Saturday, July 15, 2017 @ 7:40AM
Good morning. This is us. Not much to say this morning, but when has that ever kept us from writing. We woke up earlier, and then Rich called us back to bed – it was about 12:45AM, and then we got up with Rich at 4AM, because he was going out to breakfast, and then to fish with a friend. We asked him to cover us back up (we were sitting on the recliner). And, then we slept until about an hour ago. We’ve done our morning routines, such as everyone is fed, watered, bath roomed, AND some of us have taken our medicine … with the REAL us, just being Dakota and “us.”
OK, then. Fresh start!
They last couple of days, we’ve been intent on doing work with self-regulation (S-R) and dissociation (Multiplicity). We may or may not go there again, it is too early to tell. The last part was that we’d talked to Dr. Marvin, and he suggested that we write an exposition. We weren’t sure what that was, so, we went online and took a few notes. Whoop! Forgot to plug in phone/camera … that’s charging now, but soon enough you’ll find the picture of the notes.
Just skimming over the notes now and should admit, we’re curious in a tired, pokey way about the notes. I would like to get started, but there is no agreement on how to do that! It needs to be totally framed. Maybe we’ll see if there is other stuff we can talk about, and then trace back to this, K?
Ok. So, what is going on around here otherwise? I think your brought up to account in that this week, we saw Dr. Dorman about getting the release for the spine injection. We got that, and then we had the injection on Wednesday. You must be put out, and so that makes us groggy for a couple of days … or at least sluggish in our ability to move. I think we are back to normal. They told us to take it VERY easy for the next three days.
The first (Thursday), we only finished the load in the dryer – one of our big quilts, and then, we finished one load of clothes that had some of Rich’s stuff he needed. We had to ask for help putting away the clothes. BUT, the next day – yesterday (Friday), we could do four loads of laundry – ALL our clothes, towels and some bedding is done. AN, we put it away ourselves, in one time up. Last night, we were twelve steps from hitting 3000. I had realized it after we had gotten to bed, and we were just too tired and had the mask on, so we let it go. Today, is the third day. If we were Good, we would wash the bedding on our bed too. The other bedding was the guest bed. MIGHT just do that!
But, not just yet. In-between that then, we had a couple of appointments. You’ve heard (in a long drawn out way) about the call with Dr. Marvin. AND, we had a meeting with Amie, our nurse. The biggest part, besides catching-up on the week, was having her assist with a diabetic ulcer on the ball of our right foot. Blah! That’s what we got to say about that.
When, she’d come in (we give her a 2-3-hour window), we had been reading, though we were getting tired. We finished the introduction I believe in the “old” (2004) Handbook on S-R. There was a lot of chicken scratch on the book. It’s not as easy to mark-up the online books, but, that doesn’t stop us. That’s why Kindle has a note section, AND some magical way to get our highlights and notes to our Evernote notes. We haven’t come fully in-tune with that, but it’s all part of the Grand scheme.
It would be easier if someone just wrote down directions and it said, 1) do this, 2) and, then do this. I know I have some help from Dr. Marvin, but saying … Maybe you could write an exposition. Well, that’s not a lot of clue, though, we’ve taken his seriously to heart.
We wanted to finish the part about Amie though, because it was funny. The part that was out, was very depressed – most likely Ann. I think in part, because, it had seemed Amie had blown us off last week. She was supposed to be here on Friday, and then she got behind again, and said for sure she’d be here Saturday, because she wanted to check the ulcer. We told her, she didn’t have to come, because, we knew her sister was in town. That turned out indeed to be the problem, but we were trying to avoid having her over-committing. Since, we had Dr. appointments both Monday and Wednesday, and Dr. Marvin appointments Tuesday and Thursday, if she missed a day, then it would be really disrupting.
We got through it, and now we’re scheduled next week for Monday and Wednesday, but already we are guessing, she’ll only meet on Wednesday, and then Friday, we can’t meet because I’ll be seeing the podiatrist. We DO seem to have a LOT of doctor appointments! On Monday, she has an afternoon commitment with her office to have a big meeting in the afternoon. Because we won’t be going to the gym with the ulcer on our foot, we agreed to be her second patient of the day – about 10-11AM. We’ll see.
