I know my blog used to be about healing.  That was before we moved in with her.  And now it's all about my personal experiences with her, once again, like it was in the beginning.  And I know I lost readers due to this.  And that's okay.  People need to take what they need from bloggers and leave the rest, because isn't that what we're here for?  To connect with those who need to hear what we have to say?  And if people don't need to hear about my personal experiences, then that's not what they need right now.  And I'm cool with that.

But I need to write about it (I suggest you do it, too).  I need an outlet for what I'm going through in order to heal and move forward in life.  Yes, I have a tendency to complain a lot.  I know this.  But this is a type of therapy for me.  My actual therapist is a cross between a nice guy and an idiot.  Rude, I know.  But sometimes he makes me want to scream.  And today??  He was the voice in my head when my mother said something rude to me and made me feel bad (I went out of my way to buy her her favorite cereal and other stuff and she only complained I didn't buy her any raisins--something the store I was at didn't have).  He was that little negative voice that said "Why do you even care?  Why did you think she was going to be nice to you about anything?"  Because that's the type of shit he says to me when this kind of stuff happens!  I don't find that very understanding.  Or therapist-like to say.  And this is round two.  Round one was last year and eventually I got so angry at him with the way he treated me, I stopped talking to him.  And then I went back to him a few months ago because I hadn't had a therapist since and I am applying for social security and he was confused as to why they were calling him so he called me to ask me why (really?  what a dumbass).  Sigh.  

Anyways, I've been working on stuff for the past year.  Like a LOT of stuff (all the while dealing with her).  I've been trying to open an online store (which is NOT going well, as the store will have handmade items and I have nowhere in my house to make them).  I've been writing my main memoir, as well as a few others (which IS going well, but I'm super overwhelmed with editing).  I've been writing various stories to go in my short story book (my hubby and I are both writers).  I've been creating content for my many blogs: I have a Buddhist blog, mental health blog, tarot blog, and others).  I created my own tarot deck (though just the majors, not the minors yet).  Right now I'm working on a guided journal/workbook for daughters of narc mothers.  Though I haven't even started my book yet that I created my survey for (if you filled out the survey, know I have ADHD and it's hard to have so much going on at once).  And I built my store website, as well as my author website for my memoir, so both are ready to go when they open.  So I am always busy.

Though, I haven't done much art (which, up until a year ago, was a HUGE part of my life), but I do have a list of  all the paintings I want to eventually make.  

Oh, and I am taking a therapeutic life coaching certification course as well as a Buddhist course, and hypnotism courses.  Not really needed, but I thought they'd expand my knowledge enough to help more readers get more of what I write.  

So while I was doing tons of research for my articles and books and whatnot, I came across something interesting.  Which I found kind of amazing, since I thought I invented it.  Let me start off by saying that I am fascinated by psychology (in case you couldn't tell already).  I've always found it fascinating and taught myself how to spot a liar at a young age based on shit people do whey they lie.  Now that I am in my forties, I can pretty much spot a liar right away (not always, but usually).  Then in high school, for some reason they offered psychology as a class, so I immediately signed up and got nothing but straight A's (and I am certainly not an A student...but when something interests me, I can breeze through it pretty easily--like in college how I took a transcription course and did the entire thing at home before school started and showed up with all the work done for the entire semester on the first day LOL).  I took more psych classes in college, but I dropped out because I hated all my other classes LOL (funny, they made me take remedial English, yet here I am, getting paid as a writer LOL). 

I didn't stop learning though.  I researched and taught myself all I could from any book I could find and eventually the internet became a thing and then my learning became boundless.  I studied hypnotism and anything else I could get my hands on.  I learn more about body language and spotting liars (since my world seemed to be full of them).  I learned about sociopathy/psychopathy.  I learned about mental illnesses and how to fix them (mainly my own: anxiety).  I immersed myself in anything that taught me how the human brain worked and why it worked the way it did.  Psychology, like science is ever-evolving as more is discovered.  So I am never bored.  And I'm always coming up with my theories and whatnot, even though I know sometimes I am dead wrong, because I am just a fan and not a licensed psychologist.  Though if I am ever dead wrong, I relearn what I need to know so I know better in the future.  I know more than the average person about psychology, but not more than those who have degrees (though some, I may argue, who have degrees also know as much as I do, if not less LOL--but that could just be my perception).   

Anyways, so I saw this documentary about DID.  It was a recent one and I found the subject of the show on social media and struck up some conversations with her.  I shared with her how her show really made me realize that DID is not only real, but we ALL have those personalities in our heads, but in those with DID, they are separated into different people.  Whereas with everyone else, they're all integrated.  Now, I don't think that every person who claims to have DID has it (because not all people who claim to have cancer have it--I know this from personal experience).  But it all made sense to me, because I could recognize these "personalities" within myself.  And when I share my thoughts with my husband, he realized the same thing, that he had them too.  And then I started to ask others, and they all said "Yeah, wow, you're right, I never thought of that, but I have them, too!"  I was like whoah, I'm on to something here!  We can use these personalities (personas, selves, etc.) as a way to recognize our bullshit when it's happening and tell them to stop.  This was amazing!

And then by accident, I came across IFS.  And to find out, not only did I NOT invent this, it's an actual branch of psychology!  Ha!  

IFS stands for "internal family systems" (why it's called that, I kind of don't get it, but I guess it's because your selves are a part of one big family?) and it's all about how your different "parts" are made to protect you.  There's some great books out there on it, and the one I am reading right now is called "Self Therapy" by Jay Earle and it seems to be a pretty down to earth explanation of how it all works.  But you can also go to https://ifs-institute.com which also will give you a ton of information about how it all works.  

