Multiplicity

what I meant in saying originals was more in respect to I don't know exactly what created these others or what created what I am now, I know I wasn't always like this but I don't actually remember it... I've never been able to change it, make there be less of us, the landscape of my mind is the landscape of my mind, I hear what I hear outside myself and inside myself... if I can't seem to change these things then maybe I'm not the one to make the sfae places in my mind.... My Dr. wanted me to create safe places in my mind for us all... each and avery one... I'm not sure how many of us there are now... but how can I do that if my concept of safety is so skewed... The places I felt safe in my old room aren't open to me, I don't live there any longer. places I had thought were safe havens have been systematically shut off from me my whole life, or it's been made clear to me that i was there only by someone elses wishes / behest... The people who have kept me safe or given me that feeling of safety have generally ended up being abusive in some way shape or form... The only ones who haven't taken that route are either far away or, the one who actually manages to quiet us down most, in jail. I live in an apartment now where I cannot sleep because I am perpetually dreaming that people will break in... for various less than wonderful purposes. The concept of safety is one that is far too fleeting for me... I don't quite grasp how I'm supposed to make all of us feal safe... When it comes down to it that's part of the reason why I finally went back to a therapist and decided to be more open about all of it... I'm overwhelmed, I'm little by little losing my capability to function, and I'm scared...

From:

shandra.livejournal.com

That is very hard. My sympathies.

On a purely practical side of things, maybe a security system or a better lock would help with the apartment. That and time - the longer you are there without anyone breaking in, the easier it will be.

For internal spaces it can be hard, but you could experiment with a visualization technique. Start with thinking about what would make you feel safe, maybe, and visualize it as thoroughly as possible - maybe draw it, or sculpt it in something like Fimo... I can't say this will translate to your inner world, but it might help, and other people might latch onto it and show you how to do it (if they know). Try playing music you like that's peaceful while you do that, so that when you play that music you can associate that nice place with it.

We also have found it helpful to find and wear a kind of amulet, from time to time - something to remind us that we're now in a different present. Something we never had before, sort of deal.

I don't think it's your sole responsibility in your system/group, but perhaps you can help take the lead and others will jump in.

As a long-term goal understanding why people you looked to for safety were not the best choice, or that you need to also create your own, will help - but that's a big task. I'd start with more immediate, tactile things. Clay and blankets and good solid deadbolts. :)

From:

Thank you...
I'll definately try to take your advice.... my problem is getting them to take interest in what I want them to, Lindsay would probably be all for an art project though, especially clay (7 1/2 yr old girl with a head cold)

and you're right I do like small spaces... I got quite perturbed when the realization dawned that we hadn't put any place close to curl up in in this apt. as to that I am working on the personal safety issue but alot of it comes from a serious nesting instinct... I can't create a home here where it's not uncommon to see an ambulance outside my building cause someone got beat up or stabbed...
I'm giving serious consideration to moving

but thank you... really... not used to it being okay to talk on this... not really... thank you...

From:

shandra.livejournal.com

Moving might help. I also wonder if you could arrange the furniture so you have a small space, even between a bed and a wall. Our kids sometimes even make those tents with the blankets and that. :)

Good luck with all that. It is hard but it really does sound like you're headed in the right direction.

From:

ex-kiota.livejournal.com

Ooo. The tent with blankets is really good. Or take a big box and put blankets inside it so when you want to you can go inside the box.

From:

We tend to create spaces like that in closets, not because we need a safe space as such, but because an enclosed small space cuts off outside stimuli, and when you're an Asperger's autistic, that's a blessing. (Especially when you're autistic AND trying to study.) Like Stevie Nicks, some of us prefer to use a closet as a bed-alcove, sleep and study in there, with the main room being used for everyday activities. Could you try something like that?

(deleted comment)

From:

Mail will be fixed shortly.

There is no known neurological link. A number of plurals online (ourselves included) report that they are also autistic. For us and some others, the physical brain has the autism and whoever's up front is affected by it to a greater or lesser degree. Some groups have persons in the system who are autistic, or would be termed so by present-day western-civilization standards.

You might consult the writings of Donna Williams and other of the books on autism on our booklist page (http://www.astraeasweb.net/plural/books.html)...

also, http://www.autistics.org

From:

I fully intend to find something like that in wherever I move but right now there's quite litterally no place to hide, i've built myself into a corner on that one...

