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Windows Update 1 of [number I will never reveal]

March 24, 2013 by mentalpoliticalparent

Do you remember this post?

A Story About A Broken Leg I DIDn’t Have

That post was written just over a year ago our diagnoseversary has been and gone and none of you bastards sent cards, flowers, toys, colouring pencils, mugs, tea-bags, Zopiclone, paper plates, glitter, stationery, insecticide, custom-made jewellery, hand-knitted unicorns…….(to name but a few of the gifts we’ve received during our time in the Madosphere). How could you all forget….?

I’m sure none of you forgot; even in the absence of blog posts and a running commentary on Twitter I know that you’re all still there- the mentalists, the politicos, the journos, the professionals, the mummies (as in have children, not Egyptian and swathed in bandages), the funny “in-betweens” I can’t quite define and the ex-colleagues who read but are too afraid to draw attention to themselves by interacting. We missed you all, admittedly some more than others (borderlines you may start panicking now) we’ve missed our little window on the world.  Last night I opened that window again, I question my wisdom here and indeed this morning there have been a few internal arguments over it, some valid, some less so. I’m triggered by almost everything so reading, writing and interacting is difficult hence the bit about comments in the sidebar ———>

What happened? Where did we go? We clearly didn’t die as “the last blog post ever” stored in the drafts folder hasn’t been published (all Madosphere bloggers have the post-suicide blog post ready to go right?) did we stop being mental or political or a parent?

No.

I and [number I will never reveal] parts who share my life, mind and body are very much alive and furthermore we intend to stay that way. This doesn’t mean that the blog will be void of “this is shit, I wish I was dead” posts and indeed it doesn’t mean that life isn’t shit and we don’t often very occasionally wish we were dead it just means we are here, still mental, still political, still a parent and still the author of one of the best blogs on the internet. The decision to go silent (externally) was in part enforced by mentalism and in part a choice we made to increase our safety. There’s nothing safe about isolation.

That broken leg I talked about turned out to be two broken legs, two broken arms, several broken ribs and a very broken brain. As I or someone who looks a bit like me said in that post- “you know if you have a broken leg” and indeed it came as no surprise to learn of all the other breakages either, I was just glad we’d managed to hide them until it was safe for all those fractures to be revealed. Broken legs happen- people fall and legs sometimes break, broken legs are accidental, a nasty side effect of a bad fall if you will. Multiple fractures don’t happen by accident, all of the literature suggests there’s something purposeful about multiple fractures, experts agree that it takes a lot of time, effort and organisation to cause multiple fractures in a child. Those fractures will never heal, survivors like us will simply limp along forever popping painkillers and hoping for moments of peace and freedom from the pain. Multiples are notorious for their chronically low expectations and indeed we often have them met, nay exceeded (by lying MH ‘professionals’ for example…) but for now it’s enough just to be here. We’re more mental than ever but the upside of DID is that you still can’t tell by looking……if you discount my current attire of pyjamas and the unflattering jumper mk2.

It’s been a long time since the blog was updated, much has changed but much has stayed the same, upcoming posts will hopefully include-

The one about the Ombudsman not upholding the complaint against NHS Fife because DID isn’t included in the ICD 10 and therefore doesn’t exist though “Multiple Personality Disorder” does… [review pending]

The one about moving house and being so dissociative most of us didn’t notice.

The one about the annual ATOS form related breakdown.

It’s good to be back.

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You Have To Fight For The Right- Partly

September 11, 2012 by mentalpoliticalparent

It’s often said here that one of the benefits of DID is that one has somewhere to hide; the rich internal world we have created has helped me conceal myself for some time. I popped out to blog about the new mental health strategy and then went back. I concealed myself in my own personal part of our internal world where I sat, resolutely alone and miserable. My thoughts were often circular; I would find myself stuck in a loop of grieving for everything that I had lost and all those things I once thought my future held that I no longer believe are there. There’s a tendency for others to “big me up”, to assure me that all those things are still there to remind me I haven’t lost any of my skills. I haven’t, it’s true but I am one part of [number I will never reveal] this isn’t just about me and my skills anymore.

