I am still working at trying to find ways to deal with what I have termed a psychological suicide attempt. I keep telling myself that if one is lucky to survive such attempts, there is the opportunity for recovery and healing.

After my pre-Christmas hospital stay, I arrived at a solution that I needed something new in therapy. I felt I needed new forms of expression, that I had outgrown the art and music and writing and now needed to focus on physical means of expression.

I find myself back in the hospital again prompted by a similar "attempt." The fact that I only managed to stay out of the hospital for three days has compelled me to take a close look inside.

On the surface, it seems that I am doing all the right things. So, it was natural for me to seek an additional tool or pursue a new direction.

I quite quickly found here that I had not at all outgrown art and music and writing as expressions that lead to learning and healing, but that I was doing them in an isolation of sorts. I would not at all go so far as to say I was merely going through the motions. But it has been something akin to that. I thought I could get all the healing benefits from what I used to do, but with significantly less effort. What made it hard for me was that it was rather easy to convince myself that there was no decrease at all in effort.

I will take my paper journals as an example. I have done art (and writing) in paper-based journals for years, but my output has dropped to nearly zero for well over a year. I had found a new tool. I used electronic system maps. Additionally, the monthly word counts in my private electronic journal began to jump significantly. Looking at this globally, the effort was merely shifted. But, really, what had found an easier way to work that gave me far less information and was far less helpful and far less healing.

My therapist brought me a couple of my older journals from a few years ago, and I was just immediately floored. The 120 pages in each were filled in a matter of weeks, with art, with statements, with dialog, questions, answers, pain, joy, anger. There was a huge amount of information and expression. Most of it was extremely hard to see and read. And every page was eye opening.

I realized that I was not doing that now. So, I decided to dedicate more of myself to this type of work. I know that means not just here in the hospital, but out in my regular life. And I also know that may require some sacrifices.

Yesterday, on a weekend day without any groups, I was here with a friend I have known for a long time. We were talking about using art as a means of expression and healing. We decided to do an "art therapy" group together. I came up with the directive: "Draw about your major obstacle facing you right now."

I drew about the divide between the two "camps" of me.

In the "left camp" are the parts of me who are very comfortable with all the healing language. We know what those words are. We use them all the time in therapy. The left has seen enormous growth. There has been a huge surge in functionality. I am able to juggle work and family and therapy. I have achieved major accomplishments at work that I thought I would never achieve again. I have become completely reliable at home, and taken on more and more in my community. Who can have a problem with that? The left paints a very nice picture for the world that is "socially acceptable" and "socially appreciated." Of course, it is very appealing for me and easy to use that growth as the measure of my progress.

If the "left camp" was the totality of who I am or even the great majority of who I am, there would really not be a problem. But, it is a fact of my life that there is an enormous "right camp" that needs to be attended to at least as much as the left. And it has not been. The result of such complete focus on the "left camp" lead to huge jealousy and anger from the right camp, and that lead to a serious lack of safety.

The obstacle, for me, is getting some communication and collaboration over that divide and over that bridge. The path is the art. The expression.

In the image, the "right camp" is straining against the river. Overflowing. Looking for a way across. Trying to communicate. There is huge effort from the right. I know it is easy to say that the actions of this camp are so harmful and hard to imagine that they want any help. Our focus has become only about stopping the actions. But that is an approach they cannot understand. It is a mismatch of language.

The only way to heal is to give the "right camp" a path. A new outlet. Or a new lease on old outlets. By the "left camp" being more accepting and understanding that the "right camp" is as much a part of us as any other. The irony in all of this, is that the "left camp" fully knows life is not perfect. The left expends so much energy to keep everything contained and looking good and strong.

Balance was my word for 2011. In many ways, there has been balance this year. But the balance has been so precarious. The balance came at a huge cost as it was achieved merely through division.

