Amuletum (from Latin) meaning "an object that protects a person from trouble".

Yes, I know. It's been a while since I have posted here. Life has stepped in quite a bit, and in many ways that has been fantastic for me. Life has big feet, and as long as Crocs aren't involved, we can be friends.

Anyway, I'm digressing. I have kept up with my journal during my longish absence here. If that stopped or even slowed, I would have certainly fallen off a cliff. It has taken me many years to get to a place of consistently writing down my private thoughts, and being totally and brutally honest with myself about them. I am now in my fifth year, and journaling is on the same level of self-care as brushing my teeth. Journaling is not a luxury to make life "nicer", it is a requirement, almost like breathing, even though it can take up a fair bit of my time. My journal is like a best friend. It listens really well! It never judges. It is there when I need it. And most importantly, it provides insights I would never get to "on my own".

I realized it was time to resume writing here when I saw the news about the Ohio kidnapping rescue. I said this long ago: If you have a voice, you owe it to yourself to use it. If you have something to say, speak up. Every voice helps. And I have more to say.

There is a difference between writing only for yourself and writing publicly. While there are many different ways to journal for yourself, the hardest for me is to step back and look at the big picture. Writing publicly is almost always about perspective. That is why it has been helpful for me and why I look forward to jumping back in.

If you want to come along for the ride, hop on in. There's plenty of room. We have places to go.

One of the things Deb—I want to start using real first person names for people in my life instead of descriptive terms like "Healing Guide"—has helped me with is planning for potential responses before I do something.

On the surface this may seem like over-planning or over-thinking, but it is not if it helps and makes life easier and safer. While life is filled with unpredictability, there are ways in which I can make it more predictable. And there are ways in which I can control my internal responses even in the face of what is externally unpredictable, which in turn helps me be more resilient.

This is perhaps the best benefit of increasing internal and external awareness. With time, and journaling has helped with this too, I learn all about patterns, mine and others. It engenders a sort of personal wisdom.

I thought I would share one of the skills I use to plan. For a while now I have mentally "set an intention", usually before I take on an significant event. I would say it is similar to how athletes approach a competition. They do what it takes to either relax or get pumped up, or both. Setting an intention is putting yourself in a certain mindset which, in theory and often in practice, makes it more difficult for an unexpected event—or a trigger if we can use that language—to be derailing. The intention remains as a sort of constant or a focus. I think I came up with this on my own, but Deb has always helped remind me to do it.

My friend Danielle has been fond of actual objects. She gave me a "No" button for Christmas (which will be the topic of another post) and gave me a "Compass" medallion a little while later. I have been no stranger to objects as aids. A few years back I put two pins on my briefcase, a blue child abuse awareness ribbon and a puzzle-pieces "dissociative disorders" ribbon, which looks much like the autism ribbon. A couple years ago Deb gave me a clay labyrinth she made as a grounding exercise and I gave her a compassion stone inscribed with Om mani padme hum, which sits in her office.

Getting back to the compass medallion. It had been really helpful for me, because it was something I could carry with me wherever I went in my pocket. That was the new piece for me. I didn't have something like that before. I also carry my iPhone all the time which is a grounding object because I can connect to people quickly or read or write in my journal. But it's vastly different. The compass has been a tangible reminder to always remember I must know where I am going. In some ways it's an intention. But then I realized that single message loses its luster after a while.

So, I tried a variation on a theme. I have recently started setting the intention for each day at the beginning of the day. Here is how I do it. I have recently collected a bunch of amulets on my dresser. Every morning I lay them all out. Then I reflect on what is to come for my day, check-in on the inside, and then ask what my intention needs to be for the day so I can stay the most present and emotionally well.

I take the amulet, put it in my pocket and keep it with me all day until I get home, and then it goes back on my dresser with another check-in of how well I did with the intention. In effect, I create safe bookends for each day.

The amulet really does feel like a protector. If I have trouble during the day or need some help, I can pull it out and look at it. Or I can reach into my pocket without anyone needing to know, hold onto it and usually just breathe. It does not always work like a "charm", but it most certainly helps.

By having the possibility of a different amulet for each day, the process becomes more meaningful. There are intentions for specific events and situations. For example, I co-led our elementary school's Lip Sync shows this past weekend and I set the intention to Embrace the Moment, which seemed to match what was basically a "performance". I did not have as many responsibilities for this event as in past years, so I was able to just go with it, connect with the kids, and be myself. That carried me right through.

Today's was Keep it Simple. I started to feel like things were getting a bit complicated and there was really no reason for that.

I don't know what tomorrow's will be. And that is sort of what is great about it all.

I really love this song. For me it is about trying in the face of failure, grief, finding oneself, and hope. "I will try to fix you", is for me a self-directed message to all of me. What does it mean for you?

Thank you for listening!

I want to share a bit about my process the past week or so.

This touches me partly because I have two daughters in elementary and middle school, and I am very involved in the elementary school as leader of its parent-teacher organization. Two days before, I was at a PTO-sponsored arts and culture event with kindergarten kids. I was struck by their curiosity, their enthusiasm, their sparkle, their following directions, and their innocence.

Added to this was the fact that what had come up around Halloween was still very pressing for me. I was dealing with some very acute details from the past which had only become more complicated and magnified since I left the hospital.