The FUN part after we got through all that, was that we had talked to her about being depressed more from the conversation with Dr. Marvin. We still hadn’t gotten over the problems that had come up for us with our father, and we are still thinking over the part where Dr. Marvin doesn’t have to care about our end-result. Amie is smart, and sometimes we forget how smart hehe AND that over the last four months has gotten to know us as a Multiple.
We could identify when she asked, that we were feeling depressed. We told her that we’d been focused on the writing, and all the above, and then she asked what did Dr. Marvin tell us. We thought for a moment, and remembered that he told us to do easy things that we could do well, to build up our confidence and sense of self-esteem. This was because we’d gotten lost on the other. He had said all that was new, and we were just figuring things out and so it was normal to feel some of the negatively valanced feelings. Again, we then gave this information to Amie.
I think she said something about what was easy for us. Washing the clothes and dishes by then had already been done.
And, someone said, “I don’t know maybe coloring.” Then, she said she would get it for us. And, we said, “no, we’ll get it later.” The smart part was that she said silently to herself, no she probably won’t. So, she asked, “where do you keep it?” Our eyes relaxed a bit. We said, “over there, under the TV, and that the whole shelf of books in the glass case were coloring books.” She was saying that her and her daughter color all the time. She said, “which one do you want.” We didn’t know, so she picked-out one for us, it happened to be our favorite book right now. We told her that our colored pencils were in the colored cases in the glass cabinet on the other side.
When Amie got back to the table, we felt already tired. She took the fabric though that had just been sitting out for the last couple of weeks, and she moved it out of our way. She moved everything that didn’t have something to do with coloring out of the way. Mostly our fabric cutting tools. And, then she helped us pick-out a page, and she helped us open all the soft containers, we keep our pencils – this pouch for blues, this pouch for greens, etc.
Then, after everything was settled, she talked for a few moments, but it was clear her work was gone. I could see BOTH the nurse AND mother side of her saying, “Missy, and get this done!” She did say that she was coming back and expected to see some coloring done. We thought, yes ma’am.
Last night when Rich was making dinner, we started to do some coloring. Maybe, today, we’ll do some more. It did feel nice. We chose a picture of a porch with a couple of comfortable seats and a table and some nice flowers and it overlooked a lake with mountains in the background. OK, that felt more like we wanted to be there, and could be there through our coloring.
Ahh, just remembered that there probably was extra coffee in the pot after Rich had left out. So, we just heated a cup and am now sipping on it. It’s about 8:24AM. Not so bad, only four pages, and we’re still confused a bit, but have taken one of our first deep breaths.
That was our Amie story. We’re glad that she’d been here, though I think it was the first time she met the depressed part, so clearly. She did good. AND, so did we.
We find in general, if we can just talk out what’s happening to us – mentally, physically, whatever, that we can usually progress through it. We just must be honest with ourselves. Like when we got up last night to go to the bathroom, we found ourselves at the computer starting to work blankly – even though it was just about 1AM. Rich figured it out.
He was telling us sternly to come back to bed. We’ve gotten past that point with him, often enough, but last night? Someone asked, are we tired? And, should we go back to bed? It’s kind of a group question, of us trying to take care of ourselves. When the answer came back as yes, we knew we’d be listening to Rich as well, and so, we left our dear computer to go back to bed, AND that we’d have to put back-on the C-Pap machine. It’s ok, right?
This morning, we got on the scale, and she read … drumroll … 269.7! Woohoo! Just barely, but we got into the 60’s again! We must be maintaining our health and fitness, or all of this will fall apart. We started the year at 303.1, so at this point, we’re at 33.5 pounds. This is seven months after, but at least we are lower than we started, right?
And, the A1C test is coming up – thinking beginning of August. Last number was 6.7% in April. We think we can beat that number! Be great to be under 6%, but we’d take anything lower
YEEKS! Since we were looking at charts, we glanced at our current step-count. We’re only at 410 steps. Let’s double Yeeks- YEEKS! That!
I would have to go 236 steps though in the next 14 minutes to meet our goals. Not sure of how to make that happen. Oh, treadmill, I see. Can we?
