[Waterloo12345]

Hi All,

I don't formally use parts work or IFS in therapy or have been diagnosed with a dissociative disorder but I do identify with having parts with their own characters, ages, personalities, needs and wants.

My question is how do you mediate when each (or some) have a differing need or wish where fulfilling the need of one will very likely undermine the needs of others.

How do you decide which to act on? I guess this would be for those who are in the middle of the spectrum and there is a level of control by the functional part - actually my parts are screaming not control W but cooperation and working together, none of us is better or in charge. So. That's 'me' told. The old me that still thinks I'm one person.

Anyway, that may have answered my question, talking, cooperation, seeing where the least harm could be caused or mitigating it.

I was just curious to hear others experiences.

[here today]

My last therapy was with a specialist in trauma and dissociation, so I'm familiar with that. The way I was, there were 2 "narcissistic" parts that were very split off and that I had worked on "getting in touch with" for years, both in the last therapy and prior to that.

In the language I used in another thread, they both had kind of their own container/bubbles/part-egos, and then there was the "apparently normal" main me that thought it was and acted as if it were one person, but -- I guess was largely a "false self"?. So the challenge has seemed to be to "merge" those bubbles into a whole that includes the "bad" impulses, parts, etc., or maybe to develop another bubble from scratch that contains them all. But I had to be familiar with the formerly dissociated parts before that could happen. Which did, in lots of ways, come from therapy.

Don't know if that makes sense -- take what you like and leave the rest.

As I've implied before -- I don't think the dissociation/parts psychologists and the ego development (object relations?) psychologists have a coordinated approach yet. So it's kind of up to those of us in the thick of it to put together something that will work for us individually, maybe.

Would you like to hear some more about my narcissistic and/or destructive parts? They don't cooperate, so -- they've been hard to accept and contain, rather than just cut off. Even when logically I understand that's the better route to take. Getting better, that's the good news.

Just deal with what comes up. Otherwise it becomes to contrived.

[Waterloo12345]

I like the framework of thinking of a false self. I think that's what the 'me' I refer to is. That false self operated as the main me except when in emotional flashback or acting out the other parts forced themselves to the fore but as it was all unconscious I didn't realise.

It has been through therapy that I've come to be familiar with the formerly dissociated parts but I'm still grappling with integration or merging which suggests an anniliation or reburial of those parts. I have to work that out ad it's not (I think) but am uncertain.

I haven't picked up on your implication but it does resonate. My T is more object relations but does have a willingness to take an electic approach but I perceive (?projection?) that she is less comfortable with parts. Though that said when it first came up she was alert for symptoms of DID. So who knows.

Yes please! It would be very interesting to hear about how you contain and accept and not cut off. I've got similar parts. I try to see at least one as a protector part ie maladaptive but well intentioned.

Thanks.

[Waterloo12345]

Originally Posted by Jessica11

Just deal with what comes up. Otherwise it becomes to contrived.

Unfortunately that's the problem for me - how to deal with it when it comes up. Or when what comes up can help one bit, harm another etc.

You task any whatever feels the most pressing.

[Waterloo12345]

I don't think that will work for me or perhaps I can't distinguish what you mean by most pressing.

So the most pressing for me right now is to get to the garden and do something and make him love me again. I say no because that is acting out. But baby part just wants the garden, the safety. I've a lot of time for giving into her needs as she provides the foundation of my equilibrium. So I might go and just sit and breathe. Use it as a transitional object to restore underlying safety before I go off and do irl stuff that will eventually mean I can self generate that safety.

So i guess it could be said that the most pressing is my medium term stability (as going to the garden for the baby will rub raw the child part who is so near but yet so far).

But to come to this mediated compromise I had to actually talk to each and get views and reason with each.

So yes it is contrived. I would like to know how others actually do it if any wish to share.

[Waterloo12345]

Hi HT

This resonates but I didn't want to derail lrad's thread.

So, that's my take. I continued in a lot of therapy for a lot of years, with what turns out to have been false hope and maybe fantasy.

Hope for me is paramount. Without hope of recovery (or at least amerlioraton) I know the pain would be too much for me too bear. So it might be a false hope, emperor's new clothes type thing, but I need that. I also thibk in my case unless there were objective gains I would lose hope.

I read this obituary on Twitter this morning about the loss of hope and it really resonated.
In Memoriam: Matt Stevenson

Now I am getting off PC at least for 45 mins....baby steps eh.

[here today]

Originally Posted by Waterloo12345

. . .
Yes please! It would be very interesting to hear about how you contain and accept and not cut off. I've got similar parts. I try to see at least one as a protector part ie maladaptive but well intentioned.

Thanks.

The 2 parts I mentioned -- one I used to call "antisocial" but he's really just narcissistic, focused only on me and therefore maladaptive but well-intentioned, at least with regard to me. Cares NOTHING about anybody else -- which is why he's dangerous and had to be cut off. I could get REJECTED if he, or the impulses that became "him", showed up.

