reimeichan - Tumblr blog

[reimeichan]

I'm a little. Biologically, I'm in my late 20s. And... I had the realization hit me last night that even though I'm a little and feel like I'm still a child, with all my childish wants and needs and fears and stuff, it doesn't change the fact that I've lived through 20-something years of my life. I have adult responsibilities and adult experiences and adult memories.

But more than that, I can't go back to being a child anymore.

My past, my childhood, I can't change any of that. The pain and traumas are real, the memories I have still haunting me. And even the moments of nostalgia I have, when I reminisce on my past... well, that's all they can be anymore. They're not my present.

And in spite of all this history I have inside of me, I still feel like a kid who didn't get the love and affection I needed. I feel stuck in time, but time always keeps marching forward even if I don't. The grass grows and the meat rots and the rocks weather. I can honor these feelings of being a kid, and give myself the things I didn't get back then. But... I'm still an adult. And I think it's also important for me to acknowledge that.

Integration is so hard. I've fused and gotten closer to so many of the other littles that now we're all sharing those moments from our childhood: happy times and sad times and even just times that existed. But I'm also closer to the adult parts, and with that comes... I dunno. I guess I'm less dissociated from my current reality and I'm more grounded now. And it feels so scary and confusing trying to navigate this new reality that I'm not used to. But I know I have people around me who can help me, from my friends and partners to the other parts of me I share a life with. It'll be okay, I think.

But for now I'm gonna mourn my past.

[reimeichan]

''Doesn't know what it's like to receive love''

[reimeichan]

My partner with DID: look at me I'm so healed I gotta deal with these idiots in my head

[reimeichan]

I've been slowly learning to reclaim things that I love for myself. So many of my hobbies and passions are tainted by history: piano was forced upon me as a child and was a huge source of trauma by itself, dance was fun until my teacher started shit talking me about my weight, even photography sucks because it's something my parents enjoyed and god forbid I turn out anything like them.

But I'm teaching myself to decouple the past from these activities. I acknowledge the trauma associated with piano, and also that I miss playing pieces I enjoy. I allow myself time to hammer around when I can and to take breaks as long as I need to, to make the music making enjoyable in a way it never was for me as a child. I learn new dances from youtube, and giggle when I get the moves right. I still can't record myself, but I'm re-learning that my body shape has nothing to do with my ability. And while I still don't take a lot of pictures, the people around me do and I'm starting to associate picture taking with them instead of my parents. I guess this, too, is a part of healing.

[reimeichan]

Dealing With Executive Dysfunction - A Masterpost

The “getting it done in an unconventional way” method.

The “it’s not cheating to do it the easy way” method.

The “fuck what you’re supposed to do” method.

The “get stuff done while you wait” method.

The “you don’t have to do everything at once” method.

The “it doesn’t have to be permanent to be helpful” method.

The “break the task into smaller steps” method.

The “treat yourself like a pet” method.

The “it doesn’t have to be all or nothing” method.

The “put on a persona” method.

The “act like you’re filming a tutorial” method.

The “you don’t have to do it perfectly” method.

The “wait for a trigger” method.

The “do it for your future self” method.

The “might as well” method.

The “when self discipline doesn’t cut it” method.

The “taking care of yourself to take care of your pet” method.

The “make it easy” method.

The “junebugging” method.

The “just show up” method.

The “accept when you need help” method.

The “make it into a game” method.

The “everything worth doing is worth doing poorly” method.

The “trick yourself” method.

The “break it into even smaller steps” method.

The “let go of should” method.

The “your body is an animal you have to take care of” method.

The “fork theory” method.

The “effectivity over aesthetics” method.

[reimeichan]

Final fusion...

For a while, I thought that just wasn't going to be possible for my system. We were all so differentiated, our memories so disparate, each of us seemed to love being these distinct individual versions of ourselves. But deep down we all knew this was what we wanted, even despite our differences. Or maybe even because of them.

We've been struggling to learn about each other and understand each other for the past however many years now, and in the process, allowing each other access to a bit more of ourselves. We've had a lot of surprises along the way: parts we weren't aware of existing popping up out of nowhere, memories we'd long forgetten resurfacing, pain we had burried away slamming back at full force, and so much other stuff. It's been rough and so many times I've wondered if it was really worth putting in all this effort when my trauma and my past were never going to get better. I mean, I can't change the past, and these memories will forever haunt me.

