January 16, 2009
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?
.
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?
.
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
www.AbuseConsultants.com
www.SurvivorForum.com
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January 12, 2009
Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Internal Communication, mental health, Therapy Homework Ideas tagged Abuse, AbuseConsultants, AbuseConsultants.com, Artistic, Collage, Communicating, Creative, Creative Expression, Depression, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Emotional, Expression, Grief, Healing, Insiders, Internal Communciation, Internal Connection, Kathy Broady, Listen, Listening, Memories, mental health, Multiplicity, No-talk Rule, Paint, Picture, PTSD, Safety, sexual abuse, split personality, Support, System, System Cooperation, Talking, Therapeutic Exercise, Therapeutic Process, therapy, Therapy Homework, Trauma, Trauma Survivor, Traumatic Memories, treatment, treatment for DID, Trust at 11:58 pm by Kathy Broady
Creating a collage is another way of allowing your internal system parts to tell more about themselves.
Pictures can be a powerful way of communicating. And a collage – a collection of pictures – can tell a lifetime of stories.
Most trauma survivors were repeatedly told by their abusers, “Do not tell”. Violence, threats, abuse, and pain often accompanied these rules. How many times did you hear “don’t say anything to anyone” or “don’t talk about this” or “you better stay quiet”? All of those directives involve restrictions on being able to talk. Years later, even in the safety of therapy, the intimidation of the no-talk rules can still feel as powerful and real as ever.
One important aspect of healing and therapy is learning to work around the negative, confining rules and those scary points that keep people stuck. If some of your parts are too scared to tell what happened, maybe they could show what happened instead. Pictures can be a way of communicating when talking is a hindrance.
A picture paints a thousand words!
Sometimes writing is too complicated and can also be “against the rules,” especially in the early days of treatment. Thinking creatively, you can work around these rules too. Typing, for example, is actually different from writing. Cutting out printed words is also different from writing. Using stencils, stickers, and rubber stamps are also ways to show wording without having to write.
Collage allows the artist to show a mixture of pictures and words to tell stories without officially breaking no-talk and no-write rules. Collages can be made with a specific topic in mind, or they can be another useful format for the system descriptions.
To create your collage, use a variety of magazines, newspapers, advertisements, and telephone books, etc. Look through these printed materials and cut or tear out any picture, word, or phrase that seems relevant.
If you are sufficiently computer savvy, you can also create a collage from computer pictures. The web certainly has a wide variety of images available for collage purposes. If you can copy-paste and arrange pictures on a document, you can create an incredible collage without so much as lifting a piece of paper.
Let your internal system help pick out these pictures and words, and pay close attention to their interest in selecting pictures, even if you are not sure why they want that particular one. It is very important to not edit or limit the choices of pictures made by your insiders – let them pick whatever pictures they relate to. Each of your parts will have their own things to say, and everyone inside will relate to pictures in a very different way.
Don’t be alarmed or hesitant if you don’t understand why some of the pictures are selected. Chances are, you won’t understand the meaning of all the items picked. That’s ok – that means your insiders are getting ready to tell more about life from their own perspective. Be open to this new information – getting new communication is a big part of why this exercise is helpful. Besides, as you get to know the insiders that selected those pictures, and as the time is right, they will tell you the relevance and meaning of all their selections. If your insiders are picking pictures they relate to, they are completing the assignment, and that is a good thing. Don’t interfere!
Even though you might want to know why the various collage pictures are being selected, be very careful not to push your insiders to talk about everything at once. Not only will that put the others on the spot, and potentially chase them away from the assignment, but you could also easily overload and overwhelm yourself if you start demanding explanations for every picture or phrase that is selected. Select the pictures from a comfortable emotional distance and save the “talking time” for later. There will be plenty enough time on different days for your system members to explain their choices to you.
If you find that lots of your parts are doing this exercise at once, you can either make different piles for the pictures that belong to different folks, or just cut out everything you see and separate the piles of pictures into themes at a later point. I have known people to be working on dozens of tiny collages all at the same time. I have also known people to assemble gigantic collages on huge poster boards. Use whatever style works for best for you! The important point is that your parts are creatively showing you what has deep meaning for them.
The purpose of the collage is to provide another way to tell without telling. Using groupings of pictures and cut out words or phrases can help to say things that you are not allowed to say directly. Any form of expression is helpful in the therapeutic process, even if some of it stays unclear for a long while.
Another added benefit to this exercise is that you will get to know your system parts better. You might recognize patterns for who leans towards what type of pictures. You might hear a new voice that you don’t recognize insisting on a picture that has absolutely no relevance to you.
Collage work can help with the processing of traumatic memories. You might see entire story-lines displayed right in front of you in the groupings of magazine pictures. You might develop a greater awareness for who in your system dealt with what types of abusive situations.
Tending to everyone, listening, and allowing everyone in your system to have an unedited say in picture selection is important. As with any exercise that includes your whole system, it can lead to greater trust, system cooperation, and internal connection.
