Recently in Public Journal Category

I don't really have a good sense of what's happened over the past couple weeks. I am now out of the hospital. But events and experiences are all over the place in pieces. I suppose I could put the pieces together from my private journal entries, and I will do that in due course. I sometimes resist doing that because then it becomes patently clear how discrete and dramatic my experiences really are.

My main accomplishment in the hospital, and there seems to always be a main accomplishment for each admission in recent years, was the eventual "coming together" of all parts of me in order to create an honest and meaningful "System Contract". The Contract is ten pages long (in rather large font) and contains our first definitive statements on what the parameters must be for our system as well as truisms that we often have great difficulty acknowledging (and even deny).

As an oversimplification, the hospital is a place where my system can relax, resulting in a bit of coming unglued (hence the Brief Cohesion post), and then some learning takes place and I make some accomplishment or some meaning that moves me forward.

This is what happened with the Contract. It most certainly would not have been able to be written outside of the hospital. It was done so in four major sections over an intense period of several hours, with each containing a series of very clear and definitive statements. I will not share the whole Contract, but I will share just a few of these statements:

These are four of the 16 items from the first Section, consisting of the core elements. Subsequent sections were more wordy, very personal and specific.

It was signed by every part. When I was discharged late last week, I saw my therapist and I read the entire document out loud in her office. Doing this was probably one of the hardest things I have ever done; but all of me knew it had to be done. I didn't think I could get through certain sections. We cried. It felt as if a stake had been put in the ground and we were propelling ourselves forward.

Unfortunately, the Contract quickly lost its luster. I am quite disconnected from it now. It is a horrible feeling to know you have accomplished something historic, say it's your "mission statement", your "Constitution", your "Magna Carta", but then lose the experience and all the knowing in such a short time.

But this disconnection really does not diminish the magnitude of what I've been able to achieve. There really was a coming together of all my parts; more than the brief cohesion of the last post. It is not surprising that I would lose that complete sense of knowing. And I'm okay with that. I think we have to accept inside that things will still be very difficult and I will struggle.

Even if all that's a given, things are different now. The changes may not be as dramatic and quantifiable as I originally anticipated, but there has been a more qualitative reordering of sorts inside.

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)

For 14 days, my wife is in Europe on vacation with her niece and I'm completely in charge of the kids. Well, my mother-in-law has been here for half the time in the middle, so she's been a huge help. But, I have to be totally responsible for my 11 and 8 year old girls. We are on Day 8 now, but who's counting?

I've mostly taken the time off from work, as I've only gone in a few times. I've learned that being responsible for the kids is a huge job. I didn't really know that before. Well, I knew it, but I didn't experience it, except for a day or two here and there. There is so much to coordinate with this activity and that activity, who we will carpool with, what to wear to school, what to pack for lunch, and on and on. There are so many details. It's so complicated. I'm keeping a lot of lists. We figure out what they want in their school lunches and two snacks the night before and I write all that down, then in the morning I just have to tick off the list. I also have every day all spelled out on another list with every single detail. If I get confused, I just consult the list.

It's been an emotional roller coaster for me, though. I have to be aware of so much. I can't drop the ball. I'm in charge after all. And I know that my kids are totally dependent on me. I guess that's why I can claim them as dependents on my taxes! I deserve that tax break! This changes things. When they go to bed the reality of the emotional stress kicks in. I can tell that old coping mechanisms are at play. For example, there's a lot of blocking out of experiences during the day. I definitely experience more internal fragmentation. This just makes it that much harder for me to sustain keeping track of all the family details. Sometimes my head is swimming.

It's not just that I'm responsible, it's that my whole environment is different. I'm not used to my wife not being home. I don't know how to sleep alone. Yes, I miss my wife! My work schedule is thrown off, as well as my therapy schedule. It's very hard to set time aside to journal and check-in. My whole internal experience is thrown off; it's akin to how things changed internally when we brought our first daughter home from being born.

But, even while my experience is off, I still have to remember at what time to schedule that orthodontist appointment 1 hour away so that we will be able to get back to gymnastics in time. I have to make sure I send in the pick-up note to school, make sure the gym bag is packed with the right clothes and with water, remember to bring her contacts and a toothbrush so that after she eats her teeth won't be dirty for the exam. I have to take pictures of her getting braces so my wife can see them on Facebook. Then, figure out how to get from the dentist to the gym (thank you iPhone voice navigation App) because I don't ever go from one to the other.

I do like it, though. I just don't think I could do this 365 days in a row. I like the feeling of accomplishment. Another good outcome is that because I need to be on the ball so much, I've been able to get a lot of house chores done. Our basement is cleaned out, septic pumped, oil burner and propane fireplace tuned up, and lawn is mowed. I have this extra energy and alertness going for me (with little sleep).

