Wednesday, July 26, 2017 @ 7:50AM
Good morning. This is us. We’re getting a late start. We woke up about three hours ago. We’ve been messing around in general, had breakfast with Rich, and finished a task in adding to our Master References and Titles. Otherwise, just cleaning-up stuff online. Yup, yup … started, but pretty much running in place.
It’s such a huge task to make all those chapters “ours.” That we just should keep working on it bit by bit. Right now, we have five and a half books listed. I haven’t counted how many chapters that is. Hmm, maybe I could do that now as an update. Hold on. There are about 122 chapters and about 30-35 books – Maybe more … Must be choosy in using the Dissociative books (Multiplicity) That wasn’t too hard to figure out … Hmm, how many books do we have right now just in the area that we’re studying? Closer to 20, but the 30-35 number was because we went through our library and allowed the books to sync in our mind as leading us to this topic. Thanks Kindle for making life easy. I have NO idea of all the books we’ve left in our garage for lack of space. Hopefully, because they are on Kindle, which is relatively new, we’re getting newer books.
These were categories, we’ve been interested in: creativity, emotions, arguments (tactics especially in conducive reading), productivity, habits, insights, learning, GTD, strategy, “Sticking (to things),” and group psychotherapy. Hey, WE’RE a Multiple – many people make a group hehe. All of it seems to be connected as “going-on,” and “getting things done” as to being our interest – if not done well. Maybe, stretching a little, but we’d like to consider this. There is holding it tighter, but then it’s a life mission and these other things have interested us too. Just not sure how “scholarly” to keep it. I like our “little list!”
We should hold the categories to the concepts of self-regulation and Dissociation … are we taking care of our goals? Regulation is a lot about goals. Only thing is that there could be a LOT more books added, but we’re going to want to keep for now just the focus on the primary two – regulation and dissociation.
Basically, that means … well, three things. We’re writing three documents for now in “collecting” our list from which we’re studying. The following are three snapshots of the front page of each. They are all in alphabetical order. It helps hehe.
- References – Master
- Titles – Master
- Sections – Master
@ 9:15AM Back. Shoot, not sure what to do right now … thinking that Amie might be here as soon as 45 minutes, but always – Maybe later, because she runs late. We’ve been skimming through some book titles and dipping in to read words here and there. We are thinking that we’re going to keep our self-regulation/dissociation “stuff” tight, and then just add something that will be called – on the fly – our “cross-hatched” references, etc., That way we’ll bring together OUR thoughts, without messing with our more professional “work” in the field we’ve labeled. Basically, there will be TWO Reference lists. So excited that there are so many in the field of self-regulation – gives credence to our interests. Just whatever their interests – most likely differently motivated than us. We’ll figure that more as we go. Just know for us self-regulation is a show-stopper.
@9:38AM RE-back hehe. We just got back. It appears to have taken 13 minutes to get dressed, cleaned the house – INCLUDING kitchen and unload/load the dishwasher. Ok, to be truthful, we had cleaned the kitchen last night and just had morning dishes to load, but it still should be touched-up, right? We are getting better at doing the dishes by about 7PM. We eat about 6PM. We also got the kitty litter and garbage done last night. Feeling good about taking care of the domestic Goddess parts of our lives. 7PM is a hot-bed of issues … we should do the dishes/kitchen, take-out the dog, use the washroom, get our medicine, change into our pj’s, AND get anything Rich needs since we’re up. Don’t tell the others, but it is a very calming time for us, if we don’t have parts out – who DETEST kitchen duties. We are very aware that if Rich is going to cook the dinners, the least we can do is clean-up after dinner. Right?
OK, let’s move-on? Seems like we were thinking harder just a few moments ago.
OK, another light-side one? We are wearing one of Cari’s birthday blouses! It’s a different style than we are used to, but I like it. It does make us feel different. It’s more like a nurse’s style blouse. The upper part is a bit more fitted – you can tell we have a bust. To be truthful, most often we try to hide it. But, we’ve been appreciating that Cari’s Lularoe’s are more fitted as does probably ALL other manufactures now. Women don’t seem to hide their bodies as much. *sigh* And, then the bottom half is longer and – scalloped on the back like a man’s button-down shirt. I know there is a name for the style. I just don’t know it.
The print is reddish/pinkish flowers on a solid dark blue background. It’s nice. AND, there were TWO shirts! I already wore the other one. It is more a cotton knit where this one feels more like a polyester. The other is primarily gray with a faint-colored leafy pattern. It’s not as fitted, but BOTH go nicely with our two sets of white capris. WooHOO! We’re getting stylish!
I don’t remember the last time we went shopping. I think maybe before Christmas. I was appreciative of getting a couple of new shirts – ESPECIALLY, because I like these and they are both wearable for general nice dressing. Is that a term? Don’t recall hearing it. Ok, we should get past being spacy.
@12:26PM We’re back. We should read-up to see what was supposed to be happening. I see. We just went back a page and a half. We’re at page 6 (1000 words). I didn’t like the uncomfortable way we were feeling. Then we realized we hadn’t taken our 11AM medicine yet. We were an hour and a half late. We also went to the bedroom and changed back into our pajamas. We weren’t feeling good. Probably the medicine, but think also it is starting to warm up. Alexa says its 81 and will go up to 86. I just checked. It’s already 77 in the house. I turned on a few more fans.
