Recently in Hospital Category

In my last post titled Inside from the other day, I wrote about how the Art Therapy work I did with My Healing Guide last week in the hospital helped us reconnect in a way that had been sorely lacking for a while.

That disconnection was really not the fault of either of us. I realize the whole post was meant to tell a story that led to an optimistic outcome of reconnection. That post, however, did not represent the complete picture. While the result of that process was one of reconnection to the healing path, that connection did not at all stick. Dissociation and inability to ground (as well as basic necessities like eating and sleeping) were constant battles.

Partly, the drivers that led to the disconnection in the first place were due to the fact that we had been through a really intense and emotional period of six months, most of which was documented here. In December, our system came together to create a Contract (which we also call our "Statements of Truth"). In March, My Healing Guide and I made a visit to the church where a lot of childhood abuse happened. This helped us deal with Easter in a more holistic manner, even though I spent that time in the hospital. There was also the worldwide Catholic Church scandal as well as a family crisis thrown into the mix.

On Monday morning in Art Therapy, the directive was to draw our relationship to treatment. As you can see from the image above, I felt quite split about that question. On one side, I felt as through there was this sense of blending of colors and views, held within a container of grounding brown. But on the other, there was pure black chaos. The two sides felt completely separate.

Fortunately, sometimes such tension can be a good thing because something had to give. The crux of my problem has been that there is a part of me, a seriously self-harming part, who has seemingly not been in any sort of alliance with the healing journey we have been on for the past couple years. I recently realized that the more progress we made on healing, the more this part was left out. I also realized that my words saying that I was open to meeting this part halfway were not really coming from a place of true meaning.

Well, all that changed, quickly and dramatically.

On Monday evening, I wrote a multi-page letter to this part ending in directed questions meant to learn more and open the door of collaboration and inclusion. On Tuesday morning, I discovered there had been several text messages sent from this part to My Healing Guide during the previous night.

On Tuesday afternoon, this part came out and met with My Healing Guide for most of our session. So much happened. Many perceptions were completely shattered. Amongst many other revelations, this part declared she was not evil like we all thought, but rather a hurt child. She wanted to be part of the healing.

Tuesday night I tried to write down what I remembered from the session. Clearly something enormous happened. That evening there was all kinds of internal chatter about what all of this meant. Many parts did not trust that she could be brought into our healing circle. Many saw it as some elaborate trick just to get out of the hospital. Some saw it simply as not being real.

Wednesday was spent trying to rest and regain strength, and have this huge change settle in our system a bit. That has continued through today. The aftershocks have been large. The chatter has persisted, as well as the doubt, and some parts are still very scared.

But there are signs of trust.

In Art Therapy today, the directive of "draw a nest" led to a very clear image, all done in charcoal. Balanced in the nest were circles representing parts coming out of the nest much the same as depicted in Towards a Model of Dissociation. But it was clear where the "new" part was. She was the furthest away from the nest, but still connected to all the rest.

Tomorrow, I will leave the hospital. Despite all the recent huge changes, which I could equate to an earthquake, I feel like I am finally on solid ground.

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One of the major obstacles facing me is that I have felt like I am not on the same healing path I have been on for the past two years. There are several reasons for this, some my own doing, and some external to me.

What do you do when you feel like you are not on the path? I have been struggling with this question for a while. For me, the time in the hospital has provided me with enough distance from normal life to effect a change and to let it stick.

The other day, My Healing Guide and I did a piece of work together in the hospital, meant to help us realign with each other and inside. It was the first time in a long time that I stepped out of my head or at least "over to the right" a bit.

The work we did was all about being in the process and experiencing emotions without many of the filters that get in the way. Basically, I trusted that I would be okay with the emotions, and things started to connect as I went along.

I started by choosing important oil pastel colors. Those being red, purple, black, brown, blue, pink and grey. I know what all those mean for me.

Not knowing what to do, I just started drawing blobs of color. At first it was red, blue, then pink. When I got to the pink, I knew they had to be balloons for a younger part of me. So, I started making more of them. And as I expanded the red, I started "feeling" that it should have jagged edges. As I was laying down the purple for another part, I eventually knew I had to somehow get a cross in there. The brown tree is another part. I can speculate that the red is anger or something that feels really big, like it was in my last image.