For me, this was the backdrop to what happened.

When I got the "breaking news" flash on Friday morning, while it was happening, I notified our school principal to give him a heads up. Then I immediately had a window into panic.

But that window closed quickly and I saw the tragedy through the lens of someone who has done a lot of healing work. I reassured myself. I knew I had my own daughters to attend to. I wanted to be strong. So, I configured myself to be strong.

At a meeting at a friend's house that day, none of us really knew the extent of what happened. But while there I read "The Living Tree" poem that was hanging on her wall. In all the healing work I have done over 20 years I have never read this poem before. I was stunned. It was so perfect in so many ways. It read:

Reading that gave me an enormous boost. I felt as though it was a gift to me. Just a couple hours later our public statement from our PTO went out on social media:

When my girls got home, they did not have much to say. They knew about it. My older daughter seemed not to be impacted, but my younger daughter wanted to know that her world was safe. I answered her questions, which were few, in as direct a way as possible but that were also child appropriate and focused on reassuring.

We went to our neighborhood Christmas party that evening, and nobody mentioned the tragedy at all. I said to myself, "Everyone handles these things in their own way." I did not judge that. I tried to be social. But I had a heavy heart and I felt very out of place.

That night, my youngest daughter wanted me to go into her room to read her a book to get to bed because "I want to know my room is safe." So that is what I did. "Mission accomplished" I said to myself. I read her "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" in an english accent, and all felt right in the world.

Of course over the next couple days there was a lot of sharing via social media. There were some amazing quotes, wonderful articles, a few "angry political outbursts", but mostly everyone was supportive and focused on compassion and healing and hope. That felt like such a positive step forward.

A friend of mine sent me this one: "Don't be discouraged by your incapacity to dispel darkness from the world. Light your candle and step forward."

I wrote in my journal:

The very next day was the holiday concert for my community band and chorus that my youngest daughter is in. It is a huge concert for me, and was so significant last year because it was my first concert of that sort in well over 20 years and I felt it was a giant leap forward for me in so many ways.

But this year I was not myself. I got nervous in ways I had not ever been before and in ways I did not understand. Eventually, I was able to see the concert as part tribute, part putting some hope and love into the world, part being with my family and friends, my band-mates, my community.

I wrote: "The world is most certainly not a dark and evil place."

However, we are human and we cannot always hold onto that place of compassion, no matter how hard we try. It's not always about effort. Sometimes we are not in control.

There was a dramatic turn I did not expect. I was not really paying attention to all the ways in which parts of me were not feeling so safe. The school shooting started to trigger my own past fears. I started having flashbacks. The events of my own past, directly related to what I had been dealing with the past couple months, started overlaying with what happened Friday. I could not make sense of anything.

I do not think this would normally have happened were it not for the case that my daughter's Sunday evening youth orchestra concert was in a church and she was on the altar. I struggled with that a bit last year when she joined, but I have come to feel safe there.

But from that moment on I started to spiral out of control dramatically.

I could not hold onto that healthy place anymore.

Everything became a problem. The girls fighting became overwhelming. Seeing the president cut in to speak during my "protected" time watching the Sunday night football game felt like worlds were colliding. I panicked that this was going to immediately become a political issue and we would lose sight of the human loss and suffering and compassion.

Then when the game came back, merely an hour later, there were movie commercials showing extremely violent gun shooting with the shooter aiming right outside the screen as if the bullets were coming towards me. That completely sent me over the top. Could this really be happening?

I was reeling and trying desperately to contain it all.

Meanwhile I had not been sleeping. I tried to force healing skills to "fix me." I played piano the entire night Monday without sleeping a wink. I played every "emotional" and healing song I knew. But it did absolutely nothing.

I was overcome with growing feelings of terror, and finally realized on Tuesday that the problem was that I knew what massive terror felt like as a child. Repeatedly. Over years. I, of course, knew the situations were very different, but I knew directly what it felt like to think I was going to die from what was happening to me, and worse, that I preferred to die.

On Tuesday evening I met with my therapist and I was able to say all of this. That helped enormously. I was able to gain some perspective and ground.

But it was tenuous. I still was panicking at times.

On Wednesday morning, we met with the school principal about what we were going to do jointly to help. I was absolutely petrified to go into the school. I knew our school was safe. I knew I was an adult and the level of fear I had was not rational. But so much of me did not trust that. So, I asked a PTO Mom to come with me, but did not say why. It helped tremendously. Everyone who worked there was just focused on being kind and caring, and that helped to reassure me.

But I was still reeling. Proof of that was just last night. My wife and I went to a group Irish music session. It was at someone's barn in a remote area. I focused on the positives at first. But I quickly became overwhelmed by all the people. I felt trapped. I did not know where I was. I started to dissociate. Sounds felt like jet engines. I could not see very well. All the telltale signs of stress overload.

I panicked, but was able to not let my wife know about it. I kept it hidden with the excuse that I had a neck ache. I am not really sure why. Maybe I did not want to be seen as weak. Maybe I did not want to hear a judgment. I just was not sure what her reaction would be and did not feel I could risk it.

After the chaos last night, I knew I had to focus on myself. I had to change my approach.