__________
By:
Kathy Broady LCSW
www.AbuseConsultants.com
www.SurvivorForum.com
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January 11, 2009
Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Internal Communication, mental health tagged AbuseConsultants, AbuseConsultants.com, Album, Amnesia, Amnesiac, Amnesiac Barrier, Amnesiac Wall, Cloth, Collage, Communicate, Communication, Crayon, Create, Creative, Creative Expression, Creativity, Decorate, Describe, Design, DID/MPD, Display, Dissociative Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Drawing, Expression, Fabric, Freedom, Freedom of Expression, Fulfillment, Fun, Healing, Homework, Insider, Internal System, Journal, Journal Exercise, Journaling Exercise, Kathy Broady, Keepsake, Memories, mental health, Multiplicity, Personal Fulfillment, Photo, Photo Album, Poem, Priceless, Recovery, Resistance, Ribbon, Rubber Stamp, Scrapbook, Scrapbooking, Self, Self Esteem, Self-Worth, Souvenir, Souvenir Album, Stencil, System, Therapeutic Exercise, Therapist, therapy, Therapy Homework, Trauma, Treasure, Treatment Goal, Writing at 3:38 pm by Kathy Broady
A fun and creative way to increase system communication and overall system familiarity is to make a scrapbook displaying pages that describe each of the people in your system. Getting to know your system is an absolute essential part to your healing and recovery, but doing system work doesn’t have to be drudgery. A system scrapbook can be a wonderful treasure and a priceless keepsake for many years to come. It can help create and solidify nice memories for you.
This exercise is similar to making any other personal scrapbook or souvenir album or photo album. You will need a scrapbook, or a notebook, or a binder full of paper. Have a wide variety of writing utensils available, ie: pens, pencils, crayons, markers. Allow for different colors to be used. If you want to get creative with your pages, you could also set out scissors, glue, glitter, strips of fabric or cloth, stencils, rubber stamps, yarn, buttons, dried flowers, photos, ribbons, pretty papers, etc.
Invite each and every one of your internal system parts to design their very own page or two or three about themselves.
The pages are to be created by each of your individual system people to introduce and describe themselves, their activities, their interests, their friends, their history, etc. They each can each decorate and design their pages however they so choose. Encourage your parts to creatively display as much information about themselves on their pages as they are comfortable. It’s also good to include drawings, or photos, or collage, or poems, or lists of information, or “Facts about Me”, etc. The sky is the limit with creative expression!
The purpose of this exercise is to assist your system in getting to know themselves and each other, to increase system communication, and to lower amnesiac barriers between the different parts. As everybody fills out their own personal pages, they are providing a good visual summary for the others in the system to get to know who they are, what they like, what they don’t like, who they know, etc.
There is a particular personal fulfillment in being able to creatively express who you are as an individual. The same principal applies to internal parts as well. Having this freedom of expression is a great way to encourage other levels of communication, and being recognized as an individual within a system is also an important emotional need. The self-worth of each of your internal parts can increase just by being recognized as a valuable part of your system.
Completing a personalized page will be a challenge for many insiders, as they often do not know what they like. It’s ok to let the pages be filled out gradually – there doesn’t have to be a time limit or a rush for completion. In fact, the longer you allow this exercise to continue, the better. Some of your insiders might have to look around in the outside world to find more things that they enjoy. Many of them won’t be used to the idea of “liking anything”. Having the freedom and encouragement to explore, and to pick and choose for themselves will be a very new – and possibly unsettling – but positive experience for many of your internal parts. The entire design side of this exercise could be a totally new experience for most of your parts.
Of course there will be those who are resistant to telling anything at all about themselves to anybody, even to other insiders. These parts do not need to be forced to participate. There will be plenty of other folks that find this exercise to be a fun and creative way to meet each other. Encourage as much of your system as possible to participate in making their own page, and remind everyone to keep looking through the other pages.
View the amount of participation and interest each insider shows as an emotional barometer. The amount and intensity of interest your parts show in completing their pages and looking through other pages will absolutely parallel how comfortable, interested, and willing they are to participate in overall system communication.
This project can be rather involved, and may take days, even weeks, to complete. That’s ok! Hopefully more and more insiders will get involved over time. And as you do ongoing work in your healing process, you will continue to meet new insiders. As those new parts surface, encourage them to add their pages to your scrapbook as soon as they are ready to do so.
Another value in this exercise comes in your working together as a team. Some of the older parts will probably have to help the younger ones. Who is comfortable being near the kids? Everyone will have to take turns. Who gets to go first? Some parts will have to share when they both want to include the same item on their page, and as a system, you’ll have opportunities to problem-solve the various dilemmas. If someone makes a mistake, who will comfort them or assist them? If someone breaks a crayon, will they get in trouble? If these parts see someone new in the scrapbook, will they try to communicate with that new person on the inside? The actual process of learning to work together as a group in creating such a valuable system book is invaluable.
Please do not show this book to anyone you do not completely trust as there is no need to set yourself up for uncomfortable situations with people who are not open to understanding dissociative disorders. This system treasure book is primarily intended for you to get to know you and all your other inside peoples. It is a good therapeutic exercise and I’m sure your therapist will be very interested in seeing it as well.