The other is much more scary, dark, evil even. I called her "female snotty *****". I have had to try for years to stare into the heart of darkness, so to speak. And to try to find some value, some reason for it's being. It includes an impulse to actually harm another, and came up big time when the last T terminated me. So -- anger, rage at being abandoned, hurt -- still not sure about all of it. And I fully felt a wish to hurt her back. I was impressed with myself for actually feeling it! Though somewhat taken aback, too, of course.

But the reason I came up with for it existing, with a clue from my cat, who "mouths" me if I'm doing something else with my hand rather than petting her!, is that our primitive ancestors didn't have any words to say "that hurts me" and so hurting the other person back was a way to show that. Anger and fighting against a clear and present danger is one thing. But wanting to hurt someone AFTER the fact? Seemed evil, to me, so very hard to accept. But, with that story in mind for the "reason" it existed, I can accept the fact of it better.

I haven't had any control at all over the growth of the bubble, or container. But once I knew and was kind of at peace with the parts and the impulses in them, it seems to be happening somewhat on it's own. Like skin growing once the barriers are removed or something, and the infection cleared somewhat.

[here today]

Yes, hope IS paramount. I haven't given't up on that, though sometimes it's hard.

Baby steps, yeah. Some days just taking a step at all, one foot in front of the other, is about all I can do. But keeping on truckin'.

And you never know when you might come across a potential club member!

Edited to add -- just in looking over your thread again -- I do NOT suggest or want to suggest that continuing in your current therapy, or perhaps another one or more to come, is a false hope for you. That's for you to decide, I see no reason to think that you aren't in the best position of anyone right now to decide that. I accept that and sincerely wish the best for you.

That's said, as a club member, if you still want to continue that analogy. But one with my own individual identity, which is why I mentioned the stuff about my sister in another thread. I don't know about your situation but I think enmeshment in the family system was part of my loss of a sense of self. Separating from her, while learning to work together on some property we inherited jointly, was an accomplishment but not the whole thing by a long shot.

Originally Posted by Waterloo12345

I don't think that will work for me or perhaps I can't distinguish what you mean by most pressing.

So the most pressing for me right now is to get to the garden and do something and make him love me again. I say no because that is acting out. But baby part just wants the garden, the safety. I've a lot of time for giving into her needs as she provides the foundation of my equilibrium. So I might go and just sit and breathe. Use it as a transitional object to restore underlying safety before I go off and do irl stuff that will eventually mean I can self generate that safety.

So i guess it could be said that the most pressing is my medium term stability (as going to the garden for the baby will rub raw the child part who is so near but yet so far).

But to come to this mediated compromise I had to actually talk to each and get views and reason with each.

So yes it is contrived. I would like to know how others actually do it if any wish to share.

I was totally disintegrated. Not pays with specific names. If that's helps go for it. But there really isn't any real way apart from, show up. Ramble and let the T good it all together for you and hand it back safely and integrated.
I'm ice to make a simple thing compliated.
I've said I feel this parts wants to do this etc. But it's all the same.
If just aspects of the personality that needs to come together. And talking and talking with a T that can contain the mess.

[Anne2.0]

Originally Posted by Waterloo12345

My question is how do you mediate when each (or some) have a differing need or wish where fulfilling the need of one will very likely undermine the needs of others.

How do you decide which to act on? I guess this would be for those who are in the middle of the spectrum and there is a level of control by the functional part - actually my parts are screaming not control W but cooperation and working together, none of us is better or in charge. So. That's 'me' told. The old me that still thinks I'm one person.

I'm sure everyone's internal world is organized a little differently, but I never reached a point where it became a choice about fulfilling needs. It's hard to know in the abstract whether it's something like eat the chocolate ice cream (it tastes great) v. don't eat the chocolate ice cream (sugar makes me feel sluggish) or tell off the boss or call in sick to work and paint pottery or move across the country. I think in my internal world (and I feel more whole these days than I used to), the functional adult was always in charge, just like I was as a parent, and tried to say "yes" as often as possible to the younger parts as long as it didn't compromise the adult needs to keep a job or maintain civil relationships with neighbors or colleagues or whatever.

For me, my younger parts had a great need to be heard by me rather than for me to do anything specific. I found once I listened and understood and empathized with what they had to say, their desire to have me do something specific that created internal conflict didn't exist. So when you ask how to mediate, I would say from my experience the answer is to listen to the younger parts, not with the end result of saying yes or no, but to truly understand what they have to say. Ask questions. Maybe check in with them about how they feel and how things are going at times where a decision doesn't have to be made or isn't looming on the horizon. Communication, relationship, that seemed to be what my younger parts were after. Not control.