I also have been able to assess what life is like for our family. I'm a little unhappy about how busy my kids are. My immediate reaction to all the kids' activities is this: Whoa! Slow down! What ever happened to coming home and playing? And having real time to do homework? And relaxing? Nope. Can't have that. Apparently, somehow, we ended up having the crazy activity schedules like everyone else we know, even though my wife and I always promised each other that it wouldn't happen to us.

This has happened partly because I've sort of taken a back seat in the managing of our kids' lives. I want to have a bigger say. My kids are great. My family is great. But our lives are way too hectic. And we all know it's easier to add things then it is to take them away!

I've also been able to appreciate the amount of time and energy that I put into healing. This time with the kids has really meant that I cannot put too much effort into healing. I haven't read much of the blogs I follow. As I said, I've written very little in my journal. I watch the clock in therapy. I have to think much less of me and much more of them. I try not to judge whether that's good or bad. It just is right now. I know it won't be that way forever.

This is a somewhat edited reprint from my private journal of a little more than a week ago, which, I guess, by virtue of my posting it here means it's not private anymore! While it's personal, I wanted to share it here because it shows how I can have hope in the healing process and maybe that could help others.

This post gets a trigger warning for link to a news story about abuse.

I'm posting this also partly to give myself a little boost. I'm having trouble holding onto the hope.

I debated whether I should post about Michael Jackson's death. After he died, I immediately recalled the scandal in 1993 where he was accused of abuse and his interview with Oprah where he accused his father of abuse. I remembered the difficulty I had during this time.

A few days ago I wrote in my private journal the following:

Despite my dislike of his music except for Mowtown, Jackson is undeniably a giant of the industry. He was also, equally undeniably, very disturbed. That is no excuse for engaging in child abuse, whether he believed it was abuse or not. He frequently had little understanding of his actions with children. He was quoted as saying: "I have slept in a bed with many children... Why should that be worrying? What's the criminal? Who's Jack the Ripper in the room?" For reference see Why I Sleep with Little Boys, by Michael Jackson.

When looking back on his life, we perhaps should take into consideration that his life was radically different from almost every other. He performed professionally since the age of 9. He changed the face of music in the 80s. Like many child stars, he was ill-equipped to manage his life.

Just as I don't doubt any survivors I have met concerning their abuse, I cannot doubt what Jackson has said about his father. But, he is no survivor in my mind. Survivor is one of the few terms I use regularly and with pride. For me, it means that not only have you lived through atrocities, you have ended the cycle of abuse. Michael Jackson, by his own actions and statements, did not end that cycle. We may never know, but this is what ultimately may have ended his life.

This is perhaps the first post that is sort of like a journal entry. It's kind of a gamble for me because it's a bit more revealing than I'm used to. Here goes.

Lately, I've been in I guess what you would call a "depressive rut". I have been almost completely non-functional most days, getting out of bed in the late morning and not really accomplishing much of anything during the day. I have done the bare minimum during the few hours I've been awake. Yet I've been to all of the kids' functions, I eventually mowed my lawn, and I did clean the house the other day (though I'm not sure my wife really noticed, but that's another story).

Even though I've been unable to get myself motivated most days, on Tuesdays and Thursdays I have been able to make the one hour commute into my office, getting there before 5AM and having "no trouble" being functional. I started realizing that these were huge swings in how functional I was and I didn't much like it. Ah, there is that new awareness again!

I began to wonder why I just didn't go into my office every day, thinking that I could be functional all the time. But, I don't think it works like that anymore. It probably used to at some point. Those days are long gone.

Backing up a bit, a little over a year ago, I decided to focus my efforts on healing and this didn't work out well with the old Monday through Friday get up at 6AM and be home by 7PM routine. This change in focus, which perhaps one could call a lifestyle change upon reaching 40, has been met with great success and I've healed in ways I could never have imagined. I've been able to get my work done through a combination of working from home and going into my office for meetings.

Well, this past Tuesday I didn't make it into my office. And I realized on Tuesday that the "work part" of me either isn't as committed to the work or isn't able to work like before. I guess this is one of the unintended consequences of healing and being more blended inside.

This brings me to last night. Last night was chaos. The chatter would not stop. This led to some screaming. I tossed and turned in bed until finally I asked the "work part" for help. Was up at 2AM. Had breakfast at International House of Pancakes at 3AM, and was at work at 4AM.

So I need to figure out how to handle this. I think if I can only motivate myself to start exercising and doing my yardwork during the days I'm home, I will be okay. But I don't know that I can do that. Why can't I take a little bit from this "work part" and have him keep me from being non-functional? This was the whole point of healing, right? So that I could be more blended inside and communicate and collaborate inside. I did learn to do that. But why isn't that happening now? Instead, things are becoming more separate. I'm becoming less aware. I'm writing in my private journal less because I don't have anything to write about.