~~ Happy New Year ~~
.
Hey hello, hello 
I’ve been busy with the holidays, but I wanted to come write a quick note to say hello and most of all, to wish YOU the very best for this coming New Year.
What are you going to do this year?
How are you going to make your life better?
Sometimes it’s hard to remember that you really can make decisions that change your life, or at least affect your life. We ALL really can make this a New Year that takes our lives closer to being the kind of life we want.
What changes do you want in your life this year?
What things do you want to stay the same?
Think about it.
At this point in time, no one can affect your life more than you can.
You can make a bigger difference in your life than anyone else.
So…. hmmm… What are you going to do for yourself this year?
???!
HAPPY NEW YEAR.
May this New Year be your best year ever!
I wish you the best in your healing journey.
Warmly,
Kathy
Copyright © 2008-2018 Kathy Broady MSW and Discussing Dissociation
well, we had a long post written here about goals, but Missy decided to erase it all.
The part we just wrote about not being pushed around by her just all got erased too.
Happy New Year though. Good to see another post on your blog from her. First day of the year and you’ve got a post up– you’re on a roll 😉
I want to stay safe. I don’t want our abusers to find us. – The only thing I can think of right now to do for myself is keep moving forward. I’m so scared and trapped in the hurt and want to scream/cry. but I want to keep moving forward even if it just means get up every morning and make sure I shower every day and eat 3 meals a day every day this year… that will be a huge difference for me. Every piece of me wants to crawl 500 feet underground and hide away for forever but I’m already isolated enough. So what I’m doing – for me – is make sure I talk to at least one safe person each day.
I think the big thing this year will be finishing my degree! It looks as though I will graduate next December. Along the way will be figuring out all the details involved in applying to grad school, and actually doing them. I/we do better in life when we are in school…so graduating is a fairly scary prospect, but continuing on the higher education path will help. Then eventually we will be out in the world, hopefully making a difference, with the skills we’ve aquired along the way!
We should get our certificate in mental health this year. Still have a long way to go before done with school but will be nice to have something to show for what we have done so far.
Our big goal this year is to make decisions on all the stuff we have been not making a decision about, like having kids, confronting our family or not, other relationship questions…
And finally we are going to be truer to ourselves this year. We are done hiding and lying and making up excuses. We are who and what we are and that’s good. And anyone who only wants us in their life if we pretend to be someone other than who we are… well they don’t deserve to have us in their life.
Oh, and we are going to start going to an in-person support group at our church.
Gobbies
we are not in agreement about a lot of goals. bug wants t have a baby but most of us don’t want that. some want to get a drivers license some are afraid of having a drivers license. one thing that we all seem to agree on is we want to find a way to control who is out so that ones that don’t want to be out don’t get stuck out. sarah had the goal to make a carrot cake and she did that! so at least oe of us has already managed a goal for the year!
-s
This year I’m going to try to forget the past.
Caroline
“And yet, finding the courage to face the truth in the present is as necessary for your healing as dissociating the truth away once was necessary for your survival.”
I started this year quite depressed and found it really hard to look ahead. I have been re reading the posts on this site and re reading some of my old comments. I have found that to be very helpful offering some insights especially the amnesic dissociative walls stuff and things we dont want to deal with. I was feeling so lost because I dont know what I am not wanting to face.
Then it dawned on me of all the things that could never say, the people who I could never talk about or photographs that scare me. That every time my therapist tries to talk about my family I ‘go away’. I thought about the bad dreams i can never talk about and the feelings in my body that are too painful or too shameful to bring up. I challenged myself – what if there was some way to let my therapist know about some of these areas? Not talk about them yet – but just map them out in some sort of way.
This year I want try to face some things. This is really scary – so scary I told myself that it was impossible- but that is what i have been reading in Kathy’s posts about facing the stuff that scares us and having courage. Talking is so hard for me I shut down. i know I need to take small steps because when I take big steps I only get left behind. So that is my new project to get some of this stuff down to map out what I do know. I always felt like I dont have a story like the pages of a book that have just been torn out. I am realizing that maybe I do have a story and I just need the courage and strength to piece together the pages that I do have even if the pieces dont make sense on their own.
In my ‘story book’ I do have pages that record me being told I was a liar and that what I was seeing and feeling wasn’t the way it was. So how can I now know how trust myself? I have been beginning to see my behaviours as matching ptsd and dissociation – in that I am beginning to trust. WHy would I create these behaviours myslef?
Am I ready to give myself a chance to trust myself ?- can I be trusted? I think i have spent more than enough time lost. WHose side am I on?
Ah god. I do relate to what you’ve said.