Pswhoo! We did it! We’re at 821 steps – so over our 250, we did 585 steps over! IN five minutes of walking. We could have gone more, but we didn’t want to overdo it. Let’s take up the challenge again though, hmm? Let’s try to do another 250 steps before 10AM. It’s 8:56AM now. I think we could do it. AND, if we were perfect and did it eight more times – that would be 2000, plus our 821, plus however many other steps. CERTAINLY, it would put us past the goal of 3000. Yup, let’s give that a go! Your all challenged! Dammit! Shhh, you’ll scare the little ones!
Moving past that one fast hehe.
Our Fitbit buzzes us ten to every hour, if we haven’t met 250 steps. It feels comfortable to get back into doing what we’re supposed to be doing physically, without over doing it too much. We’re still not at the point of wanting to do MyFitnessPal calorie counting, but we’re closer. Let’s take it easy, hmm?
What’s next? I don’t know how we got to the numbers, but recognizing a time for a change. There was this other thing we remembered from last night. It was just past 7AM, and we got undressed and were heading for our pajamas, but then Rich was like – hey, it’s perfect out here with the Dog and me, why don’t you come outside? Dear, we’re naked. Ok, that might have been repeated, many times. But, it was easier to put on our pajamas, then getting dressed. He should have given us some warning. Maybe next time?
Last time there had been bugs. Rich has sprayed since then, and he got a citronella candle for the table. I don’t know … maybe not rushing there yet.
We tried to talk to Rich about being depressed. He doesn’t want to go there. He knows our parts will switch soon enough, and then we’ll be excited again, and not depressed. His reason is that we can’t come-up with a reason why we’re depressed without him knocking it down, so obviously, we can’t be depressed. Ok, dear. It doesn’t work that way.
I think, he cares about me – and yes loves me, but he doesn’t understand us psychologically. He can only think as far as his mind will allow, and it’s pretty much stuck on not wanting to deal with new information, or information that requires deep talking.
This was part of our conversation, a couple of days ago, with Dr. Marvin. It’s not like I’m going to find off the top-book shelve, someone interested in what we’re doing and want to be thinking about, it’s just that we’re not going much farther than that looking for people to talk to. It doesn’t make it any better, that it’s almost our birthday. Maybe, that makes it worse. We’re on Facebook just a little, though, we understand that our blog entries are going over there. The courts still out, whether that’s a good thing or not. But, the bottom line is that we don’t feel very close to people right now. Maybe that is the depression talking.
It took us as a hit, when Dr. Marvin said, he wasn’t interested in the end-result, but the process we take getting there. I suppose he is saying that he doesn’t really know where we are going to go next, but he’s not giving-up on us if we make, or do not make an arbitrary goal. I think we have some thinking to do there yet. Mostly, because we are fighting that it is an arbitrary goal.
It’s just that people who are NOT disabled, or possibly Multiple, have goals in life. At least, I think they do. Maybe a lot of people working, just have the goal to retire. Other people like their work, or know it’s important, so their goals might be turned more toward that. But, what happens after you’re not “working.” What happen to your goals, our external sense of worth then?
I tried working more with quilting and building an identity there. But, I know now that only takes place sometimes. I deeply love quilting with the girls. I can quilt by myself, but it is harder to let it take priority.
I know … What happened to our goals just a month or so ago? We were going to be quilting each night between 7-9PM. Right? What happened to that goal? Why did it get so hard?
Even if we were quilting for two-hours a day, our major goals would still align toward writing about Multiplicity and S-R.
I don’t think we’ve carried the argument that Dr. Marvin is carrying, in that it should be OUR goal to balance outcome with process, but HIS goal with us is just watching over process. SO, why do we feel so cheated!??
Likely, that if he’s not interested in our end-point, and nobody else seems to be, then does it still matter? It does still seem to matter to us, but I can’t say it does for everyone in our system. So, are we still going there? OK, OK … I know the answer to that … CERTAINLY, we couldn’t quit this fast just at the beginning, thinking the almost-project stage. If Dr. Marvin was here, he’d remind us to give ourselves a little break, in that, getting started is tough for anyone. He wouldn’t buy into the part – that, we just want to skip that step. Get right to the meat of it.
Hmm, we’ve been away for a bit … it is 9:59AM, Ok … waiting … waiting … It is 10AM Pswhoo! We can go on. Chimes are ringing!
