A sequel to my previous post, "Fragments of PTSD."


At age 6, my parents decided that the local public school was not good enough for us, so I got sent to a private school.  The main thing I remember was being told off for forgetting my first homework assignment ever, and how made me feel like I was bad.  Unfortunately, that set the tone of my school years: forgetting assignments and getting in trouble for it and feeling more and more like a failure.  I was also forever missing the school bus.  One time I asked my mother to drive me to school, and she did, only she spent an hour or two visiting friends and running errands, while I grew more and more frantic, before finally dropping me off at school.  I learned my lesson — I never asked her again.

Starting in 5th grade, that school split us up into a boys' school and a girls' school, and that's when my hell really began.  They had required after-school athletics, such as tackle football, baskeball, etc., which I was no good at and didn't particularly want to be good at; I got called queer, sissy, and weirdo; I got harassed and ostracized by both adults and children for not being tough enough and not being interested in being tough.

But things were actually worse in classes.  By that time, just being there was so painful that I would zone out whenever I could, by daydreaming or reading or drawing diagrams, and that got me in trouble a lot.  The school took as its mission to turn us boys into what they thought boys should be, and when it didn't work on me, they just upped the pressure.  I got sent to the principal's office many times, and each time, he'd look out the window at the classroom wings and say, "all those people are able to do it, why aren't you doing it?"  It succeeded in making me feel like the lowest of the low, but by then I was in such a constant state of panic that I never managed to do what they wanted me to do.

They had a system of "demerits."  Teachers and administrators could give one for whatever they thought best, and you had to bring in the slip the next day, signed by your parents, and then come in on Saturday for an hour for each demerit.  I wasn't disruptive, but I seemed to collect demerits like a shaggy dog collects burrs.  Many of them were for forgetting to get my demerit slips signed, and I remember many a time calling my mother and desperately begging her to come by and sign the slips so I wouldn't get any more demerits; of course, she never did.  If you got 10 demerits in a semester, you got suspended for a week: I got suspended every semester.  Since I wanted to please people, you can imagine how this made me feel.

I didn't get any support at home, either.  My parents, and indeed all the adults I knew, thought my troubles were my fault and I should just stop being stubborn and do what I was supposed to do.  My father, in particular, enjoyed teasing me when I cried or was upset.  Whenever I got suspended, he would call me "the demerit queen."  "Queen" because my older brother, who also got suspended every semester, already had the title of "demerit king."

During those years, I seriously thought about killing myself every day.  I planned out how I would do it.  But whenever I visualized actually going through with it, I got scared off.  I knew if I tried, I would have to succeed, because my mother had already indicated that she thought suicides were bad people for not taking into account how bad it made other people feel.  If I ever thought a failed suicide attempt might get me a little sympathy, her comment made it clear that it wouldn't.

I might have gone on like this until I did kill myself or maybe withdraw into a catatonic state, but somewhere near the end of sixth grade, my older brother — the one who terrorized me through most of my childhood (my parents knew about it but did nothing) — had a conversation with me and helped me see that if I was that miserable at That Awful School, I should tell my parents I wanted to switch to the public school.  I did, and they did.  And my life got a lot better.  Junior high was no picnic, but fortunately the teachers and administrators had bigger problems than me, so they mostly left me alone.  Which, by this time, was all I wanted out of life.  Just to be left alone.  I had no interest in friendship or love or anything to do with anyone else.

The experience left me with a tendency to suicidal ideation and a burned-in sense of my own worthlessness, both of which plague me to this day.  And when I'm criticized or make a mistake, that feeling that everything I've done, am doing, or ever will do is wrong comes up and grabs me by the neck, and it takes me hours or days before I can handle the situation with my adult brain.  If trauma is like a stick of dynamite going off inside your mind, these experiences are like little bits of that dynamite being triggered by a careless footstep.  I still can't deal even with the memory of that time; one time, my therapist tried to use EMDR to help me deal with it, and I dissociated for something like 10 or 15 minutes.  I always say that I'm not afraid of Hell because I lived there, and once you've lived there, you'll never be entirely free of it.

They say that when you have children of your own, you understand your parents better, but for me, it was the opposite.  I raised two high-maintenance children (one is on the Autistic spectrum, the other was finally — at age 16 — diagnosed with ADHD/inattentive variety), and my parents' behavior boggles my mind even more now than when I was young.  It must have been obvious to both my parents and the school that what they were doing wasn't working and was, if anything, making things worse.  It must have been obvious that I was miserable.  Yet they just kept on doing the same things that hadn't worked before, and it was left to 11-year-old me and my 14-year-old, severely disturbed older brother to figure out what to do about it.  Every time I think back to those days, I can't help saying, "what were they thinking ???"

Asche,

Your story about an awful school is not the same as mine, but in many ways similar.  The issue is that the public schools I attended up through 8th grade (age 14) were, to me, hell.  The break came the summer after 8th grade when my parents moved and I ended up in a closer to "normal" public school.  I have no doubt that had I been forced to attend high school in that first, awful school district, I would have been driven to suicide.  One of the teachers had even spoken with my mother about the worst of the issues -- and she blew him off just as much as me.  The move was based on other factors with no consideration to making life livable for me.  I am sure I was NOT a wanted child.

