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\nComment by I’m Still Standing\u00a0on 07 Jan 2010 at 6:49 am<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n
Dear Karen,<\/span><\/p>\n
Another person posted a question to you about how you were able to know the difference between real and imaginary while trying to live in reality. I loved your answer that you chose not to pretend that you were fine and nothing had happened to you and you gained so much in facing your reality and your past. I struggle with pretending, myself. I am a survivor of some extreme abuse, but I have no evidence that it really happened other than the marks it has left on my psyche. I had amnesia about it all until about 20 years ago when I began having flashbacks (The flashbacks sometimes came with a different sense of self.). I have been in therapy and healing ever since. My therapists have believed me, but my family denies that any of it happened. I still go in and out of minimizing it\/pretending to myself that it never happened. My life as an adult is so different than my childhood. I am not around abusive people or that kind of trauma any more. Sometimes I feel inside myself such a profound disconnection between past and present circumstances and pain. It seems memories, feelings, different senses of selves are frozen inside and I keep it all locked there, no longer needed today. Perhaps this feels emotionally safer to me, but the internal disconnection is interfering with my quality of life now. I often feel empty inside, especially when stressed. It seems \u201cI\u201d go away and what is left is an empty shell. Sometimes when tired or stressed I hear snippets of conversations in my head. It feels like other parts of myself talking to one another about which one is going to perform some abstract task behind the scenes in my psyche. Usually my conscious mind is not able to hold on to the content of these conversations. Years ago with a different therapist, I would share time with a child part of myself. The adult part of me was always there too. I never lose time or find things I don\u2019t remember acquiring. Nor do I have any other symptoms of multiplicity. When I try to talk about these other senses of self in therapy I have felt my experience has been either dismissed or misunderstood. Currently, my therapists and psychiatrist think I could be suffering from delusions that anti-psychotic medication could cure. I find it difficult not to get lost in confusion and fear. It is hard to hold on to my truths in the face of lack of external evidence, therapists who don\u2019t seem to get it and most of all a desire to pretend in order to keep myself emotionally safe. I know you are not a therapist and cannot tell me whether I have some form of MPD. I would just like to read your comments as someone who has been on your own journey with this sort of thing.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Dear I’m Still Standing,<\/span><\/p>\n
Thank you for sharing your story. I understand. I also felt confused about my past and how to handle the bits of memory, or lack of memory, that caused my dark thoughts and feelings. It’s difficult to maintain inner peace without the knowledge of what may have happened.<\/span><\/p>\n
During my early years in therapy, I did not recall all the details of what happened to me because it was all was fragmented and distributed among my many alters. Each alter held a part of each episode of abuse, causing my inability to initially remember one whole single attack.<\/span><\/p>\n
I believe the marks left on your psyche are your evidence. If you are experiencing ill feelings and have felt the pain of the past, chances are you are temporarily being spared the memory. In my case, as I focused and began to let myself recall my fractured past, the memories came flooding back. \u00a0Feelings are real and no one can change the way you feel. No one but you has\u00a0felt your pain. Trust yourself. \u00a0You need a patient therapist who lets you explore this, but doesn’t try to force it.<\/span><\/p>\n
I started having flashbacks after the birth of my daughter at 23. Before that I had small flashbacks that I dismissed. But I always\u00a0felt something wasn’t right. \u00a0Like you, I would hear snippets of conversation that were coming from within me, not from the outside. At the time I’d never heard of multiplicity and was afraid to share for many reasons.<\/span><\/p>\n
I am glad to hear you are not surrounded by abusive people. That’s incredible! I\u2019ve found myself a magnet for dysfunctional people until I learned\u00a0in therapy\u00a0that I was drawing them towards me by having low self-esteem and unconsciously carrying the guilt of being a sexual abuse victim. I was never aware of these actions until I recognized them. <\/span><\/p>\n
I understand how your family denies all that happened. My family did the same. I never shared my story with my own mother. I tried, but I was unheard; she acknowledged some abuse but felt there was no point in dragging it all up. My mother never understood, though she’d never admit it.<\/span><\/p>\n
I can’t advise you on whether medication is right for you. As you already know, I\u2019m not a therapist and can’t give advice. Medication never worked for me. In my opinion, based on my own personal experience, I can’t see anti-psychotic medication helping a multiple. I admit, there were a few times I needed to calm down, and\u00a0for those times Dr. Baer prescribed Xanax, to take as needed, though I rarely took one.<\/span><\/p>\n
What worked for me was decided between myself and Dr. Baer. My symptoms of impaired recall, switching, lost time, alter interference, and inner system functioning were unique to me. I believe your therapists will learn in time what may work\u00a0in your therapy.<\/span><\/p>\n
Wishing you a safe journey to discovering what happened to you so that you can put your ill feelings behind you. May you\u00a0step out of your past and continue to live\u00a0your future abuse free.\u00a0Please know that there are reasons for all that you are feeling. If\u00a0your past trauma is meant to be known, the memories will surface again.<\/span><\/p>\n
Karen <\/span><\/p>\n
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Comment by I’m Still Standing\u00a0on 07 Jan 2010 at 6:49 am Dear Karen, Another person posted a question to you about how you were able to know the difference between real and imaginary while trying to live in reality. I loved your answer that you chose not to pretend that you were fine and nothing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-karens-answers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1895"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1897,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1895\/revisions\/1897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}