I think we went to find how we get our notes from Kindle. There seems to be two places. One from Amazon called Amazon Kindle – Your Highlights, and there is another from clippings.io. We’ve used both, but both are stuck behind our terrible Internet service. It is not loading fast enough, so we’ll have to move on. We also let out the dog, and we walked another three minutes to clear our ten-minute challenge. So far, so good. we’re at 1545 for 10AM. That’s already half our goal. We’re going to kick 3000 steps-butt! Hehe
AND, after two cups of coffee – highly energized, we switched over to ice water. It’s time. Not much else. Now, where were we. If we can’t check on the highlights, we just read? Hmm, by now the phone-camera is charged. We can take a picture of the focus journal on. We had to look-up from earlier writing, what that word was again, “exposition.” *Sigh* back to not knowing words well again. I think it’s Anniemi. It’s ok girls. It’s ok. We have our trusty online dictionary up again, just in case. Now, let’s look at those notes!
Ok, they are posted here … must now somehow understand them. I skimmed about 2/3 the note, and then we realized, I was lost. So, obviously, I’m not the one that knows how to do things like this. Either, someone comes out who does, or they as a system, are leaving it out to me to figure out. We use the analogy of the weakest link. I may be the weakest link right now and am slowing down the system.
Ok, they don’t hate me, I just have some work to do in trying to understand this. Yes, I am Anniemi, but others skip in and out too. We’ve never could control that well. Ok, and YES, I’m the one that often tries to avoid things as a distraction of hard work ahead. Yep-yep, you could write that in my bio. But, you don’t have to. Obviously, for some uncomfortable reason, I’m here now, and I know that it is nine pages in (3249 words), and I’m just mumbling along. I’m so sorry for slowing down the system. Just get to it? Groaning.
10:39AM Back again. We were -assertive in act of having gone back over our notes. There are a lot of parts switching in and out to take care of their business. I think our writing in general, especially blogging must be like this. This time though, we could skim over the entire note above.
WooHOO, another contribution toward the project! Someone has cleaned-up the notes. Maybe Jessie? Be nice
Back 10:57AM. We’re struggling a bit. Another walk needed to be done. We had steps on it already, but we had to do a four-minute walk. Maybe not exactly, but we have problems just stopping on a stray number. Step number is 2079 WOW! Good Job! It says also, that we’ve gone .85 miles. That’s good for us, I think.
OK, beauties … moving on … writing? ARGH! Ok, lunch first! Be back in a bit.
Pswhoo! We’re back! We’re good for the hour on our steps – we did some more. It is now 11:40AM, and we’re up to 2606. VERY Good! We’ll have 3000 steps by 1PM! VERY-VERY happy about that! Feeling tired and a little heated. Our minds are racing. We might have to turn off CNN. We’ve had that on for the last 40 minutes. I think we’re caught up.
Someone, maybe me should take a note, that we’re good on the back so far. It hasn’t caused us any problem. We should probably take note what it is our body feels like after we’ve had about four minutes of walking. What is giving out first?
Our pulse is 84. Need to slow down that and the racing in our head. OH, we have another picture to post … This is back to the writing. Someone, we’re guessing Jesse wrote a simplified version of the exposition, least that’s what we’ve been told. Hold on…
OK, the next thing that happens, was that we put the notes in an outline form. This is what we have so far. Obviously, anything could change.
We also need to maintain in this process, our checks and balance … are we adding
- Adding insight (personal and professional)
- Helping the reader relate, without bogging them down.
- Keeping academia invested in our learning
And, then … here is what we have developed for a plan
- Overview
- Introduce problem/conflict that leads to our action (story)
- What has already happened (matter of fact voice)
- Historical context
- Introduce the characters, Update progress for our boss – Jesse
- Background or plot, or characters (backstory)
- Setting details
- Explain steps of what is coming-up
Ok, this seems more doable, then the first version. I’m thinking we need to do some research. We need to introduce the problem/conflict. I think this might be that for some reason, we’ve
Part 1 – Introduction
Our personal overview of this project named, “Multiplework” is that by the end of our project, we and our readers will understand better the connection between Multiplicity and self-regulation (S-R).
In this case, we will be reading directly from experts in the field, and then allowing the words through “text, cases, or papers” touch real people, and were letting it touch us as a Multiple with strong interests, almost magnetic.