Just must get past this part … wait until the medicine gets into us. I hate when we forget. Hey, that’s one thing I remember the part out was telling Amie that we were forgetting a lot. She put it together … we were low on our blood sugar and needed something – she got us yogurt, and was about to set-up camp. What a goose. I said, that we’ve never passed out due to low blood sugar. BUT, we did appreciate the concern. She said that we were starting to slur our words.
I’m having difficulty breathing. Even now. I first thought maybe I ate too much. We had oatmeal, and then we fell asleep, then we had some coleslaw. Probably isn’t it. We felt this way the other day too. Where we were having trouble breathing. Think it’s the temperature.
We have had our hair pulled back. Think we’re going to go sockless. Nobody is going to get the mail today – we’re way past that. I did put on our purple pajamas … we have three nice summer ones like this. I’m wondering if we should get one more fan … thinking of the sewing room one that Maury was using when he was here. Just I don’t need warm air, we want cool air. There, we just got the tall fan.
Looked down the line … we have an air conditioner that lets it get 81 in here, and we have the tall fan, the living room ceiling fan, and the bedroom ceiling fan, and the fan in between the two rooms. Should be ok. Just having problems. Just got to wait now for the medicine. I think it’s only been about ten minutes. Our body is warm where we put down our elbows to type. I’ve never really noticed that before as being a hot spot. Sorry folks, just spacey. I should calm down. The nearby tall fan feels good … it’s oscillating too so feel more when it comes and goes. Like a breeze. What else do I have to do? My right hand feels a little numb. Typing is troublesome – more like labored. BLAH! No, sure we’re not having a heart attack or stroke. Ok, it did pass our minds, but I would think I’d know that for sure.
It felt good for a couple minutes to lift our arms – seemed to lift our chest up … less pressure, made sense to us. We put our hand down too … to get better blood pressure to the fingers.
17 minutes … damn medicine!
Back … it’s now 1:08PM … I’m feeling much better, and thanks to the pajama wearer’s!
We just found ourselves at an old friend’s web site. Periodically, we like to find out what she’s up to. She’s super genius smart … that’s all. Not much to say there, but we’re glad to know her – from the kid-side out … we haven’t really known her as an adult. But, we used to like her a lot. Now, we don’t know her … just respect her, especially for the trajectory her footsteps have encompassed. Kendra … this one’s for you!
Ok … getting our wits back in order. The air is nice … I’m not sure if we need it, but it’s just nice. We’re still stumbling today in our writing. Feels good to be back at the keyboard. We’re smoother now. We enjoy the soft pop playing. News was too much today … Trump destroyed his outing with the boy scouts. I’m sure some of them were traumatized! Hopefully, they weren’t listening. Grrr. AND NOW? I think to deflect some of the other nonsense, he decided that transgendered cannot serve in the military. BULLSHIT! I call BULLSHIT!
That’s all we’re going to say there. Well one thing … my Grandson is transgender. We’re going to call out BULLSHIT! In his honor, too! I respect my grandson. I don’t respect the President … bunch of SHIT! THAT’S ALL!!!
Ok, no, I don’t know where that came from. You all know already, I think the idiot is stupid, and I don’t use that term lightly. He got the job because of his bullying and entertainment value AND the RUSSIANS … Part of our population liked the game-show quality. That’s it. Shhh, ok, we were getting better, right? Well, anyway, that’s why we aren’t watching, or listening to the TV CNN in the background. Yes, CNN is part at fault too … they played too much of Trump’s nonsense (because it was SOOOO bad_ Think if Wolf could have grabbed him by the neck … ok, no violence. Just saying the guy is an IDIOT!
We’re eating again … made ourselves some popcorn and we gave Dakota a treat. He was over by the table and his nose was just a sniffing, and then I realized when Rich went shopping this morning, he got some dog treats. So, we opened the box. Good Dakota for snooping that out! Hehe.
I haven’t made popcorn since about the time we were starting the diet. For the sake of argument … we’re at 268 this morning, so a couple of pounds over. Probably should start-up that whole program. Not ready for it right now. We did get on the scale, and we took our blood sugar reading when Amie was here. We were at 75. Someone told her, we’d start “our program” again. I’m pretty sure that means tracking the numbers. No one wants to put back on the pounds, we had lost. Right now, we’re just holding ground. Oh, I remember – she was telling us some REAL horror stories about a couple of people who were letting themselves go. Scared straight, I tell you!
No, I’m not one at least that knows what the problem was. That is the problem of tracking and being more conscientious of health. I can just say that it seems to have disappeared into thin air. We probably should make some revisions. And, MAYBE … not get used to liking POPCORN again! HMPF! Bloody Hell!
Damn STRAIGHT I’m going to eat this bag of popcorn!
@ 1:45P Umm, back. There were no real thoughts coming in, except Jamie was having a good time with the dog. Playing games. Said something about he had to solve a couple of puzzles – making him think through escape routes. Cool … just don’t interrupt popcorn time, I guess. Sheesh!
