Transcript: Episode 335
335. Self States
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[Short piano piece is played, lasting about 20 seconds]
Nothing is as I expected today. Or this week. I didn't even know how to talk in therapy this morning. Because there was so much happening inside my head. She said just starting anywhere I wanted, or couldn't land, or just resting in the quiet was okay too. That we have choices.
We were supposed to be in Florida tonight for Healing Together with Infinite Mind. I had even thought at one point when the children first got vaccinated that maybe we could take everyone if I worked really, really hard, so that they could experience it too. Even though I know that's just a dream, because there's too many of us. And there's no way we could afford that. But I thought about it. But with Omicron it wasn't quite safe enough for us with our daughter with a complex airway. And with the winter storm moving in with ice and snow on its way, our flight was canceled anyway. Which maybe was the better and safer way to go. Or not go. So I'm trying to hold space for acceptance. Of just understanding that once again it's not our turn to be there. I don't want those feelings dismissed as FOMO or fear of missing out. It's not that. It's just disappointment. Because for the first time I have friends, and I came so close to getting to see them in person. Which maybe is overwhelming. Well, really is very overwhelming. But would be possible with them, safe with them.
The ISSTD conference in Seattle is coming up and I still don't know if I can go. Not just finances, but physically, neurologically, I don't know if I can do it. That's not fear. I'm being honest, compassionate with myself, accepting where I'm at. Knowing what I know about me and my brain.
Once we knew that it was not safe because of COVID for us to go to Florida, we tried getting an Airbnb, or a hotel room, maybe an Airbnb because it would be safer than a hotel room, I guess, theoretically, to be away from home, to have a respite, to still enjoy the conference virtually, but have a break from the children and the responsibilities at home. But the storm is coming, and I don't want to be in a strange place without resources in case it's really as bad as they say it will be. It's already cold and it's already snowing. But they would say we will have a lot of snow and ice too, and that's one thing, and if we were further north, our home and our environment and the world around us would be more prepared for that, even if it were hard. But here, they don't know what to do with snow or ice, and everything stops, including our electricity. So instead of getting on a flight, and going on adventures in Florida where it's warm, and meeting with friends in real life, we're here. Cooking things in the crock pot and a pot full of beans just in case we aren't able to have electricity so that I can still feed the children.
The Airbnb idea was a good one until the storm was coming. And it was such a good idea, and the husband was so impressed that we were going to care for ourselves like that, that he called his sister. And she flew here with a COVID test to stay with his parents, so that he could come home for a week while I was away, so that he could be with the children. They were excited about this, because we've been in shelter in place, which means he couldn't come home. But numbers are going down as quickly as they said they would, and even hospital numbers are going down. All of it's still too high, but going down. And so it means he could come home after quarantining for a week. So he's done that. And he's here. And I would be excited and celebrating, except it's a big adjustment, having a man in my house, his house, our house, when he's been gone for a year. And I'm not that person that I was. I've not forgotten him. But also I don't remember him. I mean, I do. I know who he is. But I don't know who I am. I do. I know I do. But I am not who I was.
And a lot has changed since he left. Inside and out, everything has changed. Our home has changed, our town has changed the land where we live has changed. The children have grown. The chickens are gone. Our friends that we thought we had don't even contact me anymore. And friends I never knew I had, that we found through groups, are the ones who stayed. I guess that tells me something. Even the grief has lost its flavor. And there is relief, I think, in having found my own tribe. People who understand. People who now with Healing Together have officially been our friends for a year. That's a big deal in my world. I've missed groups so many weeks in a row, because my children have been in crisis, back in quarantine, adjusting, screaming and throwing things, recovering themselves again. And it's taken all my spoons to hold a steady presence, to coregulate with them, to be present with them. I had nothing left for me. Except sleep. And even when I tried to make groups, something happened every time. And I have to work really hard not to resent them for it. Because I know that's not their fault. And they're just children. And it's my job to be present with them. And it's my job to tend to them. I know that's most important. But it's a lot easier when I can tend to myself as well.