Get creative, and have fun!
__________
By:
Kathy Broady LCSW
www.AbuseConsultants.com
www.SurvivorForum.com
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January 10, 2009
Posted in Dissociative Identity Disorder, Internal Communication tagged Abuse, AbuseConsultants.com, Afraid, Amnesia, Amnesiac, Behavior, Choice, Communicate, Communication, Complex, Dallas TX, Destructive, Destructive Alters, DID Survivors, DID/MPD, Difficult Insiders, Discussing Dissociation, dissociative disorders, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Dissociative Treatment, Emotional, Goal, Harmful, Heal, Healing, Internal Communication, Kathy Broady, Listen, Manipulating, Manipulation, mental health, Multiple, Multiplicity, Negotiation, Process, Sabotage, Self Harm, Self Injury, Self-destructive, SI, split, split personality, System, Talking, Therapist, therapy, Trauma, trauma therapist, treatment, treatment for DID, Treatment Goals for DID, Treatment Process for DID, Understanding, Value, Violent at 5:24 pm by Kathy Broady
I’m going to take a slight detour in the internal communication series and write a little about working with difficult alters. It is crucial to work with these internal parts, no matter how challenging and hopeless things seem in the beginning. Your therapy and healing will never be resolved unless you approach the issues connected with these difficult insiders.
And for that matter, the whole process of building a connection with these difficult, complicated insiders is based on building good communication skills with them, so in that sense, this post is still part of the internal communication series. System work, in whatever way it happens, is a critical part of internal communication and the overall healing journey for everyone with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID/MPD).
Insiders may first appear in your therapy process being difficult – obstinate, obnoxious, aggressive, scary – and they may maintain destructive behaviors for a long time, but regardless of where they start, any alter within your system can become a helper or a protector. If you as the person truly want to achieve healing, then the healing of your difficult insiders can and will happen as well. No matter how difficult they initially present, they can become productive, helpful, positive members of your system.
Remember, even as a multiple, you are still one whole person. If any of your insiders are left to behave obnoxiously, or if they maintain their destructive negative goals, their behaviors and feelings will affect you and the outside people that interact with you. You cannot block off your “problem parts” and pretend they don’t exist and still expect to achieve positive healing. ALL of your insiders have to have the chance to heal, including the people you are afraid of or the ones about whom you don’t immediately find anything likable.
Some difficult alters are destructive by their own choice and design. They do what they do because they purposefully want to be negative and interrupting. Other difficult situations are complicated simply because the issues at hand are very complex and emotionally challenging. Those internal parts may not want to be as much “trouble” as they are, but until their issues are more resolved, they may not know what else to do.
Who do I define as a difficult alters? Some examples are:
- Those that purposefully sabotage or terminate your therapy and your healing process.
- Those that are self-destructive, violent to the body, or harmful to the body in any variety of ways.
- Those that sabotage other people within the system, including hurting or negatively manipulating others, blinding them, locking them up, abusing them, etc.
- Those that are willing to hurt outside helpers – any of the people that are legitimately trying to promote healing. Any version of hurting the helpers – verbally, physically, emotionally, monetarily, violently, etc. – counts as being difficult and destructive to your treatment and to your system overall.
- Those that cannot contain the new learning and tend to repeat the same negative behaviors over and over.
- Whoever the system members themselves define as “difficult” or “challenging” because those parts hold issues or feelings that are particularly hard for them to work with.
- Those that have trouble connecting to the current day, time, place.
- Those that act out their trauma instead of talking about their trauma.
- Those that stay locked in trauma memories and do not see or interact with the current day, time, place, etc.
- Those that adamantly insist on staying hidden, separated, and amnesiac from the others inside.
The quick answer to address these complicated insiders is to speak to them. Talk to them. Get to know them. Try to understand them. Listen to their perspective on life. Even these insiders can be and should be approached in your therapy sessions. I can promise you, if you avoid talking to these insiders, they will continue to act out their issues. Ignoring them frequently means they will just act out more to get your attention.
It is essential to approach these insiders knowing they have had their job for a reason. You might not like the reason, or understand their reason, but the point is, they are doing what they do because they believe it is helping to achieve a goal that they want. Try to understand what it is that they are doing. Why are they acting out like that? What do they believe? What do they value? From their framework, does their behavior make sense?
Really listen closely to understand why they are doing what they are doing. Work hard to hear and listen to their perspective. You might be pleasantly surprised to hear that their goals are not as “bad” as you might have originally thought they were. The main difference is that you might not agree with the visible behaviors.
Once you have an understanding of why they are doing what they are doing, you can work with them to problem solve and find new ways – more positive and helpful ways – to get what they want. You can begin negotiations on what helpful and positive goals will be.
And the whole process starts by talking to them. Communicate with them. Let them talk to your therapist. Let them get involved in the healing process. Remember, if they aren’t helping the healing process, they’ll continue to hurt it.