For 2012, we need a new word. Balance is still the goal, it always will be, but we will achieve it through unity. For me, unity does not mean we will all be one. Unity means more about being on the same team. United. Working on the same goal. Supporting each other. Harmony.]]> tag:www.mindparts.org,2011://5.586 2011-12-21T08:00:00Z 2011-12-22T00:30:25Z

I have struggled for a long time to make any sort of system map. Decades really. I have long known that this inability has clearly been all about resistance. And the resistance was mostly that I believed once I made a map, I was locking all of me into a certain way of viewing myself. I thought it meant it would play too much into a "dissociative" way of looking at the world, when what I really want is to move away from that view.

One important lesson I have learned is that to heal and move forward, you have to accept where you are in the present.

Over the past few years, with that acceptance mostly in hand, I have focused on more visual ways of checking in with myself. I started with these maps two months ago. I have now made 15 maps, and my goal is to make them more regularly. Each really only takes a few minutes. I use a simple diagram program called Diagrammix on Mac OS, but there are many out there. To make a new map, I either start with the previous one (if I feel connected to that last state) or I start with a template (if I do not).

I change links and arrows, widths of circles or squares, shapes, colors, size and more. It ends up feeling a lot like a virtual sandbox. I have found that what comes out is usually not what I would be able to describe if I had to use words. So, in that sense, they are quite helpful. I do not really have to think all that much and I do not really worry about how "accurate" the map is. The intent is to do as good a check-in as possible. It is sort of akin to taking a temperature reading. It is but one measure of where my head is at.

I also save all the images to a folder, and can flip through them as a slideshow. This sequence of images gives me a sense of change over time. Again, quite helpful.

My private system maps do have labels in the circles and squares (I removed them for this post). I have talked before about labels and names, see Naming Parts of Our Dissociated Selves. For me, I have found that the names and labels help me identify and make sense of what is going on. It provides a framework for me to think about myself, and thus, is an important component of healing, changing, or growing. I am, however, careful with names and labels and have established a "safe setting" rule where they are used. That means they remain private.

The maps show me how drastic the changes can be over time. Sometimes I have made a series of maps just over a few hours and even that can show dramatic shifts. The point of seeing that, for me, is mostly about gaining visual markers. What often happens for me is that hours or days run into other hours or days, and I can easily lose track of continuity of experience.

There are many skills one can use to help. I have written about many before, and this is just one more skill to add to the "toolbox."

It is no secret to me that I have had a hard time writing here the past many months. Rest assured, I have not become complacent. For the time being, the "expressive arts carnival" is shifting to every other month, and I will post a new activity next Tuesday, November 1st. And, yes, I do really want to try to find a way to write more here.]]> tag:www.mindparts.org,2011://5.564 2011-10-01T01:08:00Z 2011-10-01T15:14:02Z

There are endless comparisons one can make between failures in technology and psychological "failures." I will not bore you with very many examples, but I have seen quite a few error messages in my day from the computer side, mostly stemming from memory issues. "Segmentation fault", "Stack overflow", and "HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError" are just a few. "Core dump" is a common Unix error that can be a bit intimidating, especially if it is on a computer mainframe that hundreds of users depend on. One of the more scarier messages came from the old Mac computers. Imagine a window popping up with a clip-art image of a bomb. Yes, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak envisioned what has become arguably the slickest computer operating system ever created. But back in the day, you got a bomb along with a message that said "Sorry" and a frozen computer.

Computer memory is made up of individual bits that are either zero or one. What could be easier than that? Sure there's quite a lot of physics in there, but memory storage is conceptually simple. Of course, the computer needs more than one bit. Modern computers have many gigabytes of memory. 16GB of memory is also 138 billion bits of information. To give some perspective, that number is about 20 times the entire current population on earth or roughly equivalent to the number of human beings who have ever been born! All those pieces on one little laptop running a Web browser and Word!

What makes memory complicated is that there are management techniques that programmers must take into account in their programming. Every time a programmer creates an object in their code, they are asking the computer to assign memory for that task. Programmers have to know things like how much memory to allocate, whether their code is causing a memory leak, and sometimes when to dump memory. There are also tools that the tech-savvy among us can use to analyze the state of the memory.

Of course, many times memory errors cause a total system failure, sometimes known as a "kernel panic." The computer will hang and you have to restart it, fix it or in some cases throw it away and get a new one.