[ArtleyWilkins]

I never specifically did parts work in therapy, but there was a period when I most definitely was aware of, what I called, my 5-year-old and my teenager. Those happened to correspond with my abuse ages which was telling for me. I could actually hear them speak to me, and my emotions and sometimes my actions corresponded with whichever one was prominent in a given moment. No one ever went so far as to say DID, and I’m certain that wasn’t the issue. But dissociation was a huge problem for me during that period; I do hold a firm PTSD diagnosis.

Eventually those parts and those voices went away. I know that I had to put me, my adult in the present me, in charge and had to take some control of those kids who were either terrified or raging because they needed adult guidance so to speak. Thinking back, I think what I did was that I simply took the reins and didn’t let them run the show anymore. They seemed to prefer that adult guidance because they calmed down and eventually faded away.

As a parent and as a teacher, what I know is that kids who lose control are often kids who have no stable and supportive adult guiding them. Kids want and need a benevolent, stable, nurturing adult in their lives. I don’t think parts work is much different.

You talk about a garden. Adults garden. Old people garden. The adult you can garden. If the child comes along for the ride and gardens alongside you, that is a nurturing and bonding experience. Something to think about.

[Elio]

Originally Posted by Waterloo12345

I'm still grappling with integration or merging which suggests an anniliation or reburial of those parts. I have to work that out ad it's not (I think) but am uncertain.

This is where I am stuck right now. Not only does a part of me feel like there is an annihilation or reburial of parts, which I don't want. I also feel those parts fading away. My T has been clear that integration is not a goal nor is separation. She has been supportive of me finding what works for me. Perhaps that is a sham; a way to be all the while knowing that integration would/will happen as I heal.

I once envisioned how I'd like things to be in terms of my parts - which was a campfire where all the parts got to have their say and talk things through while the "I" listened and figured out how best to move forward. However, the "I" for the most has seemed absent of late and the bickering between parts has been very crazy making to say the least.

Sorry, no answers here. I'm in a similar place in my journey. I just keep going and talking as I work my way through the messy middle.

[Elio]

Originally Posted by here today

As I've implied before -- I don't think the dissociation/parts psychologists and the ego development (object relations?) psychologists have a coordinated approach yet. So it's kind of up to those of us in the thick of it to put together something that will work for us individually, maybe.

Yes, I agree that there is some overlapping in these theories that have not been completely connected to create a coordinated approach. I do feel at times as part of my journey with the transference that I am creating/recreating the internal mother object. There are moments with my transference that I am not sure if my feelings really are projecting out to my T or if they are talking to another part of me. There have been times where I find myself talking to myself using the words T uses - is internalization of the T simply the act of creating the internal parent/caregiver object?

[Elio]

Originally Posted by here today

The 2 parts I mentioned -- one I used to call "antisocial" but he's really just narcissistic, focused only on me and therefore maladaptive but well-intentioned, at least with regard to me. Cares NOTHING about anybody else -- which is why he's dangerous and had to be cut off. I could get REJECTED if he, or the impulses that became "him", showed up.

The other is much more scary, dark, evil even. I called her "female snotty *****". I have had to try for years to stare into the heart of darkness, so to speak. And to try to find some value, some reason for it's being. It includes an impulse to actually harm another, and came up big time when the last T terminated me. So -- anger, rage at being abandoned, hurt -- still not sure about all of it. And I fully felt a wish to hurt her back. I was impressed with myself for actually feeling it! Though somewhat taken aback, too, of course.

For several months, I had a mean part emerge and take control. It continued to grow in strength. It set me off on a journey to have myself destroyed. There was minimal restraining it. There was no kicking it out, it was too strong. It wasn't until I linked together where this mean part came from and what it was doing did it weaken enough for me to push it back to the background. It's not gone, it will still emerge and try to get me to do things that could seriously psychologically damage me. It is more easily identifiable and when I find myself with him talking and wanting control, I remind him that I am not mean, it was my father that was mean - we do not need to imitate/be my father, nor find someone that would be mean to me like that.

Originally Posted by here today

I haven't had any control at all over the growth of the bubble, or container. But once I knew and was kind of at peace with the parts and the impulses in them, it seems to be happening somewhat on it's own. Like skin growing once the barriers are removed or something, and the infection cleared somewhat.

I agree to not having any control as to how things are shifting or growing. Which for someone that likes to know the path, this has become very difficult for me. Perhaps another element is about to emerge -- it seems so.

Originally Posted by Waterloo12345

Hi All,

I don't formally use parts work or IFS in therapy or have been diagnosed with a dissociative disorder but I do identify with having parts with their own characters, ages, personalities, needs and wants.

My question is how do you mediate when each (or some) have a differing need or wish where fulfilling the need of one will very likely undermine the needs of others.