My dietitian says it's non-negotiable. And I've been practicing that. Getting better at eating three times a day. That's my goal right now. Still. I can almost do it every other day. And I sleep hard because I'm exhausted, beyond weary. Sometimes when the weather was still nice, I was able to take the children for walks on the city paths while everyone was at work and school. They like to go to the skate park. They think they're tough and cool. And when we find it empty, they can skate and I walk in circles around the parking lot. Doing my best in the ways that I can.
But this week, that does not include an Airbnb or Florida. The husband and I will still speak on Saturday. If you're coming to hear us, I'll try to have some energy by then. The husband has been gracious. He moved in the small refrigerator into the closet, of all things. It makes me laugh just telling the story. And he said he would sleep on the couch so that we could keep ourselves locked in the suite, our bedroom with the giant closet. So that we still had our own experience and could focus on whatever headspace we need for the conference. And it is beyond kind and gracious of him. But also, it feels terrible to finally be under one roof and send him to the couch. We're not that kind of couple. I've never sent him to the couch. And this isn't some kind of spat. He's trying to be helpful. He wants to be supportive to all of me. And that's where I get stuck even for therapy. Because I just want to be me. Just a human being. Even if a tired one, a weary one.
They say it's a paradox. Well, they say it's a delusion. But it feels like a paradox where there are many of me, but I am just one of me. Just me, with all of them as me, and none of them me at all. It hurts my brain trying to think about it. I told my new therapist that maybe it's a mistake. Maybe DID is not a thing. I don't want to be delusional. And I want to be better. But it's hard to be better and in touch with reality when doing so gets crazier along the way, at first. Being just me denies them. Accepting them denies being only me. I am a new me, but haven't talked about that with my therapist or my husband because I don't want things to be worse. I don't want to be crazier. I don't want to be unwell.
My husband knows. He said when he came home that he's aware that really stressful situations… [11 second pause] …can cause splits or more alters, or something like that. I don't remember what words he used. And he acknowledged that the last few years have been difficult and hard. I just tried to smile and I patted his arm and I said, “I remember you. Don't worry.” But I don't remember how to be her. I don't know how to find the spoons to smile. I don't know how to live having learned to tolerate my feelings, and also notice what there is there to feel, because it's so much.
Every time I try to talk with my new therapist, even about the most basic things, I just start crying. I mean, somebody's crying. I'm talking in regular words and I'm just fine, but tears pour down my face. Unwelcome, unbidden, unclaimed. I don't know why. I don't know how. I don't know what that's called. But I can't make it stop. I'm okay. I'm not in crisis. But I think there's just so much there, and it's still coming out. But I haven't made it to the place yet where my words and my feelings all can match at the same time.
Because of the storm, the children are out of school. I mean, we've been homeschooling them, but doing their virtual work as well. But now their whole school is out for three days, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, plus the weekend, Saturday and Sunday. That's five days because of the weather where people literally can't go anywhere. And so finally, the whole world is in quarantine with us. Which technically makes Monday the safest day they could go back to school, even for a season. It makes me nervous. Because I don't want to get sick, and I know our turn is coming. We can't hide from it forever. We were waiting until there was hospital support for the two that are medically fragile, including our daughter with her complex airway. But our time is running out and it's going to be our turn. We're all vaccinated as much as we can be, and we wear masks. But our time is up. And Monday they go back to school. And we'll see how we do. I think I am numb to it now. But I don't think that's dissociating if I'm aware of it. I don't think it can be dissociating if I'm aware of it.
There is a lot of hard things, I guess, in my head. I don't mean to be so flat and not exciting. Or not sharing important educational things. This is just where I'm at. Our therapist keeps talking about our previous Kelly. Making sure we feel safe with our new Kelly now, our new therapist. As if maybe we're not done with therapy for therapy, after all. We've had a lot of rough experiences in therapy with therapy gone bad. And she says maybe we need to start there, if that's what feels like it's getting in the way. So we talked about it just a little bit before I gave the signal that we needed to stop because it was too much.