Dakota got taken out too, so he could have one more treat. I think he’s good for a while. Meantime, our fingers are washed again … and we’ve got the remaining afternoon ahead of us. I hope that we can say something smarter than playing popcorn tricks … shhh. Ok, I’m not complaining. Yes, my tummy is as full as the next person’s. Ok, back to business?
I’d like to get back to the pages – we placed several pages back – the References, Titles and Section headings. I know there are those who want to get back to the project of getting chapters into the Title Master, but then … we must be planning too. And, we have some commentary back from Dr. Marvin. There was only about 15 minutes left to talk about the regulation work, because the stuff with BJ took a while to get through. Maybe later, we could put some of those notes in here too?
Now? *sigh* We’re never going to get anywhere! BUT, we don’t have to talk about it right? Ok, getting the camera. Just going to put the notes in … they include notes on the BJ part and the part about the material from self-regulation. We’ll sort it out in a few moments. BRB.
Back. We’re waiting for it to load into our Evernote program, so we can save it as a jpg. For Word or WordPress. I’m disappointed with WordPress for some reason, we weren’t, then we were, and now we’re NOT able to get blown-up pictures we place in our blog. I’m probably doing something wrong – like remembering how we did things when it was going right. But to be truthful – think they were working on changing programs. Anyway, I still think pictures are blowing-up to a nice size in our old blog. She’s got that much going for her. Well, a lot more. I love our old blog. Just thinking that we should be moving on … It’s been about seven years. The one before was five years, and the one before that two years. Times change. AN, we still haven’t talked to Dr. Marvin about it.
I’d like to have a discussion on it, because we have mixed feelings. We just need to watch it still in that it has our Multiple bloggers updates, so we know when people have gone over a year. We can do that without posting – so there is one vote in favor of not double posting blog entries. Hmm?
Ahh … she’s ready. These are the three capture journal pages with notes from Dr. Marvin’s. The first side of the first picture is the end of our notes from our work on the first chapter outline. Obviously, two different selfs hehe the handwriting is only PARTIALLY different? *Giggling* Ok, that sort of stuff just happens, right? It’s ok? Anyway. Here are the notes.
Again, I’m not sure if you are going to get a good “large” picture of these notes. If not, I’m sorry. Maybe we should go over them just for a few moments. We want to get to the next stuff. We felt the same when Amie was here. She was here last Friday, when we were feeling bad, but then she said she was glad to hear us yesterday seeming so much better. I could report that we ARE better (not so suicidal – all apparent thoughts at least), but there’s a LOT of stuff we’re avoiding. I think that was one of Dr. Marvin’s first points. Basically, we are suppressing what’s going on. We were like fine … we did it ok, though in that we didn’t have the resources to deal with it without Dr. Marvin, so it was saved, and we started to process it on Tuesday with the Good Dr.
I’m going to just skim the notes and thoughts we can read and understand. This is going to be a bit of a monologue. I apologize for that in advance.
First there was something said, that we were having problems, because we had both positive and negative feelings about BJ, and he said that this was driving our emotions. Basically, the system was trying not to think about what had happened to us last week, and from processing the information from 19 years ago. It was just like it was yesterday, when we started talking about it. We understand the process – we were going through flashbacks. Just could include Dr. Marvin there too. He did agree that it was OK to suppress it until we had safe space with Dr. Marvin. We didn’t like that the thoughts the BJ note had hijacked our brain, and it was worse, because it was our birthday AND Austin was over. Thank goodness for Rich. He carried the lion share of time with Austin that first night.
We told Dr. Marvin, we didn’t know how we were supposed to feel about BJ, and Dr. Marvin said there was no clear answer to that. He said all feelings were good and acceptable. Not his words, but something like that. Somehow there were words about being overwhelmed back into suicidal thoughts and feelings. There had been no resolution to the initial situation. We then talked about talking to Amie about calling the psychiatrist on call … and then something about being stuck. We hadn’t understood what was available for safety if we had to use the Advocate system closer to us out here, if we couldn’t control the suicidal ideations.
There was a memory of Dr. Marvin saying something about BJ. He had said, and he reminded us again, when we asked for the word, that BJ was oblivious, to our situation. It was as true back then as it is now. Then the system went through a long flashback where we were back at the original time with BJ and the sexual assault, except this time Dr. Marvin was there with us. We didn’t want to go through the whole thing, we were just opening the door. Our notes were “strawberries, big bad wolf at the door, having been in our pajamas, and inviting in trouble. Something was said then about BJ bringing the strawberries to the kitchen counter, and then we remember being led into the bedroom. We talked about, Dr. Marvin’s conclusion that he knew ahead of time what was going to happen.
We didn’t want to talk to Dr. Marvin on Tuesday about what happened directly. I think we skipped. Should turn the page to see what we discussed next. OK, we can do this, right? I think we then talked of the value of food – especially garden stuff to BJ. We talked about that for a while. We got to the part of him putting the strawberries on the counter again, as for later. We got through a bunch of thoughts, and then came back to Dr. Marvin about the housing situation … It must have been a safer conversation for us.