Adding the black came after all the other elements were in place. I knew I would have to get black in. Then it just came to me that the black would sort of border everything, providing compartments much like a maze with dead ends. I wanted to have a ground, and I wanted it to be gray. Ground wasn't meant to be the best place (otherwise it would have been green grass).

This piece was extremely emotional for me to do. I cried while blending in the colors at the end. The process of blending in elements already laid down was very important to me. I had the feeling that I didn't have to "do" any more to the image; just that I was allowing everyone inside to "feel" the image by the act of blending. I felt like I was really doing something with and for parts of me in a way that felt very much like what we used to do.

After, I felt that this was my work. I know that the path I have chosen is not only absolutely right and healing, but remarkable and awe inspiring.

No more church news for me. Well, I know there is news, but I have been making a conscious decision to tune it out and not read any. The fact is that I was really destabilized by all of what has been happening.

I had thought I left the hospital last month in better shape than I really did. Unfortunately, it was one of those situations where I actually left standing on quicksand, and life quickly got out of control. There were very highly functional parts of me in the fore, but also very dysfunctional (and dangerous) parts were equally in the fore. I could not keep track of everything, hence the post We Have Met the Enemy... from a couple weeks ago.

And so I am back in the hospital. So far here, it feels like I have still not really been able to gain any traction. Though this post may be one step towards gaining some.

This morning's art therapy group was focused on self-assessment, with the directive to represent body sensations, thoughts and emotions contained in a circle. With many of these directives, I have to think a lot about what I want to do and why and I am very deliberate. I did not do that this time. I just focused on the process.

I see this is the first art posting on the blog using oil pastels. I rather like working with them because once you lay down the vibrant color, you can use your fingers to blend and it becomes a very tactile process.

The only conscious decision made was to choose red and black.

Looking back on the image, I see the black jagged barrier as separating me in two. The black splotches represent parts of me. It appears they are trapped. But it is unclear to me that they would be any better if the barrier would be removed, since the top half of the picture is the same scary red as the bottom half.

All I know is that we are separated now. The collaboration is not there. And I am stuck.

As many of you know, I have been inpatient in a psychiatric hospital; the same hospital I have been coming to since two decades ago. I was discharged today after 17 days. Every admission is unique. Yet every time there are striking similarities.

One similarity, alluded to in my last post, is the healing power of the group experience. The inpatient unit I always go to specializes in trauma and dissociative disorders. So, in a certain sense, we all have something in common. All of us know about triggers. We recognize when someone is in crisis and is grappling with safety. We know what it means to struggle with being present and we can sit together outside the nurses station and help each other ground. We empathize with someone who is in acute distress and may need to go to the Quiet Room. Or shudder when we hear the words yelled out from some corner of the unit by a nurse: "I need staff!"

There is a weight to the place that is almost impossible to describe. But it is also a place of levity. There are a few staff who specialize in this. One staff member likes to tell us each morning he received a "Certificate for the Best Blood Pressure Cuff Putter Oner." The other night, one nurse listened to much of my 90s "alternative rock" playlist on my iPod. I gave her the name of a good restaurant, and she shared with me a great grilled steak recipe. I do not think I have ever been there when I have not, at least once, almost peed my pants in laughter. I even got a real doctor's prescription for "One Dog"; yes, a real live dog!

That is the balance I often refer to here on Mind Parts. It is the balance that makes the unit the special place that it is. It is the balance where we find true healing.

We are all at different points along the healing journey. I know when I started here I was always amongst the youngest. Now it is not that way. In fact, someone referred to me the other day, in a complimentary way, as the "Unit Dad," I think, in part, because so few patients are male.

I often meet young people who have so few skills and feel as though their lives will never change. I also meet many who have struggled for decades and are tired of the journey. I am one of those people sometimes. For many, the journey never seems to be worth it. For many, depression never lifts. For many, life is one disappointment after another. It is somewhat natural, in one sense, to contemplate suicide.

I like to think that being around others—going to groups, sharing in the kitchen, being up sleepless at night because of PTSD hypervigilance—is remarkably healing. Many of us do not know the gruesome details of each others' histories. But we know where most are at. We just know. In art therapy group today, the last group I attended before I left, the directive was to draw a fork in the road. We draw for 20 minutes. We post our drawings on the board. And we talk about them and get feedback from others. When you have spent two weeks with many of the same people, you understand what their art means and what they are trying to express. It all makes sense.

