My Mosaic

[Bow]

Thanks @Snowie  are you home now?

hi also @Eve7  hope you are ok?

[Snowie]

Yes home now @Bow 

[Jynx]

@Bow scrolling works too - especially in this cold!! Though I am trying to move towards reading instead - the light messes with melatonin. 

Hmm... I think schema therapy is more focused on our values and beliefs. I think the two can work together though. Yes IFS means internal family systems.

So IFS might help us to realise that these parts within actually have different beliefs to our true Self - e.g. the ED part of you might hold the belief that you deserve to be punished, even though your Self knows that not to be true. So you might work on integrating that part by sorta... accepting its intentions without accepting its behaviours. You can make space for the parts, but also build up internal boundaries around their beliefs and behaviours, i.e. reject their schemas. 

Does this make sense? 

Remind me hun, was it about 5 years ago your marriage broke down? I can understand how that could be isolating, to have a more unique experience. But doesn't mean your experience is invalid - trauma and subsequent mental health struggles can happen at any age. Especially if we already had to deal with the trauma of our needs not being met as kids - makes us waaaaay more susceptible. 

Welcome back @Snowie and hello @Eve7 !! Good to see you both 😊

[Bow]

Yeah I know I should put the phone down like what it’s an hour before bed right? @Jynx  But ya know… that’s hard! It’s kinda how I wind down. It’s my TikTok time. 
geee I’d love to read truly. Have you heard about bionic reading? @rav3n told me about it and it actually helped. 

That’s a hard one to sit with…. When ya have this big overpowering part me that straight out believes I deserve to be punished and ain’t nothing going to change my mind about that and then there is this absolutely teeny tiny little girl inside me jumping up and down trying to get someone’s attention cause she knows that I don’t deserve it. Ya just scream at that little girl to sit down and shut up, you are wrong and you need to be put back in your place. Kinda like seen but not heard. 

nah marriage broke down a few? years before that. 
it’s all pretty complex yeah

[Eve7]

I’m good thanks @Bow I’ve had a quiet day at home after an early morning trip to a sporting event.

[Jynx]

no what is bionic reading @Bow ? Colour me intrigued! 

Curious, did you grow up being taught the value, 'children should be seen and not heard'? I wonder if it's a factor - like your parts won't make space for that little girl's emotions because they don't 'trust' her to know what you need? 

Maybe also (cos this happened for me) there's this sense of like... well if we start to listen to that inner child, maybe she was right all along, and maybe I didn't need to be so hard on myself...and then there's this grief over all the years I spent being so horrible to myself when I really didn't need to. Those parts that wanted so badly to repress my inner child became wracked with guilt, which itself was another thing I needed to heal. Still am, really. 

So yeah this? 

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@Bow wrote:

it’s all pretty complex yeah

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ACCURATE!! 

lol it's all intertwined hey, and even more complex when we know that processing trauma can sometimes not start until years later. Maybe that's another factor - these things you went through as a child/teen weren't enough to trigger ED behaviours on their own, but adding further complex trauma down the line brought it all to the surface. 

Anyway, just a check in to see how you're going processing everything? Info overload is a thing and I don't wanna overwhelm you!! 

[Bow]

Bionic reading @Jynx  let me look I think I saved it 

 I’m not even adhd but that was so much easier to read. 

It was most definitely something that was made very clear at my dad’s. Seen but not heard. My dad’s house was very messed up. A lot of traumatic things happened there and absolutely no one cared. I blocked a lot of that stuff out for a long time. Kinda accepted it as normal and something I shouldn’t complain about. But it was really not right. Really not good. Things that I read about and thought no, that’s horrible, how can people do that. That was me. That actually happened to me. Urgh 

no

stop

shut up

shaking head

I don’t think I’m at that place Jynx. At that place where all the big parts think they might be wrong and it’s time to listen to and trust little bow. 

do you think maybe I’ll get to that place Jynx? One day? 

I think thinking about that and reading it over again, this anger rises in me cause there is no way that that is true. 

Ya know….. I was really messed up by my marriage breakdown. Like it totally broke me. It made me question so much stuff, including my faith which was such a HUGE part of my life. That is what I originally sought a psychologist for in 2020. I needed help to process all of that and put all the pieces back together. I didn’t get anywhere with it cause my ED very quickly teared its ugly head, SH and SI and then she dumped in via e-mail cause I was too difficult for her. 

I’ve still never really addressed any of my marriage breakdown cause ya know, mental health stuff. 

It’s a lot and I think I triggered myself earlier

[Jynx]

Oh that is so cool @Bow .... now how do we automatically implement it onto every piece of text we read? 🤣

I am hearing you hun. One of the effects of growing up being gaslit about our needs is that we learn to also gaslight ourselves. To diminish and belittle our experiences and tell ourselves we 'should be able to handle it'. But truth is no one is supposed to be able to 'handle' all of life's stressors. Not a one. We evolved to do it together. 

It's okay to feel anger, to feel a strong gut reaction to it. Anger, in my experience, is the part of us that is fighting for us. It responds to injustice. When your anger tells you 'there's no way that's is true' - what is it fighting for? What pain is it protecting you from? 

Yes I think you will get there hun. Your path will be different to mine but I think certain principles are the same. Increasing internal communication between conflicting parts and building acceptance and harmony within the system - one of my therapy goals 😊

That sounds like complex grief hun. Grief over losing a pretty significant sense of identity, including your connection to your faith, is a very nuanced experience, and one that is often not spoken about when we talk about grief. 

Do you think it's worth bringing this up with your psych? The significance of the changes in the wake of that event, and this feeling like you haven't been able to address those feelings due to everything else? 

[Bow]

I think @rav3n  said you can get some books done in that way @Jynx 

Think I went too far tonight @Jynx  not feeling ok. Feels yucky

[Jynx]

@Bow too far with processing big info and thinking about the painful stuff? Or too far with ED stuff or SH or something? Let us know if some safety planning could help. 

I'm sorry that it's all so much hun. What do you think you're needing at the moment? 

Hugs 

 (つˆ⌣ˆ)つ