I said that it felt like domestic violence that we kept going back and going back and going back even though we were being harmed, and I felt foolish for that. I said that it felt like childhood. Where you say, “Hey, you're my caregiver. You're the one taking care of me. So it must be me who's wrong.” And it feels like failure, which I know we've talked in the Community a lot, so many big discussions about this and about how you can't fail therapy. But it feels like it when you're in an unsafe situation and can't get it right, or be good enough, or pray enough. She says it counts as religious trauma besides. That's when I stopped her. That I can't even go there yet. I'm so weary. But I see it. And I'm looking. And I'm showing up each week. And I'm trying to learn. We talk about Memory Time, and Now Time, and how DID is the experience between them.
I watched a training today. Rich Lowenstein was speaking. He called them “self states” and talked specifically about why we should say “self states” instead of parts or alters. He talked about animals, like how jelly fish sleep, and different examples of states in nature. He said that all of us have self states, and then it's different than just traits. And that it's not just about switching, but about shifting between them, or being aware of layers. And I think that's what I'm feeling and why I called this Emerging Self. I mean, it was a phrase that I heard from Mosquera, I think. But there was something I clung to. Maybe I just wanted to emerge from the last two years, from the pandemic, from my cocoon of grief.
I don't know if he's right, or if it just feels good. Because it's better than delusion. But still gives me access to my own experiences. So there's something softer about it, maybe. He said when we say “parts” colloquially, that that makes sense because it's easier to say and people understand what we mean, but that what we actually mean clinically is “self states.” And he says its self states in the same way we say self-esteem or self-expression. Our understanding, experience and presentation of the state that we're experiencing at the time. I'm not doing it justice, because that's not the state I'm in. But I've looked at the notes for a long time tonight. Because it was a piece of something to hold onto. Maybe hoping to shift my own state, if I can't make a switch. But I don't escape the delusion entirely, because he says when we refer to self states, we reify them. Which he says means taking something that is abstract and treating it as concrete.
This is why I'm sitting here, thinking about delusions. Because I want to be well. In some ways I've come so far and I've learned so much. And in other ways, I feel like I'm back at the beginning. Getting homework about journaling to them, or talking to them, or listening to them, telling her about them. I'm not, we're not disclosing anything yet, hardly. Except she's good and picks up on things that no one has ever noticed before. So that feels like trouble, in a strangely relieving kind of way. But I don't know how to do both things. How to accept them and also not reify them. How to accept me as me, when that's not my experience. And I can't deny it now because she knows about the books on the podcast, and we've talked about all of that, even ISSTD. There's no going back. I can't undo it, or take it away, or shut my eyes tight like a child and disappear. That's what's different than before.
He said self states with DID are different. He gave a quote from Kluft that says, “DID self state has a sense of its own identity and ideation, and a capacity for initiating thought processes and actions, which may be behaviorally enacted with noteworthy role-taking and role-playing dimensions, and sensitive to intrapsychic, interpersonal and environmental stimuli.” I guess that means easily triggered. I don't know how to do this, to sit in my own condition and accept my own condition, and also say, “It is who I am but it does not define me.” There are subtleties and nuances and layers of it all that I don't know how to untangle. But maybe that's why I'm in therapy.
He also talked about betrayal trauma and attachment. And I thought, “It's not working anymore.” To learn enough not to feel, to drown myself in vocabulary and theories in hopes to understand myself and explain myself without having to be myself.
