April 2011 Archives

Welcome to the April 2011 edition of the Expressive Arts Carnival. This month's theme, see announcement, was to "create an image representing your relationship with safety."

It is my policy to not comment on art in the Carnival itself. This is why we have the words of the artists themselves, if they choose, talking about their entries. But certainly if discussions ensue in the comments, I am happy to talk about the art in any way that is appropriate and encourage others to do so.

Here are the entries in the order received. Only if there is a blog or a post to accompany the entry, the artist's name will have a link to it.

Entry 1: Castorgirl

Castorgirl wrote: "I have a tenuous relationship with safety - it feels like some out of reach ideal that only happens to good people.  This is why my image is more menacing than optimistic.  I struggle to understand what safety means, and that I could be deserving of it."

Entry 2: Kerro

Kerro wrote: "When I took this photo I was deeply afraid of the dark and particularly the city at night. The dark, the people, the crowds, the noises, the lights... it all triggered me. And yet I was drawn to it as well, longing to walk the streets taking photos rather than taking them from the safety of a hotel room high in the sky. A few months after this photo was taken I was walking in town one night when I realised I wasn't afraid any more. Sure, the people were still there, the crowds, the noises... it was all the same, but I felt safe. Safer than I had ever felt before. I've represented this healing aspect with the splash of colour. I still get freaked by the dark sometimes. City crowds and noises are still an easy trigger, but I'm hoping my splash of colour will spread. The splash - and the contrast with the black and white - also represents the tenuous grip that I and many survivors have with safety. Sometimes we feel safe, and others we don't - even in the same situations. Sometimes we turn to the darkness to create safety in ways that aren't safe at all, but that we can at least control."

Entry 3: Shen

Shen wrote: "Recently, I've been protecting an eight-year-old part of me. Actually this has been going on for months, but so certain was I that I needed to keep protecting the eight-year-old, I haven't written about it on my blog and I couldn't tell C (my therapist). Two nights ago, with great anxiety, I finally told C what was going on... and soon afterwards I realized that the eight-year-old didn't need my protection at all.  That's what this image is about. I first started it before I told C, and at that time I had the wall all the way around the figure in the middle. When I finished it tonight, I realized the wall didn't need to be quite so restraining. Maybe, in time, I will be able to let all the parts of me be free to be who they are, without so much control."

Entry 4: Sanity is Knocking

Sanity wrote: "The first thing I thought of was my response to a discussion my therapist and I were having about opening up and being more vulnerable. I said I could do it if he put me in a cardboard box! I was half serious as being contained like that would feel more safe than having someone constantly reading every body movement. I think I could be a lot more open if I could hide."

Entry 5: Tai

Tai wrote: "This is about choices and sometimes about inevitability, both choices are hard and both come with emotional consequences for me. You would think that the woman on the right would look happy because she represents choosing not to self-harm , but I have to be honest and acknowledge that there's a unique kind of pain from not giving in too."

Entry 6: Shades of Ivory

Ivory wrote: "T Water. Slow, lazy water. That is what makes me feel safe. I'm drawn to water and the sound of water, but not just any water. Not the surf, or a rushing river, but slow water, lapping at small pebbles along the shore, or the silent sound of waveless water. Also, as in this picture, there are few colors, which is soothing to me because I'm often overwhelmed with the emotion of too much color and/or too much sound. Guess what live wallpaper is on my Thunderbolt?"

Entry 7: Bay

Bay titled this piece "The Price of Safety" and wrote: "Throughout our life finding safety has been a matter of building a wall around us, when we've tried to let people in we seem to choose the wrong ones, so best build a good, strong wall. Right now we feel safe in our little world, but also very lonely. The challenge now is to learn how to open that little door and let others in while somehow maintaining that feeling of safety."

Entry 8: thequietone

thequietone wrote: "What safety means to me: The word safety brings on sadness to me.  It is a fragile state that is so easily broken if put in the wrong hands.  For many years I couldn't comprehend what the word "safe" meant.  Safe for me was to keep everything inside, put up huge walls and not let anyone in.  It was a matter of time before that stopped working of course and when that happened I was on a new quest to learn all about this elusive word."