In many ways I feel it is completely selfish to focus on myself in the face of a tragedy which killed innocent kids. I feel guilt.

But, as I tell my friends all the time, the same ones I have confused the past several days, we can only help others when we are also helping ourselves.

So, that is my new focus. I took something to help me sleep last night and I went into work late, just in time for my lunch meeting. I would not normally make such changes. I would have forged ahead like normal. But I need to take care of myself. I need to be more gentle on myself.

I have a broken heart for the lives lost and shattered in Newtown. But I also know that part of my heart being broken has to do with me and my past, and that I cannot ignore.

I held on to see my therapist Thursday evening, the day after Halloween. That, in an of itself, was a strong indicator of how tenuous a situation I was in. Holding on like that is not all that common these days for me. When we met, I told her that if this escalates to what it was like on Halloween the night before, then I was not able to go through that level of distress on my own. I said once was enough. Plus I assumed the risks would be greater because I would be weakened by the other night. That was our agreement.

My time with her helped. I had a spurt of being functional that evening. At that point, I thought maybe that I was on a positive trajectory. But after my functional Friday morning at work, I started falling apart dramatically in the afternoon when I got home. I knew clearly that I rallied simply to do get through my responsibilities. I so quickly knew that it was serious and that I could not solve it by adding more and more responsibilities or tasks to my schedule.

The "plan" from the other night on Halloween was coming up again, but with greater force, just as I had feared. I was certain it was not just an expression or idle threat, and I knew I had to get help while I still was able. There was too much at stake.

I was remarkably decisive. I had to be. At 3 pm I texted my psychiatrist: "Can you find out if Proctor 2 has a bed?"

It was a struggle to tell and allow my wife to drive me. I knew that meant the option of serious self-harm was removed, though I never told her that was the issue. She knew I was having a hard time, and mostly, that is all she needed to know. So, I made it past that hurdle. As we were leaving, I told my kids who took the news in stride.

My wife was stressed about it all, and I promptly changed my mind on the drive in. I wanted to go back home and try harder. But by this point, despite my growing panic, the decision had been made. The admission was all arranged. They were expecting me. Changing my mind was not an option.

Just a couple hours later I made it through admissions and was on McLean's Proctor 2. There are few words to describe how it feels to be in your home and then a few hours later on the same psychiatric unit I have been coming to for over 20 years. It is surreal and, as always, conflicted. While I felt safe from self-harm or worse, I did not feel safe "in my head." I know coming here means I have a lot of work to do so I can leave in a place where I am grounded and confident in my ability to stay safe and live the life I have built for myself.

Because it was all surreal, I needed to reality check and assess what got me here.

First, is that I was able to get to the hospital without actually hurting myself. It does not usually happen that way.

Second, is that I was able to have the accomplishment of getting through Halloween on my own, whereas in the past that kind of experience would have landed me in the hospital, and many times in restraints. Being able to prove that I could get through that kind of off-scale internal response was enormous for me.

Third, and perhaps the most important, is about trust. I wrote this in my journal:

"Internal slider" is a new analogy to help me think about and experience the active process of staying centered. Last January, in a post titled Unity, I wrote about thinking about my psyche in terms of "parts on left" and "parts on the right", and how my challenge is to find a bridge between them. The real world experience is of sliding back and forth. Sometimes there is more activation of parts on the right and it becomes harder to stay safe and live in the present. Sometimes the focus is on "work" and I lose touch with everything from the past and enter denial. A visual image of a slider and a bridge is realistic, and it is consistent with the view that dissociation exists on a scale. Where someone is on that scale is different from person to person, and also different for a person over time.

Coming here does not mean that certain parts need to go nuts or dump a lot of memories or any of that. In other words, they do not have to continue the trajectory I was on. I came here precisely to change that trajectory.

I knew how to get all of me to safety. I knew when the time was right. I knew it had to be after Halloween and not before. That has to have created a huge amount of internal trust.

I know this past week or more was very dicey. I get that. But the payoff has been enormous.

And now my work here begins.

A conflict had been building for days about staying safe. That is not particularly unusual. However, I knew the level of risk was. Even with seeing both my psychiatrist and therapist that day, which were both helpful, I did not have a real grip on staying safe.

My first order of business was to get back to my house. That was a battle in itself. I made the decision to go home not because I pushed parts of me away or ignored what was coming up or issued an ultimatum. I have learned that none of that works. I got home because I kept my hand on the "steering column" even though the amount of actual control felt minimal.

I like to use metaphors. Felix Baumgartner jumped last month from 24 miles above Earth and in the process he broke the sound barrier. What interested me the most was his press conference after his landing. When he jumped, he almost immediately ended up in a uncontrollable spin. It wasn't clear to him what to do. He said he reached out with one hand and it made it worse. He then reached out with the other and it made it better. All the while he stayed the course and kept trying.

Now, I'm not equating was was to come during my Halloween evening to this historic jump. But, for me personally, there are similarities. The similarity was that the risk was so great and it was not clear that what I was doing was enough to get me through without serious harm.

