whillakers! Jiminy Crickets!! It was a much more difficult experience than I would have ever imagined it would be.
One thing is for sure. For any television production company to expect to go through and toss away / give away 80 – 90 % of a hoarders belongings over a period of just a few days is just ridiculously cruel. Most people — especially those that tend to be collectors in the first place — are not ready to let go with that much finality that quickly, or that easily. There is no wonder the hoarders on the television shows have so many emotional outbursts – the whole process is set up exactly to create that kind of emotional conflict within them. I suppose that makes for interesting television, but it is not very kind to the hoarder.
My experience of working with professional organizers also reminded me of some of the stories I have heard over and over from many of my clients with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID / MPD). Let me ask you a few questions. Can you relate to any of these experiences?
As children or teenagers, or even as adults, have you felt violated when your parents or caregivers or family members rifled through your belongings without your permission to do so?
How invasive did it feel to have people touching your things when they were not invited to do so?
How powerless did you feel to see this, and to know you couldn’t stop it from happening?
How did this affect your personal boundaries?
How did it affect your ability to feel like something – anything – belonged to you, and to only you?
How did it affect your privacy, or lack of having any privacy?
When your boundaries were disrespected and exploited, what did you to do cope with the feelings you had?
With whatever trauma and / or neglect you experienced in your life, did you develop a greater attachment and emotional connection to physical items and personal items as a way to bond with something / anything? Or did the repeated violations leave you distanced and unattached to your personal items, able to easily walk off, staying coldly disconnected and apathetic to having anything of your own?
How would you feel if someone took your things from you? Or if someone threw your favorite items in the trash? Or if someone broke an item that you cherished? Would you have an anxiety attack? Would you be angry? Would you withdraw inside, crashing into depression? Would you find yourself switching from insider person to insider person?
Does it feel good and more under your own control to keep the amount of your personal belongings to a minimum? Does that feel safer for you, or does that feel like deprivation? Do you prefer to have bunches of things, feeling safer being surrounded by stuff? Does having layers of stuff feel like layers of protection?
How do victims of floods, fires, tornadoes, and earthquakes, or other natural disasters feel after suddenly losing all of their stuff? Even if they evacuated with a few things, how would it feel to lose so much, so quickly?
It is interesting to explore these questions with yourself. If you aren’t sure what some of the answers would be, try creating the situation, and let yourself experience it first hand. Experience having someone else / something else take your cherished items from you. Chances are, many of you reading this blog have already experienced these situations in your life. But if you haven’t experienced this, don’t judge other people’s reactions and their big feelings about having “house invaders” mess with their things. These experiences are a lot more difficult than you might have ever realized.
It certainly was for me.
Kathy
Copyright © 2008-2012 Kathy Broady and Discussing Dissociation
January 16, 2009
Lists of 100 Reasons
Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, mental health, therapy, Therapy and Counseling, Therapy Homework Ideas tagged Anger work, Angry, Co, Communication, Creative Expression, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Emotional Saturation, Expre, Flooded, Freedom of Expression, Frightened, Hearing, Homework, Inside, Internal Communication, Jounaling Exercise, Journal, Kathy Broady, Listening, Multiplicity, Overwhelm, Panic, Relationship, Safety, Scared, Self-Expression, Struggle, Struggling, System, Talking, Therapeutic Homework, Therapy Homework, Writing Exercise at 1:51 pm by Kathy Broady
This is an excellent journaling exercise that can be adapted to any topic at any time. The entirety of the exercise is to find a difficult or complicated topic. Ask yourself a question about that topic and then write out 100 responses to that question.
For lots of people, one hundred sounds like a huge number for a writing exercise, but once you start thinking about the issue in smaller increments, you might be pleasantly surprised with how many thoughts come to mind so quickly. Most people find this exercise easier to do than they realize. On really big or complex topics, one hundred might not be enough. If you want to keep going past one hundred, please do so.