Entry 9: Leslie

Leslie wrote: "A child's home should be a protection and a shelter from the storms of life, much like an umbrella protects and shelters us from storms.  For us survivors, too often our homes were like the umbrella in this picture...broken not providing any protection at all.  Thus safety is a concept that is hard for me to trust in. My son helped me to look at this in a new was."

Entry 10: wantstorun

wantstorun wrote: "The text says: 'Safety is the state of being 'safe,' the condition of being protected against physical, social, spiritual, emotional, financial, political, occupational, phychological, or other types of consequences of failure, damage, error, accidents, harm or any other event which could be defined to be the control of recognized hazards to achieve an acceptable level of risk.  This can take the form of being protected from an event that causes loss; can include protection of people or possessions.'  I used 'magic paper' for this project, paper that is black on the surface, until parts are scratched away to reveal the rainbow of colors underneath.  It is symbolic of my system, because while I see the beauty of my system, it is much safer for us that it remains hidden/unseen.  I cut the paper into the shape of my vehicle, which is one of my safe places in the 3-D world."

Entry 11: OneSurvivor; see Blog Post 1, Blog Post 2, and Blog Post 3

OneSurvivor wrote: "It was really difficult for me to get into things this month. The theme was ironic... safety. It was due on my birthday which is the anniversary of my sister's death, which was likely cult related. When things finally started to come together for me on this, I ended up with three pieces. Each one expresses something a bit different about safety, while sharing a similar theme at the same time. Namely, that my safety is in Yahweh. Although I don't really have a 'favorite' or think that one expresses safety better than another, it is the third one that speaks to me the most. I feel as if it has the strongest message. Or perhaps it is because it speaks the most of healing. I don't know."

Entry 12: Paul

Paul wrote: "This is a picture of my bedroom now. The chair was one of a pair that my Nana and Papa sat in every night in their own bedroom while watching television together. It is my safe chair. In the background are three paintings my Papa made. It is probably the safest spot on the planet."

Entry 13: ClinicallyClueless

Safety...what a vast topic, but safety within is difficult to achieve when one has been abused.

My sense of safety was broken
By the hands that were supposed to teach me to be open

To others and myself I built numerous walls and defenses
Of the real me only I let other and I see glimpses

The world to me all seems threatening and a place to fear
Everything begins to seem unclear

So many parts of me escaping reality
Escaping into myself I vow to be

I will go underground where no one will find me
The real me inside aching for someone to see

They have seen too much I feel threatened
Push away as I tell myself to always approach with caution

I don't really want to know who I am
As I am ashamed and I don't give a damn

A world of lies and distorted truth I learned to live
Now, I need to learn to live in reality and not be so passive

For I am not small and childlike compared to the world
I am just as large and want to be seen and heard

However, my first instinct is to hide
For my safety lays in deep inside

No one, not even me will ever see
My plea to just be

A false sense of safety is what I need to take down
At times, this makes me feel like I'm headed for a breakdown

Safety always comes from a sense of self and worth
And not from things and others even the one who gave you birth

Safety it not around me
For it is something within

Safety does not equal control
Although I keep trying to make it so

Control is an illusion and it doesn't work
It never makes you safe in reality

ClinicallyClueless wrote: "Ironically, safety is an issue that I have actually been talking about in therapy and how my defenses keep others out and even myself from facing reality. However, it keeps both 'good' and 'bad' out of reach. I have difficulty with relationships, letting others near, forming attachments, keep living in my world or should and must, live in a world of self hatred and self judgment. All it was once a way to cope now it is problematic as an adult. In keeping reality and these feelings at bay, I also have difficulty feeling love, happiness, accepting reality and moving on to just being able to be me."

That's all folks! Thanks to all those who contributed, especially those of you who are new. Thanks for taking a chance! If you think this Carnival is worthwhile, then let others know about it and we can continue to increase the contributors for future months.

