Category Archives: dissociative identity disorder

A strange peace

Posted on by

8

Ever since I got under the table in Doc’s office things have been strangely more peaceful for me. I’ve no idea if there is any correlation to my last session with Doc, or if it’s just a coincidence. At any rate, I’ll take it.

I’ve been trying to find the gift in awareness of the extent of my dissociative disorder. I don’t see the gift in having it, but I do see the gift in now becoming aware of it. Although I don’t like that there’s another thing to add to my “crazy” bucket, so many things are now starting to make sense for me.

Now that I understand that the rattle of noises in my head is really various “inside voices” I surprisingly feel less crazy. I now feel like I have far less internal secrets. I never told a soul about the inner voices in my head, or the part of me that I knew was little.

I hope the good vibes keep chugging along for me because it is a trying week at work. I have a presentation on Thursday that will be brutal. It’s tough when you have a job you don’t like. I try to be grateful, but it is particularly hard this week. I also try to veer away from the feeling that this job is a punishment for my past sins. That’s the tendency my head tends to land when I’m hating this job, and missing Human Resources.

It’s nice to feel grateful, instead of the usual muck of despair. I’ll take it.

Under the table

Posted on by

7

English: Wooden kitchen table and chairs

Today I told Doc what I learned from Cate last week. He listened, and then I just heard the world “trauma” and I started shaking badly. He then asked, “Is someone having a hard time? What can I do to help?” I could feel that “the little one” wanted to get under the table next to me, and I told Doc that I was aware of this. She really wanted to get under that table. But I resisted. It was weird, not normal. Loco. Loca. Loony. No! We will not get under the table.

But she insisted, and the more she insisted, the more I shook. The more I dug my heels in, the harder I shook. Something had to give. Then Doc said, “I invite you to get under the table if that will help.” You get to a point sometimes in life when you run out of the plausible normal-sounding options. When you reach this point you are at the end of your rope, and you start entertaining those options that seemed crazy and insane because you are desperate for some kind of peace. This was that kind of moment for me.

I leapt for that table like a lifeline, so much so that I almost hit my head on the table. I feared getting under the table because I didn’t want to “lose myself.” I was afraid of having a dissociative experience that I would not recall, like I had last week. Surprisingly, what happened is that my body became peaceful the very moment I got under that table. I felt peaceful, and then very sleepy. I could have slept under that table  for hours.

We continued our session with me under the table. It was weird, but it worked, and I shook a whole lot less. If someone told me this morning that I would end my day speaking to my psychiatrist from under a table, I would have laughed at the improbability of that scenario. You just never know what works.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A plain jane turkey dinner that I adored

Posted on by

2

I’ve been feeling shaky on a consistent basis, I’m sorry to say. It’s been a full-time job trying to combat all of this shakiness and dissociation. Good thing it’s the weekend, I suppose.

As part of my quest to not dissociate I’ve been out of the apartment quite a bit. I dissociate substantially less when I am not at home. I was driving around this cute rural area I don’t know very well when I came across this little cafe at the end of the village. It was one of those places where the locals gather, and everyone talks to each other across the tables.

I found they had a turkey dinner as a special so I ordered it as it sounded like good comfort food. Here’s the thing with a turkey dinner: It’s great if it’s a gourmet meal, and it’s even better if it’s a plain jane turkey dinner. And, yes, I know that statement needs an explanation.

Before my mother married my stepfather we never had a Thanksgiving dinner at home. I’m assuming it was a combination of not being able to afford it, and my mother was likely working on Thanksgiving. Because of this, I always looked forward to the Thanksgiving turkey dinner they served in the school cafeteria the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I loved it all: the gummy mashed potatoes, the thin sliced turkey loaf, the boxed stuffing with an overabundance of parsley, a prefab bread roll, canned peas, and jellied cranberry sauce.

I would sit there and eat that turkey dinner and imagine that the potatoes were the right consistency, the turkey actually had skin and bones, the stuffing was homemade, perhaps with cornbread (yeah!), the vegetables were fresh, the bread was a homemade parker house roll (yes, as a poor kid in West Texas I was familiar with the concept of a parker house roll as an avid reader of cookbooks) , and you could see the berries in the cranberry sauce. I was likely one of few students who happily ate the entire dinner. In my mind I had eaten a Thanksgiving dinner fit for Martha Stewart!

It was a plain jane turkey dinner, and during the time I ate it I was present, calm and grounded.

Today when I eat such a dinner it makes me happy because it reminds me of the optimism I had as a child. Such a turkey dinner also gives me hope that I’ll be optimistic again someday.