From:

i can really identify with what you've said about not understanding safety or how to feel safe or create that safety for yourself. that was my experience for many many many years.

about three years ago, i visited a friend of mine in texas who had her own house and... it felt really really safe to be there. and it gave me a lot of ideas about how I wanted to change my own home to feel more safe. but more than that, it made me realize that i had literally never felt safe before in my entire life. and i had never realized that because i had nothing to compare it to before!

it made me really mad actually. i kept trying to think of a place where i had felt safe and there really wasn't antyhing. there were places that had been nice, but that was it. i had just thought i must feel safe because intellectually i knew or thought that nobody was going to break in and hurt me, basically. which isn't a very high standard for safety (and if you can't feel that safe now, that really sucks!!)

at the time i was living with someone, which i didn't even realize felt really unsafe to me too. i didn't realize that till like last year, a few months before he moved. i didn't realize that part of the reason that i stayed up so late all the time was that i didn't trust anyone else to be awake in the house while i was asleep. i didn't even trust people to know that i was going to bed. i thought they would see me as weak for going to bed before they did and that then they would attack me somehow, even just by judging me and being invasive/mean verbally.

so i tried to change things in the house a little, but i didn't really have the resources to make it safer. i didn't have that much money and i still had a roommate. i spent a lot of time cleaning, i think, and getting rid of clutter. we made a rule (in here, not us and the roommate) that we would do at least one thing every day to make the house nicer - pick up one piece of trash, dust, whatever. eventually that turned into a real cleaning chart which

precisegirl was thrilled to draw up and implement in here.

but i didn't know where my boundaries were or that it was okay to have boundaries (intellectually i knew that, or suspected that, but i didn't know it in my gut) or even know how to figure out where my boundaries were. And that's the CORE of safety, I think. Being able to feel my feelings, know what they are, know what is and isn't okay with me, how it affects me, what I can do about it, that i CAN do something about it... how can I be safe without any of that?

it's hard-core.
(continued)

From:

ricktboy.livejournal.com

You know, it's incredible, things like Feng Shuei(sp?) really do work. Making sure things are placed in a room exactly how they make you feel comfortable rocks. And I've always needed tiny little places for me to be. Cubbie(my 8yr old) really needs that, but my husband and I live in one room, my bedroom in my parent's house, and it's hard to do that here, I make do, sometimes just curling up with my favorite blanket and pillow help., and I relate on the sleeping thing, I CANNOT sleep untill everyone else is asleep most of the time, making me face exaustion at times, where I end up passing out for hours, sometimes days. I have parties, when my parents go away, and I am awake until all hours, because there are so many people to wait for...

From:

I feel really fucking lucky because my roommate was in AA already by that time and i went to some meeting with him because he was scared to go by himself still, and i heard just so much amazing wisdom about these things. And I was like "oh my god I need this! but i'm not an alcoholic. where the fuck do *I* get this stuff?" and finally I decided to drag my ass to codependents anonymous (http://codaws.org). And that was probably the best thing i ever did, because i immediately started getting SO many fucking tools about things like... what boundaries and rights everyone deserves to have, how to set boundaries with people, how to make myself feel safe.... because that program is basically based on boundary issues. i mean, that's what codependency is. it's boundary issues, it's control issues, it's basically i think a given if you've been abused. others may disagree though, maybe based on differing definitions of abuse or of codependency. or of control issues or boundaries :-D

And like... I'm glad I don't go to AA because... the meetings I do go to are mostly the ones that focus on boundaries, abuse, self-care, et cetera. (specifically the aforementioned CoDA and survivors of incest anonymous (http://leaves.wineberry.net/sia/online/), although other people in my system go to and have gone to a few other things. but those two are mine! that link for SIA is to the online meeting actually, not to their official site. but i digress.) and um... I think AA is great and all, and i like a lot of their literature, but i've noticed that in programs I go to that focus on the idea of addiction from an AA-type of standpoint, um... people don't always come in with a good idea about boundaries, and they don't go there to learn about boundaries. and it's kind of jarring for me sometimes. I'm thinking about debtors anonymous (http://debtorsanonymous.org) actually, which isn't even a substance abuse thing... the meetings I've been to in my area have really amazing tools and ideas and resources for dealing with problems with time and money, but sometimes people there just have serious boundary problems and i'm not used to that being so common in a meeting. Basically I'm glad I'm not in AA because I don't like having to do a ton of work to find a meeting I like where I trust people... I'm spoiled. :)

but anyway. So that's what's worked for me. And it's like, now I've been in 12-step programs that really focus on people helping each other work on these issues and showing each other what has worked for them, issues of safety and boundaries and taking care of ourselves and for me it's like, SAFETY SAFETY SAFETY! and i've learned so fucking much. Like how it feels when I'm safe, like how to become willing to BE safe, like how to be present instead of always being really switchy or dissociated/unfocused, how to know when I'm triggered and what to do with that, like what stuff in my life is an effect of abuse and how to start fixing that, like how to know which people in my life are unhealthy for me to be around, and whether to cut them out (and how) or to set boundaries and get some distance and see what happens, or what... it's really awesome. And some of those things are still in progress, like being present and not floating off or hiding or whatever. But I'm starting to get a handle on them I think!!

