Three Kids in a Trench Coat

There’s a weird thing that happens with DID (in our experience, anyway – but I’ve heard other systems talk about similar) where you can mentally accept everything that’s going on with clarity & clear thinking…. but you’re not feeling it. In fact, your not feeling anything. You’re still in that dissociated, frozen state, while your parts go on living & making sure you don’t die of inaction.

Your mind has wandered so many miles, while your body is still bracing from something you were avoiding feeling 6 months ago, 2 years ago, 40 years ago…

It’s hard to describe where I’m at. I think the best place to start is:

I’ve been wanting to feel. To feel emotions again. I’ve been very cut off from them while I’ve been in survival mode – and our periods of survival mode tend to last a loooong time… like, weeks, months, years….

My body is a mess of impulses, cravings, bracing, pining, weight, sadness, anger, loss, joy, frustration… it can be so difficult to tune into anything when opening the tap all the way still feels like it’s not enough to get the blockage moving, while other times opening it just a smidge sends a torrent of everything everywhere all at once.

It’s a lot to navigate.

And it’s not so simple as, “Just feel your feelings.”

Joe Hudson, YT therapist / coach, does this exercise a lot, “I want you to try and stop your emotions, right now, just stop them…” and he gives it a second, and says, “See how uncomfortable that was? You have to physically tense up your muscles to stop them moving….” … and I’m there like, “Dude, wtf are you actually talking about…. literally no change, there was nothing to change xD”

And so often, nothing does move until I get in touch with my inner fam. Literally, we just end up stuck in a brace position, waiting for something awful that – leaves us stuck indefinitely if it doesn’t happen…

And that’s probably why some parts sometimes try to accelerate us towards the awful, because it keeps things moving, while others prepare for the fallout… it’s a whole thing.

Systems generally seek a state of stability, survival, and purpose. Lately for me, the priority order has been 1) Survival 2) Stability 3) Purpose. I’m really missing 3).

Denial of your system as part of the system

I live in this perpetual state of half dis-believing myself about having parts, a system, an inner fam, taking on these imagined judgements from other people, “Oh, Riley’s just making it all up to be different”, “It’s for attention”, “She’s just indecisive”, “Her therapist must have put this all there”

Most of those, no-one has ever said or even implied to me… they’re just self-judgements based on being treated as “the identified patient” or “the problem child” as a kid in a family system with a lot of repression & virtually non-existent relationship with open expression of emotions.

That last judgement, though – an ex has actually expressed to me many times, and she forgets every time (she has her own struggles with amnesia) I explain that… no… I found a therapist that helps with this stuff precisely because I had already recognised this stuff myself… it’d be a bit weird to specifically seek out a trauma & dissociation specialist for no reason xD

The thing is, this doubt is something I come back to from time to time quite naturally. Partly because it’s normal to question what sometimes seems ‘extraordinary’ in a society that tells you people ‘work’ a certain way – and that way is that people are basically one whole messy blancmange, rather than separated layers like a trifle (are we hungry? I could totally go for some trifle & ice cream rn x – Aer) .

But moreover, because internally denying your own experience, for many with DID, ourselves included – is how you learned to survive. Because being yourself wasn’t safe, it got you rejected or harmed by the people who were supposed to love you & teach you you’re ok, from long before you had any agency in the world & all you could do was freeze.

So you learned that “whatever I’m feeling, thinking, experiencing – no I’m not”.

So much of this process of trying to live with with each other now is learning to make space for feeling things that might seem inconvenient, or like it doesn’t make sense… and to get out of this space of putting thinking before feeling.

As much as anything – because so often, until you’ve felt the feeling, thinking clearly just isn’t going to happen.

Accepting your selves

It’s always so strange coming back to a place where you try, honestly, with curiosity & a certain amount of calm, to do things that consistently seem to work for non-systems, and find yourself coming up empty until you get in touch with everyone inside first.

Trying to write down what you’re feeling is one of them… when you want to give it a go, chide yourself for not having done it, and open your journal to seeing 10 pages of new entries, all in different colours & handwriting, some talking to each other, some talking to you, some about you…

Or your open your sketchbook to new art, when there are so many different styles & themes & you still aren’t sure how to draw anything more than a stick person…

Yeah, acceptance is hard when society’s taught you one body = one self your whole life. But when I was younger it also taught me that boys only fall in love with girls, that assigned boy at birth = always a boy, etc etc.

Society taught me a lot of things that have turned out to be incorrect, and this is just another thing where we’re having to learn through experience that our own truth is more important than society’s misunderstandings & shortcomings.

Acceptance is important, because denial is really just a way of not dealing with things.

And we have to deal with each other in here, even if it’s sometimes inconvenient & hard to get along.

Still.

Work in progress x

Until next take, take care of yourselves, kiddos

Riley & fam ❤