In what was the first real post on this blog, a bit over two years ago, I wrote about safety and the healing I had done to that point. How fitting that on the two year anniversary of this blog, I am coming back to safety. Indeed, I posted this month's Carnival activity on safety—which will be published Saturday night. At the time, I did not think it was going to be terribly hard for me. Was I wrong! I had no idea what to submit for my own contribution. The last couple of weeks have been enormously difficult, tumultuous, and confusing. I experienced some instability around the time I posted Hallelujah Piano Cover. But since then, I have experienced massive time warps, huge amounts of lost time, safety concerns, fundamental rifts in awareness and perception, as well as accomplishments that I thought were not possible anymore. The only point in telling this is that life has been too complicated to even contemplate how to capture safety in any way.

But, the ship was righted today. Almost precisely in the same way it was a month ago, except without needing to go into the hospital.

I decided that for my Carnival submission on safety, I would look through my photo galleries and try to collect images that are most safe for me.

There are many pictures of my daughters that show them as safe. Two, for example, taken when each was born, show them swaddled in the hospital blanket with the sock on their heads in the nursery crib. There are hundreds like that. All safe. And while I know I felt a huge sense of safety at the time, the images tell a story that the safety is really on their end. Plus, I did not want to imply that safety is only at infancy (which, of course is not even true for many).

So, I started looking for different images, going through each gallery to see which "spoke" safety to me. I quickly saw pictures of my now-deceased grandparents. Since I was extremely close to them and have often said that I have felt most safe with them, I knew I need to focus my attention there. But as I began gathering images to show, I started having an experience that is evolutionary for me. There are tears. But so much joy and so much awareness of safety.

We always did a lot as a family. There were the customary Sunday dinners, Christmas Eve with Santa Claus every year, our annual family apple picking trip, Papa teaching me how to do yard work and plant flowers, hanging out at Papa's barber shop, and, what I remember most, lots and lots of hugs and kisses.

When I was 22 and my life collapsed, I moved to the family home with my grandparents and parents. I was mentally very sick. I tried to commit suicide, and nearly succeeded twice. And while life was very hard for very long, I always felt a complete sense of safety with them that was unique for me. After a few years and a lot of treatment and effort, my life got much better and more stable. That was around 1994. I met my wife in 1995. Got engaged and bought our first house in 1996. Got married in 1997. Had our first daughter in 1998.

Those years were huge for me and my Nana and Papa. I had hundreds of dinners with them. We talked for hours. We laughed. I took up golfing with my Papa. We bowled together; he would take me to his weekly bowling league for a time. He had a 35mm Minolta camera that he did not know the first thing about. When I got into photography, I started teaching him and he would go with me to the local camera store. I taught him about different films, about lens filters, composition. He attentively listened. He took up art in his 80s; taking painting classes. At the time, I had no interest in making any art myself. I did not realize that now I would incorporate art—as well as photography—as important aspects of my healing.

While I was better, I was still severely partitioned. And while I told them I loved them a million times, I was really not able to have any perspective on it. I was in the moment with them. All the time. I just knew it was love. I just knew it was safe.

But, on the day I got married, I gained perspective on what they meant to me. And this is a memory that I have tried very hard to learn more about, but could not, until tonight.

We got married on a picturesque lake 6 hours by car from where we were living, in the town my wife grew up in. I remember that they were staying in a guest house with all my immediate family, including me. I was there a week before finalizing things with my then-fiance. My family came up a couple days before the wedding. It was all fun and relaxing.

On the night before the wedding, I think it was after the rehearsal dinner, I left them a card and a handwritten letter in their room. This is where things get hazy. I remember I wrote something along the lines of "you saved my life" and also "you taught me what love is." But, aside from that I do not know what I said. And I do not remember their reaction, which was most certainly extremely emotional for all of us.

I think the writing of that letter was a transcendental experience for me. An aligning of sorts. Somehow, I was able to have perfect clarity and perspective on not only how much they meant to me, but also on what getting married to my wife meant in relation to my life history which included them. But after, that perfect perspective went away. We partied at the reception and it just became a party.

