Three Kids in a Trench Coat

I’m a very logical, rational person, or at least I so often try to be. Even when I’m letting go of those kinds of self-labelling, I tend to try and think my way through my problems. I’m very, “in my head”.

But so much healing, getting to know yourself, learning to live with more calm & intention etc, is full of the counter-intuitive – resistant to the brute force approach of consciously directed thinking, at least until you start learning to listen to what the rest of your nervous system is trying to tell you, whether you think it’s “being rational” or not.

Deciding how to move forward when you feel stuck in a war between your head, your heart, and every other part of you & and your life, is the topic of so many social media articles, videos, bestselling books… and many trade based on the omission of an uncomfortable truth; there’s rarely one right way to be.

Rarely is there one answer to life’s problems, & or a universal set of magic techniques to engender self-development that are universally true & useful for everyone.

Social media & self-help books are full of claims that assume the opposite – that all your problems would be fixed if you just… learn to let go / find attachment & connection / become more disciplined & persevere through adversity / stop trying to force things and go with the flow / have a better routine / plan less & be more spontaneous / work towards long term goals / learn to just sit still with yourself / stop wasting your time doing nothing… you get the idea.

That’s, I guess, part of where religion comes from – the desire, no matter how old you are, for there to be some kind of cosmic parent figure who can just tell you the damn answer when you feel helpless & stuck – what should I do?

Whether you believe in some version of god, or the divine, or not – here on earth, in the here & now, the reality either way is: We’re all different – and advice that helps one person with one set of tendencies may be terrible advice for someone who already leans too hard into that world view & struggles to engage with the wisdom available in getting to know their own shadow.

Because, if we’re just clicking on the article / video / kindle recommendation that feels right to us, when we’re feeling from a place of desperation & helplessness – often we’re going to be choosing to listen to the advice that already sounds good to us because it’s what we already think the solution should be, even if we’ve been doing it for years & it hasn’t been helping.

That’s just how trauma works.

Pain – what is it good for?

Let’s take an example.

Pain.

What should we do with it when it finds its way into our lives?

Should we listen to it more? Should we embrace it full on, and not allow ourselves to be stopped by it when there could be rewards on the other side of striving through it? Should we be kind to ourselves & avoid it whenever we can? Is it a kindness to yourself to avoid it?

The truth is a messy one that anyone looking for an easy answer isn’t going to like; it depends.

Pain is a sensation in our bodies & our experience of the world. It’s almost always trying to tell us something. There are exceptions even there, in the case of neurological diseases & injury, but generally – the only way to know what it’s telling us is to be with it.

But, it can also be too much for our nervous systems sometimes, particularly in the case of trauma. Sometimes we just don’t have the capacity to go straight towards it without burning out, having a panic attack, switching… we need to look after ourselves to create the capacity, the space, to be able to welcome the pain in & listen to it calmly & with curiosity.

If the answer is, “it depends”, then how do you know which to do when?

Well… you have to be there & decide for yourself. No-one can give you a magic algorithm that’s going to trump your own experience & trusting yourself.

There are wonderful ways to practice both welcoming experience, and learning to cope when you don’t have the spoons to do so right now… with DID, we tend to be very prone to leaning hard into the latter. Change is possible – but you don’t find a new balancing point overnight – and learning to stay is a process.

“Being there” with DID

This search for that new balancing point is, I’ve found, where DID can make things a lot more complicated than I get the impression it would otherwise be, at times.

Because living your life in the sense of doing, being in motion, being functional; compared to being present in the moment, are often extremely dissociable for us, as it were.

Heck, I’d even say that once things start to shift in a positive direction, there’s something about showing up calmer in the world that can feel very unnerving if you’re used to your parts taking the wheel most of the time.

It can feel good for a while, feeling more in touch with your body & your feelings – but you may realise there’s this thing you need to do, and oh shoot, this part or that part normally handles that stuff, and you feel like you don’t have them on speed-dial right now and oh no, you’re doing the thing you know is gonna help bring them forward while you step out, even though it often comes at a cost…

As my therapist put it recently, “As things start to feel more connected again, and as you try and connect more with the world around you… it’s like that game Operation… we can do our best, but sometimes you’re gonna get that “BZZZT!”… you’re going to hit the sides, dissociation will happen…. and that’s ok – you’re still headed in the right direction.”

And he’s right – the more in touch we get with pleasant & even neutral experiences again, the more we’re opening up our capacity to feel pain again. And this is where learning to sit with experiences as they are, rather than as we’d like them to be, becomes so important. Learning to manage our capacity so we can feel pain rather than shutting it out again & leaving parts to deal with it alone, is so important – we really are stronger together than we are alone.

When we can do that, and be with feelings – they start to move again.

Not because we force them to, but because change is part of life – and feelings move, flow, get bigger, fade, get wider, thinner, thicker, resolve, dissolve, climb, and flow into a new experience each moment – it’s just what they naturally do.

Feeling mixed emotions for the first time in a long time is a heck of a thing – and most feelings aren’t simple or one dimensional. Learning to listening to the little feelings can be as important as listening to the big ones when it comes to learning to live a life not dictated by your survival protocols.

And when your system’s no longer constantly bouncing between 95 – 100% of the way to overload anymore, as that inner doomsday clock eases up & we have more space for whatever comes up – that’s when room for friendship, joy, love, start to make appearances again.

And whatever may come, it’s important to make those experiences available to everyone inside who wants them, too – our parts have spent a long time in darkness, and they deserve to live in the light where we can find it together x

Until next time, take care of yourselves, kiddos x

Riley & fam ❤