But by working together with the others, our dissociation has naturally lessened and our integration increased. And as we started getting closer, we realized we *want* to get even closer and closer. I want to understand all the parts of me as intimately as I know myself. And so we became more intentional and deliberate in pursuing fuller integration, or as the community calls it, "final fusion".

And I'm not there yet. But... I can see it, somewhere on the horizon, I see it. I still have to do a lot of work to get there, but it's getting closer and closer every day and I know it's only a matter of time now. I'm both frustrated that I put in this much work and I still have so much more to do, but also I'm so, so excited for what's to come. It's not gonna be the end of my journey, but getting to the next major milestone is still something to look forward to.

[reimeichan]

listen, if you want to be with someone that has ADHD and doesn’t / can’t take medicine for it, you have to understand that we just forget. Yes, we know you had us write it down and put it somewhere obvious, we still forgot. Yes, you just said it 10 times, we still forgot. Yes, you literally, to our face, seconds before, told us in detail, we turned around and forgot immediately. we forget, everything, immediately, most of the time.

[reimeichan]

You are not doing anything "wrong" for continuing to struggle or not being where you'd like to be in your healing journey. Healing has no moral value and neither does struggling. Continuing to struggle is not a sign of "failing" in any way.

[reimeichan]

hi hows thigs ?

I'll be honest things could be better. I've been processing through a lot of my trauma this past week and while that's great in the long term, right now it fucking sucks balls. But I'm hanging in there.

[reimeichan]

The adults in my system have been struggling a lot recently and that makes me really sad :( I've been seeking out our partners for comfort and cuddles to help the adults feel better, I try to get us our favorite foods, and huddle under our blankets. Because these things help me and make me feel better! And I'm hoping it also helps them.

They've been dealing with a lot of our trauma memories that have been coming up, not anything new but things we're starting to finally process through. They seem scared that I'm gonna get hurt while they're processing. But... for me, those things were just my life. I was just living my life. I don't feel like this processing thing is hurting me any more because I know what I went through.

But I think for the adults, it's something different. Like they're realizing how fucked up the things we went through were. And the fact we were children when it happened. I don't know, they seem to have a different perspective and context and understanding from what I have and I don't know why things are so different between me and the adults of my system. Why do they need to process but for me it just feels like it was... I guess it was just my everyday life? How do they have these different perspectives of our childhood from me?

I don't know, I wish I understood what makes me a little and what makes them grown ups. Why I haven't grown up, even though I'm biologically 20+ years old and even have the memories and experiences to back it up, while the adults, who are missing way more of their memories, are the grown up ones. And why they feel so horrified by our past but I just nod along and say, yep that happened.

I dunno. I think I just wish we weren't so different from each other. I wish we were more integrated so that I can understand them as well as they understand each other.

[reimeichan]

hello! i hope you are doing well.

i was wondering if you could explain double bookkeeping? and add some examples maybe?

my searches have come up very complicated.

i may be psychotic and i am trying to learn.

thank you in advance! (your blog is deeply appreciated)

Hi there! Double bookkeeping is when you hold two opposing things to be true at the same time, for psychosis we use it to talk about a specific type of insight that many people experience.

Insight is when you are aware on some level that your delusions might be the result of illness, and insight can exist at various levels and in various ways. Often there's an internal fight related to insight, so one day you might feel like "I think that my beliefs might not hold up with reality and that I might have a problem" and then another day maybe you think "oh no, I nearly fell for the conspiracy by thinking I was suffering with delusions". And there can be many in between states and more extreme states as well. It's not either or, it's a spectrum.

Double bookkeeping is when you at the same time do feel convinced of the delusional content, but you are also aware that you have a disorder that causes delusions and that your thoughts might be the result of that. Often this allows you to act in a way so as not to "arouse suspicion" about your delusions, bc you are still aware how it looks to people around you.

So you could say that you are keeping two "books" on reality at once, and they can't both be simultaneously true but you feel rather convinced that they are.

