multiplicity_archives | trying to sort it out

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trying to sort it out

a while back we had some really fucked up shit happen in conjunction with recovering new trauma memories and we're still trying to sort out what exactly happened. it was really weird and scary and we want to make certain (if that's possible) that it doesn't happen again.

someone else posted about being locked out, and not being able to sense the others, and that sort-of rings some bells, but this was kind of like we were a blur. we went from having switches to having a consistant perspective and it really fucked me up. i wasn't bel anymore or any of the others, but i didn't exactly change either. but it's like the thoughts lost their flavor and i couldn't tell who was who, so it was just "me". i kind of assumed that we'd integrated, but then once shit in our outer life got more stable we started being able to look at each other as sepatate beings again. another thing that was messed up about that period of time was that i started having a lot of what i can only describe as strange psychic phenomena happening around me (lightbulbs blowing, minor precognitions, electronic devices malfunctioning around me, and other weird shit) and other senses opened up in such a way that it totally overloaded me and i had a hard time staying grounded. i'm not entirely sure what set it off in the first place, but it fucked my life over hard core and i really want to get a better understanding.

anyone else ever have something like this happen? i'd love to hear some other perspectives because we're still not back to "normal" and system communication is still pretty low and it's bothering us. we know that we are "we", but we don't really feel quite real since we're having trouble communicating or knowing exactly who is out. sometimes it's very clear and those moments are all that is keeping us going. but we really want to understand this better so that we can stop going through life feeling like a zombie.

Bel and rina of the Crowd

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We're somewhat assuming what you will find from a lot of groups here is that this happens to some extent to everyone. People call it blurring, blending, partial intergration, etc....

We experience it whenever we're in a situation we can't singly handle... we all sort of blend and for a bit, it's OK to have... and then it gets really fucked up.

what i don't understand is that at the time we had so much co-consciousness that i don't know why blending would be preferable. plus, it was kind of fucked up from the get go. it didn't improve functioning one bit. in fact, it really screwed up our relationship with my now ex-husband. that kind of ended us.

it did make it easier to realize some things, i guess. i mean, we came out of it stronger in some ways and more self-aware in terms of life lessons and such, but not more selves-aware, if that distinction makes any sense. to put it another way, it's like, because i went through this fucked up shit, i understand the world better, understand the effects of our life events better. we learned things from the experience but each of us is having more trouble feeling our own essence, though it's definitely clear to us that being multiple didn't just "go away". it seems to be getting better somewhat with time, but i think that we need to be more proactive in trying to understand this.

i wasn't kidding when i said we felt zombiefied.

thanks for the comment. i appreciate it.

rina

i love your icon, btw

innea

Thank you. This is our shared journal, and I don't have my own icon at the moment, so I just use one of the shared images.

In regards to the blurring and co-consciousness...

You'll forgive me. We're at work and it's sometimes difficult for us to split our attentions in a functional manner.

However, I wanted to first say that we tried, when we were all being internally introduced to one another, the co-conscious aspect of things. I have to point out that we never WERE co-conscious, and the week we first spent attempting to be co-conscious voluntarily was one of the worst weeks in terms of functionality, ever.

We operate now under the idea that we are SEPERATE PEOPLE and people don't know one another's thoughts unless they CHOOSE to VERBALIZE.

It's no wonder you felt like a zombie. When you have to sort through numerous other people's thoughts to get to your own (if it's even possible) that is expected.

I'm sorry it did hurt your relationship. I think the only reason we ever get through that sort of thing is we're in with another multiple group who deals with similar issues.

Colour

co-consciousness has never been a problem for us. it's not a complete thing, like we have to sort through everyone's thoughts all at once or anything. it's never been like that.

some of us have closer bonds than others. holly and peter are twins and share the closest bond, but she can tell the difference between her thoughts and his, and vice versa, though when one of the other of us listens to them talk we have trouble telling the difference sometimes. they finish each others' thoughts all the time, but it doesn't make them any less clearly individuals.

we all have the ability to "tune in" when something on the outside is interesting to us without fully switching in. we can hear each other's thoughts, but we can also sheild our thoughts from one another.

for us, it's kind of like we have shared memory storage, but the ability for a certain person to recall an item depends on how much they personally were paying attention at the time, and how interested in and familiar they are with the subject in question. of course, if we can't remember, we can ask others to help us find it.