So here's a small breakdown of the IFS model: 

• We aren't just one mind, as previously thought.  We have our main self (which is not a part), and then many parts/selves which are helpers to the main self.  
• Each part/self is a part of our mind that was developed to protect us from pain or hurt (from a past pain or hurt and these "parts" were built so that pain doesn't happen again).  
• The parts can be beneficial or detrimental to our well-being.  
• All parts want to protect us.  But some choose detrimental ways to do that, because those parts don't know how else to protect us (some choose drugs/alcohol or being rude or destructive, etc.)
• Our parts were mostly created from painful experiences.  So we have managers, who manage our pain.  Firefighters (or call them what you wish) who want to extinguish pain in any way possible, and exiles, who are kept hidden because they carry so much pain that we hide them so we don't have to access them.  
• IFS states we can get to know our parts and by doing so, we can heal them.  Even the exiles.  

Now, this is a basic overview of IFS, so I suggest you do your own reading and research to learn more, but if you sit down with yourself and identify some of your "parts/selves", you'll see that what I am saying here can pretty much work for anyone.  Here is a short list of some of my parts: 

• The irritated one
• The over reactive to sadness one (rejection sensitive dysphoria)
• The anxious one (I have many anxious ones)
• The perfectionist one
• The self-hating one
• The misanthrope
  
• The not-good-enough one
• The introspective one
• The loving one
• The hopeful one
• The understanding one

You could say "I am understanding, loving, and self-hating, but that doesn't make them different parts".  But rather than thinking of them as personalities, you could think about it as "different parts of me".  That really what it means.  Someone with DID usually fractures into different parts due to really bad trauma before the age of six.  The rest of us stay intact.  So when we say "parts", think of them as "parts to your personality".  When we come from a place of CPTSD (meaning complex PTSD, which comes from being in a state of abuse for many years...which we all have), our "parts of our personalities" act out in ways we don't want them to in order to protect us from retraumatizing ourselves with pain and hurt.  So we become seen as "messed up" or even assholes.  We keep fucking up and don't know why.  We want to change, but we can't seem to.  We blame our mothers and fathers, and while the abuse is what started it all, our "parts" are really to blame why we still act in ways we shouldn't in life.  So in order to heal our bullshit, we need to heal those parts that our parents created in us.  We don't need to heal our relationships with mom and dad or even fully understand them (their parts are protecting them, which is why they do the things they do, but since they have zero ability to change, we don't need to engage in that).  Instead, we need to heal us.   

And I thinks IFS just may do that.  Well, at least for me I think it can.  I mean, it couldn't do a worse job than my therapist is, so there's that.  

So go visit some websites and read some books and see what you think.  I ordered a deck of these Inner Active Cards also, so I'll share them on here after I get them.  My therapist just gives me advice like "This is your life Shay!  Time to live it!"  And shit like that.  Is this therapy or is does he think he's Zig Ziglar?  And now that I have REAL health insurance, I'm going to have start paying him for his mantra-style advice!  Good god, no thanks.  So I'll try this IFS therapy and see what happens.  Like I said, it can't be worse than Ziggy the Therapist.  

Oh, let me give an example of this guy: 

I was relating him a story last Thursday about how I have always treated my anxiety (which I have severely) about how I will PUSH and PUSH and PUSH through my anxiety in order to get to the other side.  I grew up doing this because I had NO choice.  So earlier that day, I was on a suspension bridge with my dog.  I am horribly afraid of certain bridges over water, but this was a small foot bridge and decided to just run over it.  And I did.  "Sometimes the only way out is through" I said to him.  And in certain situations, this is true.  I had no choice but to keep running over the bridge, otherwise I'd get dizzy and possibly fall off.  And I knew if I did over and over again, eventually, my brain would calm the fuck down and I'd be able to go over it normally.  This is exposure therapy.  Now, my way of doing it is a bit extreme, but I don't have time in my life to fuck around with shit, so I decided to run.  Anyways, my point was that in life, not everything is a fucking bridge.  And I've learned in my old age that some experiences are worth taking time with.  And some aren't worth doing at all.  And I don't have to treat every little thing in life as a bridge to run over.  Sometimes it's okay to just expose myself little by little to my fears, to take time and let my brain catch up (or, if you're into IFS, the part that is freaking out) before putting it into freak out mode and just enduring it at any cost, which is how my entire childhood was.  Good point, right?

Nope.  Ziggy the Dumb-Dumb I think was not even listening to me and heard I said I was afraid of bridges and turned our entire session into my fear of bridges.  "Start with standing in the bathtub over water and see how you feel."  I said I am not afraid of water in the bathtub, Ziggy.  He said "Okay, then start on the side of the river".  I said I am not afraid of the river, Ziggy.  And then he went on and on and on about the bridge and then he acted all satisfied with himself (per usual) about his ability to help me get over my fear of heights over water.  Sigh.  Fucking dumbass.  I was talking about my anxiety METAPHORICALLY and had he been listening, he's have known that.  The bridge was my visual example of what my point was.  ARRGGGHHH.

I seriously think that was my last session with him.  Though maybe this time I will actually tell him why.  I fear confronting people, though.  Ugh.  We'll see.  Though I don't want to pay him for his stupid mantras and judgement (like once, he practically yelled at me for letting my mother hurt my feelings). 

Anyways, I'm going to try IFS and see if that works better.  If you don't feel comfortable doing it on your own, you can seek out a therapist that uses IFS if you want to try it, too.  But I'll be sharing things here as I go, so maybe we can get this blog back to healing rather than just my personal rantings?  (but there will be those, too LOL)