I initially concealed myself and my misery as I couldn’t cope, I’m not a particularly emotional person, I’m not a psychopath just a bit buttoned-up, my buttons didn’t just pop open, they flew off. The more I learned about DID and our own system the worse I felt and as news reached me of recent developments I felt even worse. I didn’t feel worse as recent developments were a clear sign that my future was going to be nowhere near what I and others had imagined, I felt worse as everything I saw around me was about me.

Unlike many other adult parts of our system, I was that child and I remember being that child. I remember being on the pupil council in primary 6, I remember taking part in a mock election in primary 7- it was 1986 the kid who won had SNP connections and lots of stickers, me and my rational political insights didn’t stand a chance- even then the Scottish electorate confounded me. As I recall that child was hit by a car later that year and suffered a broken leg, I’m sure there’s a lesson there somewhere. I remember modern studies classes, I remember being “This house would rather be a teenager than a pensioner” in the Press and Journal schools debating competition (there’s a theme here in case you hadn’t noticed) and I remember sitting in a higher history exam in 1993 with absolutely no recollection or ever having studied history in my life. I failed that exam.

My skills have developed as I aged and I became adept at fighting for others, I embarked on righteous campaigns against whoever I had to in order to get the things people needed. These skills became invaluable when I launched the bloody, protracted battle against NHS Fife for the correct diagnosis care and treatment. I won that fight and I thought, until now that it was the most important fight of my life.

As my understanding of DID has grown and my knowledge of our system increased I faced the grim realisation that my skills were 37 years too late, there was no campaign I could embark upon now that would erase the trauma that got me, got us to where we are now. I concealed myself again.

As has been mentioned in previous posts due to recent events we suffered a complete communication breakdown. In the past I was able to do the necessary reorganising to re-establish communication and ensure smooth running but I couldn’t do it this time. Fortunately someone else could and they did. I was persuaded to come out of hiding and have an eyebrow wax, it was long overdue and the complaints about the eyebrow situation were coming in as thick and fast as the eyebrows themselves. I cried a lot that day- not least as I’d had my eyebrows ripped out and after such a long time it really hurt. I cried for myself and for the others who share my life/mind/body. I cried for that child, that child I was, that child we all were. I still can’t say the phrase the <?> therapist wants to hear “they are all parts of me” but I can say

They are all parts with me

Having all those parts with me has enabled me to make it this far, it’s nowhere compared to where I thought I’d be but I am still here. I am still here in spite of what must have been an exceptionally traumatic past, having parts, having DID has helped me. I’m not proud of having DID but I’m not ashamed and I am bloody proud to have survived my past.

I have been assured throughout our journey that one day I will be able to realise some of my ambitions, albeit in a slightly modified way. I took comfort from this and clung to it. I have also been told by the <?> therapist that many people with DID can have fulfilling lives in some of the top professions, I clung to this too. As such I questioned my openness about my mental health, I questioned the honesty on the blog- both from myself and others who share my life/mind/body. I am burdened by the knowledge that DID can be difficult to understand, weird even scary. Those with DID who are successful professionally are able to do so as they conceal their multiplicity, I make no judgements about this, each to their own. But I’ve been concealed and concealed myself for too long.

I have never allowed anything to beat me, I have never been shy in speaking-up and I have never not challenged injustice where I saw it. I am the product of what happened to me, my tireless fight to right wrongs is so obviously driven by a childhood where I felt unheard and unrepresented- I was a child, I was that child. I couldn’t help myself then but I can help myselves now, I’m not hiding any more. I can’t go back in time and stop what happened to me, to us and I can’t stop it happening to any other child other than our own and I can continue to tell my part of part of the story.