When my girls were born, they were a source of my grandparent's happiness. We only lived 30 minutes away and, so, we continued to see them all the time. Life changed for me. It was no longer just me and my Nana and Papa. They died in March 2004 and January 2006 respectively.

Almost exactly two years after my Papa died, my healing journey changed course, and that is what this blog chronicles. My internal and external awareness blossomed like never before. I started using words like healing.

I like to think all these gains are closely connected to my Nana and Papa.

You see, I do not need to know what those words were in the letter I wrote to them when I got married. Because of the process of looking through their pictures, I now know precisely what I was feeling when I wrote it. And it is the feelings that are key.

I am having those feelings right now.

Of love. Of safety.

And that is why when they died, while I cried, I had absolutely no regrets. I told them everything I wanted to tell them. And they gave me everything they needed to give me.

I settled on three images of them. The first is my Papa outside on the patio posing—he was a ham—with my elder daughter. The second is of my Nana outside the hospital as her health was failing a little less than a year before she died. I was trying to cheer her up by taking a picture of her wearing my daughter's hat. She was not a ham like my Papa, but she reluctantly humored me. The third is most meaningful to me. It is a picture of my bedroom now. The chair was one of a pair that my Nana and Papa sat in every night in their own bedroom while watching television together. It is my safe chair. In the background are three paintings my Papa made. It is probably the safest spot on the planet.

That is their gift to me.

Music has always been healing for me. While I have always found listening to music helpful, I have gained far more from creating and performing music. I have shared here a few covers over the past couple years—see my Music Gallery. While those pieces mean a lot to me, and I am glad I shared them, there has always been a fair amount of difficulty "sharing myself" through my music in any kind of public way that is emotionally authentic. As a result, how I play in private is almost always very different from how I play in public. I could attribute it to nerves, and there would be some truth to that.

But there is a history here that I should perhaps explain. When I was getting hurt as a kid and young adult, the only way I had to express my deep sadness was through my music. I would often play the piano, as I do now, with a a good deal of expression and emotion, often at night. I knew exactly what I was doing. I filled the house with music. It was a music that cried. And spoke. It was a language that was saying I was getting hurt. It was, of course, not a language my parents could decipher. They just heard it as beautiful and it serenaded them to sleep.

I played mostly classical, often Beethoven, and some emotional popular music. It was not until I was in my 20s and had begun my path to healing, that I learned to improvise. I learned that I could take a melody or a chord progression and just play with it, take it inside, attach my feelings to it, then make those feelings heard. It was freeing for me.

This recording is my take on Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. I first heard the song on the soundtrack to the clergy abuse movie "Deliver Us From Evil" about 2 years ago. Since then, it has been the song I play that is sort of akin to praying for me. It allows me to feel spiritual and close to God. I guess there is no better way to say it.

The first verse has particular meaning to me:

The part of me who was hurt deeply by religion is also the part of me who plays piano. And, so, for me this is a validation that my music somehow does indeed allow me to get closer to God.

The rest of the song is about love and sex and how that alters his relation to God. I see that in a very specific way. For me, I see what happened to me as so greatly altering my life, and in this sense I think about the lyrics as a sort of grieving.

While the lyrics are masterful, the original Cohen recording, for me, is not at all emotional. For one, it is in the key of C and it sticks robotically to the 12/8 time. Jeff Buckley's guitar version stands out and gave the song attention it did not initially enjoy. It has since been covered by practically everyone, including Bon Jovi and Justin Timberlake. The one that I have found most inspiring, though perhaps a bit too elaborate, is k.d. lang's version which has been prominently featured many times, most recently at the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. Espen Lind's version, with Kurt Nilsen, Alejandro Fuentes and Askil Holm is also wonderfully done.

I take a rather reflective approach, which one can do as an instrumental. And I keep the voicings rather simple because I find that more meaningful. This recording of mine is in the key of A, for the simple reason that it is the best key for my voice. I often sing along in private as I play this piece, which has its own healing aspects to it. It is also in 4/4 time.

I have been wanting to record this for the past year. The timing now is right. Easter is traditionally very difficult for me. Last year I was in the hospital. And this year is very difficult. Sharing this piece here and now just feels like the right thing to do.

