Guess I'll post myself a reply... Antoni, very clever lad you are, great insight and great questions!

Dude

Hi Antoni, the 'false memory' idea has hurt a lot of people on both sides. What we know of memory in the brain is that we can get some things mixed up. However, I have no doubt about it--nor can anyone doubt it when they look at the news today--there are atrocities that have been inflicted on human beings by other human beings.

In some ways, in the larger scheme of things, identifying the exact details of events are less important. The discovery of a memory is very important. The fact that someone has to split off aspects of themselves because of great harm is the most important aspect to me. Something terrible happened and in order to cope with the horrifying experience, a human being comes up with strategies that are useful at the time of the event (like splitting off), but less useful past the event.

This is what I trust. Something very very bad happened. I know it because I see the pain in my clients' eyes. As a human being, I know that pain and I know we don't, we can't, make that up.

Does this explanation ring true for you?

Shrinklady

BTW, if you'd like your own "title" Antoni, you can easily get one by just signing up using a different email address.

I read this book about that once that I thought was very interesting...

it's called "Unchained Memories' by Lenore terr I believe... or maybe that's a flase memory> omg... lol.. kidding.... anyways... it's good

Antoni... I feel like with DID, a 'recovered memory' isn't really recovered.. it's more like..'discoverd' like buried 'treasure'.. it was there.... someone was/is holding it... and has deciced to let it be shown... or however you might state it.... so therefore it becoems 'recovered' but it's not really... I don't know.. that's the way I see it...

With me... there's tons I don't remember.. btu i don't have any part of me that recalls it. It's buried deep without another part to show me the way... so it's different...

whatever the case.. memory isfragile.

but that book... is good... i liked it... it gave me a lot to thinka bout.. if it doesn't make you feel more confused.. i do nt kow.

Sounds like an interesting book. I doubt we'll have time to read it though... we are up to our eyeballs in studying for the course we are taking.

"someone was/is holding it... and has deciced to let it be shown..." I really like the way you phrase this! it shows a lot of insight and appreciation for how it is for us.

"human being comes up with strategies that are useful at the time of the event (like splitting off), but less useful past the event."
OUCH! This statement hurt!

Dude

Yup, just like a shrink to be offputting...sorry Dude and thanks for letting me know. Let me see if I can be more explicit.

This splitting off (i.e. of a memory), I meant in the most general terms. Everyone uses it to some degree. I feel if more people recognized it in themselves, no one would question DID. It's pretty hard to be human and not experience some events that we need to tuck away.

Where I see it show sometimes is when some people move into child mode. We say, "some people just don't grow up" and we blame them. But if we had more understanding we'd see, this is what that person needed to do in order to keep a connection, to keep going. The child part of him or her holds that memory so other parts of him or her can keep the business of being in world going.

It might not be working for him or her right now (i.e. not recognizing the memory) especially with all the respoonsibilities of living in a complex society, so it's less "useful" to him or her in the general sense, but the "way of being" is there from experience.

In other words, memories tucked away can be very confusing...we can get triggered and not know it and then behave in a way--that on surface--doesn't make sense to others or even the person experiencing it. Memories split off from awareness require a kind of energy that could be better used elsewhere. The finding of memories then, is the beginning of healing.

Does that make sense?

Shrinklady

Thanks for the clarification! I agree that some behavours or 'ways of being' are less useful than others. more later...
Dude

"Memories split off from awareness require a kind of energy that could be better used elsewhere. The finding of memories then, is the beginning of healing"

YES!I truly believe in the healing of memories, and having them surface. It's a difficult task ... even us 'insiders' have memories we don't want to deal with!

We've had enough of the "it's not good to talk to your 'alters' as it encourages them to speak" attitude! you'd be amazed what people say... perhaps not, as being a 'T' I'm sure you hear it all.

Dude

Dude- ... I had a friend with DID.. BPD... Bipolar... etc etc... and she was in extreme denial of her DID.... her mental 'health professionals' did NOT help because they were of the thought that 'DId was somewhat a dellusion"..... sigh....

It drove me nuts.... it's like.. simple.... People with Dellusions.... you can't TALK with their dellusions.... so.. duh? lol...