Anyway that's my story... I hope it helps.

From:

the stuff about changes NEEDING to happen NOW sounds like programming, but that can be a difficult thing to explore. it sounds like you guys were really triggered though - like there was just chaos and knowing but not being able to think and things being done out of desperation and not being present. i hate feeling like that, personally...! another thing, fabulously, fortunately, which doesn't happen anymore.

have you thought about making a rule - a collective agreement - that decisions don't get made in that state? the catch of course is that it's really, really hard to feel safe (!) *letting* that be a rule unless/until you can feel like nothing in your life is ever TRULY going to be that desperate. that there will never or almost never be a situation where if you don't make a split-second, immediate, RIGHT NOW decision and take IMMEDIATE action, something bad will happen.

I don't mean that you'll never have to take immediate action to avoid getting hit by a bus, or to get away from an assailant, although we can hope. But sometimes it's possible to agree to take a leap of faith together that *not* cutting your hair or anything else right now - when you're switchy and no one can hold focus and people are *that* triggered - will not actually result in anything bad happening. And if you can take that leap of faith for a while - even if you put a time limit on it like "we won't make any decisions when any of us are flipping out, for one month, and then we'll vote on this matter again" - it can make you feel safer. Because often part of the problem with safety is that we're physically safe, we're in a place where nothing bad is about to happen, but we can't believe we're safe because we're so fucking triggered by shit from the past that it seems like everything is that bad *now.* And this can kind of illustrate that it's not. Potentially. It works better when you're also working on other ways of feeling safe.

From:

"the stuff about changes NEEDING to happen NOW sounds like programming..."

Or just plain frustration, which is what a lot of what they described sounded like. That business about the haircut is something that a lot of people (singlets too) do when they don't feel like they have enough control in their life. Like you said, it's a complex issue.

From:

well yeah. and haircuts can be powerful :) but there's a difference to me. i mean, when frustration is so big that THINGS HAVE TO CHANGE NOW and people are having trouble staying out and people are getting agitated and screaming and people's hands have phantom pains, imho it's usually something more than frustration. like, the frustration is triggering something or is part of something bigger or whatever.

From:

The things have to change now thing has sometimes been out of frustration but also I have the tendancy to need to change the physical in response to the mental, almost as if to prove that something has changed. Its a response that I think comes of having so little control over what goes on up there... I have to have control of my body, my body is real, so maybe the changes aren't real unless they happen there?
I'm not sure exactly what the thought process is but it's ended up being something along those lines...
It's become a certain amount of a battle ground for some of us, I prove to myself I have control over my body and the next thing I know I don't... and that's usually Devon or the Shee, Devon because she finds it amusing and she's a dominant personality... not to mention a bitch, and the Shee because she's self destructive... more than once I've known she took over only because I've found bruises or cuts or the whole thing with my palms... that's the fist time I was aware of her... when I looked down at my hands one day and the palms had been scratched to the point where they were two big blisters... I only became conscious when the blisters popped... I don't look at my palms often now, the image is still there, when I look at them half the time I see them open like that and the screaming starts in my head again.

From:

What does she want?

From:

the Shee or Devon?

From:

I think what my esteemed colleague was attempting to ascertain was: why does the Shee behave the way she does?

From:

I think it's because it's what she feels we deserve...

From:

and because as long as the pain in the body can overwhelm us all, or atleast distract us all, then the mental bullshit can't be that bad....

From:

pengke.livejournal.com

Making a list of everyone doesn't sound very wise when you are having issues with safety. For some there is safety in being anonymous. Others might not appreciate you talking about them.

It's not your responsibility to make people feel safe. Your idea of safety isn't going to fit other people's ideas of safety. You can address physical safety by moving away to a nicer neighborhood but that's about it.

It also sounds like you need to address more irrational feelings of being unsafe. We've never really understood the idea behind building a big floofy inner world of safety and happiness but the imagery and grounding techniques behind it might help. If you can visualize your own personal image of safety when you feel scared and unsafe, that's something that will be with you where ever you are and no one can take it away from you. Even the other people in the body with you can't touch it because it will only exist in your individual mind for you specifically to use. If the technique works then it's something all of you can learn to help each of you individually feel safe.

From: