Everything has been so incredibly confusing lately. I feel like I have lost myself again. I have been told that I sometimes think in black and white, everything or nothing. So I have been trying to be more detailed instead of making general sweeping statements. It still feels like I am losing myself again and with that everything that I have built up in the last few years. And I have been here before. In a spot were all the things that give my life quality are slowly disappearing because I lose the connection, because I lose the focus, because I lose the strength, because I lose the interest. Some of my greatest losses and pains that I can universally remember are the related to feeling everything slipping, disappearing, and ending up in a place where I give up, where it is dark and chaotic. A place that leads me to psych wards, self-destructive behaviour and suicide attempts. So when I say that I am worried that I am losing everything again, it is more tied to the overwhelming fear to end up in that place again. And the sad thing is, part of me is already in that place mentally. I am trying hard to make rational decisions, to have a sort of maintenance mode where I can hold onto things without too high expectations on functioning normally. But I can feel the frustration growing, not about the situation. But I am so frustrated with my own inabilities. My own weaknesses. I am frustrated with being an outlier on every damn scale there is.
I only have three modes these days: absolute disconnection and dissociation, crazy chaos and not caring anymore, and introspective despair linked to self-awareness. What all those three modes have in common is that I don’t want to be perceived at the moment. I think that is a C-PTSD thing – not feeling human, feeling alienated from the rest of society and feeling an intense shame just for existing. With that comes for me a very strong lack of self-worth and my body image has changed for the worst. At the same time I don’t have the strength to be the sort of friend that people know me as. Socializing, even just through social media, is very difficult and I can’t much imagine meeting any of my friends any time soon again. My work seems useless and I lost all confidence in my skills. The only thing I can do in all three modes is to distract myself. I know that isn’t dealing with any of what is going on with me. But I feel like no matter mode, I am in a general survival mode, not growing and healing mode.
All this started about three months ago. Something shifted inside, or as my therapist said, there is movement. I don’t know if she sees it as a positive, but I don’t. I don’t see it as a positive at all. Without going into too many confusing DID details: some trauma memories got shared, and they became real. At the same time some things changed inside the system that demanded active handling and participation. All that resulted in denial walls breaking down. Denial and minimizing are typical symptoms of childhood trauma, I get it. They are safe and make it easier to not deal. But now we are in a place where all of those parts that have been strongly holding onto denial, are not able to do that anymore – especially the reluctant host who usually comes and goes and is easily overwhelmed. There just wasn’t any way to deny anymore. And that means that we need to deal with the truth of the trauma, the severity of it and the consequentially what that means for what our life is, who we are, what our future can be like. It felt like everything changed, Suddenly memories and trauma holders popped up, while dealing with the truth. There were a lot of breakdowns and despair, self-harm and just utter exhaustion. Being a survivor of childhood abuse, a survivor of child sex trafficking, of having grown up in a house of horror – how does one face that? Being a polyfragmented DID system, plus being physically chronically ill and having bipolar disorder, How can this be the reality.
Ever since then there has also been mode number two: the dissociation. Holy shit – that disconnect to the body, to the inner world and to the feelings is incredibly strong. I even want to say that I don’t even remember it even being that strong. The general connection to the body has changed since April anyway. The body feels weird, like not my own, like it is rotten, weird, not alive. Sometimes this leads to health anxiety. But it is quite obvious that it is related to dissociation and the shift. We had to function really strongly for a few days and we literally did not feel the body. It was all robotic. The other day we were just lying on the bed, feeling like a 500 pound feather with absolutely zero emotion. Like a ghost that can not reach the dimension everyone else is existing in. It was really freaky.
And then there is the self-destructive chaotic mode. It is mostly happening because there is a disconnect from the inner world at the moment. There are just a lot of overwhelming emotions that have no obvious cause. And those emotions drive us into wanting to hurt, wanting to burn the world, wanting to do all kinds or retraumatizing things (not going into detail here). It seems untamable, not controllable. It feels like emotional flashbacks on steroids, constantly under the surface and wanting to sort of get that out of the body. It is difficult to stay safe at the moment, that is for sure.
We haven’t been able to return back to the reflective mode ever since that period when we had to function for a few days. In some way that is good because that mode was the hardest in terms of how it seemed to traumatize parts of us. On the other hand, it is probably the mode that is working towards some sort of progress. But it is too hard and we are not sure the host can deal with any of that. The main mode right now is the self-destructive and chaotic mode, which is scary, but also familiar. The dissociative mode just kicks in randomly. None of those modes are necessarily linked to only one part – but there are several that are more active in different modes.
All of this is happening because of the shift. All of this means that we are facing to lose everything again. This isn’t sustainable. I wish we could hide from it all the same way we are hiding from the world right now.
Fragments of Reality 