I hope you enjoy it.

In my last post, I wrote about the language of dissociation, specifically focusing on the issue of names in dissociative identity disorder (DID). That discussion leads me to the issue of language while maintaining healthy personal and public boundaries.

Many years ago, I decided that therapy and the hospital would be the places where I would trust and talk freely about all of myself using whatever language and techniques worked best for me. I decided, and a lot of this was a decision driven by instinct, that when I write publicly and interact with people in my life—including most family and friends—I would be extremely careful about the language I chose to use.

I try to write and communicate with others in such a way that it can broadly make sense. I find one important way to destigmatize trauma recovery is to not use language that makes the issue esoteric or unique. I avoid altogether talking publicly, except here and with family, about dissociation. I find it makes me feel safer and less exposed. I have come to terms with the reality that Dissociative Identity Disorder will probably never be something that any significant numbers of people will understand or accept without judgment. It will never be seen like cancer and probably never be seen like depression. It will be so strongly stereotyped because so few have direct contact with it. I have no problem with that.

One of the reasons why I started this blog was that I came out publicly when a child sex abuse scandal in our town came to light. I spoke out in the newspaper and as a parent in the community about the issue and came forward as a survivor myself. I did that to lend some credibility to my argument, saying that we all needed to make sure that we appreciate and attend to the plight of the victims. I am now appreciative of the fact that my coming forward then changed things for me. I was careful about what I said, but it helped me to come out of the darkness and changed the dynamic internally. So it taught me a lesson that I could be effective without telling all the details.

I am mostly comfortable with being able to talk in a public language that sounds mostly "generic," but I do it while knowing inside that the reality is often quite a bit more complicated. Nowadays, I often talk with friends and family about "not being connected" or "feeling depressed." I know it sounds like the stuff of life that everyone has to deal with. Yes, on some level it is. And here, while I do often use a more "technical" language, I still am extremely careful about the words I use and what I share.

But, like everything in life, some people's experiences can be in the extremes. I find that there are safe and not safe—or appropriate and not appropriate—places to talk about these extreme experiences. I do not find it helpful to try to educate everyone in my life about what it is like to have multiple personalities or to self-harm because people are so affected by stereotypes. And here I am careful, for example, not to delve into details about traumatic memories. What I have learned is that stance is not invalidating. Rather it is a personal stance aimed at helping me feel safe. Perhaps it can be seen as my playing it safe. But, even though it is totally different kettle of fish, I would also not talk to a public audience about the intricate mathematical details of the Lennard-Jones potential in molecular modeling (which is what I do for work).

So, I have these boundaries in place and one may wonder if I am only creating an irreconcilable conflict by having such acceptance in therapy and being so careful about how I present myself outside of therapy. I could imagine that someone might think that if I am able to keep my "outside life" appear relatively normal, then am I only creating imaginary issues in therapy? If I just cut out all that uncomfortable stuff from therapy will my life just be so much easier? Is therapy creating my problems?

Those are all valid questions, and all are questions I have asked myself, over and over, in different ways for two decades. To be honest, this has often been a source of internal conflict and I have addressed some of these conflicts here and in my comments on others' blogs, even very recently. In September, I wrote The Uncertainty Principle. In that post, I wrote about the pitfalls associated with definitive answers to complicated issues. I wrote about how many psychiatric "authorities" can see the same person and draw very different conclusions. I wrote that we must challenge ourselves to ask tough questions, struggle with doubt, and find a way to live with friction.

In some ways, how I work in therapy and how I conduct myself publicly is a measure of this necessary friction. But, as I have said before, it is how we use friction that is important. We can let it become an insurmountable barrier and lead us down a path of a false set of beliefs that, on the surface, feels more comfortable. But I have never found denial to be a long-term solution.

Like I said in the last post, I believe when I talk in a specific language about parts of myself openly in therapy, in the hospital, and in my private journal, and am careful about what I say publicly, I find that is actually an approach helps me to heal.

