Not always funny

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.

Will Rogers

One of the challenges I face is to decide if I share this blog with someone I know in my every day living.  I am very comfortable sharing that I am in counseling.  I don't mind sharing how long but explaining what I was diagnosed with PTSD with dissociation at an extreme level which translates to multiple personalities becomes very ticklish.  I am not ashamed of how I survived.  I am disconcerted by the reaction of other people.  Movies and TV shows are polarizing the myths about multiple personalities ala Jekyll/Hyde to the other extreme that DID is only play acting.  Another reaction I received was someone was fascinated and almost came to the point where they wanted to watch me switch like some sort of circus freak show.  There were people that disappeared out of my life.  One person even expressed concern of 'catching' it like you would a cold.  I started this blog to share that multiple personality was a creative survival technique that developed at an age when I didn't have many coping skills.  Integration did not change my need to cope with PTSD.  Now I have more tools and a wider understanding of different ways to cope with nightmares from my past haunting me today.  I believed integration would be that magic bullet to make my past disappear.  Didn't work out how I expected.  Now, I can pick and choose different coping skills.  Unfortunately, mindless computer games is one of my choices.  It dulls my mind and keeps me from slipping into that murky past called yesterday.  Why do I even bother?  Imagine you plan to hike a steep mountain path.  Your back pack is very heavy with things learned from the past.  However, some of the stuff is just dead weight adding nothing to a better way of living.  Most people know how to sort through their own backpacks and let go of past hurts and disappointments.  There are other people, like me, that until I went to counseling I didn't even know I owned a backpack.  I also didn't know what was in it.  Releasing my 'stuff' terrified me.  What would I have left if I took out all the rotting garbage....at one point in my mind I believed that was all I had.  KavinCoach started the process of showing me I had a backpack and getting me to unload garbage. 

Some events I mastered telling the story in such away that it comes across as really funny to someone else.  My DH found a pair of shoes in the living room when our children still lived at home.  He showed them to me and asked me if they were mine.  I denied it and suggested that they belonged to one of the girls.  He asked every member of the family.  No one claimed the shoes.  Several days later he came back to me showed me the shoes and told me that no one claimed them so he planned to give them away.  I squealed happily, "Oh thank you sweetheart,  you found my shoes."  I look back at the memory and chuckle at his look of total bewilderment.  Just days before, I denied knowing who the shoes belonged to.  Later, I am delighted he found my shoes.  Missing shoes, clothes and other items were the least of my problems.  The bigger problems of missing days, weeks, and promises far more difficult to cope with.  Multiple personalities is hard to study since every multiple is there own unique mix of people, old and young, male and female, introvert and extrovert, talking and mute, cooperative and stubborn, or any other combination created and maintained to cope with their particular triggers.  No multiple ever fits into a nice tidy package.  In my opinion, no multiple is born that way.  The multiple themself has the most difficult time unlocking their own heart and feelings.  Nothing is funny about being a multiple.  I admire each person that survives then works at rebuilding their life.  Survivors of trauma are an amazing group of people.  Survivors are not always multiples.  Survivors becoming thrivers is what this is all about.  Beating the odds is possible. 

Gathering and storing bits from the past.