I struggle with trying to “KNOW” for certain that my memories are accurate, especially when a part shares something that I know nothing about. I think sometimes I get caught up in trying to ferret out the “truth” and that becomes a way to avoid the feelings. Then parts complained to my therapist about me not believing what they tell me. So now I am learning to pay less attention to the details of what they tell me and more attention to understanding what the experience was like for that part. It took me a long time to accept the diagnosis of PTSD and dissociation because I didn’t believe I had ever endured abuse bad enough to have led to that. ( and okay, sometimes I still wonder if I REALLY have PTSD, etc. I actually had a lot of cognitive memories left intact but it just seemed like no big deal to me. The emotions were so totally cut off. So when a part shares a cognitive memory that I don’t have it is especially hard to take in.
I guess what I am trying to say is trust what is within you. It is there for a reason. My therapist reminds me…..it is part of you. Honor it ( thus Just Me)
1/5/18
Hi Just Me,
Oh gosh … I think that you speak for many of us here. I denied my DID for about a year and a half. I feared false memories and maybe just being plain crazy and making it all up. I know now that part of my doubting and wanting to know “for sure” the things happened that my alters talked about with my T was my way of running away from my reality. As the dissociative barriers that kept me from the memories started to come down, I put up new barriers in the name of “seeking the truth.” Well, the truth would never been really known so I was left with trusting my alters that bad things did happen and it was time for me to know.
ME+WE
01/06/2018
Please let me know if what I write here is too much rambling or not relating – I am often not s sure I belong here. But I keep being drawn back and I feel like I am talking to someone (in a weird way). But really, Let me know i can be really clueless.
vickilost,
I am so glad you are here and posting. You ARE talking to someone. We are here. Have you also checked out the thread on “Our Normal Complicated Selves?” It’s just a thread where people can connect and talk about whatever. Some DID stuff, but other stuff also.
I can relate to what you wrote in your post about finding it hard to tell your therapist this or that, can relate to simply going away when certain things come up. I have the same trouble. Some of what helps me is to journal. I’m kind of a scrap book type journaler. I will cut out pictures or print them from the net that have some meaning to me. I sometimes find it very hard to verbalize outloud what is going on in my head, my fears and self doubts (is this really real? am I making this all up?) , memories, etc. I have “snapshots” of my life here or there. It’s like reading 10 novels but the pages are all jumbled up and mixed together. So I write things down. Or color pictures. Or one of my insiders will color pictures or even leave a note for me or my therapist. I bring my journal in to sessions because it helps me to have that reference when I can’t speak out loud what I’ve been dealing with. My T will read the parts I ask her to read. It’s really helpful that she will “listen” in a way that I can communicate. Bit by bit it gets better.
I think putting the puzzle pieces together is important. It’s also one of the most brave things we will do….to bear witness to our own story.
Keep posting!
Warmly,
Wren
1-3-2018
Wren, thank you for sharing this. For a long time I showed up in my therapists office with a folder of written pages and just handed them over to her. I could write, but any attempt to speak left me shut down and unable to speak at all. It helps to know that I am not alone in this.
Just Me,
It helps me when you share also. I’m glad to know I am not alone. So very grateful to have this place to share and so very grateful there are so many people posting here now. When I first came here it was not as active and it was hard to get to know people.
Now I feel like there is this whole tribe of people who get it and we can accept each other with all our complications and ups and downs and insiders.
What a wonder!
Warmly,
Wren
1-6-2018
We are working very hard to let go of the past. Let go of people who are not worth our time and getting over past hurts. Its a big thing we need to do.
Me: survive testing season at work, and paperwork
what i wamt for inside kids this year: I want ALL of them to learn to trust me, Caroline. and our therapist. I want all of them to have fun, and laugh agaiin. I want Missy and a couple others to face the stuff theyre scared of.
I want all lf us to survive the next week somehow.
Pilgrim,
Warm thoughts and prayers for the coming week.
“I want ALL of them to learn to trust me, Caroline.” What a wonderful thing. What a beautiful intention.
I’m still working on just communicating with my insiders. I have a couple I can talk with a little. It takes so, so much trust and acceptance. Times are I hardly know where to start but I would love for them to have that same thing…a trusting relationship with me and with my T.
I want them to feel safe. That’s a starting place.
We are all so brave. How is your week going?
Your friend,
Wren
1-6-2018
Hi pilgrim,
These are really awesome intentions for this year. You are tackling difficult but important stuff. We are all here to support you and your system folks. I am sending you extra positive energy for this coming week. Let us know how it goes.
Your friend,
ME+WE
01/04/2018
i really cant even talk about it. things are not going well around here. thanks for asking though. its not anything i need anyone to be concerned about.. c.
Hi caden,
I hear that you do not think that anyone needs to be concerned about what its happening for you all right now but … well, we are. You and your fellow system folks are expressing important concerns about things going on in your life right now and we see and hear that. I understand that probably no one in your past chose to hear or see, but I do. I read your messages and I cannot help but feel compassion, understanding and concern for you. You may not want that. you may not expect that but I am going to give you that feedback anyway because I am concerned for you, I do care about you and I do want someone, even me a virtual friend, to say your struggles have not gone unnoticed.
So, take good care caden and your system folks.
ME+WE
01/07/2018