Where all this is taking me is that I now have a better appreciation for what "group healing" means. Many of us think we heal by doing therapy, which usually means between two people, a therapist and a patient. So many of us are involved in groups—be they sports groups, book club groups, Internet groups or what have you—and these can all be quite therapeutic. But there is so much healing that can occur in a group focused on trauma healing; especially when the group experience is more than just talking. It is art. It is music. It is laughter. It is crying.

Thank you Proctor 2.

Related posts:

• Expressive Writing Group Experience (4/2010)
• Re-entry (8/2009)
• Acceptance (8/2009)
• Hospital Gratitude (4/2009)

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In the hospital the other day, I had an experience in a group that was quite special. Actually, during this hospitalization, I have had several good group experiences. This one stood out, however.

There were five of us patients who showed up for the weekly "Expressive Writing" group, plus two group leaders. The directive was:

"Think of someone you look up to, real or imaginary, who has taught you something you can use (or do use) in your healing. Describe either the characteristics of the person, what they told you, or how you have been helped. Use expressive writing by telling a story, writing a poem, or anything that makes sense to you."

I wanted to focus this on a motivating statement which has helped me heal. At first, I wanted to write about what Karl Paulnack said about music and heart healing. Then I thought about some quotes by famous people.

But I settled on something that is intensely personal. I think the most helpful, validating, and motivating statement anyone has said to me, has come from my therapist, who from here on in I will call "My Healing Guide." Over a year ago, she said to me in an e-mail:

I never really reflected on these words at the time, but I saved them. About a month ago, I revisited the e-mails we shared. These words, in particular, have helped me enormously. They have given me strength to continue on this journey; one that often feels too long and too hard.

I have heard similar words from others involved in my healing, most of them verbal (which get a bit lost). All have been helpful and motivating, though none have ever been said so perfectly. There are also many statements from my family and friends that have helped me too. But, a therapy relationship is unique in that it is focused specifically on healing. And, as such, these words have special meaning to me.

I was prepared to read my statement out loud, but there was a second part to the group exercise. That consisted of each of us picking out one or two words or phrases from our writings and putting them on different colored heavyweight paper using magic markers.

We then placed them on the floor and we read our own. We then were asked, as a group, to arrange them in a line in any way that made sense. The group debated some of the ordering and we went back and forth a few times. We then taped them up on a board, in the order agreed upon, and read them out loud together as a group.

The list was:

The only word that appeared twice—came from two different people in our group—was strength. We felt it was important to use that word to bookend the list; strength was felt to be necessary for all of the in between words and phrases to exist.

On Good Friday, the Catholic Church, through the pope's personal preacher, compared the current scrutiny of both the pope and the church to the historical suffering of Jews. Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa said, "They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms." To make matters worse, these words were spoken during the homily of the Good Friday service in St. Peter's Basilica, while the pope looked on.

I can understand that the church feels under siege. It is and should. Everything that is happening now is a direct result of the church's own doing, and as I have said before, none of this is surprising when seen in its proper historical context. The responses are typical, and sad—that facts are being misrepresented and that the church itself is the victim.

These statements, from which the Vatican has since backtracked, are merely a public admission of what is the predominantly held belief of the church hierarchy. A belief that is the foundation of all that is wrong with the church. A core belief that has put so many children in danger for so many years. A core belief that has led to the suicides of so many clergy abuse victims. A core belief that has been a true obstacle to healing of physical, emotional and spiritual wounds of untold thousands.

What do such statements say to those who were sexually abused by deviant clergy and whose abuses were covered up for decades? I will tell you what I heard and felt: That we survivors are demons. That we survivors mean nothing. That we survivors merely incite violence.

The irony of these statements by the church is that in reality they do not apply to church suffering at all, but to the suffering of victims of clergy abuse. In fact, this is a parallel I made in Jews.

Whenever I think there is hope that the message I heard loud and clear as a child and teenager and adult is now different, I am given a dose of reality that it is not. These statements have served, in my mind, to nullify any prior or future statements of empathy or support for the abuses and cover-ups that have occurred. The Catholic Church does not have the right to say one thing one week, do nothing at all in its deeds at the highest of levels, and then say something so appalling and unholy the next week on one of the holiest days of the year—and expect to retain any shred of credibility.