I tried to encourage her to change therapists esp. because the psychiatristds were just giving her all kinds of antipsychotics which.. guess what.. don't work.. gee wonder WHY....

I felt more compelled to help her when one of her system protectors came to me one day and said she had been watching me for sometime and wanted/asked me to please try and help their host to listen to them inside because the psychs outside just confused her more and it was insane..

but due to her very intense BPD (borderline personality disorder), we had a major difficult time getting along. I tried sooooooo hard but man... oh man... talk about boundaries forever tested, pushed. etc.. and finally I just couldn't take the egg shells anylonger. She was very paranoid and big at accusing me of stuff that wasn't true... and it was just to much...

but it sucks to me soooo extremely badly how she has these alters that took care of their system so long and because of outsiders and her own confusion, she thinks 'it's just dellusions and listening to them makes it worse'.....

What gives people the right... just cause they have MD or PHD to decide what you should and should not do when what you are is how you survived? Of course, there are the destructive patterns that don't help continued survival now that helped then and that makes sense to intervene upon but to decide to 'talk to one's alters or not'... is just... to me, prejudiced. How can someone decide that.. well.. DID just doesnt make logical sense so therefore... we won't acknowledge this way of coping... to me this is another way in which society denies that child abuse happens.. but that's a whole different soap box of mine.

Oh my.. I'm feeling very sedated and prolific tonight so thanks to those that were able to bare with me.... lol..

Hi Butterfly, it sounds like you have a full time job just keeping track of all your meds. That must get complicated and tiresome. I get nauseous just taking vitamin pills so I know that's got to be hard for you. I just can't imagine how your life must be like with what you have to deal with. I hope you have support. Does someone take care of you when you're bedridden?

Funny enough, speaking of mindfulness, I just attended a workshop on mindfulness by Dr. Daniel Siegel. You're right they have a lot in common. All the benefits he sited are the same ones we get with body psychotherapy.

But body psychotherapy as you suggested is a little different. It's much better for people with trauma backgrounds. The way Siegel talks about mindfulness is from a left brain strategy...that is, trying to stop your judgements and thoughts--albeit gently. However, it's a hecka lot easier to work directly with the body sensations. When you do that, the thoughts slow down...there's no telling your thoughts to slow down, "quiet brain" is just a natural consequence of it. A friend of mine has done mindfulness for years and when he got into body psychotherapy, he experienced discharge that he never did with mindfulness. You could also visibly see the changes in him.

The other big difference is that body psychotherapy is done with someone else's nervous system...that is your therapist's. Allan Schore (Affect Regulation and Repair of the Self) maintains that attunement between infant and mother are like attunement between therapist and client (e.g.attachment theory and neurobiology and psychotherapy ).

They both create changes in the brain in a similar way. It's my opinion that when you include the somatic in therapy you're tapping into that potential even more than with talk therapy alone.

It's tremendously difficult to attend to your body sensations when it's racked with pain. This is why it's so much easier with someone else. A somatic therapist would help you to focus on where you're not feeling the pain and using resources in your life to feel a tiny bit of the pain i.e. titrating between the two.

I think asking yourself to have mindful moments is a lot to ask when we have high activation. High pain means high activation, and high activation means your brain will always be fighting you on having mindful moments. It won't come easy. However, having mindful moments with your therapist (i.e. using somatic therapy) will help settle your nervous system down and then it'll be easier to have mindful moments outside of therapy because they will happen naturally (i.e. because new connections in the brain have been laid down). I talked about it a little when I described regulation.

I'd be interested to hear what you think,

I wish you well,
Shrinklady

hi Everyone, sorry, I screwed up...I'm still trying to figure this thing out and I accidently erased some posts.

Butterfly Warrior...you don't happen to have a copy of your last post?

Happy Thanksgiving to our American friends,

Shrinklady

takes a shrink to screw up eh?

I'm kidding.. lol.. no, don't have the post... not as far as I know.. it's okay.. stuff happens..

WOW shrinklady-

I absolutely love your post... I might have to share this one with my therapist. Wish She was a somatic therapist thouygh I want to ask her more of her thoughts on it since she has read.. or at least was reading "Waking the Tiger".. I just know as most Clinical Psychologist here aren't trained in that area...