__________
By:
Kathy Broady LCSW
www.AbuseConsultants.com
www.SurvivorForum.com
Copyright © 2008-2010 Kathy Broady LCSW and Discussing Dissociation
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January 7, 2009
Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Internal Communication, mental health tagged Acceptance, Belonging, Breaking, Communicate, Communication, Confidence, Denial, DID/MPD, Dissociated, dissociative, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Dissociative Wall, Effective, Emotion, Family, Healing, Hear, Hidden, Hurt, Information, Inside Part, Insider, Internal Communication, Internal World, Intimidating, Journal, Kathy Broady, Landscape, Learn, Learning, Letter, Listen, mental health, Overwhelm, Painful, Panic, Potential, Private, Relationship, Safe, Skill, Social, System, Talk, Talked, Talking, therapy, Trauma, Trigger, Triggering, Understanding, Upset, Visual, Visualize, Wall, Worry at 3:48 pm by Kathy Broady
There are a variety of ways to develop basic, effective skills in internal communication with your dissociative system. Most of these skills are very similar, even the same, as the communication skills used with real people in the everyday world. There is no fancy trick to learning to talk to your inside people. Everyone can do this.
Have you spoken to people in your everyday world? I’m sure that every one of you has spoken to outside people before. If you can speak to real people and develop ongoing relationships with them, you can certainly develop the ability to communicate and build relationships with your insiders.
Don’t panic — I completely understand that many people with Dissociative Identity Disorder have difficulties with social situations and social relationships. I am fully aware that speaking with “real people” can be intimidating, challenging, difficult, disastrous, etc.
Here’s the good news. In some ways, it is actually easier to develop communication with your internal system because they are there with you more of the time. The opportunities available to you to speak with your internal system exist all day long, and frequently all night long as well. And because they are a part of you, they will already have some innate understanding of how you think and why you think it. The ability to connect with each other can happen more easily because you already have the foundation of literally belonging together.
One of the easiest ways to facilitate internal communication is using the internal worlds – the internal landscapes of your dissociative system. Simply said — step back and go inside, look around, see who is there, and then speak to them. If you see someone — anyone — say hello, and start a conversation with him or her. If you hear others inside, even if you can’t see them, speak in their general direction. Chances are, if you can hear them, they can hear you. You don’t have to know their names. You can easily begin a conversation with “Hi, what’s your name?” or “Hello, how are you?”
Looking inside is a natural skill for most DID/MPD folks, especially once the idea of having an internal dissociative system is accepted and denial is not clouding your willingness to interact with your other parts. Communicating with your other parts will be much easier if you are truly willing to see them and hear from them. Your genuine positive acceptance of their existence is a critical foundation to effective communication.
You don’t have to be comfortable with absolutely everyone in your system to begin working on internal communication skills. Start with who you know, who you can see, who you can hear, and then build that over time to include more insiders. If you can already see someone inside, that means there is significant potential to build that relationship. The folks that are the most dissociated from you will still be hidden, or further away. That is ok. Start with folks that are already closer and less intimidating to you.
Learning to communicate well with even one or two or three other inside parts will make a significant difference. Especially in the beginning while you are learning these skills, keep yourself from becoming overwhelmed by speaking with only a few others. Even in real life, we don’t have to talk to everyone we see. Start with the people that are the closest and feel the safest and the most comfortable to you. Build your confidence with them, and plan to meet others at a later point.
If visualizing your insiders is difficult or too scary for you, try putting your communication out on paper. The main point is to start somewhere — and the sooner, the better.
Create a handwritten journal or a document in your computer that can be specifically designated as a place for you and your insiders to communicate. This needs to be private, and not open for the world or your family members to see. In that space, write letters to each other. These letters don’t have to be long. Brief introductory comments and simple questions will work just as well, if not better, than long paragraphs.
You will be breaking through old, long-term dissociative walls by doing these communication exercises, and it is critically important to not flood yourself with too much emotion or too much information when first talking to the others inside. Do not start with trauma material. Do not ask about painful secrets. At these beginning stages, purposefully stay away from any triggering topics.
The following questions and comments are typically safe conversation starters:
- Hi, my name is …. What’s your name?
- Hi little one, how old are you?
- Hi little one, you look very scared. Is there something I can do to help you feel safer?
- Hi there. My name is …. Some of my favorite things to do are … What do you like to do?
- Hi. It’s nice to meet you. Have you seen me around here before? It’s great to get a chance to speak with you. I’m hoping that several of us can get together a little more often. Would you be willing to meet some of the other people in here?
- What kinds of things are worrying you today?
- Is there anything I can do to help you feel better? Would you like a drink of water? Or a nice soft blanket?
- Hi there. You look upset. I’m not here to hurt you. Can you tell me what’s bothering you today?
- Hi there, little one. Have you ever met the little girl over there? She is about your same age. Maybe the two of you can be friends. Would you like to meet her?
- Hi there. It’s nice to meet you. Have you talked with anyone before? Would you be willing to write in our journal and introduce yourself to the others that are in here?
.
These are some basic ideas. Communication gets much more complex than this, of course. This topic will be continued in future posts.