I have been working through therapy for the last five years.  The method that is helping me is Internal Family Systems therapy.  The book that sheds light is "The Mosaic Mind: Empowering the Tormented Selves of Child Abuse Survivors" by Goulding and Schwartz.  The issue here is that prior to this work the psychological community had no method to actually help survivors of prolonged, severe, child abuse -- like us -- and all their blather just consigned us to further stigma and pathologization; basically giving up and saying we are hopelessly broken.  This method offers hope.  There is a lot of work to do and I am no shining success story; but at last I see what seems a light at the end of the tunnel.

IFS starts out by making the case an amount of multiplicity is NORMAL.  For a survivor of child abuse there is more multiplicity; again NORMAL.  The utter end of the spectrum is DID.  To know the difference you need the aid of a skilled therapist (not an Internet forum).  The key aspect in IFS is working with self; and for survivors of chid abuse finding self is an arduous task.  It has taken me most of the five years to finally get a good understanding of what inside me constitutes self (hence, why I say I see a light at the end of the tunnel).

You are NOT alone.  There is hope.  See if your therapist knows about IFS and in particular the book I noted.  This is something you need to walk through with a competent professional -- self help does not work here.  The difficult memories need to be dealt with one by one once you fully have self on the team and a good therapist to walk you through.  The last thing you want to is break in before the system is ready and release all the pent up pain with no way of dealing with it.

I really hope this helps.  Hang in there!

<<Hugs>>


Erin

Oh Asche. (Hugs)

Hon. We do understand - our stories are all remarkably similar.

IFS works on the principles that dissociation and personas operate as a functional personality - the less the trauma, the fewer parts, and the less discernible they are as seperate entities.

We created a map of parts - we have a significant number that we are aware of, and we have a significant number of exiles - the number and nature of which we do not know. In that missing bunch is our original self.

For us the parts are quite distinct, and individual -hence my questions in therapy, about where on this spectrum we sit - it's all a spectrum.

(Hugs) because you deserve it


Rowan

Quote from: Asche on August 29, 2018, 08:58:26 PM
By that time, just being there was so painful that I would zone out whenever I could

one time, my therapist tried to use EMDR to help me deal with it, and I dissociated for something like 10 or 15 minutes.

It's difficult to stand back far enough to appreciate how fortunate we are to be able to dissociate- as children and now. Early on in my recovery I had absolutely NO memory of the days Flytrap would express herself, where she had been or what she had done. Waking up the next morning it was like the day before never existed for me. Flashbacks lasted upwards of an hour. Screaming at the top of my lungs curled up in a corner like a small animal- 155 of them since 2011. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Months and years later I would begin to have some glimpse of my alters' pain. But each and every flashback has been a vital cathartic step. Somehow my mind decides I am ready to know, relives the horror, brings it to conscious thought and moves on.

I posted a summary of my childhood in this thread: https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,239664.msg2161008.html#msg2161008

Quote from: Asche on August 29, 2018, 08:58:26 PM
The main thing I remember was being told off for forgetting my first homework assignment ever

I was also forever missing the school bus.

I remember many a time calling my mother and desperately begging her to come by and sign the slips so I wouldn't get any more demerits; of course, she never did.

My parents, and indeed all the adults I knew, thought my troubles were my fault and I should just stop being stubborn and do what I was supposed to do.

These things were NOT your fault, Asche. They were Your PARENTS Responsibly.

Quote from: Asche on August 29, 2018, 08:58:26 PMEvery time I think back to those days, I can't help saying, "what were they thinking "

Themselves, Asche...
As children we were desperate for our parent's love. When they failed to give it to us, we blamed ourselves as the reason to maintain our image of them being loving parents. I still struggle with putting the good and the bad of my parents into perspective. It has helped to understand they too were the product of their upbringing. Abusers marry abusers, the atrocity getting worse generation after generation until a child like me says enough, it ends with me, and refuses to have children of his own. The cycle is so predictable it makes me want to vomit...

Quote from: Virginia on August 30, 2018, 11:31:33 AM
These things were NOT your fault, Asche. They were Your PARENTS Responsibly.

I'm not going to let the school off the hook, though.  There's plenty of blame to spread around.  They should have been able to see that what they were doing was counter-productive.

But that would have required some insight and some empathy, both of which are antithetical to the kind of masculinity they were indoctrinating us kids in.  It's a great way to educate children to cheerfully lynch African-Americans or massacre unarmed people or snatch small children from their families and keep them in cages or to run concentration camps.

For years after I left there, I had fantasies of showing up with an automatic rifle and just shooting everyone in sight.

Quote from: Virginia on August 30, 2018, 11:31:33 AM

Quote from: Asche on August 29, 2018, 08:58:26 PM
    Every time I think back to those days, I can't help saying, "what were they thinking ???"

Themselves, Asche...
As children we were desperate for our parent's love. When they failed to give it to us, we blamed ourselves as the reason to maintain our image of them being loving parents. I still struggle with putting the good and the bad of my parents into perspective. It has helped to understand they too were the product of their upbringing.

My own view of my parents is that they were children who didn't want to grow up and assume the responsibilities of grown-ups.  My father clearly wanted a mommy who would manage his home (and kids) so he could spend all his non-work time on his hobbies and resented it when he was expected to deal with problems at home or even give my mother enough to run the house.  And I think my mother wanted a daddy who would treat her like a princess and deal with all the hard and "ugly" things in life for her.  She wasn't able to see other people as anything but actors in a morality play centered around herself, so she could only see my problems as a reflection or burden on her.  Being a parent requires being able to put your own needs and wants and feelings aside enough to deal with your children's needs, and my parents couldn't do that.

Like most parents, when they first had kids, they were confronted with how different and how much harder raising kids is than they'd ever imagined.  But I think that, unlike most parents, they refused to come to terms with the reality and always seemed to feel that it was horribly unfair.  On numerous occasions, my mother would say, "I don't like babies.  I don't like children until they're old enough to have intellectual discussions with them."  And yet she went and had five of them.

BTW, a number of replies seem to assume that I have DID.  I don't.  I may change somewhat with my moods, but I'm always the same person.

Although I do feel like I have a child — the child I was when I was 6 or 8, or the child I should have been — locked up in a dank dark cell deep within my mind, suffering and crying hopelessly.  But she doesn't have a separate identity, she's really me.  I've tried to heal her, and to the extent I can make her feel at all better, I make myself feel better, because she's me.

I sometimes say I dissociated a lot as a child, but it was mostly me going off in some fantasy where the hell I lived in wasn't there and I wasn't there, either.  I'd fantasize about the lives of bees (but not that I was a bee) or imagine whole cities in a tall weed, or imagine my ideal railroad (my father was a railfan, so I decided to be one, so I could somehow relate to him.)  Some people escape through alcohol, or drugs.  I escaped by filling my mind with stuff that had nothing to do with me or my world, to the point that I wasn't there any more.  (Making music has the same effect: it demands all of my mind, so for a time I don't think of the awful stuff.)

Quote from: Asche on August 30, 2018, 02:21:29 PM
I sometimes say I dissociated a lot as a child, but it was mostly me going off in some fantasy where the hell I lived in wasn't there and I wasn't there, either...

That is dissociation, Asche, just like zoning out during an EMDR session. I use/used counting alot. Rolling the eyeballs upwards into the head is another common method for causing oneself to dissociate.

Perhaps not so much assuming DID as seeing the symptoms of a dissociative disorder. Dissociation is a spectrum and dissociative disorders are all treated the same way. PTSD, DA, DID, DDD, DDNOS, MOUSE are codes the doctors use to fill out insurance forms.

Asche, you are.

That's the most important thing.

IFS is a psychological model or practice that has developed specifically through the treatment of those with PTSD and cPTSD, a link that until recently has been elusive, and one that has opened up ways for ourselves to describe what it feels like, or what is going on, and practitioners therefore to be able to help. Using it is not DID, or a diagnosis of DID, more of an acceptance and acknowledgment of the 'parts' that we are - our fragments.

Through IFS the link between DID and trauma was able to be inferred, as was the understanding that these were coping mechanisms that are ancient.

So, the spectrum runs from ancient Tibetan monk, mindful and ever present to PTSD, then CPTSD, DDNOS all the way up to DID, and everyone is on it, and at some times, in a better or worse place than others - just like our sense of gender.

Hopefully that helps?

(Hugs)


Rowan

Quote from: Sno on August 30, 2018, 03:03:39 PM
the spectrum runs from ancient Tibetan monk, mindful and ever present...

I have practiced yoga and meditation for many years and also believed this to be true. Only recently have I realized there is a distinct difference between dissociation and mindful ever presence. To an outside it "looks" the same; I was even convinced the state nondissociative people long for just came easy to me. But I my dissociative coping mechanism is very different from the heightened and non attached awareness of the world I experience as a result of meditation. Practice for me now is about learning to remain present rather than slipping into my comfortable dissociative black hole of timelessness I had "thought" to be the goal of meditation.

Quote from: Virginia on August 30, 2018, 03:23:15 PM
I have practiced yoga and meditation for many years and also believed this to be true. Only recently have I realized there is a distinct difference between dissociation and mindful ever presence. To an outside it "looks" the same; I was even convinced the state nondissociative people long for just came easy to me. But I my dissociative coping mechanism is very different from the heightened and non attached awareness of the world I experience as a result of meditation. Practice for me now is about learning to remain present rather than slipping into my comfortable dissociative black hole of timelessness I had "thought" to be the goal of meditation.

It's amazing isn't it, how meditation is portrayed as 'zoning out' to relieve stress - lots of folk are teaching themselves how to dissociate - which is ironic, as they may well be stressed from dissociation due to trauma... my view is that meditation is the practice of 'now', and observing the sensations and responding wisely to them...

The commander.

(Argh. At least we are aware when they intervene. )

It's nice to meet you, Commander.

We are on the same page. That meditation is portrayed as 'zoning out' to relieve stress  and folk are TEACHING themselves how to dissociate- a state of mind we are struggling furiously to overcome...Is Terrifying.