We invite anyone to read or write along. The books are formal, we are not. We hope to touch real people from which the books discuss inadvertently. Any of the books, we have purchased or acquired, have come through Amazon.
As an introduction, we as a Multiple have been tuned into Multiplicity and S-R without understanding the draw. Multiplicity is clearer. We’ve known about our Multiplicity for 27 years, and have had 25 years of excellent therapy through the University of Illinois – Chicago (UIC), which continues.
This interest in self-regulation began about ten to twelve years ago while we were working on a Master’s degree in both Educational Psychology and Adult education, specializing in e-learning, technology and design.
So far, we haven’t been able to read the real hard-core books that have spoken educationally about Multiplicity (dissociation) or S-R. We believe these books are going to be wonderful in that they are edited by a few brilliant people who have curated through being editors with writers who have written all the chapters, thus these people are educators of the highest degree with different views within similar fields of interest.
We would like to be able to put an all-out effort forward in correcting this inability we’ve had to read and thus understand the tough stuff. We add to this load, by stating up front, that some of us within our system have real memory (recall) problems.
So, our means of getting through this much information might not be standard. We hope primarily, to understand self-regulation and “formal” dissociation (Multiplicity) to our own benefit. so that we can live life with more regularity – though still being fully Multiple as we understand it.
Secondarily, we hope others are interested too. We will be reading, noting quotes through our table of contents, and then we will summarize for ourselves and anyone interested.
Again, we will be very out loud from the perspective of a Multiple, or through the view of someone who is dissociative. We want to hope that we are smart enough to take on the goals we list here for ourselves, but the truth is we are still uneducated from the field of our interests.
And, although we are a system of many, we feel very alone in starting this project, well with the exception of Dr. Marvin. He’s our current psychiatrist, and we just celebrated our 18thyear together, YAY!
We have things to contribute, such as one basic piece of knowledge – many Multiples are offended by the title DID (dissociative identity disorder), so we will try to avoid that, we will use the terms Multiples and dissociatives. No one wants the label of being disordered.
Though I recognize in the field, DID is still the key term to search out to better understand what the scholars have figured out about dissociation. They are still coming from a medical model.
Our brains/minds are just creatively different. We think that when we were young and going through abuse, our synapses ordered different and that it has something to do with the amygdala and hippocampus, we can never remember the functions of these two structures, though we’ve gone over it many times.
We just forget, it’s the “hot” stuff. And, we’ll figure out more as we go-on and record things so we can find the information.
We don’t understand the difference between, Multiplicity and dissociation, but both feel acceptable and it’s acceptable right now to have differences.
We’re going to study it – you know, figure stuff out. So, this is going to be a learning process that is difficult, but worthwhile. We want to go-on!
We’ve found three books that we believe will give us a lot of answers, and then we went out and ordered a half dozen more books.
With the three books, we are starting with – two are on S-R, and one is on dissociation. All the books we have are edited by a couple of master minds, with contributions of many people – experts in the general fields.
The books are edited by professionals, and take on the work of teaching through a total of 106 chapters and hundreds of authors. That’s just with THESE three books!
The two S-R books are both the Handbook of S-R, but one was edited in 2004, and the second was edited in 2016, so we get an understanding of changes in the field.
The book on dissociation (Multiplicity) was published 2011, and is another handbook collecting the best of resources at the time.
These are the three main books:
Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders: DSM-V and Beyond, by Paul F. Dell, PhD and John A O’Neil, MD FRCPC (2011).
Handbook of Self-Regulation: Research, Theory, and Applications. (3rd ed.), by Kathleen D. Vohs and Roy F. Baumeister, Eds. (2016).
Handbook of Self-Regulation: Research, Theory, and Applications, by Kathleen D. Vohs and Roy F. Baumeister, Eds. (2004).
We have read none of the books, but believe with our whole heart that the process of getting through the “hard” stuff is going to leave us feeling amazed and successful. We want to “go-on” through comprehending the work, and the other hard stuff we’re going to need accomplish to meet this goal. We want to understand and believe that we too can contribute toward something with extremely high value.