The reason why I bring up memory errors is that I have been having a lot of them lately. I wrote not even a week ago about the firm ground I found myself on. A lot fell into place for me. I had crystal clear perspective and was able to look at my life at any scale, from the big picture to all the small details. That firm ground lasted for what felt like a microsecond, but was actually about a day. It is almost impossible for me to believe now that only a few days have passed. Over the past week, I have been writing in my journal about the enormous swings of knowing and not knowing, connection and disconnection, wonderful tingly sensations and searing pain.

I have often seen the ability to attain what feels like a internal wholeness, with accompanying clear sense of safety, as touchstones or experiences to strive to achieve more regularly and for longer periods of time. They have been motivators.

But this week has not been like it has been in the past. This week I am hugely discouraged. I have lost hope. I am angry. I am checking my calendar and journal constantly, looking back on what I did and only vaguely able to make sense of it. But my problems are more than just a memory errors.

To continue the computer metaphor, memory, along with other layers of computer architecture, are managed by the operating system. I can easily think of myself as an operating system. My treaters are encouraging me to enlist others (inside) for help, saying I cannot do it all alone. But that kind of advice is really falling on deaf ears. As I have told them: "I know that, but I can't do that." Or, more precisely, "I know that, but I can only do it for very brief periods."

I also know I have a responsibility for safety, and that complicates everything. Safety was severely compromised last month and I am in many ways still reeling from that. Sharing responsibility, for me, means that I must put myself in a more vulnerable position. When I allow parts of me to come forward, so to speak, I put a lot on the line. I know full well that many parts of me do not worry at all, or even know much at all, about safety issues.

I now find myself in a huge bind. I have a wealth of experience that tells me that collaboration and communication internally lead to more wholeness and fluidity of experience. I know that I do not have enough resources to manage my life without the contributions of all parts of me. But I cannot do what is needed without internal trust. Because of the safety breach, that trust is simply not there now. I simply cannot take that risk. Yet I do not feel any safer.

So, I am doing exactly what a computer operating system would do.

A "kernel panic."

Image is from Dmitry Vostokov's Dump Analysis blog, who has many very amazing visualizations of memory. Click on the "Art" category.

Today, though, I want to make my contribution to this month's Expressive Arts Carnival. In the announcement for the Carnival, I did not say that I did this exercise before, a bit over a year ago while inpatient.

In thinking about this directive now and who I could possibly write about who has taught me, my thoughts go inside of me. I have learned the most about healing from me. That may sound like a "big ego" statement. But it is more a statement about acceptance of parts and an understanding that dissociated identities is fundamental to who I am.

I know I have talked about this many times before: When I get into a denial space internally and make statements that parts of me do not exist in the very separate way they do, I end up not being true to myself. And that truth is a necessity. That is what I have been missing over the last few, at least, months.

A good deal of healing comes from communicating with discrete parts. Of course, they are all connected and we are one person. But it is also true that I have evolved in a very compartmentalized way, and so learning about those compartments and building connections is what a lot of my healing journey is about.

Over the past few days, since I have found a sense of balance, the key thing I have done was to accept and listen inside. I stopped pushing parts of me away. I acknowledged all of them. That approach has changed everything for me. No longer am I so confused. No longer am I losing time. No longer am I so hugely distant from memories that I just pushed away. No longer do I have no understanding for my behavior, and why I was driven to self-harm.

Indeed, the past few days have been humbling for me. I now know that "I" is broad. I am more than "I" and that is something I must accept. It makes the journey more simpler in some ways (e.g., I gain more fluidity) and also more complicated in others (e.g., I have to own difficult feelings). But that is my reality. My path. And I am back on it.

My words for the Carnival are: Truth, Healing, Balance. And my hex color code is #855E42 (named "Dark Wood," which for me signifies being grounded like a tree).

The Carnival will be published tomorrow, on the last day of the month. If you want to make a last minute entry, please do so by 2PM EST July 31 and I will include it.]]> tag:www.mindparts.org,2011://5.542 2011-07-05T23:19:00Z 2011-07-09T15:50:22Z