This exercise is good when you do not have an immediate or direct answer for your struggle. Start with listing the peripheral, simple reasons, and as you write more and more, you will likely reach more specific and complex answers to your concern.
Or this exercise is good to use when you feel like you are flooded with too many answers. Writing out every option that comes to mind can help to organize your thoughts and validate your big feelings.
Any of the following questions could be your starting point:
- What are 100 things that are on my mind right now?
- When I am feeling overwhelmed what 100 things are bothering me?
- What are 100 things that frighten me?
- What are 100 things that I am angry about?
- What are 100 positive things that happened when I was a child? (100 negative things? 100 harmful things? 100 helpful things?)
- What are 100 things that I like and enjoy?
- What are 100 things I wish I could say to my mother (father) but can’t or won’t?
- What are 100 things I wish my parents had handled better for me?
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You can pick the topic and make the question relative to whatever you are experiencing at the time. Pick an issue that you are addressing in therapy now. Use this process to help sort through your thoughts and feelings.
The purpose of such a long list is to take sufficient time to get past the surface obvious answers to your question and to get into the deeper more subconscious answers to your question. Plus, the self-expression and self revelation required to do this exercise make it an interesting task. Breaking down any huge emotion, or any complex situation, or any frightening topic into smaller chunks will help you to develop a sense of mastery and control over the issue. Smaller items are easier to manage than the overwhelming whole. You might be able to fine-tune your struggle into more specific areas by doing this exercise than how it felt ahead of time.
For example, “I’m scared of everything” – a vague, over-whelming, sweeping out-of-control feeling – could become “I’m afraid of specific item A, specific item B, and specific situation C.” By definition, you can start to consciously realize and remember that there are lots of “everythings” in the world that are not specifically A, B, or C. Pinpointing troubled areas helps you to know there are other areas that are not a problem. That’s a good thing. Finding safety somewhere is better than feeling afraid “everywhere”.
It is best to complete the list in one sitting, if at all possible. Write your answers as quickly as possible, and don’t worry if an answer gets repeated more than once. The repetition of an answer can imply that that particular issue is truly bigger than many of the other issues listed.
Remember to pay attention to your own emotional saturation point. While this journaling exercise is intended to help you gain mastery over difficult topics, if you find yourself feeling overwhelmed from pulling up too much at once, immediately step back for a few minutes and take a breather. Get grounded again before you start to work on it more. You might consider dividing your topic into an even smaller focus area, or you might purposefully start and stop a few times, just to keep more stabilized.
Once you have completed your lists of reasons, be sure to read over it a few times. When you are looking at it from a whole, you might see different things than when you were inching through the individual points. You might find several repeating themes, or whole new areas of thought that you hadn’t expected to surface. Be sure to discuss your findings with your therapist, especially when you learn new bits of information.
To make this an exercise in system communication, allow and encourage the other parts of your system to participate in the making of the list of 100 things. Individual parts can each have their own lists, or they can put their name / initials beside their contributions to the group lists. Or use this exercise to focus questions more in the directions of system work. For example:
- What are 100 kind things I can say or do for my inner kid parts this week?
- What are 100 areas of conversation that we as a system can talk about?
- What are 100 activities I want to do with my inner people?
- What are 100 things we can do in our internal world to make our internal landscape more pleasing and comfortable for us?
- What are 100 things that I hear from inside today?
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These kinds of exercises, whether done on paper, or within your internal committee meetings can give you a format, a method, or a starting place to help you hear and understand your other system members.
Remember, developing good, effective internal communication is the key to your healing.
