1) Physical health and how it interacts with mental health
2) Finding a new shrink
3) Getting used to things being good
4) Being judged
5) Standing up for yourself with people who don’t understand why you’re switching
6) Figuring out why things work when they work!
7) Do you believe your alters?
There is a definite link between physical and mental health. I just don’t know what that is…(ha,ha)
But really, I definitely feel more pain when I am depressed or angry. My hope is that as my mental health improves through therapy, my physical health will improve too. I have not done enough work with the body to see if it works the other way around too. Like, exercise is supposed to make you feel good, but we just get tired out. I do believe that the body stores memory, that will hopefully release so I can feel better before I am dead. I have not found anyone to help work with my body this way. The body does not want anyone to touch it.
I’ve been struggling with the realization recently that my physical health is less affected by my mental health than I thought. Well, not quite sure that’s what I meant. I know that there are some things that were definitely affected by my mental health. For instance, there were several years where I couldn’t handle massage or most other health care stuff, and that had a big impact. And also, there are things where I think my mental state had a big effect.
But for years, I’ve gone on the belief that my physical health stuff is mostly due to mental things, and only recently have I started thinking it might be the other way around. For instance, I thought that the sore throats and bronchitis I had *every year* when I was growing up were due to psychosomatic things. They ended as soon as I left home. Now, I realize I was living with a three-pack-a-day, indoor smoker, and (duh) living with that much junk in the air is probably why I had those problems, and why they went away was that I stopped living with it. Not psychosomatic at all!
On the down side, I’ve had to face up to the fact that my fatigue is more likely to cause depression than to be caused by it. I thought it was switching, but I’m starting to realize there are some parts who just weren’t coming out when my body felt crappy (they still don’t, mostly) (jerks). So one reason the littles are more likely to be out in the mornings is that I feel better then. And so forth. We’ve been out more often regardless of how the body feels lately, mostly because the body feels like crap more of the time, and so if they want time out they have to put up with times when it’s hard.
But I’ve been paying attention, and realized that if I’m feeling otherwise ok and a flare-up happens, it takes three or four days before I feel depressed.
It doesn’t mean I don’t think there’s a mind-body connection, I’m just having to face up to the fact that my problems might not be from mental health, which means I need to figure out how to get medical care for them, which is hard and scary for me.
For me, exercise helps, but only if it’s the right kind. I really miss being able to work until I’m sweaty and tired, but if I let myself get tired I feel horrible for too long. If I do really gentle exercise (the kind that drives me CRAZY because it doesn’t feel like exercise), then I usually feel pretty good. But I also have to accept resting waaaaay too much of the time, and taking stupid naps even though I hate naps.
I’m feeling chatty tonight. Not sure why–maybe because my hands are cooperating and my eyes are working. So, thinking about whether I believe what other parts say….
I don’t know. I’ve found that if I get too caught up in that, it seems to make things worse. I don’t know if I believe all of what other parts say, but I guess I’ve got no reason, really, *not* to believe them. And it doesn’t hurt anything for me to believe them, so I just sort of… leave it be. They can talk about stuff in therapy, or journal, or whatever. We don’t spend much time around the people they talk about, and we’ve pretty much come to a compromise about that, where those of us who want to spend time with family make sure the others are safe and get breaks and support.
When I can be rational about things, it makes more sense that the stuff they say is true than that it isn’t, you know? But at the same time, it’s not really worth the effort to confront the people who hurt us, since we don’t think they’re likely to be in the position to hurt anyone else, and they might not even do it now even if they were around people they could hurt, since they *have* changed. So, yeah, no point in confronting them, but no point in thinking they didn’t do stuff in the past.
Plus, having that information makes it easier to be prepared for things like, I don’t know, my mom being really narcissistic. I mean, she *is*. And if I know that going in, then it’s easier to not be hurt by it.