I think, we circled back to “being” at the house again. We were explaining in a long-drawn-out way the closet next to the bedroom and the bed. We had hung curtains and a picture or something on the clear wall of the closet – to make it seem more open, brighter. It was the best walk-in closet I have ever had … It had a good amount of hanging space, and it had a stack washer/dryer. It was perfect … clothes went straight to the washing machine, and when it was full, it got washed. OK, see what I mean … this doesn’t have to have anything to do with BJ, but again we got our visualizations back INTO the space, though we’re hemming and hawing, to avoid direct memories.
OK now … more avoiding … Someone brought up all the books, because another Brother Jerome, had helped us hang a lot of shelves in the bedroom and living room for all our books. Ok, we’re getting closer to the bedroom. And, then we brought it to the recent Amazon books ordered. Clearly, we were playing hide and seek with Dr. Marvin.
When he brought us back to the things around BJ, we told him, that we didn’t know how to NOT like BJ. We could understand how what he did was wrong, but then we got into the parts where it felt like we were the ones punished. So, we must have done something wrong. BJ went back to his normal life. I don’t think anything really changed for him, but it’s now 19 years later, and we’re still being horrified. I don’t know how he processes all these thoughts – his email said he thought of us every day. I don’t know why. It really crashed things for us, that had been otherwise good, all considering.
We’d gone through all the stuff with losing the kids, the house, our job, our doctor, and our dog, and then we were at the homeless shelter, and then we found this government housing. We had been moved by the state to three places in the two years we were there. I LOVED the place we got to. It was ideal for us. Things were going good at school and I had a couple extremely good friends, especially BJ. I trusted him for everything. He was my safety. And, then crashing into our thoughts was the whole business with electric shock treatments (ECT). There were six sessions at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, until it cleared my memory, and I couldn’t remember things like owning two cats, or that I had a house with dishes, or a bank account with a checking account.
All of that was gone from my memory for a while. I don’t recall being in school that semester. Just don’t recall anything except at that meeting with the President of the college, that Dr. Luttmers head of the psych department was going to help me get through and finish my classes – in psych. The President had asked what I wanted out of the situation. All, we wanted was to graduate, and then leave. I didn’t want to ever come back. My whole college experience became a wash. And, a LONG nightmare.
Now, I wonder why I hadn’t asked for more. There should have been money paid, or some other kind of compensation. They just swept it under the rug. They had just seemed so big and controlling, and they were my entire life. I needed to graduate. I needed the degree to get a job that would carry our situation. They didn’t offer to assist with school loans or anything. They didn’t know how the situation had crushed something important inside. It was like the bad stuff that had happened with my ex and chasing us through court until there was no money left. Well, all that, was nothing, it seemed by that time as the damage was done in not being able to trust BJ, and to go through the psych system at Mayo to keep me alive. All we wanted to do was be dead. It’s been such a strong curse any time, we get overwhelmed, like we were back then. Nothing here was fair.
But, now, we’re in our time. This stuff we’re talking about is now … it didn’t get talked about at Dr. Marvin’s. I remember saying to him it was like WE were the ones who got punished – had been guilty. We almost lost everything. I don’t think BJ, ever said sorry. He has NEVER claimed responsibility for what had happened. I don’t know if he knows that the sexuality that happened in the room that day was about the worst thing, he could have ever done to me.
I was a sexual assault survival. It had been happening all my life. It happened with my grandfather as an infant and small child, then there was abuse and neglect from my parents, stuff happened too early into our teens, and then we got married to someone, we shouldn’t have – another someone who was saying he had all the answers. Then we had trouble when we went back for training at JVS, and THEN we lost everything. BJ what the fuck? How was this next move supposed to help? Just so frustrated. Don’t know how to deal with it, other than to suppress it. Maybe if we can just get through what the other notes were from Dr. Marvin’s. I’m trying. What was BJ thinking … this woman has been hurt many times …? I guess it’s my turn? What’s it going to hurt? We were working with women at the woman’s shelter. Soon, even that became too much … couldn’t handle all the emotions.
The best was that Rich figured, we needed to come back to the Chicago area. I HATE that we had the St. Rose job for twelve years, though we were proud that our degree was going to make a difference. Some of those years had felt useful … just another Catholic. This time a nun. We were working in the field. That’s another story of abuse. For another day. But, the best part? Not only had we moved back closer to Rich and the boys, but we MET DR. MARVIN! He was there for us from the start of moving back. We had an appointment with him the day before we started working at St. Rose. AND, he’s been our stable person for the last 18 years. I didn’t think we could depend on anyone else, but we depend on him, and we depend on Rich.
So, I guess that’s the whole happy part. But, Jesus Christ BJ? 18 years of therapy? 300 POUNDS???! I know we were messed-up to start, but how was what you did supposed to help anything?
Now we’re back to our notes. Next thing was that we’re back to not knowing how to process BJ and our relationship. I still like him. I don’t know how to NOT like him. I love BJ. He’s been in my life since 1977 … WOW … we’re celebrating our 40th anniversary right now in knowing BJ. Brother Jerome has passed, but the stronger relationship was always with BJ.
