I DID it

@LifeIsMyCanvas

Nice to meet you all. I love how you are aware of each of your individual personalities and their characteristics. I also love how you describe all of them with love, compassion and understanding for how you work together to keep you safe. Thank you for sharing.

Inside

Most people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) have an inner world that holds the parts/insiders whilst they are not 'out' in the real world interacting with the human race. There are some common things like safe places, hiding places and other such useful things meant to help those inside to cope with their various traumas/roles/life stuff.

I once drew my inner world, it looks a bit like this...

The house is where 'we' live and it has a mixture of safe places and places we store stuff that isnt dealt with trauma wise, although mostly we have worked through most of the house. The boat on the lake is the place one of my parts goes to remember my Dad as that is were they most connected with Dad when he was still alive. The forest is mostly used as a meeting place with hiding by trees for curious ears that arent brave enough to join in. The sunshine cloud leads to our secret safe place where we go to pray and think about stuff. The poppies are remembrance to special friends we lost, and to the sacrificed lives we witnessed. The tree is called 'the tree of core beliefs'. Every experience is represented in that tree and it helps us understand parts of who we are. The vault next to the tree serves many purposes. This is a lock down area where we may put parts that become dangerous or overwhelmed if all other helpful things have been tried and they or we need protection. It also has the library of our remembered traumas, our feelings jars we are working on in therapy and other significant things we want to keep safe and not loose. Inside the house we have a duvet fortress for the little ones, they mostly play in there. There is the chill out room in the attic where parts go when stressed, angry or experiencing other overwhelming feelings. So yeah that's where we hang out together and do our thing when we are not 'outside'. Except Vicky she lives in a different space and I will let her tell you about that when she is ready.

- Canvas & Marcy & Charlie

The Noise

It's noisy in my head, as you can imagine sharing it with 11 others. Sometimes it

My Self Care Day

First things first – lay in!!!
Watch some crafty videos on YouTube in the duvet den
Put on a good music playlist and have a cry
Work on one of my nerdy passion projects
Get out my self-care box and have a look for a journaling topic
Do a bit of journaling
Take a long warm shower, taking it easy as my body hurts today
Let the little ones do a jigsaw on my ipad and cuddle their favourite teddy

Our journey to remembering

The feelings always came back first, sometimes as pictures in my mind. I thought I was hallucinating at first. Maybe I'm paranoid? No surely not because I knew these were in my mind yet not mine. I was scared, terrified I was drifting from reality. Yet they were my reality, they were my feelings about life, my real reality unknown to me at the time.

I like to art and stuff, I think most people can guess that from my name on here! I find it helps where my mouth is bound to silence by the mind control programs and it is therapeutic to say how if feel in a secret language I only understand. Less fear of being found out, more power to say the unsaid yet deeply felt. Art was the way I talked to my counsellor for a long time. I drew and drew, only cracking part of the code for her with minimal words to accompany them by way of an interpretation. I'm not sure at what point she cracked my code and started to see more than I shared. I was reluctant but grateful she spoke the things I could not say.

Looking back at my art journal, it seems so obvious I was multiple. Of course when I started drawing these pictures I didn't understand I was multiple or programmed. I was completely oblivious to it, I only knew I lost time and constantly felt pressured to work harder to make up for time I couldn't account for. I went through a stage for about a year, of beginning the walk down the stairs and suddenly I'd find myself crumpled up on the bottom step with no recollection of falling. It scared me so much I went to see a doctor… and that is saying something for me because I am terrified of doctors after the mind control programming. I was compulsive, ritualistic, in complete lock down. Self medicating, trying to forget these images that haunted my mind, trying to sleep without remembering the night terrors. Always so tired, I'd awake thinking some evil thing must have given birth in me to dream such disgusting things. I'd rack my brains about things I'd watched on TVs or read about looking for any reason for it not to have come from inside of me.

My counsellor went through a phase of asking me ‘who are you?. It totally paralysed me in a way I don't have words for. I was suddenly aware of a deep void, nothingness inside. I couldn't remember big chunks of my life. All I had were these pictures in my head, night terrors I couldn't stand and then I saw her. There she was, tiny little thing running around in my head. I'm ashamed to say I locked her away in a bird cage. No idea why. It took me a while to speak about the girl, that's when my counsellor told me, you have DID.