I have a friend that does integrative therapies including somatic expereicing and she tells me that she wishes me to find a therapist that does it. I would if I could but I can't due to major financial issues so I take what I can get.. that is through county mental health. I do see it as a direction that would make a lot of sense to me es. when you mention the ability to regulate oneself and have this sort of maybe grounding type or tapping into oneself with someone else opens up yourself for further connections/mindfulness/harmony latter on.. I say harmony because the feeling of mindfulness to me is one that feels full of harmony...

I agree that having so much pain, it's too hard to find myself outside of it but I know that when my massage therapist has had time to work with me (he treats me for free and is having financial issues so i havent seen him in a few months now) however he has workrd with me for instance.. last time for 2 hours... he did massage.. different types and stretching and such and I know that as he worked on me my body was very very painful but some areas were very relieved and happy to have his body work and it was very soothing on many levels. I was in terrible pain for a couple days after thr massage but after 10 tons of water and a soak or two in the hot tub, i began to feel reenergized and so much more quieter inside than I normaly do...

"A somatic therapist would help you to focus on where you're not feeling the pain and using resources in your life to feel a tiny bit of the pain i.e. titrating between the two."

that right there sounds absolutely AMAZING and something no other type of psychotherapy can do.

I find that often a frustration actually is that in my therapy, i really don't like to talk about the pain I'm in though it naturally come sup esp given the situation I'm in right now. However it's like of no use to talk about it because it s like so what now what? Sure we can talk about the emotions and how hard it is but that really sucks and doesn't help.. lol.

Oh yes in terms of being in bed.. I'm not completely bed ridden but I cannot really sit up or even use my scooter/wheelchair as I normally do. I can sit on the couch if i'm not sitting straight and walk a little in the house. My mother is helping me a lot though she is tired and gets frustrated.... which I understand. I hate being so dependent on her. I'm 30 years old and I live at home.. that really sucks to me and to need her to do so much for me is hard to swallow but hopefully things will ease up soon.

My therapist has been wonderful to me, keeping in touch with me weekly and sometimes more if I need it. I guess she is trying to really show herself there for me. I really appreciate it but it kinda sucks for me beause with phone therapy, only so much can be accomplished and I really was kinda willing to push myself to start back working on trauma work and that just can't happen on the phone. In the mean time im ldealing with all of this crap and of course, i can understand where the idea of mindfulness can come in here but that isnt REALITY... lol.

I really like what yoy brought out as the differences with mindfullness vs somatic expereincing because I feel much more attracted to the ideas of somatic expereincing but I think I like it mostly because I believe in the healing power of touch alone. To me that in itself has a lot of power esp with someone you can trust.. it can be renurturing and helpful...

I think about one of my friends that has DID. They went through a lot of intensive therapy.. a lot of exposure therapy and one thing their therapist always did was hold their hand hug them hold them.. present herself their even in their imagery if it helped in grounding.... and i think again that power of touch really can help a person.... than add that to a particular method and procedure .. well.. my thoughts are a little scattered but Im thinking of an article my friend.. the integrative therapist.. sent me about trauma and how much of it is held in the posas muscle... and how much work on that particular muscle often produces very emotional results... how one must be careful and just other things in relation to that particular area.. it was very fascinating. Dont know if i still have it since my hard drive crashed...

anyways those are my thoughts for now..

Hi Butterfly Warrior, how interesting...I couldn't agree more about touch. I think you might have missed Dude's post about the Little's who experienced touch with their T (it was another one I had erased). Maybe, if Dude reads this he can tell us again about it. Apparently, the touch really helped.

The massage therapist I refer most of my clients to is actually trained in body psychotherapy. She does amazing work but you would barely recognize it as massage as she won't touch a body until the body is ready. So she slows everything down so you know whether you're ready for touch here and there. She brings awareness so she's always staying in contact...i.e. asking, "what are you noticing". Of course, if someone is expecting to zone out, which I think a lot of people normally do, they might be a little disappointed. But the change is more dramatic...patterns are interrupted and new ones laid down. I'm working with her on an article so I'll let you and everyone know when it's done. (she helped edit my article on dissociation).

Talk to you later,
Shrinklady