Lowenstein said that having a more unified sense of self doesn't just mean a continuity of identity. But more accessibility to our memories and our knowledge and our skills. With increased consistency and deliberative integration of behavior. I don't mean parts, but of behaviors and experiences. And that we get increased self-control, overt state modulation or self-regulation. Those all sound like increased functioning, more effective functioning. And I thought I can't even remember if I've turned off the stove or not. I don't mean in an OCD way. I mean, I don't remember that I was cooking earlier today until someone says, “I think the beans are done.” And I smile and say, “thank you.” And act like it was all intentional.
I think one of the hardest things from the last year is that all the wrong parts got put in all the wrong situations. That was some of the stress. The parts of me that work have never been near the parts of me that have to parent. The parts of me that parent had no idea what I had to do for work. The parts of me that took care of appointments and school and teachers were not the same parts of me that want to snuggle or read to them. And that's not the same part as little ones who would play with them. And what happens when my outside children are growing up, and inside parts are not, everything has changed, inside and outside.
This is me trying to be present, trying to hold space for plans changing for disappointed feelings, for adapting expectations. We'll still attend the conference, even if it's virtual. Our bullet journal is ready with the pages decorated and space for taking notes. And I know we'll still interact with friends. Because that's how we met them in the first place. So everything's going to be okay. And if we have spoons left, we'll talk about it with the Community. Depending on time and children and spoons, always the spoons. Never enough spoons.
And now the husband's in my own house and still we're far apart. Except not really, our relationship is solid. Just separated by a door. Because of all of this. If I open the door and go out there to help him, to spend time with him, I don't get anything done that I needed to do this week while I was away. I worry it's not what was most important if I'm having to turn away my family to get it done. That's not okay with me. And I don't know how to untangle that. But also it's all been put on hold because of them and for them. And it sometimes just needs to be dealt with.
I had a book to finish this week before the conference started. I have the ISSTD presentation to get ready for, if I'm going to do it. We have the DID Awareness Day webinar coming up and getting ready for that. And even with Healing Together, it's just completely open. Me, the husband, a conversation, your questions. Please come with questions. Help us have a conversation.
I don't mind working hard. I don't mind pushing through hard things. But it's been so many right in a row. And there's no recovery time between. If I use this time to rest and recover, rare opportunities, while I have the chance while the husband is caring for the children, then I worry I won't get my things done. If I push through to get all of that done, I worry that I'll come out of this weekend even more exhausted than I went in. This is the challenge of being more aware of your self states, your parts, the others, however you want to say it. Is being more aware of those competing layers. Not just fighting for control, but really being at a loss at what to do, how to prioritize, how to even function. I tried a little today to get myself organized, to spend some time resting, to eat healthy foods, and to make sure I hugged the children before they went to bed. Because I am here, not in Florida. And so that's the right thing to do, consciously, intentionally. Even though I especially on therapy days don't want to be touched. Even if all we talked about was a previous Kelly and the conference this weekend. Maybe I'm in the trenches and can't see the work that I'm doing. Or maybe I'm just asleep and only dreaming. Or maybe this is normal, because I'm a human being, and I'm just as tired as everybody else in a pandemic in the middle of winter dealing with virtual school and trying to work and wishing I were away and feeling disappointed. Everything has changed. Being aware, learning, growing, even on the days that are not a crisis, but when it's also hard to feel progress, or to even know what's next. But we'll figure it out. Because that's what we do.
I'm gonna get the husband. I think what I need to do first is get the husband and talk with him, maybe on the podcast because it's relevant, about what happened with my family and why we took the book down, and parts of the website, and what's been making things so hard in the background. Because that's wearing me out.
So see? I'm already figuring it out. Just looking at the pieces and putting them in place, and seeing what I can contain, and where I can get support, and asking for help with clarity. Because even when we're weary, we don't give up.
I think sometimes I talk with the husband, even on the podcast, because if part of it is delusion, it's hard to trust what's real. Even inside of me. And I think that's why it matters so much to have others, like him, like a good therapist, like friends and groups, and at the conference. So I'll be there. And I'll find a way to share what we learn. And we'll keep trying.
[Break]
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