Saturday, November 24, 2007

Questions from Khaless

Recently, Khaless asked me a question in the comments on I told her that I would Questions from an Alter of Another System answer in a post. Now that Thanksgiving is over, I figured I better get this taken care of before I forget.

Khaless's questions were in regard to me saying that I have lost parts of my system.

Q: Is there no way you can ever now connect to them?

I guess I wasn't specific enough in my terms when I mentioned that I had lost personalities within my system. These missing parts are not misplaced. They are dead. That is not meant in a "dead to me" type of terminology that people apply to family or others when they are upset with behavior. It is meant in the concept of the more final forms of death. They cease to exist.


Q: Or are they gone forever?

Yes, they are gone forever. There are no traces of them within my system. While I have knowledge of the memories they had shared, that is all that is left.

Any memories that were not shared throughout the system or any secrets they didn't disclose are gone forever. And as I said in the first post, there is a disconnect between the knowledge of those memories and the feelings that went with them. I have no emotional attachment to those memories at all.

The most difficult part about this is there are things about my children and they're growing up, that are part of the emotional connection I have lost. Things that are important to my kids that I have no memory of. How these parts functioned in my system that put them at risk, I do not know for sure, I can only guess. All I know is that I was told when they were dying and that they are gone.

Q: If so how / why?

Personalities died during the time when my therapy was turned on it's ear. I posted the particulars about that episode during the posts that began Lunch and a Movie

During my indoctrination by the cult my psyche had been manipulated to include both the psychological AND the physical tortures that I was forced to endure. I posted about this in In Lunch and a Move Part 2

During my childhood when this was happening my developing system found a way to wall this combined torture off protecting my personalities from its harmful effects. Even during the therapy process my system continued to function in this protective format. Feelings were allowed but there were definitely protective buffers that helped me to feel the physical pain without the emotional pain at the same time. My therapist personality directed the process so that the damage the cult had intended was not unleashed.

Once my process was disturbed, I was at the mercy of my "emotional " programming. Even though my therapist personality was able to keep memories in check until I could get to a safe place to process them, the barriers and buffers my system had provided between the pain and my personalities was obliterated leaving my entire system reliving the tortures in the manner the cult had intended.

From what I can tell, personalities that had been made to experience feelings in a superficial manner but that were protected against the onslaught the cult had intended me to suffer, were now exposed directly to the who ugly mess. They were unable to cope with the combined physical, emotional AND psychic pain. As we abreacted (relived) the tortures in therapy, those parts died in the process, despite my system's best attempts to protect them.

The dying that happened is one of the reasons that I have chosen not to integrate. We processed only enough to get us past the hold that cult had over us. Keeping us believing that we deserved all that had happened to us. Once we found the source of that belief and healed it, we stopped the process, unwilling to risk loosing anymore parts of our self.


To be continued..........

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, RR. Though I know my question may be a bit ignorant, I certainly hope it it not offensive in any way. If it is, please know that it was not meant to be that way, and I just simply don't know enough about your inner situation.

Do you suppose the parts who have died were simply integrated? Do you think that they have gone because they reaveled what they had and there wasn't anymore to share and thus you didn't need those parts to continue being separate? Could the missing information be stored somewhere else and it did not die with them? Maybe it is just undiscovered? What is the difference between parts dying and parts being integrated. IF death and integration are one in the same, AND the dead/integrated parts did NOT forever lose info and it is simply misplaced, what else have you lost by not having these parts? Have you lost any functions?

I ask because though I have not been diagnosed with DID, I have discovered that I have two distinct states of being. One is emotional and has access to memories. The other is all business and is very detached and is functional and not so bothered by all the trauma (the 'fake' self?). These are the ways that I am. Of course, I prefer the detachment because I have things to do and don't like pain and horror. I have detected what I think is an inner attempt to blend these two ways of being and I don't like it. I can see how it would be beneficial in a way (pain might be less painful?), but even in 'function mode', I am less functional than the average person. I worry that if these two ways melded into one, then my functioning would be diluted and I don't think I can really afford that. Having said that though, sometimes I can go for months (or even years) without getting a good foothold in 'function mode'. This makes me wonder if being consistently lower functioning wouldn't be more productive in the long run than it is to go for great periods of time without access to good functioning. -- Or perhaps I am wrong and what I have detected is an attempt by the emotional self to bring the memories to the functional self who could look at them without emotions? I'm not sure this is possible, though. If I have to see that stuff, the emotional self will take over. It's what has always happeneed. I don't know what is happening to me. I hope what I have asked and described makes sense to you. It's hard to explain.

signed us - etal said...

just wanted to say we have bene here and red not sure what to say so just hi will have to do

Kahless said...

Thanks RR for taking the time to write this post. It must have been painful for you to write.

I understand what you are saying now, that those parts cease to exist. And I understand why you chose not to integrate.

Thank-you again.