Some of you reading this have met me, some of you have sat in meetings chaired by me, some of you have worked with me, some of you have printed my press-releases. I’m no scarier now than I was then (and for the record I prefer the word ‘formidable’ to scary) I am still here but as I said I am just one of [number I will never reveal]. I’m not going anywhere, not least as I suspect parts like me are impossible to integrate (though there are a couple with whom I’d make a nice ‘blend’) but I also have no desire to dominate, we may all be parts of the same thing but we are all different and we all have something to offer. Some of you who knew me before have happily chatted here and on twitter to someone who isn’t me for some time. I’m glad some of you stuck around and I’m sorry that part you are more familiar with now is no longer able to communicate but I see she has trained you well. She also moderated blog comments well and as yet we’ve yet to find a replacement so please bear with us.

So after all that powerful ‘fighting talk’  some of you may be in doubt as to whether the artists formerly known as Zoë Smith were somehow no longer mental, let me tell you about the rest of Tuesday 11th September 2012.

Communication is really good, the system is running smoothly. Today brought the challenge of taking the 15 year-old to the orthodontist. This is a challenge for many reasons and there are a vast number of triggers involved. Among my many jobs I am “The only ANP who can take the children to the dentist” (I’m thinking of putting that on my CV), so I did. The visit to the orthodontist was uneventful, my biggest problem was keeping a straight face as I sat, apparently normal and another part expressed a desire to scrutinise the orthodontist, we switched seamlessly and switched back again- we were on fire. When we were finished another part popped into Asda for new school shirts for the 7 year-old (to replace the ones ‘lost’ after a visit to his father) and I drove home. The 15 year-old has a sinus infection and had to see the doctor, it’s someone else’s job to take the children to the doctor- again we switched seamlessly and all necessary information was transferred between parts.

It’s Tuesday, AKA “Tesco day” in this house, the doctors surgery is opposite the local branch of Morrisons so in my infinite wisdom I decided after the 15 year-olds appointment to do the shopping there instead of making the 20 mile round trip to Tesco.

It’s not my job to do grocery shopping, I haven’t been in a supermarket for months and I had forgotten the first rule of multiplicity-

We don’t do change*

*if you discount the obvious.

There followed a confusing, chaotic trip to Morrisons with completely uncontrolled switching, communication was reduced to random shouts of “Shit! That woman knows [redacted] from playgroup, don’t make eye-contact” and “why is that turkey round? Turkey’s aren’t cylindrical”  and repeated cries of “THIS WOULDN’T HAVE HAPPENED IF WE’D GONE TO TESCO” The shopping trip is largely a blur for me, reduced to nothing more than 8 bags of shopping I’m too afraid to unpack as I don’t know what’s in them but I know enough to know that the contents will scream

MULTIPLE!

I also know that someone else will have to go to Tesco tomorrow to get all the things that we didn’t get today. I’m glad we have a sense of humour.

So after a hiatus filled with misery I’m back- I never really went away. I haven’t lost any of my skills but my skills are needed now for our continued survival. With DID every minute of every day brings a new fight and each of them is  important.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Wise Investments

September 8, 2012 by mentalpoliticalparent

So much can happen in such a short time when your personality is not just fragmented but completely obliterated, compiling a blog post that says what needs to be said, what I want to say yet at the same time doesn’t reveal too much is extremely difficult.

The need to tell a part of the story is still there so the blog is still here.

The drive to write, to communicate, to educate, agitate and entertain is still there and so the blog is still here.

I am still here so the blog is still here.

I tried very hard not to be here, I pigeonholed myself and decided early on I was merely a ‘fragment’ or ‘function’ and kept my head down. It took me a while to figure out that perhaps fragments or functions lacked the ability to pigeonhole themselves but I continued to do it anyway. I’ve hidden, not spoken but continued to listen, others with whom I share a life mind and body were more than capable of doing what I did. I resisted sentience, resisted existence as my increasing awareness that the metaphorical scars I bear are similar to the scars of others with whom I share a life, mind and body was too painful. It was easier for me to believe I was created to do one thing and wasn’t created as the result of trauma. No part of a system of dissociated identities chooses to exist, whilst I can’t deny in terms of having all bases covered we’ve done a good job- from a pathological point of view this particular system of dissociated identities is bad news.