How do you decide which to act on? I guess this would be for those who are in the middle of the spectrum and there is a level of control by the functional part - actually my parts are screaming not control W but cooperation and working together, none of us is better or in charge. So. That's 'me' told. The old me that still thinks I'm one person.

Anyway, that may have answered my question, talking, cooperation, seeing where the least harm could be caused or mitigating it.

I was just curious to hear others experiences.

My parts had a mind of their own. One had a strong control over me where it felt like it was controlling to do harmful things to myself, sometimes just feeling physical sensations of being stabbed. The other most significant part I remember is one that would trick me to 'come get me'.

My memory is so fuzzy about them, but I clearly remember the 2nd one was an introject of

Possible trigger:

someone who tortured me and tried to kill me when I was a little girl.

There wasn't talking or cooperation with that part. It felt like it was hiding inside my body to come out and 'get me'.

There were others but they all seemed to have taken me over in these sudden waves where it felt like I was possessed. Working through the stuff that emerged with my T somehow integrated them and I no longer have any awareness of them.

So no, nothing done to interact with them. My T doesn't work with parts. But glad they are all integrated. I don't there are any left but I sometimes wonder.

[koru_kiwi]

Originally Posted by Waterloo12345

My question is how do you mediate when each (or some) have a differing need or wish where fulfilling the need of one will very likely undermine the needs of others.

Anyway, that may have answered my question, talking, cooperation, seeing where the least harm could be caused or mitigating it.

I was just curious to hear others experiences.

when i was doing parts work in therapy for my DID, T and i found it helpful to do 'mapping' of my parts/alters (i tend to call them insiders) at the begining of my sessions. i brought a collection of unique polished stones that i had assigned to each and every one of my insiders and i would arrange them in position to how they were relating or in relation to my other parts/insiders or in relation to my T. my T found this helpful because it gave him an idea of how each part may have been feeling about him....ones that trusted and/or loved him were usually positioned close to him and those who mistrusted or may have been angry at my T would be positioned further away. this often helped to direct the discusion in therapy as to why a particular part was feeling close or distant or whatever.

as i progressed in therapy and gained more co-consciousnesses, the ability to communicate and cooperate more directly with and between my insiders, i could see how various insiders in my system changed in relation to each other and most importantly to my core self. i identified my core self as a very lonely frightened sexually abused six year old little girl who was trying to maintain a sense of control and keep the system of all my insiders together, but there was very little cooperation or other parts ignored her for a very long time because they were so fragmented off from the core. as healing progressed, and through the mapping, i could see how parts eventually were coming closer to her and cooperating more to help protect her, nurture her, keep her safe, and love her.

now at the end of my parts healing or integration or whatever term one prefers to use, i can clearly sense all my various parts encircling my core insider, surrounding her in a uniform circle. i still identify as having separate parts, i continue to hear them chatting in my head and having conversations often, especially if i have been triggered or in times of stress, but now they all are working together, cooperating in a very uniform manner for the interest of the whole internal parts system and for my core self. i feel very balanced and and safe within my self and in my body now. i feel the contentment and a warmth of self love and worthiness because of this...there no longer is a big dark and cold empty hole of nothingness inside of me. i, and especially my core part, no longer feels the ache of an eternal loneliness. also, i rarely feel conflicted between my insiders, and if i do, my insiders tend to manage to eventually sort it out in a healthy manner that is in the interest of the whole system and no longer just for for themselves or for the few.

personally, i do not believe in annihilation or the burying of parts as being the final or only path to integration. you will find that many of those in the DID community are quite frightened or put off by this concept that is sometimes pushed by the professionals and chose not to do this as a goal to their healing and they are mainly interested with gaining co-consciousness and cooperation between the parts. sometimes some will experince their parts eventually fading away and sometimes others may actually have a ritual to celebrate a part no longer needing to be needed. it's a very individualistic and personal choice to what is best for them.

not sure if that was helpful at all or if my description/experince was confusing or too 'way out there' to follow, but i mainly wanted to suggest and explain how the mapping work has been so beneficial to finding a way to communicate, cooperate and relate to my various parts and thought something like that could be useful for you as well.

Stop watching Hollywood movies about it.

[Waterloo12345]

Jessica Jessica you are either acting out or just being mean. I do hope it's the former. I don't have a tv or Netflix or Amazon prime or whatever one watchs now and rarely go to see movies. Not actually seen any movies on DID.

If your cryptically concise statement is meant to bear a greater meaning e.g. that I'm suggestible and/or shouldn't read forums like this or Google then that is a genuine consideration to bring to my attention but please do make it clear. You come across here as hurtful and dismissive.

I've considered that - my doctor has said I'm suggestible but he's also taken steps to work with it (prior to stopping). So even if it's come about cause I'm imagining it it's become real and needs to be dealt with in the here and now. My therapist also works with it albeit I feel it's not her cup of tea.

The mediatimg thing actually arose organically- which is why I was interested to know what others did.