I have not often shared writings taken directly from my journal, but as I am trying to get across my experience, this seems to be the best way to give some context for what was going on:

Here "clear cut" refers to needing the hospital. The discussion I had with my psychiatrist that morning was about why it is often clear cut for going to an emergency room for a medical crisis, but not for a mental health one. The reality, we both agreed, is that I have been able to get through many mental health crises safely without needing to go to the hospital. But there is always a safety risk. There are many mental health crises I have not navigated safely. Despite those realities, I felt strongly that trying to get through on my own was what I needed to do.

The closest parallels I can think of to this experience are the times I have lost control in the hospital, was not safe, and had to be restrained in the "quiet room." But I was not in the hospital. So my safety was totally up to me. What happened then was that my journal entries got more sparse and, at the same time, much more bizarre.

Because I do not have a "memory" which corresponds to these entries, I will not share them here. I do not think that is fair to me. But suffice it to say that my reading through them is extremely difficult. They were off scale.

But at 6:01 am the next morning I made this post:

At 10 am I wrote:

Just a few minutes later, four to be exact, I wrote: "I have found my way back to center."

I have a policy to avoid language specific to self-harm or suicidal behaviors. In this post, 'safety' refers mostly towards the latter end of that spectrum (i.e., suicide). Tomorrow's Part III post will focus solely on the aftermath.

Over the past few years I have learned to prepare myself more for what to expect. I have become much more vigilant. I make every attempt to stay as grounded as I can so that when I am eventually triggered, I deal with it from a more stable place.

It is difficult for me to really know what is going on during this time. There are some rather unique qualities to Halloween: like people dressing in costume and pretending to be some one or thing they are not, like kids venturing out into the night in masses going from house to house asking for candy from people they have never met, and the endless scary imagery.

One way I look at it is that I have had to deal with a good number of scary situations in my life. While scary situations in fun create an exhilarating adrenaline rush in some, for me scaring for fun is often a trigger to the past. Of course this was not always true. I used to relish haunted houses and the sort, but that was before I had a broader awareness of "all of me."

This year was on target to be managed better than most. I ramped up the reliance on my supports, and I took other measures. But, just like last year, a freak ice storm lead to the postponement of "trick or treating" in our town until today. So, that meant, like last year, we effectively had two Halloween holidays. I did not handle this all that well.

Halloween is more complex for me than simply the imagery. There are very specific internal responses and internal activations, and a corresponding assault of off-scale "memories." As I have said many times before, I do not think it is helpful to validate every memory as historical fact. In the past when these memories came up I would say something like: "Oh no! I can't believe that happened! I can't live anymore!" I had such a black and white way of approaching them that never really helped.

Because I have a psyche that can be massively compartmentalized, over time I have learned to accept that there are "realities" of parts of me that are very real through their own lenses. So, when I get bombarded by all that comes up, I try to be committed to a non-confrontational stance, an open-minded stance, a down-the-middle stance. This is never easy because we are, by nature, biased and judgmental. I strive to be mindful nowadays, precisely because I know what the stakes are for me.

Every self-harm event or past suicide attempt or mental breakdown (if we can use that term) or maybe even a dissociative switch is about a falling into a vortex, or a polarized position, and away from a more centered mindful position. Conversely, every success in healing has been about finding my way back to a more centered and mindful place. It seems so simple, but in many ways it is not.

The good news is that by repeating this over and over again, in word and in practice, as I have done now for years, it has stuck as a skill and has become enormously helpful.

I knew that such an approach presented an opportunity for getting through Halloween, but it also presented some rather significant risks. Every opportunity has associated risks. This is universally true. Artists take creative risks, athletes take sports risks, politicians take political risks, businessmen take financial risks.

Halloween, for me, represents a period of significant safety risk. Safety is not simply about the perceived external threat. It is not just in my head. The threat becomes so overwhelming that an expected "solution" is to turn it inward.

It quickly becomes a battle to just hold on. To not hurt myself. To not do something drastic. All the while there is an attempt at reality checking: I have kids, a wife, a job, people care about me.

But severe stress, especially in certain contexts, does crazy things to people. If one is pushed hard enough and far enough and long enough, you can get to a place where it is nearly impossible to reality check.

That is where the real risk lies.

I took that risk this year. I knew that was going to be my experience. I knew there was a very fine line between being able to hold on and stay safe and not.

Tomorrow, in Part II, I will post about my experience on Halloween day and evening.]]> http://www.mindparts.org/2012/11/halloween-part-i.html http://www.mindparts.org/2012/11/halloween-part-i.html Dissociation Healing Self-Harm Sun, 04 Nov 2012 19:10:00 -0500

The hallmark of having a dissociative psyche is that drastic and off-scale changes can, and will, occur in the blink of an eye. It is often called "switching", referring to switches in personality states. I have certainly come a long way towards accepting "parts of me" and know that acceptance has been necessary and helpful in order to live with such titanic changes of state.

However, when push comes to shove, and especially in times of trouble, acceptance is sorely tested. In times of difficulty, there are some subtle differences between an acceptance that works and one that does not.

I will start with the one that does not. When certain aspects of me are massively triggered and there is an increase in symptoms such as intrusive memories or emotional distress, there is a natural tendency to isolate and compartmentalize. I will often say that I still accept these parts of me, that it is not like the past when I would try to erase them—a full scale denial.