Those of us with DID are never short of internal conflict and arguments with ourselves are frequent, the relatively short length of time it takes to get washed and dressed in the morning can see several arguments over what to eat, drink and wear. There have been many conflicts since the last blog post was published but one particular one is causing a large amount of confusion.

I don’t suppose we’re unique in that there is a tendency to look forward, to seek answers about what the future may hold. I suspect this is largely as our pasts are unknown and the present is often unbearable. I don’t know how often the <?> therapist has been asked “how long will this take?” but I do know she’s never quantified it and I also know where the answer was once “years” then “a long time” and is now “a very long time”. Events of the past few weeks have painted a grim picture of what the future may hold, there are a number of reasons for this- most of them not for sharing but one reason is the impact of our own ‘investment in separateness’ according to this paper it’s a very negative thing. As terminology I’m uncomfortable with it, it’s a judgement laden description of something that’s complex and convoluted.

We never chose to become separate, to exist- our separation happened as we fought to survive, there’s a conflict there over whether to marvel at the abilities of the human mind or wonder if it might have been better not to survive. That’s not a thinly-veiled statement of intent or suicidality, just a fact. I don’t imagine there are any people with DID who don’t have at least one part hell-bent on ending their own lives- it’s almost a rule of multiplicity. Life dictates that we continue to survive and therefore our continued ‘investment in separateness’ is unavoidable.

Events of the past few weeks proved extremely destabilising and there was complete breakdown in communication. The past few weeks have been busy, confusing and often harrowing but as is the way with DID most of what goes on, goes on internally, underneath a benign, functioning exterior. You would never guess we’d fallen off the relentless treadmill of existence and I don’t think I will ever understand what drives the willingness to get back on the bloody thing- but get back on it we have.

Thanks to our investment in separateness we possess the skills necessary to keep going, to maintain that benign, functioning exterior. It’s the season for cabinet reshuffles but what was required was a complete system reboot. Those separate individuals we have spent 37 years unwittingly investing in have proved to be essential in making the necessary changes to ensure that the benign, functioning exterior remains in place.

As is often the way the grimness of existence has had a few brighter moments, I’m not sure the following exchange would win any prizes for internal communication or indeed compassion but it did cause a number of laughs, laughs that have been largely absent for some time.

“look, I know you’re suicidal but you’re a multiple and you know the minute you’d swallowed the pills, rat poison or whatever- some smart arse would phone an ambulance and our miserable little lives would be saved again. If it was just you and me I’d get you a glass of water to wash them down. It’s crap and I know you’re miserable but I assume you know how to work a fucking hoover?”

As soon as I’ve finished writing this I guess we’ll find out. I’m going back to my hooverless pigeonhole for a while, I’m many things but I don’t hoover.

Posted in conflict, Internal Communication | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments »

Helpful Letters; Safety In Numbers

August 31, 2012 by mentalpoliticalparent

The last thing I feel like doing right now is writing a blog post but I read a letter this morning from one of the people who share my life/mind/body, that letter said many things one of the things it said was

“Please keep blogging, there are loads of you who can do it and if you don’t we lose our story, her story.”

She’s right and I know how important the blog is to her, to us all. I know who the letter is from so it was no surprise to read the “damned by faint praise” follow-up to the request to keep blogging

“Some of you are ok at moderating comments”

I’ve never moderated comments here but I will try, though the author of the letter may appear to do it herself, probably at 3am as is her wont. I’m so grateful for the ability we multiples have to sleep internally as I’m really not a morning person.