As an example I used to have a long-standing delusion that I somehow personally was the cause of the suffering experienced by living beings on this earth, it caused me a lot of guilt and self-hatred because I did believe it, but at the same time I didn't go ahead and "save the earth" by committing suicide, because I was aware that my beliefs didn't make sense in consensus reality and that if I was wrong, I would simply cause more suffering to my loved ones.

I hope this was helpful!

[reimeichan]

thank the alter who did the homework. tell the alter who cooked how much you liked the food. tell the alters who shower and clean your room and work out and drive home how much you appreciate them keeping things together, and tell them more when they mess up, because it's all about being there for each other.

[reimeichan]

Had a silly moment in therapy where our therapist asked me a question along the lines of "when did you start noticing these thought patterns?", and at first I responded with a vague non-answer like "I don't know, they've been there for a couple of months now but they've been kind of slowly building up", before I was rudely shoved aside and found myself saying "Actually yeah I do remember, it was when <insert very specific situation from earlier this week here>". Great way to remind myself that yes I have DID and that these other alters in my brain sometimes know and remember things that I don't. You'd think I'd be used to this by now but I'm still caught off guard regularly when another part knows stuff about my life that I don't.

[reimeichan]

thank the alter who did the homework. tell the alter who cooked how much you liked the food. tell the alters who shower and clean your room and work out and drive home how much you appreciate them keeping things together, and tell them more when they mess up, because it's all about being there for each other.

[reimeichan]

I rewatched Shang-Chi recently, as one of my partners hadn't seen it yet and it's one of my favorite movies to rewatch when I can. It's no Everything Everywhere All At Once, but it was still a piece of Asian-American (and more specifically, Chinese-American) film that impacted me and holds a lot of importance to me. There's so much in that movie that I could go on and on about in relation to myself: the feeling othered in both the US and in Asian countries, the specific Asian American culture which is neither White American nor is it "Homeland" Asia culture but something that's both and neither, the trauma of never being good enough, loving and resenting your sibling.......

One line that stuck out to me in this particular rewatch, however, was when Ying Nan (Michelle Yeoh's character) looks at her nephew and says, "You are a product of all who came before you.... You are your mother. And whether you like it or not, you are also your father." And that's so powerful, for a movie written in the West but by those from the Asian diaspora. Many Western movies would have had a line about how you're not your parents, you're your own person with your own life and destiny that you get to define yourself. And Asian culture tends to focus on respecting and carrying on you family's legacy and tradition. But here... in the context of this movie, I see both having their place. Shang-Chi has to learn how to take that legacy from both of his parents and make it his own.

And I love that. He doesn't get to run away and leave his past behind. And I don't just mean his past and his life's history, I mean also that of his parents. Because family history and family culture absolutely colored his life and is an influence on who he is today. His father's traumas and history as a warlord, and his mother's past where she had to leave her village, are both things that affected him and shaped him even though they were things that happened before he was even born. And by acknowledging that these pieces of his family's history are a part of him and his own narrative about himself, he can truly finally accept himself and create something new and wonderful from that.

Just.... god. It's such a struggle, as an Asian-American who was hurt and abused and traumatized by my parents, to try to figure all that out. "I don't want to be like my parents", I tell myself. But I constantly see parts of them in me. I have my father's jaw and my mother's eyes. I love physics because my father nurtured that in me since I was a child, as he was a physics professor himself. I'm a musician because my mother's a singer and loves music herself. I have a tendency to avoid my problems and not get confrontational like my father. I yell and throw things around when I'm angered like my mother. I can't escape the influence both of them had in my life, even though I no longer live with them.

And even if could get rid of everything that reminds me of them, where does that leave me? What parts of my Asian heritage do I reject in the process? Do I change my last name to distance myself even more? What could I even change it to?

No... I think for me, the most empowering thing has been accepting that my parents' traumas, and their parents' traumas, and all the traumas that came before them, all have a place in the narrative I tell about my own life. Acknowledging that these things did happen and did and still do have an affect on my life has been so important in my healing journey. No, I'm not saying their individual traumas are my traumas. But... their traumas affected how they treated me, which in turn gave me my own traumas. And I can look at that part of my history, my family's histories, and make it my own.

[reimeichan]

therapy isn't enough i need to have a tea party with my 7 year old self and tell her she didn't deserve anything that happened to her

[reimeichan]

From Why be happy when you could be normal by Jeanette winterson