I will often normalize how I think about parts or aspects of me. I minimize. This can be a sort of denial and a protective mechanism and leads to an increase in internal conflicts because it does not embrace who I really am. I often believe that my "moderated stance" is perfectly appropriate (and in many ways it is). These are the kinds of statements I make: The parts of my personality are all part of one person. They are "facets" of me. There is a continuum, and since I have healed so much and have more awareness I do not have "parts" in the same way I used to have parts. That then means what I call parts of me are not really important. Switches are not really switches but generic mood swings.

Because I am more functional than ever, I am still able to, for the most part, make appropriate shifts to keep up with my life. I end up walking on a metaphorical tightrope until I realize that what I am doing has become a continuous strain.

This type of tepid acceptance tends to work externally but erodes internal glue and cohesiveness.

Where I often get tripped up is that the "acceptance" that works is not so much different from the one that does not. I can still stick with many of the "moderated" positions about parts of me, but if the intention is there to walk through life more collaboratively with a whole scale acknowledgement and acceptance, that is what really makes the difference. In the past, I have described this kind of internal collaboration using the analogy of water.

The key is intention.

The issue is really not whether the statements I say to myself are true or untrue. It is how I set them up. I can take "true" statements and beliefs, put them through my internal intellectualizer, and the outcome is invalidation. Or I can put the same statements through my internal acceptancer, and the outcome is validation and not have to compromise my intellectual integrity.

To use another analogy from sports, these two forms of acceptance are the difference between a good team and a championship team. They are both teams. What is interesting from sports, is that even if the team is loaded with outstanding talent and highly played players, they are not necessarily champions. To win, talent is generally not enough. The championship team must have that extra something, which is often difficult to quantify, to put them over the top.

This is what makes dissociative identities and childhood trauma recovery so difficult. The difference between what works and what does not is often simple to articulate but can be very hard to put into practice, especially with so many different pieces in play in dissociative systems, just like team members on the sports team.

Another reason why it is difficult is that the the stakes are very different. For many of us, it is not about whether we come in first place or third place. Rather it is whether we stay safe or not. Stay functional or collapse. Have a positive outlook on life or are suicidal.

The reason I share the art work above, is that I did it the same day I made the last post here. I was feeling particularly "open". I felt I was not working hard enough at healing or addressing what was below the surface well enough. And so I shared in art (and during therapy) the feelings associated with the memories which were coming up at the time.

I saw that as a positive step forward.

Yet the very next day I hurt myself.

I have not hurt myself since, mostly because I have understood that the breakdown in safety was about the difference between these two types of acceptance.

I write today because I know I am trending away from the acceptance that leads to safety, and I want to find my way back.

I have been having a difficult time knowing what to share here, how to share and whether I even want to share anything at all. It is not something new. I have struggled with this in various ways over the years.

I originally said to myself "What more do I have to say? I've already said everything." I have also seen that the blogosphere can be quite dysfunctional and I became scared of saying something that would create a conflict.

But in the end, those are just distractions. I know I have more to say because I keep writing in my private journal and often remark to myself "This would be nice to write about on the blog." And I have long known that the Internet is a unique medium with a lot of unpredictability. I have mostly been comfortable with that by working at maintaining healthy boundaries.

I also started having broader issues. This blog is one aspect of my life that I keep somewhat separate by being careful not to share, for example, my full name. But aside from that, I have been very honest about who I am, what I think and what I feel. From the beginning I said if I could not be honest, then what is the point in having a blog in the first place?

But that was nearly four years ago. While there has always been the question of what feels safe to share and what does not, my life is not the same now. Back then, my life was clearly more centered around my mental health. I was struggling to keep my life going. That made it much easier to make the decision on what to share. I had little to lose.

Now, my career has become more significant and required much more attention and I am doing more in my community, the largest of which is leading a public non-profit organization. Those have definitely driven me to be more private about my mental health.

It would be perfectly fine if the only outcome was not writing on the blog and I was comfortable with that decision. But I am not comfortable with that decision and the increased privacy has come at a cost elsewhere. In the last post, I asserted that my increased privacy did not mean I am ashamed of who I am. That is just not true.

I am stuck because that shame forces me to be mostly silent, when this is not my true nature. I have kept saying to myself that I am sharing in therapy and with my wife and with very close friends. But that is not enough. This blog has been hugely important for me and helped reduce the shame. It has been critical for me to have a voice. In fact, I have long known that my leap forward in healing coincided with speaking out on an abuse scandal that happened in my home town back in 2007.

On the whole, it has been incredibly helpful for me to repackage some of my longwinded views and awareness in my private journal into more concise statements here on the blog. For the past year or more, with my life becoming more private, my private journal has become merely a record of day-to-day happenings and is not helping me make sense of my life as much as it once did.

I had convinced myself it was not necessary. "I don't have time," I said. "And I am not struggling to keep my head above water." I also know that I have learned a lot. So I do a lot of things mindfully, do more soothing activities, and am more involved with my family and friends. Those are all positives and not to be minimized, but can lull one into complacency.

At some point, it would be nice if I could live the life I want to have (and deserve to have) in a more easy way. But it has slipped my mind that healing is a journey. A long journey. Probably a lifelong journey. And not a lifelong journey that you come back every now and again. Instead, I have been satisfied with where I am right now and have not really been pushing myself to heal more or achieve more internal awareness and personal insight.