I am certain Jesus does not at all approve of what the church has become, supposedly built around his life and teachings. If Jesus were giving the Good Friday homily, I would suspect he might repeat Matthew 21:13 in which he said: "My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves."

On Good Friday, the hours of 12 noon and three are known as the Three Hours' Agony, representing the last three hours before Jesus died on the cross. Tradition holds that these hours are for specific prayers and acts of reparation for Jesus' suffering; acts meant to repair the sins against Jesus. For me, this year, I spent these hours in a psychiatric hospital, tortured by internal conflicts about religion, God, Jesus, and Satan. When I read these statements spoken on Good Friday, precisely in the middle of these three special hours, I could not help but have the immediate reaction that I should die. It was then not easy to stay safe, and eventually I found myself sleeping in a hospital Quiet Room.

But I fought.

A couple days removed, I have gained some perspective.

In Galatians, Jesus said that we are all sons of God. My interpretation is that these acts of reparation are meant to acknowledge all of God's children who have suffered in the name of religion.

Instead, in St. Peter's Basilica, we are not reached out to; only the church is the victim.

Unfortunately, this leads me to conclude that the words of the Catholic Church are clearly not the Words of the Lord.

Related Posts:

• Holy Week, Church Visit, Scandal, and Miracles (March 29, 2010)
• Thoughts on Catholic Church Abuse Reports (March 15, 2010)
• Ireland's Church Abuse Scandal and Personal History (May 24, 2009)

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It was a decade that began, for me as a survivor, with the public airing of the clergy abuse scandal in January 2002. I had thought that was all behind me. I had dealt with all of that a decade earlier, surviving some tortuous "healing" years in and out of the hospital in the early '90s.

By the mid '90s, I filed suit with the church, settled, and then completely distanced myself from therapy and the hospital. I wanted nothing to do with all of that. I was very clear that my DID (dissociative identity disorder) or multiple personality disorder was made up. While that was a huge piece of denial, and I know that now, somehow that allowed me the space to get married, buy a house, build up my career, and twice become a father. But, really, while many good things happened during those years, my life was severely partitioned. I just wasn't aware. Hurting myself would happen in its own box. Being petrified would happen in its own box. Everything went back to the way it was in the '80s, except I now had built a life for myself, which was very real but also somewhat of a facade, something I could hide behind.

It collapsed like a house of cards in 2002. It's shocking to me how quickly it all happened. The more functional parts of me thought they could handle things; the talking to reporters and details of my abuse being in the big daily papers. But something strange happened. I started to realize that my life really was a bunch of partitions or rooms and that things not only were not right in 2002, but they weren't right all along. I was kidding myself about how much I had healed. The depression, the switching, the suicidality, the eating; these all were back again.

After a series of false starts with various random therapists, I called my old therapist, I like to call him Freud, and asked if I could go back to see him. We started working together again. It was hard. I became increasingly symptomatic. I became more fragmented. I acted out in self-harm a lot. And I ended up in the hospital again. And again. And again. But it was different from the '90s and I can't quite put my finger on how. We worked hard. But it was slow progress.

Then things changed. In 2008 I started working with an art therapist. By late 2008, I stopped working with Freud as my main therapist and switched to the art therapist as my main therapist. And things took off, like I was shot out of a cannon. I was not used to working in this new way. The old way was to intellectualize everything. The new way was to explore feelings, draw and paint, hug each other when leaving, and use all those healing words and phrases. The new way acknowledged internal parts in a much more direct way. She wanted to know what they felt too. We started paying attention to everything. I started taking journaling very seriously and now use it to keep connected to my life, no matter how chaotic and confusing. Also, this website was born.

Here's what I accomplished in 2009 (in rough chronological order):

Whew! I've done a lot. And luckily I did a lot in this decade. So, when I refer to the "2000's", it will be known that there were many highs and many lows, but lots of healing, and it ended in a bang.

I do give up sometimes. I cannot deny that. In fact just a few hours before I wrote the "contract" a few weeks ago, I wrote to my therapist that I was giving up. But now, looking back, on this decade and a little bit on the decade before, I must know that I can never give up. Too much has been gained. I am a different person. I have healed in more ways than I could have ever imagined. And I look forward to the next decade, even though I know that there will be lots of hard work ahead of me. It will all be worth it!

Happy New Year to all of you!