That letter was an emotional rollercoaster, it made me laugh and cry, it offered many helpful hints and tips and had a number of trademark requests and demands. The letter could only be from one person, I know her well and many of you do too. I know she’s gone silent externally and I know many of you miss her, I miss her too.

I’m not very good at explaining DID and I can’t make diagrams with MS Paint, besides the technical bits don’t really matter, what does matter is that someone I know and love is really suffering. As is the way, it’s a hidden suffering and I’m sure at some point when she reads this she herself would find it funny that whilst she was marauding around being floridly mad yesterday, someone else was using the body to do the hoovering.

It’s painful to watch someone you’ve known and loved for a long time go through so much distress. The first instruction in her letter was

“Don’t be nice to me”

Denial used to be my thing, I’ve written about it here before. I denied we had DID for a long time, I denied we had a history of trauma for a long time, had that denial challenged in a tangible way but then denied it again anyway. I’m done with denial, I know and love someone who is so badly and cruelly damaged that if she even felt safe enough to accept she had a physical body would find being liked, being cared about physically painful. I don’t know how someone ends up like that or why but I’m furious and heartbroken that someone can. I’ve redirected my need to scrutinise every little detail and contradict all the evidence away from us and our history, I became the nightmare garage customer for a while. The stupid car needed a big repair, I dissected the quote, questioned every little detail to make sure I wasn’t being ripped off. I know nothing about cars but you can be sure by the time I dropped the stupid car off at the garage I was a veritable Vauxhall Corsa timing chain expert. We all know we’ve done our jobs well when individually we’re greeted with

“Oh, it’s you…..?”

People may not be able to tell the difference between us but very few are left in doubt about our skills.

The author of the letter doesn’t believe it and can’t see it but for all the skills in our system, hers are probably the most valuable. She thinks she’s done something wrong, thinks she’s defective, she is in fact highly effective. She did what she had to do to survive but she added several flourishes that turned her into one of the most fascinating, beautiful individuals I have ever had the honour to share a mind/life/body with. I will do anything I can to help her, if that’s writing a blog post or even being ‘ok’ at moderating comments then I’ll do it. That’s why I’m here, that’s why we’re all here- to help each other and it’s just as well we are.

There’s the traditional “wrong kind of ill” paradox here, I don’t think we’ve ever had more distress and ever been more unstable than we are now but you can’t tell by looking. We decided this week to stop seeing the Fantastic CPN, at least for the time being, she’s a wonderful woman but ‘help’ from those who don’t know our system and who won’t, can’t or won’t allow themselves to ‘get’ DID is unhelpful, unsafe. We’ve been damaged enough.

We have 3 hours a week with the <?> therapist (and several emails/texts, I would hate to be a multiples therapist) and currently those three hours are all given over to one person, one part of [number I will never reveal], we may have a range of opinions on the <?> therapist- from “who?” to mistrust, suspicion all the way to ‘vehement hatred’ but that one person for those 3 hours a week feels safe. I’m choosing to be grateful for that rather than fly into a rage about the shocking lack of resources for people with DID in this country. Besides, flying into rages is someone else’s job.

Addressing lack of resources is also someone else’s job.

I know what my job is at the moment and I’ll keep doing it for as long as I have to, I have no end-goal, no great ambition other than to see those I share my life/mind/body with are ok.

The letter ended with

*very sad face*

I wept and made a mental note to check Amazon for an emotional dictionary, she really is stretching the definition of ‘sad’.

The letter’s signed

[redacted]

Xxx

Posted in blogging, Internal Communication, therapist, therapy, Told you it wasn't like Stephen Fucking Fry | Tagged , , , , | 50 Comments »

I Know Something You Don’t Know

August 25, 2012 by mentalpoliticalparent

I’ve read yesterday’s blog post, responded to comments and been smacked hard in the face with the mental stick.