It really only takes a second to reality check that I have plenty more work to do. I am still massively influenced by triggers, can quickly become emotionally destabilized or fragmented, struggle with recurring memories and flashbacks (even new ones), still have some significant issues with safety, and still very much am held back by negative core beliefs.

I cannot get around the fact that healing requires a focused type of effort.

It all hit me when I saw this TED talk. The story about Nick, the autistic boy who self-harmed, struck me the most. Giles Duley, the speaker and photographer, said: "He described his life as living downstairs at a party. He said he could hear the party in the kitchen. He felt like he was always trapped in the basement in his own little world. Wanted to be part of the party. But not able to walk upstairs." Then it also hit me that it took a personal tragedy for Duley to realize what was important in this world.

That is the power of telling ones' story. The extent of NIck's self-harming was not known and minimized and he did not get help. One man simply took a photograph of the boy's bloody face, shared it, and got the boy the help he needed.

One could argue that it was a small change for humanity even though it was a huge change for Nick. But what would our world be like if nobody shared their story?

The bottom line is that it is not about one's own individual impact. But rather it is the impact of collective voices. And this blog is one piece of that.

Yet another month has passed and I still find that I am having trouble writing publicly. Last month I wrote about it perhaps being a worry about being unoriginal after nearly two hundred posts. But I think has more to do with being public. I definitely feel more private about this aspect of my life nowadays. That does not mean, however, that I am ashamed of it. Rather, sharing publicly does not feel as safe as it once did.

That said, it is perhaps ironic that I have started several articles on a range of different topics, many of them have been explored in my private journal. Mind Parts has always been about providing me with an opportunity to synthesize my journal "wanderings" into clearer statements. So, we will see where that goes and how I sort this out.

For this month, I will share another piano recording of mine. It is in the key of G-minor, a key I almost never play.

The process is simple. I noodle around at the keyboard, then come to some chord progressions that I like. I write them out, then I improvise over those chords. The process is very much like an internal check-in. It has the effect, usually, of helping me become unstuck and create a flow of feeling. It is very much a "wandering" but it also has a sense of direction.

Near the beginning of this month, I recorded these same chord progressions. Back then it was about having many aspects of myself contributing. The recording had a little bit of everything in it. At the time, I wrote about this immense internal flow, which felt absolutely incredible. But I was not able to sustain holding all those parts of myself in the fore at the same time. Shortly after, it all broke down.

I am now recovering, and it is no surprise that this recording from last night is more reserved. It may not have as much interest as the last, but I feel as though I am in a much better place. This place I am in does not come at the cost of restraining parts of me. There is just more balance now and the "temperature" of me as a system is much lower.

I hope you enjoy it!

I have had a difficult time writing publicly. I am not sure why that is. It may be that when I start to write, I realize I have said something quite similar before. I cannot stand not being original! I think they call that writer's block or not being very creative. I am not really sure.

Lately, however, my music has been original and creative.

A couple of years ago I would cringe to record, let alone share, me playing classical music. That is not the case now. In many ways I was stymied by the expectation that performing classical music be precise. That was how I was taught. No teacher ever told me that it was all right to "interpret" the music in my own way.

So I did that on my own, in private. And when I had lessons, I tried to play it "right", as the teachers "expected".

There is a life lesson in there.

In so many areas of life, we are taught to not be creative. Creative students are often looked at as nerds by other students. They sometimes make their teachers feel uncomfortable. They are different. They stand out.

Sports are probably one area where one is almost always positively rewarded for being creative. If you get the basketball in falling backwards, shooting with your non-dominant hand, as the opposing team fouls you, you're a hero.

However, if you make a painting that doesn't look like any of the other kids in class or you know π to 100 places, well that's most likely a different story. And that's unfortunate.

Not only did I have to hide the fact that I "interpreted" classical music in my own way, but it has taken me a long time to share it with others. I think that is because I have trouble sharing something this personal about myself. In this piece, for example, my emotions are directly attached to the music.

The Chopin Prélude No. 4 is probably the most emotive classical piano piece I have ever heard.

There is also a lesson about healing.

I believe healing from deep emotional wounds also requires creativity. Often, the problems we face are just too large to be solved by "one size fits all" approaches. Ultimately each of us learns that if our commitment to healing is solely going to therapy once a week, we will probably not heal.

Each of us must find out own path, whatever that is. Some of us may find healing in riding horses, in a certain type of yoga, in a sport, in art, in an intellectual pursuit, in love.

And that path is unique to each of us, which by definition makes it creative.]]> http://www.mindparts.org/2012/06/chopin-prlude-no-4.html http://www.mindparts.org/2012/06/chopin-prlude-no-4.html Music Sun, 24 Jun 2012 23:58:00 -0500 Several years ago I began to truly accept that my mental health issues are chronic and that I was not going to solve them completely now, next month, or next year. Such an approach may work for fixing a broken faucet, but it is not valid for the kinds of challenges I, and many of us, face.

It took me nearly half a lifetime to appreciate that recovery really is a long winding and enormously difficult journey that may indeed last my entire lifetime!

Of course I had heard others say that over and over again, but somehow I never thought that applied to me. Was I arrogant and thought I would outsmart all of this? Was I not feeling up to the task of a lifelong journey?