My time in the hospital has been marked, so far, by an unbelievable lack of internal cohesion and a nearly constant state of internal fragmentation. For the five plus days here, I have been all over the dissociative map, spending hours upon hours sitting out in front of the "safe" Nurses' Station, using my basic set of learned grounding skills along with the few other patients who also are at various states away from ground. I try not to judge too harshly my needing to do these basic grounding skills. I know the judgements do not solve anything. I use the iPhone games quite a bit, sticking to ones that are most helpful when dissociative: Peggle, Cross me Not, Cross Fingers, and MLB Baseball. I have listened to a little bit of classical music. I write. I draw. I talk. I don't sleep much. I try to participate in groups, but it has been really difficult for me this time.

There are some pressing issues here. The first is eating. I know eating is a form of control. I also know that it was hugely prominent back in the 90s and has been brewing for a while now. I am now at a 20 pound weight loss over the past couple months. And the hospital has exacerbated this issue. With DID, though, it's not uncommon to be in a part of yourself who has no trouble eating. But this often triggers parts of the system who do have these problems, makes them feel out of control, and the result is almost always more dissociation (and more trips to the Nurses' Station). Usually, I find that my best bet is to eat when I am able to maintain somewhat of a sense of core control, make negotiations, eat very small portions in a very deliberate manner, and all the while respect the difficulties that parts of me have.

Other parts have trouble with physical pain and it is severe enough to necessitate narcotic pain medications at times. The pain is always much worse in the hospital. It is always perceived as a complex of body memories. But maybe that is too easy an explanation. Medications are a bit tricky. There are two sides. I cannot rely on the medications as a first response, because they remove my first obligation to attempt to utilize the grounding skills (and may become a crutch). On the other hand, sometimes the grounding skills simply will not yield relief and at a certain point my doctor says, "There is no purpose in being a Marine when dealing with this". So the medication certainly can play a role; although my response to pain medications varies widely.

Yesterday, Monday, was almost totally lost time and this has been par for the course. My journal entry from 4:55PM reads:

In a short span, by 7PM, there was a sea change. I knew what this meant; that I was on the fast track to leaving the hospital. It is hard not to like me this way. I immediately developed a sense of humor, ironically made jokes about eating (there is a nurse who loves to talk about food), felt super strong and confident, and ultra-grounded. Usually I then quickly begin to get irritated about being here, and do nothing but advocate for leaving.

But I made an agreement when I first came in. It is documented in my private journal. I came in because I went into a functional state, denied parts, and kept pushing onward. I did not go into denial about parts consciously over the past few months. I did it for survival in order to achieve life tasks that needed to be done (e.g., work and home). To achieve this level of functionality, I sometimes have to do the equivalent of putting all the parts in a virtual "dungeon". In fact, often my perception is that parts cease to exist.

When I came in here, I said I cannot use the same tactics I generally use in the hospital, where I get recharged some, reconstitute myself, and leave. I know I will end up going back to the same life-threatening safety issues that are front and center in my life right now. The part of me who is focused on the serious self-harming needs to be addressed and the work needs to start in the hospital. This kind of work with similar acting out parts in the past all began in the hospital. I understand this part needs to be communicated with if I am to achieve any sense of real safety and stability at home.

So, I quickly became determined not to let this new "awakening" get in the way of what I knew I must do. The "awakening", though, felt amazingly good, but it was not long before everything started shifting yet again. By 8PM, I started to act out the normal script; I have been in the hospital too many times to not see it. Oh, there was a temptation to keep telling staff "Things are fine, I feel great, I'm okay." I started to do some of that. But this is not a game, and this is life and death serious. I was up front with them. When I tell that them that I know there is more to what is going on right in the moment, they get it. When I tell that that my safety has been off-scale jeopardized and life-threatening, they get it. When I tell them that I do not have any evidence at all that the motivations of this dangerous part have changed one bit, they get it. The nurse said (paraphrasing): "Not to worry; we will not let you go until the big safety issue is addressed head on."

At 10:28PM, the steps I had taken had again changed things inside. The cohesion started lessening and I wrote in my private journal:

At 10:40PM, I wrote:

Tonight, I slept for a mere 1.5 hours and was not phased by the second round of sleep medications. I do not know where all this will take me. Doctors, nurses, and friends are basically telling me to "keep working and see what happens". I am working super hard. I am being given time and space. For that I am grateful and determined.