Nobody helped me write that blog post- those blanks I hoped to be filled weren’t filled. I sometimes blog individually as do other parts (you may have noticed) and many posts are more of the ‘compilation’ type, a round up of individual events, experiences, thoughts and feelings pulled together by someone with a talent for writing and diplomacy. Unusually, no other part blogged in my absence, there is a veil of secrecy around my lost week; I’m hiding something from myself.

Internal communication whilst not brilliant is good enough that I know the information about my lost week is there somewhere. I’m still not sure I want to know what happened or why but I get the impression that even if I did, nobody would tell me. It’s clear whatever happened had a knock-on effect and unsettled my various selves, it’s clear I was worried about myself and it’s obvious I am now eyeing myself suspiciously.

I hate saying things like that as it makes DID sound complicated- it’s not, I’ve made a diagram to illustrate-

Click on it, it looks far better in full size.

I know there’s ‘something up with me’ and whilst I don’t know what caused my week of mentalness I know what that something is. I don’t want myselves to know what it is though I know one of them does.

I know what to do about my something that is up, I’ve done it before and consider myself something of an expert but this time I’m having to do it alone and I’m scared, lonely and confused. Last time I did it I had [number I will never reveal] amazing, intelligent, strong, compassionate, courageous people to help, this time I’m alone. My head is suspiciously quiet other than the lone voice, from the nonchalant whistler (whom I do my best to avoid at all times as her particular set of skills scare the fuck out of me)….

“[redacted], stop playing with MS Paint and writing blog posts and do what you need to do”

I don’t want to. I’m too scared, that smack in the face with the mental stick was too hard and too painful. I’ve astounded myself with my useless ability to take mentalness to its limits and I’m not happy.

Which for me means that delirious happiness can’t be far off. I think I’ll continue being avoidant for a while longer, it’s taken 37 years to get here and in the absence of any of myselves expressing a desire to off themselves anytime soon, I’m guessing I’m not going anywhere for a while- well physically anyway.

This is hard, DID is hard, too hard.

That sentence was a test, when I start with the “it’s too hard” I usually get rescued, switch and someone who finds it all a bit easier comes along- nobody else has.

Bitches….

Posted in blogging, conflict, Internal Communication | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments »

Functional Dysfunction

August 24, 2012 by mentalpoliticalparent

This is a functional blog post, the past week or so has been a bit of a blur. It’s clear I went mental but as it was the quiet kind of mental as opposed to the screaming/road trip/helicopter/bloodshed/trip to the bin kind of mental there is very little evidence as to what actually happened. I have to admit I’m somewhat grateful that the selective mutes were running the show this time, I’m sorry to all of you who worried in my absence but it’s much easier to come back when there isn’t a trail of [visible] mental carnage to clear up.

In my experience there is little as effective as the WordPress “new post” screen to help fill in some of the blanks. Besides I’m also trying to avoid some essential but terrifying internal work that’s become necessary following a new discovery, well new to everyone else, I’ve known for ages- I’m just not sure why I never mentioned it. I’m a mystery even to myself.

I only know I went mental as others have told me, there are no tweets, Facebook updates, emails or text messages to give me any clues. The best clue I have is this snippet of conversation I remember from today’s session with the <?> therapist-

The <?> therapist “do you remember speaking to me during Monday’s session?”

Me “no, are you sure it was me?” (I think I managed to avoid admitting I thought it was Monday today, but I can’t be sure)

I often wonder if therapists who treat DID come back to these kinds of conversations later, perhaps over dinner and think “WTF?!”  I’m very glad that those who know what they’re doing can resist the “WTF?! face” during sessions, it’s a face I’m very familiar with having become acquainted with a number of health ‘professionals’ in my time.

I was there, in body on Monday- for the full hour and a half- but it wasn’t me.

I talked about lost time in a previous post and clearly that’s what’s happened again, it just happened for a very long time. As I described in that post just because I’ve lost time doesn’t mean things haven’t got done, on the contrary it appears life has run quite smoothly in my absence.