For most of us who have a long history of child sexual abuse, our lives have always been about getting through this moment and that crisis. We were conditioned to just "get through" events in our lives. In other words: to survive them. When asked to look at "the big picture" or "5 years out" or "10 years out", I used to think to myself "What are you talking about? Do people really think like this?"

The world we live in feeds into a moment-to-moment and crisis-to-crisis pattern. We compete against this all the time. Our 2012 world is one in which time is compressed. We can know what someone is thinking instantly via Twitter or Instant Message, news anywhere in the world is instantly splashed all over Cable TV or on your Web browser... the volume of information available to us is so enormous that we have no time to process it. The pace of "normal" life is ridiculous but many of us have come to accept it and pass it on to the next generation by over scheduling our children and doing away with time honored traditions like sitting down and talking!

In stark contrast, a healing journey is centered around expanding time. For example, a trigger can instantly lead to a mental collapse or a self-destructive act. But if we can learn to expand time, we can become aware of what happens between the trigger and the response, and we can intervene. Even though the chain of events can go by quite quickly, there is a chain of events. I believe that is what all of healing is about.

If we are an active participant in our fast-paced modern world, I think healing must involve committing ourselves to finding a balance, which means having time for resting, self-soothing, and self-reflection. That is not easy, because for many, the fast pace can be a convenient distraction.

The growth in our western hemisphere of eastern influences of yoga, tai chi, mindfulness and meditation of the past decade or more, have been enormously helpful to so many people. Many of these can be tools to help us broaden our awareness, expand time, and restore that elusive balance. It is possible.

This is what I try to tell myself pretty much every day. It does not always work. I am not always safe. Or content. Or happy. But I do fully accept this journey I am on.

I am going to try to write more here. It was helpful for so long and for some reason I am having difficulty finding the right words. I still do write a lot in my private journal, but it seems distilling from that what I want to put here is a bottleneck. The next Expressive Arts Carnival Activity will be posted on June 1, 2012.

Here are the entries in the order received.

Entry 1: Alice

New contributor Alice wrote: "The core belief that holds me back is the belief in innocence, or the belief that I'm not innocent anyway."

Entry 2: Algo4ME4Once

Algo4ME4Once titled her entry "Helping Arms/Hands" and wrote: "In Greek Mythology, Apollo tried to carry the weight of so much, that he fell apart. I recently got compared to Apollo, in that I carry the weights' of our human world on my shoulders', taking it all on, and it is one reason my body is even collapsing physically, so often. Sometimes I feel if I did not, then who would, not that I choose, it feels as if it just happens because I am human and really care a great deal about humanity. "

Entry 3: Wantstorun

Wantstorun wrote: "The central figure is a graphic "W."  A core belief we have is that we are *&^%#@.  Ways we are working to change that core belief are: Reminding ourselves of the present time; looking to our inner children, because don't consider the Littles to be *&^%#@; some use faith, and the acceptance we receive through the church; and we try to continue educating ourselves about trauma, PTSD, DID, and so on."

Entry 4: Castorgirl

Castorgirl wrote: "I started this drawing with the intent of showing how my feeling of standing on the outside of society, or being a "square peg" could be supported so that I could feel more included.  But, this seemed to morph into a piece which showed the highly defensive space that I'm in at the moment."

Entry 5: Paul

Paul (me) wrote: "I guess I put up the prompt knowing what I wanted to do. This is what I struggle with. The core belief is that I am worthless. The circles and curves are meant to help change that belief. It was all about process and intention."

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.

The Carnival will now be on a bi-monthly schedule. Our next activity will be posted on or around May 1.

But as she was driving home, she saw a small old wooden sign at the end of a driveway. It said: "Special Easter Eggs For Sale."

The Mom breathed a sigh of relief and hoped that they still had some left.

She stopped in and went up to the barn. An older heavy-set woman was there. She had white hair, dirty glasses, and was wearing a tattered dress that had definitely seen better days. She looked a bit scary. But when the Mom went up to the woman to inquire about the eggs, she perked right up and had a huge smile across her face.

The old woman said "Yes, I still have Easter eggs." The Mom said "That's wonderful.! The sign in front says 'special' Easter eggs. What does that mean?"

The woman took a big sigh and said: "Oh. Well, all my eggs are special because they come from hens that grew up near the real Easter Bunny. I do have one 'special' egg left, but I can't tell you why it's special."

This intrigued the Mom. "What do you mean you can't tell me?"

"You would have to find out for yourself," replied the old woman carefully.

The Mom was curious. "Can I have one?"

The old lady said "The only way you can have the 'special' egg is if you make a promise."

"What's the promise?"

"You have to promise to take care of the egg for the rest of your life and it must pass from generation to generation."

"What?" exclaimed the Mom quizzically.

"You will see..." said the old woman as she got up from her chair.

The Mom agreed to the terms. The old woman wrapped up 23 eggs in cartons, and put the 'special' one in a big carton with all kinds of padding to keep it safe.

As the Mom left, the old woman said "Remember your promise..."

So the Mom took the eggs home to her kids and she told them about the 'special' egg, which by the way the Mom had not actually seen.