You may be interested in these related posts:

• Mental States (May 2009; visually represents different mental states)
• Awakenings: An Extreme Example (September 2009; discusses an experience similar to the "awakening" discussed above)
• Making Sense of Nonsense (December 2009; talks about what led to the place I'm at now)

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My life is quite chaotic right now and a little bit out of control. By the way, I do know how to minimize!

As a system, "I" am cognizant of the fact that there is an extremely delicate balance between all the facets of my life. We cannot be too much in any one area for any protracted period of time. We all know that inside even though many of us will deny it if asked outright. This balance is crucial for my internal life as well as external life. On Thursday, hopefully, I'll write more about this from a neuroscience perspective. But now I'll focus on what my experiences have been lately.

Balance is what all of us strive for, whether dissociative or not. But there are extra challenges for those of us who dissociate, and as a general rule, the more dissociative we are, the more difficulty we have finding that balance. While there is certainly a concept of a dissociative continuum, and normal dissociation for "normal people", there is without question a different scale for some of us.

Another way of looking at the problem from an astronomical analogy is that most people stay within the context of their own psychological solar system. For the dissociative, we can be in the solar system, in the galaxy, in the Universe, in some parallel Universe, in a singularity point, or in any combination of the above, at any timescale.

For me, lately, I am experiencing more of the extremes of dissociation, where it's difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between reality and fantasy, between present and past, between safety and danger, and even to know who I am and what "me" means.

Yesterday, I was not that in touch and already somewhat unstable inside. Yet, I was able to shift things to be what I needed to be. I volunteered at my daughter's school, helped my wife fix her computer at work, got some work chores done, cleaned the bathrooms, told my daughter an awesome story about fairies, and more. But there was something missing. I was able to be functional in all those ways at the expense of loss of control. I have been oscillating between extremes and this is not sustainable.

Not only have I been functional over the past week (or longer), I have had some really amazing experiences. I was in the "zone" for a newspaper photography shoot of a parade. I freed myself from the usual "thinking" associated with playing piano and created some wonderful recordings. I was able to teach my daughter, who is somewhat new to the violin, how to improvise, create and feel music. This was an "Aha!" moment for her and it was so gratifying for me. These are examples of how dissociation can be a very wonderful gift and "healthy".

But there has been too much else going on and too many external and internal triggers. I know that parts have freaked out at night and sought out my wife (minutes or hours after some of these great experiences). I nearly lost my daughter at a hockey game (also minutes after a great experience). And I was unable to keep myself safe today. Plus, I am having an onslaught of memories and nightmares I cannot even remember.

This is not unknown territory for me. I've been struggling with a dissociative disorder for a long time, and have been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (DID) since back in the early 90s. Many of the feelings and experiences now are quite similar to back then. But what makes the present different is that I try as best I can to pay attention to what's going on and document everything I can. That effort is usually what makes the difference and keeps me safe.

Right now, that effort to document is keeping me out of the hospital and allowing me to "make sense of nonsense" or at least document the nonsense. I have kept a private electronic journal for the past 16 months, and I write at an average clip of 30,000 words a month. I'm usually around a computer and can write to it whenever I need to. As a bit of an aside, about a month ago, I wrote a handy little script for my iPhone that allows me to be virtually anywhere and write to the journal (as long as I have a 3G or Edge ssh connection). As I've written before, I use the journal (as well as this blog) to help me track of my crazy life and learn from the range of experiences I have. It's certainly not a linear healing process, but it absolutely does help.

One post to my journal stands out. At 3:43PM yesterday I wrote: "I also think something very bad happened inside just a little while ago. But I don't seem to know about it now. It was purely an inside thing." This, I think, had nothing at all to do with planning to be hurt or anything like that. It was just a knowing that something happened inside and I documented it as soon as possible. I cannot explain it. If I didn't take such care to document, these awarenesses would probably be lost in the noise.

But, despite the documentation, I still have been unable to guarantee my safety. And I am not stable internally to the degree I need to be. I believe some of the functional stuff and good experiences and successes threw me off a bit. I kept using those as signs of hope that things would change. I really cannot assess the chances of things changing and becoming more stable if I keep going without some sort of intervention.