__________
By:
Kathy Broady LCSW
www.AbuseConsultants.com
www.SurvivorForum.com
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January 4, 2009
Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Internal Communication, mental health tagged Abused, Alter, Approach, Argue, Blackness, Blocking, Child Part, Communicate, Communicating, Communication, DID/MPD, dissociative, Dissociative Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Dissociative Wall, Distance, Emotional, Emotionally, Encouraging, Fear, Feeling, Friend, Friendly, Function, Healing, Hear, Hearing, Hitler, Hurt, Inferior, Inner People, Insider, Internal Communication, Internal System, Kathy Broady, Kindness, Listen, Painful, Preparation, Relationship, Respect, Speak, Squabble, Stability, Stranger, Strength, Support, System, Talk, Talking, therapy, treatment, treatment for DID, Understand, Value, Wall, War at 4:16 pm by Kathy Broady
I ended my last post with this paragraph:
Focus first on relationship building with your parts. Get to know them. Talk to them. Learn their names. Overcome your fears of who they are. Appreciate their strengths. Develop friendships with them. I guarantee that your overall stability will greatly improve as you are more connected with your internal system on a genuinely friendly, caring basis.
In my opinion, developing good internal communication is the core of the treatment work for Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you cannot or do not talk well with your other internal parts, you will not be able to complete your healing work effectively, thoroughly or sufficiently.
Imagine going to your place of employment and not being able to speak with any of your co-workers. How well would businesses work with that approach? Have you ever been to a big department store? Imagine if the employees couldn’t speak with each other for days-weeks-years at a time. That store as a whole would find it extremely difficult to manage busy days, or to handle simple, basic operations. It would crumble. Even if all the employees continued doing their own jobs perfectly — if they are not communicating with anyone else in the store, then the store as a whole would be less effective. It would likely go out of business sooner than later.
Dissociative systems cannot function without internal communication any better than large department stores can function without internal communication.
If you don’t talk to your inner people, and if your various insiders do not speak with each other, none of you are going to function as well as you could.
Also, if you run your system with an attitude similar to Hitler’s, that’s not going to work so well either. Approaching your insiders as inferiors or nuisances that you want to kill off, or dispose of, or get rid of in some way will not be helpful. As our real-life example has shown, this type of dictatorship and abuse leads to tragedies like genocide and world wars. Don’t go there with your internal world. Treat your inner people with kindness and respect.
I promise you that every single one of your insiders has value, importance, strengths, and significance. You might not understand who they are at this point in time. And when you don’t know the positive value held by each person inside, that’s a big clue that you have some therapy work to do.
Allowing your system to stay scattered, chaotic, disorganized, and messy will not help your stability or ability to function. Keeping with the store metaphor, who wants to shop in a cluttered, disorganized, messy store? Can you find anything? Does it take twice as long to find the things you need? And are some items just impossible to find without taking huge chunks of extra time?
Permanently blocking your internal system behind walls or curtains or an unexplored blackness is not helpful either. I realize that all DIDer’s have dissociative walls and barriers already — walls that could have easily been there for years. That is the nature of DID/MPD. It’s the initial point of having a dissociative disorder — surviving by using those same dissociative walls to separate yourself from yourself and from the situations and feelings that were too conflictual, too painful, too difficult, etc. In the here and now, the treatment goal is to gradually lower and remove those barriers between your system people, and certainly not to create more walls or to support more distance between everyone.
Internal communication is the key to doing this work.
Doing your system work — meeting each other, getting to know each other, will in itself create a greater sense of order and structure within. More of you will know who can do what, where the other parts are, and how they got there. It won’t feel so strange or unknown to you. Insiders can become friends with each other instead of being strangers separated from each other. Even though there are additional steps to take, start by encouraging everyone in your system to be willing to see, meet, and greet as many others as possible. You all need to know who you have in there.
My next post — Internal Communication, part 2 — will list specific ideas for how to develop communication within your system.
For today, in preparation to do this work, please think about the following:
- How willing are you to speak to your insiders?
- How willing are you to listen to your insiders?
- If you are afraid of some of your inside people, what are you willing to say to them?
- If some of your insiders have experienced a different life than you have, are you willing to listen to them?
- What will you do if someone says something you don’t want to hear?
- What will you do if your insiders squabble and argue with each other?
- How will you handle it if certain insiders hurt others within your system? What if they are hurting child parts? What if they attempt to hurt you?
- What if meeting the others folks inside means learning that you were more hurt and abused than you realized? How will you handle that?
- What are your thoughts and feelings about finding new insiders — ones that you didn’t realize you had?
- Do you know how to speak to child parts? How will your address them if you see that they are hurting emotionally or physically?
.
You can do this. Your healing depends on your talking with your internal system.