The house is no messier than usual, there’s even a clean teaspoon in the drawer, the children are well cared for and the stupid car has a new timing chain. I have no recollection of going to a garage and indeed no idea what a timing chain is but I know the total bill for parts and labour was over £500. I’m very glad I still have the overdraft limit and credit card limit of “someone who has a decent income” as opposed to “benefit scrounging scum”. I haven’t been this poor in a number of years, it’s painful and unjust and what with it only being 122 shopping days until triggermas I have a feeling I’m going to need to hold onto that “mañana” attitude to finances lest it becomes something else to add to the very long “things that make me mental” list.

So I went mental, but it’s ok as you can’t tell by looking. Dissociative identity disorder is often described as “amazing” it’s an “amazing survival mechanism”, an “amazing way to cope with an intolerable situation”, “amazingly complex”.

DID is amazingly tragic

I don’t know what happened this week, I don’t know why and I don’t want to know but I can’t imagine that I’ve spent the week blissed out, feeling fulfilled, content, generally unperturbed and satisfied by life. I suspect I never so much as cried the whole time but I was clearly so distressed by something I chose not to speak- for 6 days. Other parts did any speaking that was necessary and I’m glad they did as it allows life to continue- for those around us. I’ve lost time and time stood still. My distress was hidden, from those around me, from those who care about me and from myself. It’s heartbreaking that an illness borne of secrecy continues to shroud itself in secrecy. I’ve been on the planet for 13,592 days, I don’t know how many of those days were so intolerably painful I’ve forgotten them, I don’t know how many of those days I’ve spent in distress whilst all around me life carried on as normal. I don’t know how many of those days I spent in need of comfort, comfort I deserved.

I’m grateful for my amazing powers of dissociation; they were useful again today when the 7 year-old was leaving for a week with his father. I was so distressed by the prospect that packing his Spiderman costume made me feel physically sick yet I was able to pack, collect him from school and send him off to his father’s appearing well the entire time.

The pain and distress doesn’t go away, it simply gets stored and it all has to be dealt with another day. I’ve done 13,592 days, I can’t guess at how much pain and distress I’ve stored over that time. I do know that it’s going to take more than 182 days to address it though which makes the letter I received from  NHS Fife advising me I’d been awarded another 6 months funding for therapy laughable at best. 6 months; 72 hours of therapy- that’s barely enough to recover from the pain and distress caused by the iatrogenic damage inflicted by NHS Fife, never mind anything else.

Posted in blogging, children, lost time, NHS, Sadness, single-parent, Spiderman, therapy | Tagged , , , , | 11 Comments »

DID Is Horrid

August 18, 2012 by mentalpoliticalparent

I stopped watching TV ages ago; I think it was as far back as 2010, I can never be sure. I stopped watching it as it did something to me, I wasn’t sure what and I couldn’t define it but I knew that TV made me mental. I covered it up for ages by saying the noise bothered me; this sounded “normally abnormal” and fitted with the experiences of other mentalists. Those involved in my ‘care’ at the time accepted this and understood.

When I was confident that my suspicions I had DID were correct and I decided to share my findings with my ‘care team’ one of the things I mentioned was television- I revealed to them that I had stopped watching television as it made me switch, TV was very triggering. Those involved in my ‘care’ at the time didn’t accept this and didn’t understand.

I used to love TV, all sorts of TV and I loved films, all sorts of films. In the time I have avoided the TV I have occasionally watched a film but anything I watched had to be something I’d seen before, was familiar with and therefore could identify any potential triggers. I had to have enough knowledge of a film to ensure I was watching it with the correct eyes- or at least not the wrong eyes.