One of the more difficult issues surrounding dissociative disorders is the so-called dissociative disorder language. Unfortunately, it is this language that is one of the reasons why dissociative disorders, including dissociative identity disorder (DID), continue to be controversial. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of the language is naming of dissociated parts of self.

I know there are many times when my therapist asks the dreaded question "Are you feeling grounded as Paul?" In the hospital, I am sometimes asked the much more ingratiating question "Who am I talking to?" Either can go down in one of two ways. One frequent response is to be taken aback and roll my eyes. I often feel like I am "Paul" but maybe a very different shade of myself, and so the questions feel incredibly awkward. But then there are clearly times when I (or rather a part of me) readily answers to a different name. I suppose there is a middle way and that is that I am taken aback, but then realize that I am only acting as a barrier to some other part of me.

I believe, and this is based on my personal experiences, that the complexity of dissociation and how it manifests drives this type of necessary communication. My level of dissociation varies enormously over time. On one side, I can often be relatively whole with access to many parts of me, experienced mostly as "shades of myself." But, on another, I can also often be very fragmented with little awareness of anything beyond what some narrow segment of me knows. As a result, there is no "perfect" (or probably even easy) way in therapy to interact with me, and while sometimes these questions feel uncomfortable, there needs to be space to ask them. If we are not direct, there is a huge potential to avoid addressing very real internal needs, which can then lead to problems such as safety issues or intolerable internal conflicts.

In therapy, the place where I make a deliberate and focused effort to heal, there really is no other language to describe the very real partitioning in my head. We use names for parts because they have names, and to not use names would make communication difficult if not impossible.

I have always struggled with names of parts. I realize that some believe the very notion of having names for parts causes more problems or even creates DID. I can understand that argument. For those of us with dissociative disorders, I think we need to come to our own personal understanding and response to such a message. For me, accepting that argument leads to denial and barriers. But, and this is a very big but, having names for parts should not ever be an excuse to take away our personal responsibility. I have seen this over and over again. We must own our actions, even if a part of us, with a name, did them. I believe it is crucial to keep that perspective.

Names for dissociated parts of myself is one aspect of the language that my "system" (if I can use that word) ended up using to make sense of that system. While I know there were names associated with parts way back when, they were not so clearly defined as they are now.

A number of the "hurt" parts were always thought of as shades of Paul or "young pieces of Paul." So there were many variants of the name Paul. And also there were "characteristics" as names, like "Dirty One", "Sexual One", "Evil One", etc. My experience of my dissociation as a kid and young adult was always in those contexts, with huge holes in my awareness.

Back in 1991 when I found myself in the mental health system and my level of dissociation became more apparent, there was a more clear defining of names as a way to talk about experiences so that my treaters and I could find common ground. It is so much harder to say "the part of you who is very spiritual and wants to go to church and holds a lot of physical pain" than to just say a simple name.

The names of parts are much more specific now, and while this is one of the sources of controversy concerning DID, this increased specificity has helped me in so many ways. I have long accepted that I have extremely compartmentalized parts of myself, and if I did not address them head on, I would be at an extreme disadvantage.

Being able to define parts more clearly allows me to know more specifically what parts represent, what their issues are and what their needs are. It has helped me put the pieces of my self and my life back together. It has helped me to be more whole and more functional in my life. It helps me to be more aware and safe. But most importantly, it has helped me to heal.

Welcome to Activity No. 10 of the Expressive Arts Carnival for the month of April 2011. Thank you to all who participate and a special welcome if you are new!

This month's theme:

Entries are due by Monday April 25, 2011.

You may also feel free to send me a link to a page hosted on your own site (or blog), if you have one. It is important to repeat that nobody is required to have a website in order to participate.

The Carnival will be published on the afternoon of April 26, 2011.

To submit an entry use this link to e-mail: paul@mindparts.org

Please use "EXPRESSIVE ARTS" in the subject heading to help me keep track of submissions. Every submission will receive an acknowledgement of receipt. If you do not receive one within a day or two, then please follow up with me.

If you have questions or need clarifications, direct them to me by e-mail or ask in the comments here.