I don’t know even after all these years how to deal with the hurt, anger, shame of the situation … that strong desire that I had to be dead. Because life just fucking sucked. Ok, shhh. This is not the time to be jumping those emotions … Just I know stuff happened … no one should have gone through. And SOMEWHERE … there’s a lot of anger … and probably we should one day get out the tears of losing the relationship with BJ. There is soooo much hurt buried inside us. Just a whole hell a lot of confused hurt. He crashed our world. What the hell BJ???!
We worked with Dr. Marvin. We told him, we didn’t know what to call it when we were touch base with people and so forth in Winona. I said, tentatively, it was “sexual assault” wasn’t it? Dr. Marvin confirmed this strongly. We talked about it being our fault … we had been in pajamas when BJ showed up unexpectedly, AND we were Rich’s mistress. Yup-yup our regular boyfriend was back in Chicago and he was still married. BJ knew all this. Was this being interpreted as I was a “loose” woman, who anyone could have? Like I didn’t matter? Or, that it wouldn’t hurt? I was good at sex? Might help him out? He was my confidant. He was my everything … Rich wasn’t there … but, BJ was. He was our safety. He had visited us when they had previously put us in the local psych ward for dangerous suicidal behavior and acting-out. He knew or should have known we were a vulnerable person. What was he thinking? What was going on in his mind? Where was he with his own psychology?
Dr. Marvin was saying something about things never being black and white. We were still having good memories of BJ, but then there was that one day … my world stopped. Dr. Marvin went over people not being good or bad, though they have behaviors that are good and bad. This had been a bad behavior. Our BJ could still be good. Just why the hell did it happen BJ? Can’t I have an explanation? How did it happen? Was there any remorse? How are you taking care of your part of this? Where are you? Yeah Happy Birthday … I get that. Loved that you still think about me, but we don’t know what you think of us. What happened? What the hell happened? What’s happening now? Is there ever be an ending to this? Where is the part where you even things out – compensate the damage done? Just a simple apology? Maybe?
We talked to Dr. Marvin that we’d been having trouble with seeing a shadow out the side of my left face. And, this had happened before. We told him, we were like having a blind side. Dr. Marvin said, think about it. BJ blind-sided you. I don’t want to think those thoughts. I know Dr. Marvin is right most the time. Just I don’t want to go crazy with all this. Been there, done that. I don’t understand having all these strong feelings. I don’t know what’s happening. Why has this kind of abuse carried on for my entire life? It’s been 58 years … where is the part – like Kendra – who could just go out and be creatively successful? What kind of life is this? Why me? What am I supposed to do with all this? Was there some kind of purpose? Grand scheme?
As per Dr. Marvin’s note. The opportunities that most people have been screwed. Everything is seen through the eyes of an abuse survivor, always looking over our left shoulder for the next attack. We told Dr. Marvin, we must where a patch on our forehead that said, “ABUSE ME!” I’m easy!
I think we talked more about stuff not written. I think we talked about Rich and his anger. And, then we were asking Dr. Marvin … How do we process all this? Where do we file it? We talked about the feelings had gotten stirred-up again and that there would one day be a point of acceptance. You know … this just happened, this is what it was … and then it is deescalated from hijacking our emotions. Just maybe see it sorrowfully. What a loss. I miss the part of BJ who hadn’t done this to us. And, the message that positive and negative happens at the same time. He then said something about the difference in how we were handling it and that we were much better able to act – and we discussed it as being mostly through our writing and that that would be enough. It’s like the writing, and writing here at our own website/blog – well that’s my space and my voice. Soooo, if people didn’t want to hear what we must say, then they could just stay away, but this is MY world.
What happened was real, and it was OK to piece it together like in getting records from Mayo clinic that hadn’t come in yet. We talked about it being like a big ball of yarn that needed untangling, but just a little at a time. Just need to organize it. The writing was our way of validating the experience, and allowing me to tell our story. We need to put it into a narrative, of what happened, but it will be one day “discharged.” This is my/our life … you can’t have that. If anyone would like to make an explanation as to the why’s though? We’re always open!
And, then, we went into a discussion of the self-regulation work. We put the other aside for another day. It’s still there. And there are still emotions that are really tangled, but we don’t have to think of it every day. And, not all the time. No one can control my mind. Through sexual abuse, it has been like our mind has been controlled through the sexual invasions. Someone is always charging in – overwhelming my life. We can … because we’re strong enough … put all that side. Those people had problems. We dealt with it, they couldn’t kill us. Listening to a song. She’s singing, “I’m a mother-fucking woman!” Ok, that’s making sense. BUT, figure, we better get back to the nice Ann hehe. WE don’t USUALLY swear and all. BUT, Dr. Marvin said that whatever I’m feeling is OK. That’s a strange thought. I’m going to be ok.
Oh? Go take your medicine? Ok, I guess that’s a good idea. BRB.
@3:36PM. We reviewed what we wrote. It already feels like someone else’s story. It doesn’t have as much to do with my success, but now remember being married, but knowing that my ex had already moved on to another woman, before we started the divorce. I just remember going to my bathroom – to hide from him, or thoughts of him. Maybe it was about the time, he was choking me – saying things about wanting me dead. We were angry, and the thought we remembered was … I’m going to survive DESPITE YOU!