They colored all the regular eggs and then turned to the huge box with the 'special' one.

They were all excited to find out what it was like. They all said things like: "It is probably made of gold", "Maybe it's the largest egg in the world", "Maybe it's naturally rainbow colored."

But when they took it out of the box with all the padding, they all looked at each other in disbelief.

It didn't look very special.

In fact, it had thirteen cracks in it. There was egg yolk seeping from the inside that had gelled up and got hard. It was kind of disgusting looking. And it smelled too.

The Mom and older daughter thought they were duped by the old lady and assumed she just used the word 'special' on her sign to get people to buy her eggs. They were about to throw the 'special' egg away, when Dolly, the youngest girl, said: "I'm not so sure. I think we should keep the promise." Dolly set the egg aside carefully.

When the Dad came home from being away for a few days, Dolly and her Dad fixed all the cracks very carefully. They used a glue that was very rare and specially made for fixing delicate objects. They worked for hours and hours until the egg was stronger than any other egg in the world.

When they were done, Dolly placed it on a small red velvet pillow on her Dad's dresser where he keeps all the objects his kids have made for him.

The egg stayed there for years. Every week or so, Dolly and her Dad would clean it and make sure the cracks were still fixed. Once in a while they had to put on a little more glue. Because they did that, the egg stayed strong.

When Dolly got married, her Mom and Dad gave her the egg."Remember what the old woman made us promise? We are supposed to pass the egg down from generation to generation."

So, Dolly took the egg to her new house. She put it on her dresser on the same red velvet pillow.

Her new husband took one look at the egg, raised his eyebrows and said "Really? Why do you want to keep that?"

Dolly took a breath and simply stated "It's a special egg."

Her husband laughed at her. "Special? It's all glued up and doesn't look very pretty."

Dolly tried to explain. "It's special because a long time ago it was was broken and we fixed it and took care of it."

Similar to this story from last time I was in the hospital, my youngest daughter again asked me to tell her a story over the phone when she went to bed this evening. When I finished she said she liked the story, but immediately said "I don't get it." We talked a little bit and eventually she saw it in terms of objects that have sentimental value. That's the perfect take home for a 10 year old. For me, it means a bit more.

On another note, the Expressive Arts Carnival No. 16 will be posted within a few days. So there is still time to send in your entry. ]]> http://www.mindparts.org/2012/04/the-special-egg.html http://www.mindparts.org/2012/04/the-special-egg.html Expressive Writing Sun, 08 Apr 2012 22:19:57 -0500 Welcome to Activity No. 16 of the Expressive Arts Carnival for the month of March 2012. Thank you to all who participate and a special welcome if you are new!

This month's theme:

If you have questions on this theme, please ask them in the comments.

Entries are due by Wednesday, March 28, 2012 and will be published shortly thereafter.

You may also feel free to send me a link to a page hosted on your own site (or blog), if you have one. If you do not have a blog post specifically on your entry, and you do have a blog, please tell me if you would like a link to your blog in the carnival. It is important to repeat that nobody is required to have a website in order to participate.

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.

My last post was a system map, a tool I first wrote about last October. The ability to make such maps is something I have worked to achieve over the course of many years, and I find it to be an invaluable tool.

I am finding it difficult to write in the ways I have become used to here. I do not seem to have a sense of confidence in understanding much about how I use dissociation and how that may be related to others' experiences. I also seem to have difficulty sharing much of anything that is even remotely personal. I feel very much alone in my struggles.

So I will write about what is going on for me somewhat abstractly via the most recent system map from this morning with labels of aspects of me removed for safety.

My system maps change regularly, as probably anyone who regularly dissociates. That is not anything new or surprising. In fact, it is one of the more validating tools I have available to me that paints a crystal clear picture of how drastically the elements of my psyche can shift over short (and long) periods of time. It is validating because to make such a map, I need to really be able to check in with all aspects of me, and it is clear that what is happening is not simply a mood shift or a influx of thoughts.

This period has been dominated by the resurgence of a particular part who holds an enormous amount of information as well as power. My psyche is very complex right now, more so than usual which is saying quite a lot. Safety has been compromised, but a good deal of information is being shared and connections are being made that I had not even considered in my now two decade journey of healing.

The timing of these shifts is clearly related to the Easter season. They came to a climax on Ash Wednesday last week, a relative benign day when compared to Good Friday or Easter Sunday, holy days which have been dominated in the past by conflicts within and beyond me; about good versus evil, God versus Satan, and the like. These are some of the core conflicts which have never been resolved in relation to my past experience (or understood or even accepted).

They are now pressing for attention. There is no alternative but to dedicate myself to addressing them. Until last night, I felt like a fish out of water. But I was able to communicate internally and information was shared that helped these conflicts be a little less difficult. This system map, then, is a sort of visual representation of how the information has been shared.

Information sharing, a form of internal communication, is perhaps the single most important tool we can have in healing from the unhealthy aspects of a dissociative existence. That is a statement I would have scoffed at just a few years ago. I would say "What are you crazy? You have no idea what you are saying!" But I have found that it is true.]]> http://www.mindparts.org/2012/02/state-changes.html http://www.mindparts.org/2012/02/state-changes.html Art Therapy Dissociation System Map Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:06:00 -0500