__________
By:
Kathy Broady LCSW
December 27, 2008
Being Kind to Your Internal System
Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, therapy tagged Angry, Appreciation, Child Part, Comfort, Comforting, Compassion, Dangerous, DID, DID / MPD, DID/MPD, dissociative, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Family, Goal, Haven, Healing, Inside People, Insider, Internal, Internal Landscape, Internal Part, Internal System, Internal World, Kathy Broady, Kind, Kindness, Listen, Multiple, Need, Neglect, Neglected, Neglectful, Poorly, Process, Respect, Safe, Self Care, Self-hatred, Skill, Spouse, Support, Supportive, System, System Work, Therapeutic, Therapist, therapy, Therapy Work, Trauma Survivor, Trustworthy at 11:55 pm by Kathy Broady
Hey everyone…
Thanks for coming back and reading more of the Discussing Dissociation blog. It’s exciting to see the number of site viewers growing each week – I think you all must be spreading the news! I appreciate all of you who have already become regular readers, and thanks for telling your friends.
As a follow-up to yesterday’s post about giving- making- creating- providing new and positive experiences for your internal child parts, I want to encourage all the multiples here to expand that idea to include your whole system on an even wider scale. This idea applies to non-multiples too, of course, but since we are “discussing dissociation” here, I’m going to write about these idea within the context of DID / MPD.
I have found that most dissociative trauma survivors have a fair bit of trouble understanding how to be genuinely kind to their inside people. It is very similar to being nice, and kind, and accepting towards outside people, but the effort gets directed to your own insiders instead of outside people.
I could explore the many different reasons for this. Is it because your family treated you so poorly? Were you so hideously neglected that taking care of yourself is truly a skill you have yet to learn? Is it because you truly believe you don’t deserve anything nice? Is it that you are full of self-hatred that you won’t be kind to yourself? Is that you are so angry at anyone (everyone?) that it is easier or essential to take it out on yourself? I don’t know. I’ll leave those questions with you to think about.
For now, I want to focus on what kind things you actually do for your internal system.
- What do you do to be nice to your inside people? What did you do this week?
- What do you do to show the others in your system appreciation and kindness?
- What do you do to encourage them through the hard parts of therapy work?
Think about all the different kinds of things you can do for your people on the inside. Your internal world — your internal landscape — is totally your own world. It belongs to you and only you and your internal system. You and your insiders control that inner world. You all can truly make a huge impact by doing nice, kind, gentle, supportive, and comforting things for each other in there on that level. Even if you can’t afford to buy things in the external world, you can do things for free on the inside worlds. Your inner world can be a true haven and a place that is comfortable and “just right”.
When you can see the others inside, and when you listen to them, and pay attention to each other, you will be able to recognize their needs and then do something about it to make their day better. Taking better care of your insiders will have a huge impact on your life, your system work, your healing process, and your external world.
One of the biggest keys to your overall healing depends on how YOU all treat your own system and internal parts. Do you support each other inside? Do you take the time to be kind to each other inside? Do you comfort each other inside? What do you do to help each other inside? Do you treat each other with respect? Are you trustworthy with each other?
For those that are DID, I believe that one of the most significant therapy goals is doing INTERNAL self care. Look at your others inside — share blankets and stuffies with them. Give them hugs, sit quietly with them. Meet their needs, clean up the messes, give them clean clothes to wear, and a quiet safe place to rest. If your inside world stays chaotic and unkept, neglected or dangerous, then how on earth are you going to feel safe or ok in the outside world? Start by addressing things in your own world, and let it ripple out from there.
The more folks learn to be there for their own selves, the less they will depend on their therapist, or spouse, or any other outside person to “take care” of them. The more you can take care of your own selves, the less it matters if someone else is busy or away for a few days. The more you take care of your own selves, the more you will feel GOOD about yourself and your ability to handle life.
Here are more questions to think about:
- What is the nicest thing that someone in your system could do for you?
- What are some of the most meaningful things you could do for them?
- How do you show the hurting ones that you have compassion for them?
- How do you show your little ones that you will protect them and keep them safe?
- What kinds of things can you do for your insiders to show them that you will help to take care of them and tend to their needs?
- How does your system respond when you are kind and attentive to them vs. being neglectful and angry towards them?
.
This is an important topic — your thoughts and/or comments are welcome.
__________
by:
Kathy Broady LCSW