The reason why I am on the fence about going into the hospital is because of those successes and good experiences. The hospital removes that. The other times I have been to the hospital, as far as I can remember, were because of complete loss of functionality. That has not happened now. I am wondering if I can build in safety more explicitly and tell my wife and boss that I need to be home for the time being. My wife already knows that I have not been well. She can tell. She has told me she knows this. She doesn't know how to act about the eating, whether to be happy or upset about my weight loss. She doesn't know how to react to parts flipping out at night and then me being completely functional and on the ball in the morning. I acted incredulous with her about it, because when she brought it up that she knows I've been having a hard time, I was in a completely different state.

I want to see how this explicit safety plan goes. If I cannot make it work, and home falls apart and everything breaks down, then I will know I need to be in the hospital. I am not there yet though. For now, I will push ahead, keep documenting, and trying to make sense of the "nonsense" and hope that I take a trip back to our solar system and stay there for a while.

I have written about many of these issues in the past. One advantage to the blog is that it distills a lot of the things I write about in my private journal. It's important for me to know what happens moment to moment, day to day. But it's equally important to know how those experiences fit into the larger picture. The blog serves that purpose. So, while I am glad that people read the blog, it truly is more for me than for anyone else. My apologies for being so selfish!

If you find this post interesting, you may want to take a look at some related posts from the past several months:

• Does Dissociation Make Us Special? (June 2009)
• From Chaos to Control (June 2009)
• Moving Past the "Band-Aid" Approach (July 2009)
• Acceptance (August 2009)
• My Take on What Healing Means (September 2009)
• Giving Up Rant (September 2009)
• The Boat is Sinking or Is There Even a Boat? (October 2009)

So, I'm in a particularly delicate position right now. Well, actually that's the problem. The position I'm in seems to change. From one extreme reality to another extreme reality. That's another post all to itself, which I will get to soon. But, the extreme changes have got me thinking...

Last week I posted my Giving Up Rant. I really was at rock bottom there and kind of stayed in this place. I guess I'm still there. Well, that's not true. I had a breakthrough on Saturday and then another this morning. But, I cannot easily keep track.

The week before that I posted My Take on What Healing Means. That was one of those "You can do it!" cheerleader posts. And just before that I posted Awakenings, which was that transformative experience when everything seemed to fit together just so perfectly.

So, I'm sort of taking stock of where I'm at. And I went through and looked at pretty much all of my previous posts dating back to April of this year when I started blogging. With the exception of some stray posts, they were all pretty much about the positive aspects of healing and, more or less, had to do with acceptance or working to get to that place of acceptance. Indeed, I wrote the Acceptance post upon leaving the hospital in August. I can easily see how I would be quite unhappy about all these posts when I am in the depths of despair.

It is precisely this "dichotomy" that has me taking stock.

I have been struggling a bit with whether the blog is really helpful for me. I think it is. The wonderfully supportive comments from all of you kind and caring people helped me stay in this place of acceptance. I appreciate them all for their validation and ability to get me to think. I especially like it when people offer alternative views. Largely, the blog allows me to synthesize my healing journey and put a good face on it, so to speak. I think that's good. But it's not enough. It doesn't fully respect the parts of me who really aren't on board with this process and fight against it. And it presents a sort of unitary voice, the sort of intellectual voice.

I know that for me, framing things in an intellectual kind of way is self-protective. I want to appear coherent and as least mentally fragmented as possible. Of course, this sort of gets in the way of acceptance. And along the way I sort of think I end up minimizing the struggle.

My private journal, which has many entries per day, contains far too much minutia for anyone to make sense of (usually myself included). And far too many extreme situations. Drama, some would say. So, that's where this blog has a real role in my healing. The blog is an at least twice a week healing exercise for me. And, usually, I write my posts at the tail end of a couple hour grounding process before or after therapy.

My hope is that I will start to change a bit how I put myself out here on the blog. I may start to include more of what the struggles are. I want to be able to talk about the scary parts. The parts that don't want to heal. I think that's the next evolution for the site. I think it will make the site more real, and in the process be more helpful to more of me.

Somewhat unrelated, but in keeping with the "blog carnival" theme, I wanted to point your browsers to Dr. Gudrun Frerichs' recently posted articles:

• Achieving Co-Consciousness
• Self-Acceptance and Love
• Healing Narcissistic Self-Parts
• Trauma Work

I found them to be quite in line with the language I use myself and how I understand where I want to go and what healing is all about. I hope you find them helpful too. I may look at them more closely and write about them in the coming days and weeks to come.