I left her feeling like I was in a bubble, lost, adrift in a black and white bubble. Everything seemed distant, unreal, disconnected. I went home and read about what this was, what it meant. I wanted to fight it, argue it away. As I read I knew she was right, it described my whole life, I broke. I laid on my bed crumpled up. Hubby sitting next to me I said, ‘what if I forget who I am and don't find my way back?. He took my hand and said, ‘ I always know who you are, you are my wife and when you forget you can reach for my hand and find yourself again. I honestly think these were the words that gave me the strength to accept it.

I let her out of the cage, I told her how sorry I was. Over time she shared her memories with me, and together we found more of the others. I realised the night terrors were real, memories of the torture and abuse. The pictures I saw in my mind were the others, desperately trying to tell me the truth as they saw it, why they were so afraid. I accepted I was already lost, I wasn't afraid of loosing myself because I knew for the first time, I'd never experienced who I was. It was hard to accept I was fragmented, even harder to see such strong personalities inside when I felt like nothing myself. So we began to learn about each other and what had happened to each one of us. It took much much longer to remember the programming, I've only known about a year. I still have thoughts that's it can't be true, I must be lying, it's too crazy to have really happened. But it did happen, now I remember, in vivid detail. The flashbacks, the body memories and all of these memories. Together we remember it, the way they show me is too child like to not be true, the pain in my body is really there and these programs are calling us liars because they don't want us to speak the truth. You are found out, we beat you with simple drawings and we will break you with our words and our will. We have to trust ourselves to win.

Stuckness and stuff

My mum in law sent me an article about someone with DID describing how they cope. Its a bit long but its insightful, helpful to give to family/friends and I didnt find it triggering. You can read it here if you wish: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170613-how-i-learned-to-live-with-multiple-personalities?ocid=ww.social.link.email

After reading it there was obviously some conversation between us. I was explaining to her that perhaps she had more of an insight as to why going out was so hard, and even small things like deciding what clothes to donate took time with 12 peoples needs/wants/tastes/attachments to consider. She made a few suggestions like putting each personality in a box, well yeah its not quite that simple, nor would it be so healthy to do that. But I did think making space for each of us to have our special things was a good idea and I have since made a happy box for all of us

Today I have been working on decluttering my safe place (my crafty room) and also some of the living areas. My apartment is very small, (hubby calls it the match box lol), so even if each of us has a few things it can get a bit of a challenge to clean and function. Especially with the extreme tiredness and pain from the body memories. I have been feeling very stuck when having to do things around the house. Its like my thoughts are snatched away and my mind goes blank, or I get decision paralysis, like Im stuck in a loop. This stuckness has been going round in circles for a really long time and it drives me absolutely nutty. Today I just accepted the stuckness. You know when youre eating and you pause to decide if you are full or not and you have to listen to your body for a response before you carry on? Well I did that but with stuff. If I got stuck I stopped for a moment and waited, sometimes a part came out to work on something else they wanted, other times I took a small break and after that I was able to move on a bit more and the stuckness sort of passed by. Ive learnt that my stuckness is a time to pause and be mindful of my parts and my energy and that acknowledging and responding to our needs is both healthy and productive.

Lost for words

When the words are lost and energy low I feel a void between the outside world and us. I can stay like this for sometime and if I dont notice it can get into a really icky depression. Art is the only thing that breaks me out of it; its grounding and mindful without forcing me to completely reconnect with reality. Maybe it is more of an acknowledgement of my own reality. Sometimes words arent enough to explain the things that I have gone through. A picture says so much more. I havent had the urge to paint recently. I thought I didnt have anything to say, but thats not true… I see her eyes inside. Im out of my body looking over her as she is frozen in terror. The pain in her eyes is piercing my consciousness even through the disconnect. Its a total ironic state to be in, paralysed yet bursting with emotion. This is usually the time I pick up a brush or pencil. All I have managed today is to smoosh colour onto paper. Its looks like fire, she is angry. Looking at her I only see cool dark tones in her eyes, she hides the fire she puts on the paper deep within. She is composed but falling apart, she is brave but terrified. She is small but her feelings are as big as the room she is in.

Thank you for sharing, you have such amazing personal insight, truly inspiring to read about your ongoing journey. Much love <3

Roll the dice, poem by Marcy

One to six,
Stones or sticks,
What will it be?

A glance up,
I shut up,
Silent as can be.

Never say no,
That

The fog

Today I have a bad case of foggy head. It is commonly described as such by those who dissociate, espcially those who switch between personalities states.

It physically feels like the start of a migraine and drowsyness but I couldnt sleep. It's a lost feeling, I'm not out of my body but I'm not 'here' either. I don't know who else is here, I feel in limbo. Half here half there, wherever there is.