not everyone is always paying attention all the time, and not everyone is able to share consciousness with everyone else. there are combinations that just don't work. Like it's really really hard for Holly and Anna to be directly aware of each other. because they both have a lot of the trauma stuff and it just hurts for them to share that. so if they talk, it's not in thoughts but very verbalized. they don't really talk often at this point in time. it usually gives us a headache when they both try to get close to the front at the same time.

we don't have to verbalize all the time, we can understand thought images and feelings that come off of one another, which can be really helpful when someone has feelings they can't verbalize, because someone else can help them put it into words. but it's not a complete telepathy, either. i can't exactly describe it, but we do share the same brain, and for us that means that we can communicate with each other in ways that we can't communicate with someone who is in another body. again this varies depending on who is part of the conversation. some combinations work better than others.

feeling like a zombie isn't because of co-consciousness. it's because we're less co-conscious and have less communication between us that we feel zombiefied. because we don't feel like we're expressing ourselves the same way. it used to be that during co-consious moments we would be aware of having one person in front, and a few others seeing and hearing what was going on also. now most of the time the awareness is just a generic "me" and not really attached to any one person. so no one is truly experiencing what's going on in our life. it's just sort of happening.

rina

now most of the time the awareness is just a generic "me" and not really attached to any one person. so no one is truly experiencing what's going on in our life. it's just sort of happening.

It's ironic that these are things that worry us, and yet this is, essentially, how a singlet functions.

hmm... no, i think it's different than that, because that generic "me" feeling that i'm trying to describe is still expressing some of who we are, but it's detached, as if i'm not quite real and a lot of the emotions are dimmer than they ought to be. the word "generic" is the key descriptor there.

there's really only a sense of truly experiencing life when we can feel like who we really are. i don't think singlets go through life feeling detached and vaguely empty like that. maybe that's true for singlets who don't have a very clear self-concept (like my ex-husband who is addicted to magic cards and can't go more than an hour without immersing himself in some kind of game), but it's not true for singlets who know themselves, and are emotionaly and spiritually aware. most of us in our system are very passionate, self-aware people, but we can't express that right now for some reason. it's just generic. we have the beliefs that are shared in common with most of us, we have the priorities we've agreed on, we have the memories that are common to all of us, and we aren't completely disinterested in life, but we're just not able to interface with life on as deep a level as we could if we didn't go around feeling so... generic.

does that make sense?

rina

It does make sense, I see your point.

I wish I could offer advice, but all I can say is that your system is probably just shaken, and will likely return to normal.

i'd like to believe that, but i think we need to do something about it. this has been going on for the past year, which is a long time to feel backed off and disconnected like this. and yeah, stress is defintely a factor. we're getting divorced, had to move away from the city we love to another state, and though i haven't really been in danger of losing my kid (no legal action or anything), my ex and his family are... less than supportive and i think would have preferred it if i'd dropped out of the picture. there's a veneer of friendliness, but they're constantly undermining me. shaken doesn't really begin to cover it. *sigh*

i just don't want get out of this unhealthy pattern of functioning that we've gotten into because of all the stress. we never really recovered fully from the crash we had in the first place and now there's this feeling of stuckness that we're trying to move past.

thanks for commenting. even if you don't have advice, it helps to have people to talk to about it. :)

roze

I may be just plain wrong, but here's what I think may be happening to you.

You were dealing with some "new trauma memories".

Dissociation is a good way to avoid feeling the pain.

I tried it once. I was dealing with some pain that I thought I couldn't handle, so I looked up dissociation on Wikipedia to find out what it was, and thought I'd see if I could do that. It worked. The painful emotions went away, my headache went away. But Nensi told me we had to stop doing it, because of how it was affecting her. She was... well, fading away, I guess would be the best way of describing it, and she hated the effect it was having on her. So, we both stopped trying to dissociate (we were doing it together), and just dealt with the emotions, headache, etc. She came back, as strong as before. She had started to feel unreal, distant, strange... I'm not good at describing what it felt like, but wikipedia has a good description of the feeling under "depersonalization". So, in my case, the depersonalization was caused by dissociation. (So much for the mental health community's idea that being multiple is caused by dissociation... dissociation did the opposite for me.) I will never willingly dissociate again. Tried it once, and hated it.

Anyway, it is possible that you all were trying to avoid the pain of those memories, and managed to dissociate away some of the pain... with the side effect of becoming blurry and unreal feeling. Perhaps facing the pain of those memories, rather than stuffing it, might help the blurry, blendy, unreal feeling.

Like I said, I don't know if this is what's happening to you. I know it did happen to me, once, and affected me about like what you're describing.

-Nancy

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