__________
By:
Kathy Broady, LCSW
www.AbuseConsultants.com
www.SurvivorForum.com
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January 3, 2009
Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, mental health tagged Abreact, Abreaction, Abreactive, Anxiety, Approach, Caring, Chaos, Communication, Confusion, Connection, Cooperation, Core, Crisis, De-stabilizing, Depressed, Depression, DID Treatment, DID/MPD, Difficult, dissociative, Dissociative Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Emotion, Emotional, Fall Apart, Fear, Flashback, Friendship, Healed, Healing, Insider, Instability, Intense, Internal, Internal System, Issue, Kathy Broady, Medication, Memories, Memory, Memory Loss, Memory Work, mental health, Nightmare, Numb, Overwhelm, Painful, Process, Progress, PTSD, Relationship, Secret, Self Destruct, Self Destruction, Self Injury, Self-destructing, Sleep, Stability, Stable, Suicidal, Suicide, Survivor, System, Teamwork, therapy, Time Loss, Trauma, Traumatized, treatment, Voices at 3:44 pm by Kathy Broady
Kerro commented:
I have a question about stability. I accept that I need to be reliable, motivated, responsible and willing to delve into things I generally don’t want to delve into. As for stability – I can see how a stable client is easier to work with for a therapist. However, what if the beginning stages of therapy have resurfaced old issues or retraumatised the client to the extent that they are now “unstable”? How would this fit with your schema? And what should the therapist’s (and client’s) roles be in re-stabilising?
Typically trauma survivors, particularly those with Dissociative Identity Disorder and PTSD enter therapy because their life is already full of emotional complications, symptoms of depression, anxiety, self-injury, internal chaos, flashbacks, confusion, memory loss, time distortion, time loss, body numbing, nightmares, voices, etc. As a whole, people do not enter therapy because their life is already stable. They go to therapy because they have some awareness that they are starting to fall apart. There is something wrong, something very uncomfortable, and something very unmanageable about their life. They may not be able to define it, but they can feel it and see it in the way their life is unraveling.
And yes, Kerro, you are right. There are various stages of therapy that can be quite de-stabilizing, yet maintaining stabilization is a fundamental building block of therapy. Sometimes the path seems like two steps forward, one step back. And, yes, there are times when it feels more like one step forward, two steps back. It is a very fine balance. To do the healing work required for trauma survivors to gain overall life stability, these survivors have to address painful difficult issues that are potentially de-stabilizing.
So, not doing the work leaves people de-stabilized.
But doing the work also can cause people to be de-stabilized.
Some days, it feels like the line between the two is nonexistent.
Now what?!
Take it slowly, one step at a time. Look ahead, increase your self-awareness, try to maintain the stability that you have, and try to predict the areas of your stability are the shakiest and and prepare for them ahead of time. This is important.
What is stability?
Stability consists of a lot of different elements all at once. Some examples of stability are when survivors:
- Can manage intense emotions without using serious self-injury to cope.
- Can be challenged with something emotionally difficult without making it ”the end of the world” or some other dramatic crisis.
- Are willing to move forward by learning about new areas of life and using new coping skills, instead of self-destructing from the same old place and/or blaming others for their lack of progress.
- Do not consider suicide as a realistic problem-solving solution to difficult situations.
- Can manage feeling depressed, and even suicidal, but knowing they wouldn’t actually do anything lethal or harmful.
- Take their medication as prescribed, regularly and consistently.
- Eat regularly, without starving themselves or without bingeing repeatedly.
- Get a regular, sufficient amount of sleep, rest, and personal down time.
- Have a steady source of monthly income that meets their basic needs.
- Can incorporate painful trauma memory work into their lives without self-destructing or attacking others.
- Work cooperatively with their internal system without attacking each other from within.
- Maintain a safe and consistent distance from and/or can establish boundaries with people that repeatedly abuse them.
- Can keep their regular job/employment, even while working on therapy issues.
- Can use their dissociative skills to their advantage, instead of to their detriment.
Sometimes therapy is like walking through a minefield. If you know you have to get through the minefield to survive, but there is the potential that you will set off one of the mines on your way through, you would tread very carefully. You would check everything you do, in smaller and more detailed increments. You would listen and watch for clues every single step of the way.
In the therapy process, once you start feeling a little too de-stabilized in a particular direction, back off and stop pushing that issue at the moment. Give it a break for an hour, a day, a week, a month — depending on the circumstance. Get to know yourself and what you can handle. Learn your own red flags for when you are starting to fall apart and getting too overwhelmed. Give yourself the space and the time to do your work. There’s no need to rush headlong into things that particularly de-stabilize you.
Remember, when healing from trauma, there are usually many, many different areas of healing. Remember the list of 50 different treatment issues for DID/MPD? If you are finding one area too difficult to deal with right now, simply put that issue on hold, and work on a different area. They ALL have to be done. They ALL have to be addressed. You can decide when something is genuinely too difficult, or too tangled, or too emotional, or too destabilizing for right now.
As a general rule of thumb, put internal communication work and system work as the first steps to focus on. If you cannot even speak to your insiders, you certainly will not be able to tolerate their intense emotional trauma memories.
In years gone by, the mental health profession used to promote abreactive memory work as valid and necessary. I absolutely, unequivocally disagree with that. Abreactions are often hypnotically induced, and they are basically inducing a flashback — putting the person back in time and directly into the intensity of the trauma. Most survivors find they do not even recall abreactive work, so as far as I am concerned, it is an absolute waste of time, and just leaves the person feeling more traumatized than healed.
If you cannot speak, in your normal voice, discussing your trauma memories from the safety of the here-and-now while still connected in the present, then don’t even try to address your memories. It is too soon.
In my opinion, memory work is NOT the core of the healing from dissociative disorders. I believe that developing the internal communication, internal cooperation between parts, and system teamwork is a much more important element, as well as being crucial to a person’s stability. Decreasing the dissociation and separation between the inside people has many facets to it. The trauma is only one area of separation between insiders. Build strong connections with each other first and then, much further down the road, address the memory / trauma issues, and you will likely find that the memory work is much less de-stabilizing than it once was.
Memory work has its role, and yes, survivors do have to process their trauma. Please know that you are not getting a “free pass” on not addressing that. BUT, it is not the first goal of treatment, and it is certainly not the main focus of the therapy.
In your outside life, when you first walk up to someone new, as you are first meeting them, do you say, “Hi. You don’t know who I am. I don’t know who you are. But I want to know your most painful memories. Tell me all your deepest, darkest secrets RIGHT NOW.”
Hello??? Of course you don’t approach people like that. SO, don’t approach your insiders that way either. Get to know them as people first. Find out who they are, what they are like. Build a relationship, a connection, and a rapport with them first.
In fact, building connections in your internal system, building that teamwork approach, improving communication, and etc. is the main and most effective stabilizing factor that I know. Once you truly can connect with your insiders, and you care for them and have relationships with them, you can hear their trauma through an entirely different perspective. You will have compassion for your inner people, and that will help you to heal. Jerking their memories out of them before you even have a relationship with them isn’t good for anyone.
Focus first on relationship building with your parts. Get to know them. Talk to them. Learn their names. Overcome your fears of who they are. Appreciate their strengths. Develop friendships with them. I guarantee that your overall stability will greatly improve as you are more connected with your internal system on a genuinely friendly, caring basis.
__________
by:
Kathy Broady LCSW
www.AbuseConsultants.com
www.SurvivorForum.com
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January 1, 2009
Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, mental health tagged Abused, Believe, Boundaries, Boundary, Change, Choice, Choose, Conflict, Control, Decide, Decision, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Dream, Goal, Grow, Happy New Year, Heal, Helpless, Hope, Internal Part, Internal World, Kathy Broady, New Year, Obstacle, Option, Power, Problem, Relationship, Strength, Struggling, System, therapy, Think, Treatment Goal, Victimized, Vulnerable at 7:33 pm by Kathy Broady
Happy New Year !!
I’ve been thinking for hours now about what kind of profound post I would make at the beginning of this new year. My words are still trickling in slowly….
So, while I’m thinking, I’ve decided to ask you all what you are thinking….
What are your goals for 2009?
And, seriously, if you could rule the world this year, what would you do? What changes would you make, and how would you bring those about? How would you address the world economy? How would you approach world peace? What would you do about famine, wars and diseases?
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to fix such big problems with just the snap of your fingers.?!
Ok, ok, so all that is just a little too unrealistic.
It doesn’t hurt to dream, but let’s talk about the worlds you can control – you own life, your own system, your own internal worlds.
At this stage in your life, you do have a lot of input into what happens in your life. You aren’t a helpless, child without resources or power. You are grown. You are much older, and while you might be stuck and struggling at certain points, you truly do have considerably more freedom, more power, more options, more control than you had in your early years of life. You can’t change the past, but you can make it so the past does not cripple your present so much. You can make this year, these days, even right now, better for yourself.
I’m just sure you can.
It’s not necessarily easy and it might take a whole lot of hard work, but you do have the ability to make things better for yourself.
So let me ask again.
- What are your personal goals for 2009?
- What are your hopes? your dreams?
- What could realistically happen for you this year if you really worked for it?
- What areas of your life do you want to heal?
- What do you want to happen within your own system?
- How are you going to help your internal parts this year?
- Who do you want to meet from within?
- Who do you want to establish a friendly, working relationship with from within your system?
- Who do you want to connect with in the external world? Even if that means mending some fences, and working through conflict issues?
- With whom do you want to create stronger boundaries, so you aren’t as vulnerable or as abused by them?
- What topics are going to be the focus of your therapy?
- What areas of your life are you willing to leave on hold for now?
We are each in charge of our own lives. Some say that to a very large degree we actually create our own lives. I understand that some things happen outside of our immediate control. However, we can decide to work around and grow past those obstacles, no matter how big they are. As much as we have to work with the cards that we have been dealt, we also can make decisions in the current day to make our lives more how we want them to be.
What do you want for yourself this year? How hard are you willing to work – learn – research – stretch – push yourself to get that?
If getting something new and better in your life means letting go of something familiar but “crappy”, are you willing to do that? Are you willing to prevent or refuse to allow victimized thinking that keeps you stuck in places you don’t like? Are you able to find your own way, your own strengths, your own power, your own ability to think?
Do you believe in yourself and your self worth enough to get something better?
It’s a New Year.
What’s going to be new about your year this year?
__________
by:
Kathy Broady LCSW
www.AbuseConsultants.com
www.SurvivorForum.com
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December 27, 2008
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
www.AbuseConsultants.com
www.SurvivorForum.com
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December 26, 2008
Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Therapy Homework Ideas tagged Aching, Bell, Child, Children, Christmas, Christmas Light, Conflict, Cookie, Depression, DID / MPD, dissociative, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Family, Family Relationship, Festivities, Freedom, Gift, Good, Good Memories, Grief, Healing, Healthy, heartbreak, Hole in the Heart, Holiday, Holiday Memory, Inside Kid, Insider, Internal, Internal System, Jingle, Joy, Joy of Christmas, Kathy Broady, Kid, Listen, Listening, Little, Memories, Painful, Present, Remember, Smile, Special Occasion, Survivor, System, therapy, Therapy Homework, Trauma, Trauma Survvor, Traumatic, Treasure, Troubled at 7:29 pm by Kathy Broady
I hope you are all having a good holiday season…..
I had hoped to post these thoughts a couple days back, but unfortunately, I didn’t have the chance until now. And even though it’s the day after Christmas, I still want to approach the topic. I’m proposing that it’s not too late to make a difference this year.
In my experience, from listening through the years, holidays are typically very difficult times for dissociative trauma survivors. All too often, holidays are closely connected with painful memories, traumatic times, and troubled family relationships. Holidays tend to be filled with heartbreak, conflict, aloneness, exclusion, depression, grief, and that nagging aching awareness that things are not anywhere near close to ok.
Years after years of painful memories leave big holes in the hearts of many survivors…
Having a good Christmas holiday is a need unfulfilled – an experience unknown.
Because this is such a common area of tenderness, I am strongly encouraging you to do something different for yourself and your inner people. You can’t force or demand a change in your family members, or create fulfilling outside relationships for the holiday moments when those relationships haven’t already been there, but you can still make the holidays a good time – a memorable and special occasion for yourself and your internal system. As soon as you are able, find a time and a place of your own where you can do a variety of special things for yourself and your inner-ones. Be determined to make some good memories this year!
For example, did you do anything this month to make the holidays new or memorable or pleasantly surprising for your inner kid parts? Did your littles get to read any Christmas stories? Or watch any holiday festivities? Did anyone in your system get any presents? Do you know what kinds of things they might want if they were to get a gift? Most times, it doesn’t take much to bring a smile to their little tiny faces, and I can’t encourage you enough to do these things for them.
Even now, at this point in time in your life, you can take the time to do things for your internal kids to make up for what they may have missed through the years. And especially, if you are not living with people who safely interact with your littles, I’d bet that most of your inside kids didn’t get many treats this year. So those little insiders will probably be looking to you, the bigger ones in the system, to provide those kinds of new experiences.
For most of you, it’s only the day after Christmas. It’s really not too late. There are still Christmas decorations available in the stores (and now at clearance prices!). There are still cookies to bake, and little presents available everywhere. There are Christmas lights all around, and it still feels like Christmas. At least it does around here. And it can, for you too.
Take a few minutes to listen to your inside ones, and find out what they want for Christmas this year. Like all kids, some of their requests might be too big for you to realistically get for them.. But then again, maybe a small stuffie, or a home-baked cookie, or a pretty treasure from the dollar store would brighten their day. (Or, if you can see your internal worlds, you can give each other all kinds of things that way!)
Let the littles have a chance to make holiday gifts of appreciation for the others in your system. Little ones inside might want to give something to each other, or maybe they want to make something to give to some of the older ones as well. Encourage the ideas of giving, sharing, and being kind and generous with each other. These kinds of activities are great in terms of encouraging greater system cooperation and positive emotional connections with each other. Who doesn’t feel more kindly towards someone who shares a nice gift with them?
Encourage pleasant holiday experiences too. Maybe the littles or other people in your system can have a few private minutes to look at the neighbor’s Christmas lights, or to watch a TV show with a holiday theme. Maybe they would blossom at having the freedom to sing some of their favorite Christmas songs, or to jingle a bell. Ask them what they want to do, and if it’s at all possible, make it happen!
The point is this. Let your insiders experience some good things. Create a positive holiday experience for them this year. I’m convinced that a big part of the healing for survivors with dissociative identity disorder is giving your inside kids some of the healthy, life-enriching experiences they may have missed out on while growing up.
You don’t have to make a visible scene in front of anyone else – please be safety conscious and very wise about where you allow your kids to surface, especially in public. But, when you are in that safe and private place, let your kids experience some of the joys of Christmas first-hand. Do something for them, to bring a smile to their face. Let them have a good holiday memory of their very own this year.
Every child needs something good to remember.
What are your inside children gonna remember about this year?
__________
by:
Kathy Broady LCSW
www.AbuseConsultants.com
www.SurvivorForum.com
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