For the past two years or so I have repeatedly watched Mulan, Heathers, The Breakfast Club, In The Loop, Spiderman, Monsters Inc. and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Whilst all of these are fantastic films, it does get a bit boring and I think I sometimes miss TV, watching TV is such a normal thing to do, it’s easy, entertaining and informative. Mostly I’d like to be able to watch TV as I feel inept that the TV still fills me with fear, I feel like I’m failing in some way.

I did once watch something I had never seen before- Disney’s Up and I’m still haunted by it. I don’t know why and I daresay it’ll all come out one day but that film was a horrific ordeal and now any reference to it- be it a picture or whatever is triggering, it is to my great sadness that my previous love of balloons has been replaced by fear as they now remind me of that film. I was retraumatised by Disney/Pixar, which sounds amusing and indeed would make a great t-shirt slogan but it was a further knock to my confidence that I’d ever obtain anything resembling stability.

Just over a week ago I decided once again to try and challenge my fear of TV and settled down to watch Curious George- a cartoon about a monkey, I love monkeys. I’m not sure what it was about and I’m not entirely sure what happened but I suspect that the episode of Curious George was not unconnected to the awful body memories and flashbacks I went on to experience a couple of days later. I don’t know what all of my triggers are, I can’t imagine I ever will but I have a vague idea of some of them. Some are obvious and probably common, some appear ridiculous (Party Ring biscuits) and some make no sense at all. One of my triggers is umbrellas; there were umbrellas in that episode of Curious George. So you see it makes perfect sense- if you’re mental.

So once again, I was avoiding the TV. TV is far too unpredictable when your summary of yourselves is “triggered by everything” it’s far too dangerous when you just don’t know what might come up and how it may affect you.

Last night I decided that it might be nice for the 7 year-old to have a movie night. I had ‘purchased’ the live-action Horrid Henry film from isohunt and we had obtained the necessary supplies from the Spar- popcorn, chocolate and crisps. I despise Horrid Henry; the animated series on TV is rubbish as are the books. I consider myself something of an expert on children’s fiction and children’s TV, the popularity of Horrid Henry confounds me to this day. I’ll spare you my critical analysis but suffice to say I find the stories of a child with some sort of oppositional defiant disorder with parents who display inconsistent parenting styles from one incident to the next, very dull indeed. I had therefore decided that the Horrid Henry movie was likely to do nothing more dangerous than bore me to death and add fuel to my hatred for Francesca Simon.

I was wrong.

I don’t really remember watching Horrid Henry- always a bad sign, but from the tweets I made during the film I can tell that several pairs of eyes watched it and it ultimately was a confusing ordeal. Not as traumatic as Up *shudders* but not something I’m keen to repeat.

I can, thanks to my virtual paper trail point to some things that made Horrid Henry quite so difficult- one being mixed cultural references, I have the same problem with Stuart Little (I have many problems with Stuart Little as I detailed here). The Horrid Henry film had outfits from times I couldn’t identify but they were anything from 1950- current day. Henry has an iPod shuffle- my poor little brain just could not compute.

Well-known faces in the film, whilst no doubt good for the box-office were also confusing for me- not least as I wonder what on earth Richard E. Grant was thinking being involved in such a pile of dross. Gavin from Gavin and Stacey was in Horrid Henry but he wasn’t Gavin. I think Jo Brand was in there too but I can’t be sure. I know Noel fielding was in the film as I tweeted about it and promptly lost my mind.

Last night I vowed never to watch a film again- ever.

I feel depressed today that something so fundamental still evades me and I feel hard done by that DID feels the need to constantly remind you of its pervasiveness and sneak into every corner of your life. I daresay that eventually, as therapy progresses I’ll gather the knowledge I need to be able to watch TV and films again, but I can’t help feeling angry that something that should be easy, even enjoyable is like planning a military operation.

As Horrid Henry would say IT’S JUST NOT FAIR!

Little shit…..

Posted in children, depression, DID, Dissociation, Dissociative Identity Disorder, insight, Sadness, Spiderman, Triggers | Tagged , , | 18 Comments »

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