Main » August 2004

August 31, 2004

a shift in the morning light....

The panic is less intense this morning. It usually is in the morning. I need to get a handle on things. I was going downhill for the past few days. I feel like I'm still on the down slope, however, I am sitting still on it for the moment. The past few days was a steady,continuous slide downhill with no break. I need to take advantage of this moment where I feel like I am steady. I need to work on getting connected again to some of the things and people I lost a connection to. I'm not sure how to go about this, but I will try to work on something today. I think I felt a little bit of a shift last night after Abby emailed Donna. I think I was feeling abandoned by everyone inside because I was feeling so horrible and no one was coming forward to give me information or help. After Abby showed up late last night, I think I felt a connection to her. I was relieved that she came around. I can't even believe I just said that. I didn't think I would ever see the day that I would be relieved that one of my alters would be around. I usually spend so much time wanting them to go away. It can be so draining and overwhelming at times when they are there. Hmmm.... this is a little scary. Could it be that I have come to really care about them and feel connected to them and actually want to have them around? But why? Whatever this turns out to mean, it's a little too much for me right now. I'll have to come back to this....

Posted by Butterflyteam at 8:43 PM | Comments (3)

August 28, 2004

panic.....

For the past weeks, I have spent almost every night in panic. It has something to do with the new memories, but I'm not really sure how. All I know is that it has been very overwhelming. Donna asked me to describe the panic. This is all I could come up with......

panic........very fast heartbeat, very shallow breaths, shaking, intense fear of impending harm, obsessive thoughts, overwhelming feelings of being trapped, no other way, sense of hopelessness, never changing, can't sit still but can't do anything else, can't focus on anything other than fear of something horrible, an extreme sense of urgency, needing to do or have something right away..................

Posted by Butterflyteam at 10:15 PM

disconnected......

I had such a good stretch through most of the summer where I was really connecting with everyone inside. We worked on projects to help us know each other better and to heal our pain and sadness. I spent a lot of time feeling focused and dare I say....hopeful. Could it really be that we are healing?!?! Could there really be an end in sight to the despair and terror and heart wrenching pain? For brief seconds at a time, I thought so. But just like anything else, it was too good to be true.

In these last few weeks of the summer, new memories have begun to surface. Memories that carry a whole new kind of pain. Two new alters have surfaced in the last two weeks. Do new alters ever stop surfacing??? I was just getting used to knowing everyone inside and we were starting to work together really well. Now, this throws things off a bit. Poor little Abby, who is generally happy go lucky, was so terribly sad the other day. She told Donna that everyone is so sad inside - that no one wants to play. We have all been thrown off a course that we were just getting used to being on. I guess that's lesson #1 as a multiple - never get too comfortable with anything - most likely it won't last!

I was managing the first week or so that all this new stuff started to surface. There was a lot of panic and confusion but I was in touch with Donna through email in between our sessions and that was getting me through. As long as I had that connection, it offered me a little bit of comfort.

The past few days........I don't know what happened! Donna is still available through email and I had a session with her last Thursday, but......I don't know. I don't seem to have any words. I feel completely disconnected to everyone and everything. Sometimes being disconnected gives me a break; some very needed down time. But not now. Now, I desperately want to be connected. I NEED to be connected. But it's not happening. Being disconnected is not helping me at all right now. But I don't know how to change it. I feel terribly unsafe without a connection.

Posted by Butterflyteam at 6:44 PM

August 26, 2004

This is us.........

I have co-consciouness with the following alters:

• Baby (approx. 1 year old) - cries, crib involved
• Kristy (age 3) - hard to express things verbally. cries a lot. Libby helps her
• Abby (age 5) - usually happy. can tell stories of abuse w/out feeling the pain
• Tara (age 6) - very sad and hurt. took over for Abby and carries all the pain and fear
• Sam (age 7) - only boy alter. very agressive and angry
• Libby (age 8) - the good girl. did very well in school. helps Kristy a lot
• 10 year old - has not offered us a name yet. suffered abuse usually in the car
• Jane (age 13) - hurt, sad, angry. had an abortion
• Stephanie (age 16) - angry, anorexic, cuts
• The Teacher (29) - responsible. can put all pain aside once she enters the classroom

I do not have co-consciousness with the following alters:

• Cloud Girl (adult) - her way of saying she wants to die is that she wants to live on a cloud
• Chloe (adult) - believes the body is damaged and needs to be killed
• JP (adult) - protector and storyteller about SRA (this knowledge is fairly new to us)
• Samantha (age 7) - suffered SRA and torture

Posted by Butterflyteam at 8:30 PM

This is me............

I've been sitting here for a little while staring at a blank screen. I'm not sure where to start. Do I write some background info. or do I just start where I am today? I always have a need to explain things - therefore, it wouldn't feel right without at least a very brief background update.

I'm 29. A teacher. Single. I started therapy about 5 years ago with an eating disorder therapist. Since I was a teenager, I had always suffered from severe depression. I went through 4 years of college as an anorexic. Bulimia followed after I graduated from college and I began teaching. So by the time I was 24, my body had taken a beating from years of living with eating disorders and I was struggling to find anything enjoyable about life. I worked with this eating disorder therapist for 3 years and my weight stabilized. Although, there were many ups and downs during those three years, including a suicide attempt and a week's stay in a psych ward. Then the real issues started to surface........memories of years of incest started started to come back. I decided to change therapists and began working with one in the field of incest recovery. For the past two years I have been working with Donna. The memories of incest have not been easy to deal with. It was almost a year and a half ago that my alters started making themselves known during therapy sessions. Since then, it has been a challenging journey. I have been IP in a treatment facility that specializes in trauma recovery and dissociation. It was there that I was diagnosed as having DID. It was very hard to accept myself as having DID. I have gotten a lot better at accepting it but I still have times that I go back into denial for a little while. I have worked hard at getting to know all of my alters. It has been key for my recovery that we work as a team. Some days are good and some days aren't. But we are trying. I hope that some of them will become aware of this place so they can come write about what's going on with them.

As for our name - butterflyteam:
I have become obsessed with the symbol of a butterfly to represent the changes I am going through. I am so drawn to anything with a butterfly on it. The Inpatient Program that I was in several times uses the symbol of a butterfly as well. When you leave the program, they give you a butterfly pin and encourage you to go out and spread your beautiful wings. I use the butterfly as my symbol because it represents transformation and rebirth. I added the word team because I have been focusing on connecting with my alters and finding ways for all of us to work together as a team, thus was born........butterflyteam.

The Butterfly Story
"One day a man saw a butterfly shuddering on the sidewalk. It was locked in a seemingly helpless struggle to free itself from its now useless cocoon.Feeling pity, he took a pocket knife and carefully cut away the cocoon to set the butterfly free.To his dismay, it lay on the sidewalk and convulsed weakly for a while then died.A biologist later told him, "That was the worst thing you could have done. A butterfly needs that struggle to develop the muscles to fly. By robbing him of the struggle, you made him too weak to live."

I have a plaque with this quote sitting on my desk:
"We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty." ~ Maya Angelou

I do my best to hold on tight to the fact that one day I will consider myself a beautiful person - inside and out - because of all the healing and changes I am going through.

Posted by Butterflyteam at 8:14 PM | Comments (2)