The historical part is going to take us some time to resource. It seems that S-R came in line over the last twenty to thirty years. Most of the books written seem to be resource books for educators working to adapt to S-R problems in their classrooms. We found some – resource books orientated more toward researchers or scholars, but some of the texts were too expensive. We had to hold a steady ground.
As to introducing you to our “characters,” OR people within our system, we’ll start with, Jesse. She’s our “boss,” or “leader” in this cause. She is the newest one of us within our Multiple system of the original 20, but she’s been with us for forty years, so she isn’t a lightweight.
There are 19 remaining. Jesse is more of an overriding editor. She is the most idealistic of us.
Although Corey is our journalist, she will continue to write mainly in the blogs along with Anniemi and others.
The most prolific of us, is our Kelsie, who has our most natural intellectual abilities, especially paired with Lissa.
I can imagine others of us contributing such as Jamie, Ann, Ayn and Kate. These are four of our older parts and are responsible for a lot of editing. Most often, we don’t note when the changes occur, we’ll have to see. We’ll try when we can.
I’m Sarah. But, it will be a system project of getting all this reading completed and notes given, or pages written.
Our specific background is that we’ve never written in this form before. And, as of this moment, we are not sure which form the process is going to take. We have the structure of our web site, and our blog.
We know, we aren’t as educated, or smart as the people that we will be reading, but we are smart in our own ways, and we’re not sure how many of the contributors to the books we’ll be reading are Multiples.
And we thoroughly believe self-regulation is extremely important to Multiples. We hope that reading and connecting interests of someone like us, very experienced in trauma, and versed in therapy, might have something to add.
To be upfront, we have a BA in psychology, which shows an interest in that field, but not much more. We will do the project as a system effort – to keep up with the high volume of quotes, we are collecting. Possibly in summary sections of quotes in each sub-topic.
That might work Things are being created as we process/think/write.
The current setting is that we have several books in hand, that have not been read. We stated in the introduction, but basically, we believe that we’ve been affected with trauma with poor attachment issues as very small children. We believe this is an effect on thousands of others who are Multiples, and possibly others who have experienced trauma as life survivors of PTSD, and other forms of abuse.
From the direct consequence of self-regulation, and we want to discover for ourselves, if S-R is what is affecting our – as people – having trouble with our abilities to “go-on.”
This includes going-on for simple tasks like washing the dishes and making the bed EVERY day, as well as going on to find things worthwhile in life to contribute towards, and in handling life and death issues, like when one or more of us finds themselves depressed and suicidal again – ready to give-up.
This is our setting. There are those of us that want to climb past our difficulties and our needs in communicating (with sometimes hundreds of people within us) and to get goals accomplished. To go-on. We’ll be using this made up term, a lot.
We want to fly forward in the face of our own adversities and intelligences, whatever various levels they may be. This is the kind of thing covers our current interests.
We are committing our life to this project, and we are interested in not only carrying on the conversation within us, but, with others.
The process is that the web site/blog of Multiplework will be our vessel for our system to continue writing and image processes. Also, Multiplework opens to others through open comment sections. Who may wish to contribute ideas, or corrections.
We will lay out topics and sub-topics, that are interesting to us.
We will be sure to include resources through curating direct quotes from our resources.
We will try to avoid distraction, but we realize ahead of time, that this is a process, that includes many who are at different levels of learning, figuring and processing.
Like we are working on our health and fitness too. If we lose, any of our major goals, we could be tripped, so we must focus all around our life. We have to succeed as a group/system.
I’m in a 23-year relationship with Rich and we live in our own house, and we have three adult sons, and they each have our grandchildren. Our body age is 58 in a few days. I also have a kitty almost twenty years, and a service dog who’s half collie, and half golden retriever. We’re on disability, but Rich earns an income.
This must work for everyone within any given system – interior and exterior.
We will try to summarize what we have learned, or what information we have gathered through studying the quotes.
We will try to put together a general outline of topics ahead of time. That will be one of our next tasks, but we’ve ordered a few more resources, that might have to be added in a couple of weeks.
Eh, that’s the way it goes! But for now, let’s start. We have a small task of pre-defining self-regulation and Multiplicity (Dissociation).
Better get to it!
Return to the Table of Contents
Were back. Its 3:47PM. Whoops, Rich just got back! Gotta go!
