Comment on or off any topics listed below for the June meeting:
- Losing time: feelings about it, what to do
- Therapist vacations
- Exhaustion
- Fear and recovery
- Relationships: how to have them, what they should look like, what’s realistic?
- Working to maintain a consistent exterior in order to relate to the world
- Wanting time in the body. Not wanting shifting to happen.
- My body locks up and I can’t move. Does that happen to you? How do you get out of it?
On working to maintain a consistent exterior: I’ve noticed that unless I tell people I’m multiple, they really do *not* notice when I switch. And even when I do let them know I’m multiple, I don’t know if they notice.
Maybe it helps that I’ve always allowed myself to be a little weird, and it might help that the younger parts tend to use a more “grown up” voice when talking around people who don’t know about me being multiple…
But, for the most part, I’ve realized that people are mostly focused on their own lives, and aren’t worrying about what I do or how I act. And anything they do notice just gets chalked up to my mood or something.
It does help that my system has agreed to use our legal name as a collective name, so we are all reasonably comfortable answering to the same name (or at least we all recognize it–there are some parts who will be a little jarred to hear themselves called by the body’s name).
the consistent exterior thing is hard sometimes! I’m in a situation now where there are people in one area of my life, who are calling me different names. One of these days I’m going to get found out and I’m thinking I’ll explain it away by saying that the non-body name is a “nickname” I sometimes use.
8. My body locks up and I can’t move. Does that happen to you? How do you get out of it?
This is something that happens to me a lot, especially when our therapy session is over, which obviously causes an issue. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions about this?
@fallen – yes the body locking thing happens a LOT to us. I have found very few ways to get out of it except to let time pass. It definitely used to happen after therapy a lot – just stuck in the car for an hour or so. Finally gave up getting upset about it and realized it was best to just expect it and plan to have time for it after therapy. I found it was much less distressing to just let go and allow for it mentally, and not beat myself up about it. All I can say is that it happens a lot less now as we’ve progressed through our process.
Sorry I don’t have a quick fix solution on that one. I really tried to find one. The acceptance thing seemed to be the only solution for us. Our distress about it dropped dramatically and that was half the problem – stressing about it!