I guess that’s what we’re feeling now. Despite everything … here we are, and we’re going to go back to our preferred thoughts of the day. We want to talk about self-regulation again. But, first, we need to do a little check. We’re ok. We’re listening to good music – women in pop – from Pandora on our Alexa. I just ate a corn on the cob. Yes, someone is watching that. It seems with the extra emotions, we’re eating in-between things, more than we should. We figured the corn was for dinner, though, and we were just pre-eating …
That’s an important part. Rich has been gone for a while, and he’s probably with his friends by now. He was going out with Jack and Doug. The next thing we know is that he said he’d be back about 7:30PM. That means we have four hours on our own yet! WooHOO!! Sometimes, we just must clear our mind and run with our bulls. Hehe.
I think there is a couple kinds of cooked chicken Rich left for us, and he got coleslaw. We’re going to be fine for dinner, AND we can eat whenever we want GLORY! Giggling. Ok, some pressure has been released. What’ next?
Fingers are a little sore. We’re at 19 pages (5700 words). I guess it’s been a good writing day. I don’t think many people read these LONG entries, but – if you were going to get into our life, or if you are our future self, who just happened to glance back to see what happened in your life … just want to tell you WE ARE OK!!!! This is a LOT better than being suicidal. I would like to take the cautions off, but we’re going to wait to see if we get past the Mayo information.
There … just updated that. We called Mayo and got the same woman. She said that it had gone out July 20th, so we confirmed the faxing information, and then she said, she would fax it again, so we thanked her, and then emailed Dr. Marvin and asked him to look for it. I’m not sure, what happened, but I trust that this woman sent it. Just don’t know where it went at Dr. Marvin’s … I think it’s a shared number with others in the office. Hopefully, today. I asked Dr. Marvin to write us when it got there. That’s good progress.
There, we just wrote a note to ourselves. We wrote that the next step if it doesn’t go through is to put Dr. Marvin in direct contact with Deana. She seems to be the one that answers the medical records phone, and she seems very nice and ordered. I’m sure it had gone out … just not sure, who got the records. Anyway … it’s been progressed, right? Next?
@4:04PM I know, I know … you are probably getting so tired, of reading us today *giggle* … eh … all we can do is ask you to try, and we’ll try to move on soon. We keep trying to get to the part of talking about whatever the next step is with the self-regulation and dissociation. You know … the stuff that’s now my “work.” *silly ass grin* we’re DOING IT!
How do I get there now? I got to think of something … marker that gets us back to that work. Where were we? What did we do last? I know earlier, we had left three pictures earlier in this entry. What were they? Think, think…Ahh … I see it on the bottom ribbon … the Word documents are still up! The first picture was references, then titles, and then section headings. I had to use a check to find that information. So. What is going on with that stuff?
Looking at the two pages now (two of them are on one page). I know that they look pretty. Someone has spent a long time making them all look very neat and uniform. It’s a lot of information. We remember typing 5 ½ books got referenced, and then put in Title format. Someone wrote … about 20 serious books (we own), and then there’s about 15 more. Reading our notes now. Someone called it something. Let me look that up. That was it “cross-hatched” references. I think that mean that things were of interest to us and show our progression getting to the books more directly related to the main topics. Being told that a decision was made to make a secondary Reference & Title page for those … so, WE could look, at it, but we want the other references to be tighter, so a professional could look at it and feel justified interest.
That was something that happened with Dr. Marvin yesterday. We had him go to the computer and look what we’d done directly. We’d posted the reference, title and section heading pages to our blog, so he could see them – us too! We talked to him also about the notes we’d gathered – LONG process that included Kindle, Word, Capture Journal, mind map, and then eventually, to be posted on our web site. I know we said it somewhere before about not going to do that for EVERYTHING we read, but until we figure out processes, it seemed necessary. Now, though, we talked to Dr. Marvin, and I told him, we’d like to clean it up. He was a little confused too about the author’s notes and ours being grouped together without a distinction of who said what. We knew that was a problem, but we didn’t have time to address it yet. That has to be done soon.
So, maybe that’s part of one of the things we might be able to do after we finish blogging and before Rich gets home. I don’t know the time is crushed. Always a lot to do. As to Dr. Marvin’s notes, what else was said? Let me read.
He said it was a great first run and that it was apparent that we’d thought a lot of thoughts through and had combined them in one piece. He was taking longer than expected to read something, and we weren’t interrupting, but then we asked if was still going through the outline, but he said, no he was looking up the reference. This was the biggest compliment to me. He said that he was interested in the material too. Originally, he was skimming the Title list and then saw the one that was in bold. We proudly told him that’s the one we were working on. And, it was like cool, but then we asked him to read the title. This is what it said,
“Right brain affect regulation: An essential mechanism of development, trauma, dissociation, and psychotherapy,” and then the introduction said, “Introduction: Regulation theory and the primacy of affective structures and functions.” I didn’t know what he would think, but he said something like, “Wow!” We just laughed and laughed.
You see, we didn’t know going into this that someone else would question the two things that interested us most – self-regulation and dissociation.” But, Schore wrote like 3-4 books, and one of them had this chapter. AND, one of his chapters – there’s another one that mentions dissociation, but anyway, he APPEARS as one of the contributors in our book on dissociation, as well in a book on self-regulation!!! The thing that we wanted to see – already has started a connection! Just soooo damn excited. I had no idea there was an actual connection … we’re just going by our gut feelings. AND, the material is soooo exciting to us, it took us two days through our outline just to get past the first four pages of introduction.
That’s like our life. How are we going to make REAL progress!?? It just seems that this whole thing could get broken down or up or whatever and that it really can be something that make groundwork discoveries. I know there isn’t a Multiple contributing to the field, but that’s what we want our task to be. Just we have SOOOO much work in front of us. Just like we got overwhelmed in BJ stuff, we get equally overwhelmed, when GREAT stuff like this happens. So much so, we should slow WAY down to be able to process it further. We just know by the simplest of starts that this stuff makes a difference in a huge way. I don’t know which way, but that’s the thrill of reading and writing. You just don’t know what the thoughts of others are going to be. Or, what our mind will allow us to know, especially beneficial to the field.
Now, we are almost done with what we were going to do in this entry, but we need to process just a couple more things. We want to know our next move. Like how are we going to clean-up our outline, so we can respectfully talk about Schore’s work and OUR work separately, but working together. Let me start by … I think its appropriate to put the out in this entry right now. I will make sure to reference it on the bottom. Remember … now the outline combines our thoughts and Schore’s, and we have to separate, while presenting something readable, you know? This is all a learning process.
Right Brain Affect Regulation (Schore, 2012)
Ann’s Outline (w/ our own Multiplicity thoughts combined)
07-25-17 @ 9:19AM
- Right Brain Affect Regulation – Notes (Schore, 2012)
- Definitions
- Cognitive – The mental activities involved in acquiring and processing information
- Cognition – A Cognition – an item of knowledge or belief. i.e. “I AM a Multiple.” See also information processing
- Golden Thread – Understanding emotions and behavior as working together —> what’s happening that resolves emotional dilemmas
- Implied – Not plainly expressed
- Ontogenesis – Development of individual organism – self(s)
- Phylogenesis – Development and diversification of an organism (multiple system — selfs)
- Physiology – study of functioning of organisms
- Primacy – Priority
- Cognitive – The mental activities involved in acquiring and processing information
- Human Condition
- Seek goals (whether known or not)
- Ancient emotional systems (independent power – separate from neocortical/cognitive processes)
- Priority (Primacy) of affect/emotions
- Primary – survive
- Secondary – when safe, deal with emotions
- Emotional “body-based” survival functions
- Each of the self have their own body memories —> they carry-around their own stories
- Survival with body memories (holding trauma history) of infant/child sexual abuse
- Periodically “act-out,” or “act-up”
- Relational interactions – impact …
- Brain Systems – Multiplicity is a system (within brain – as “many” minds)
- The selfs within system are implicit (not plainly expressed)
- Multiplicity – Internalized other people who were safe, hence (“safe” selfs unconsciously created)
- Survival functions (Infant/child’s) “ability” to stay alive
- Ability (goal/need) to stay alive (as a Multiple system – with self-relationships)
- Live/not die as an “internal system” (love/care)
- Without system, we feel we would perish
- Outer world too dangerous
- Die/not live due to lack of external system (Attachment) love/care
- Visualized as layers (multiple selfs) —> promotes cognitive-object relations
- Selfs are orphans —> needs basic mother-object-relations
- Through Dr. Woollcott and Dr. Marvin, we gain the necessary rich emotional experiences
- Build a therapeutic alliance (patient/therapist)
- Emotional communication – right to right brain
- Internally with selfs, externally with Dr. Marvin
- Addresses psychobiological core
- Human processes – caring is essential for selfs’ development
- Psychotherapy change processes (core of therapy) – essential right brain processes
- Interpersonal neurobiology of several right brain processes – reactions
- Nonconscious emotional regulation in self-development
- Trauma-based dissociation affected psychopathogenesis
- Regulation Theory – Summary
- Primarily, we are emotional structures (selfs) and we are functioning
- Critical aspects of human experience
- Implicit emotions (implied not expressed), & Explicit emotions (in accordance with facts)
- Evolutionary functions
- Primary emotional responses are adaptive
- Feedback —> provides immediate assessment to meet goals/needs interaction w/environment
- Reset organism to meet changing circumstances – affects
- Behavior
- Physiology
- Cognition
- Experiences
- Preserve emotions through body memories and through selfs’ memories
- Phylogenesis —> Multiples —> Develop & diversify
- Survive adaptively —> Right hemisphere’s functions
- Dominant in relational context, at all stages (ages of selfs) of lifespan
- Dominant in relational context in therapy
- Underlying the conscious mind
- Biology/chemical
- Right brain implicit selfs
- Conscious mind
- Intimately involved in the processing of emotional body-based information (shock/trauma)
- Associated w/various motivational states
- Various conscious minds/selfs/ w/various reasons for acting-out behaviorally (at any given time)
- Therapy encounters —> central focus
- Is to appreciate patient’s motivations
- Running story/explains behaviors
- Perceive/recognize emotional experience (whether evident or not)
- Golden thread – access and share patients’ storyline to
- Discover deep-seated emotions in conjunction with behavior being investigated
- What is patient reaching for? Goals?
- Is her method working?
- Is to appreciate patient’s motivations
- Survive adaptively —> Right hemisphere’s functions
- Primary emotional responses are adaptive
- Evolutionary functions
- Regulation Theory – Summary
- Interpersonal neurobiology of several right brain processes – reactions
- Emotional communication – right to right brain
- Selfs are orphans —> needs basic mother-object-relations
- Outer world too dangerous
- Brain Systems – Multiplicity is a system (within brain – as “many” minds)
- Emotional “body-based” survival functions
- Priority (Primacy) of affect/emotions
- Definitions
References
Colman, A. M. (2015). Dictionary of Psychology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Colman, A. M. (2001). Dictionary of Psychology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Schore, A. N. (2012). Right brain affect regulation: An essential mechanism of development, trauma, dissociation, and psychotherapy. In Schore, A. N. The science of the art of psychotherapy (Norton series on interpersonal neurobiology). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.
Return to “Working on Self Regulation and Dissociation”
Return to Table of Contents
WOW! We’re back! That’s a LOT for me to handle. I got so far, and then we had to stop – felt like our mind was being blown away. In our minds, we started to imagine something close to something I experienced as THRILLING the first semester I was at St. Mary’s – you know before the “bad behavior.” This was back in 1977 and we were in love with another Christian Brother. He was older and his name was Brother Julius. He was JUST so smart! We hung on his thoughts. Back then is when we made a commitment to learning, we were just a first semester freshman and the material they were teaching us in Human Development was just incredible. Anyway, about that time, we read a book, called, “The Chosen,” by Chaim Potok. Just found the reference at Amazon. In 2016, they put out the 50th anniversary edition of this book.
This book absolutely blew us away. What I loved most was the situation where the main person – a kid who was Jewish, well, he was studying the Talmud and a BUNCH of supporting books, and they explained a book, or maybe, how he’d put things together, but there was one statement at a time, and then there were MANY views from many scholars, trying to explain the passage. And then the climax developed, and this person was building intelligence and knowledge, and at this GRAND point, he stood up and explained how all these great authors and scholars who had interpreted this GREATEST book, well he was able to interpret how it all went together, and the successive argument.
Going through this experience in the book – just reading … it was one of those greatest unseen moments in our life. Somehow, being able to translate what was being said and to be able to express that out loud – as it happened to his class … just that feeling of being blown away by being able to comprehend … man-o-man- it was a peak experience. I know … you have to go way back in psychology and human development to understand peak experiences, but that’s the one we’re thinking of now.
And, then by no small chance, it is forty years later, and here, we are. ABLE to be a scholar. One of the greatest beings we could imagine. We must make some revisions here. We’re not a true scholar, but we’re going to be reading scholarly works and it’s making me feel very able, but also as a Multiple, doing it which means naturally, we’re going to be coming at it from our own perspectives. AND, the material is different. We’re going to say it a thousand times, but our interests rest in self-regulation and dissociation. I don’t know why, but its about as strong a thread going through our minds that ever was! Just excited to bejeebers.
OK, I know calm down … like what kind of medicine does she take? Hehe. I guess the good stuff! AND, we have Dr. Marvin on our team, there is something very balancing about that, AND balance is where we’re at now. Somehow, we need to set up a situation like – Ahh here it is the main person is Danny. And, his contemporary is Reuven. They are both brilliant. I don’t think we’re brilliant, but now the song is singing, “You are going to hear me roar!” Hehe Maybe a cold shower?
@ 5:02PM AHH, we got a note back from Dr. Marvin, AND we called Mayo again. I had written one of the numbers wrong for the fax. So, the ever-efficient Mayo clinic, updated the number, and it is being sent out ONE MORE time! Heaven knows who got the first two copies. Dr. Marvin said an unknown number sent something, but I don’t think he’d looked, maybe someone who got the records faxed them forward? I don’t know, but I sent another note to Dr. Marvin, which he’ll probably read tomorrow – since its after 5 PM. Dr. Marvin asked, so we asked the guy – how many pages. He said about 27-28 pages. WOW! We hit the motherload. It’s going to be SOOOO exciting to see what was happening. I reminded Dr. Marvin, that he couldn’t hide any of the pages!
It should all be there by tomorrow’s appointment. I want to see what they REALLY did to me. AND, what shape I was in. We only know I was deeply suicidal. AND, in the end … today, I turn out to be OK, AND we’re going to think the last thing now. How would Chaim Potok, suggest reading all these chapters, that we have available to us as our stated LIFE’S WORK!?? Chaim speak to me!
Oh, he said go to the bathroom. I’ll be right back. Might check on the animal’s dinner, and eat too … THEN we’ll check in with Chaim!
27 pages (8524 words)
