We live in this life ... ya know and time with Dr. M.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012 @ 11:40 am

Good morning … or what’s left of the last 20 minutes of it.  We were skimming through the pictures of something that we might add to the top of the blog and we came across this one and thought …we’d never posted it before so might be a good time to do so.  I believe the picture is from a Google Earth search.  This seems to be then where we live – in case anyone ever wanted that kind of image.  Sometimes we’re not overly proud of still living in an apartment, but then at other times think … hey!  It’s not us snowplowing and lawn-mowing!  We like to think of us being on the penthouse level.  That seems to make the steps (no elevator) more acceptable.  Do you know what we mean?  All in all though it really is a nice place to live and we’ve now been here twelve years – and five of those years Rich has lived with us too so we can be pretty darn happy J  Would we like a house?  Hmm, at this point maybe more like we’d appreciate a condo … did I mention snow?

Ok, maybe being a little silly this morning.  Not really in a good or bad mood, maybe somewhere in-between.  We always have a lot of work to do in front of us so it doesn’t seem to matter much on what to be doing next.  It is just more work – WHICH, fortunately is like play too … so we’re doing ok J  Have a sense of purpose. 

I’m not sure if you got a chance to look at the last entry, but we feel very comfortable with a decision made over the weekend to write a book called, “NEWS Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality disorder:  Real States of Personal Identity within Curation and Blog Culture of Multiplicity.”  Pretty darn cool, hmm?

We’re still getting over the shock of it though we know that time will prove or disprove our esteemed ability to do what we’ve intended.  So many things come and go from our plans that only the ones making it against our timeline are really great ideas.  BUT, we like that this particular one is very well-based through the curation of the Multiples’ Blogs.  I suppose there is always a vague idea of looking for what could be the next best book, but it’s usually on a back range spot.  This one has moved to the front of the stove. 

We didn’t have very much time to talk it over with Dr. Marvin, but last night there was about 15 minutes put toward it.  The bulk of the other 45 minutes went to a situation that happened a couple nights ago.  Apparently someone had exhausted our system AND had forgotten to take medicine and so after reading a bit, we got suddenly tired, and then Rich helped us with the medicine and getting to bed, but apparently we’d started to hit our head.  Fortunately, Rich had come back to check on us and then stayed with us until we fell asleep proper.  It has been a LONG time since anything like that has happened.  We didn’t understand it, but obviously brought it up with Dr. Marvin.  In general, he’s leaning toward being over-tired, without medicine, and having been over-stimulated by what we were reading.  So then as part of that process we stayed younger (middle-aged), but talked about actually quite a bit that we were remembering. 

We are on the 8^th chapter of Dell’s book on DID (about 11%) and there is a lot of information as to the actual things happening at the infant and toddler age of people being traumatized and then neglected through bad parenting – who end up dissociating.  I think that most of that is that even though there are too many big words – mostly biological – to count, that some of the understanding is getting through a LITTLE and we’re finding it over this last couple days a little harder to hide from realities of our past.  The book breaks it down one simple biological process after another so this causes that, which causes this, etc.  I think in some ways we are glad that we don’t understand all of it, because right now it seems to be stinging a bit and could overload us easily.  We are having little snapshots of the past which are appearing to confirm most of the reality that they reflect.  Little things are falling into place like cogs and wheels – though we could safely guess - there are a million more to confirm and discuss with Dr. Marvin.  The images are fleeting - just seconds of our life at one time.

Dr. Marvin said that usually not too much is remembered of the very earliest years, but we still have some images of being in the crib, being in the crib and looking at my sister’s crib in the same room, or being in the playpen.

Took a popcorn break here.  Ok, have to rethink this … where are we?  Can we say just one more thing?  We had been talking to Linda and then at the very end, we thought of the quilt we wanted her to sew the back to  before Christmas.  We decided to give our star and stripe quilt to Austin for Christmas this year.  We’re a little worried because the red stripes on the quilt are big flowers, but it is the best thing I have done that I have made (can afford) to give.  I am banking more on the stars and stripes theme being something that would connect me to Thom as his father and me as the grandmother.  I don’t know what Austin’s thoughts are toward patriotism, but we’re pretty sure that if he knows at all what his father does for a living, that he would be pretty proud of him. 

It is now only a couple days away before we meet Laura and we’re very excited.  It turns out that she has staked out a career in childhood abuse.  She has a Masters and had worked five years previous with emotionally disturbed kids for a school.  I don’t know all of what has been learned in real life or learned from academic, but I’m very positive that she knows her material.  She was a very “strong-minded” person.  I never would have guessed though that she would choose an area so close to my interests.  I had thought she went more toward nursing.  We’re just really proud of her.  We’re meeting about this time on Friday.

Just thinking a second.  Although, we had contacted last when she’d come over to our apartment to see Thom, we really had first met her when we came back 13 years ago to live in Chicago.  This means she’s actively been in our life, but much to a back burner, for a long time.  Just remembering thoughts of first meeting her.  We had been at the old apartment and Thom and Laura we’re just letting us know that she was pregnant.  It was such a long time ago … and all these years … just that we are going to meet her and Austin again … and we’re just so excited!

*sigh*

Ok, pushing through to other thoughts, I know gotta let that other excitement rest.  We were still back at Dr. Marvin’s appointment.  I think as to the longer session of parts being out talking about the abuse from the past there was some discussion on the neglect parts – which is newer to us to be talking about.  Usually, the sexual abuse gets most of the attention.  From what we are reading, it seems that the neglect has more to do with the likelihood of becoming dissociative then a lot of other things.  I think it has more to do with not only having suffered the trauma of the actual abuse – is that something is added to the value of not having anyone to trust to take down that level of anxiety and fear and being overwhelmed.  There seems to be a very problematic thing to traumatized kids with certain susceptibilities and being also neglected in that the kids are forced through a dilemma where they can only go toward their abusers who SHOULD have protected them, but the abuser IS THEIR parent so also is very threatening to the child. It locks them in a nowhere realm of being defenseless.  There is a lot about the infant/toddler trying to calm herself and they even talked somewhat about the child going into a real state of helpless or hopelessness where they compare it to dying … in that some of the bodily systems close way down like the heartbeat and the automatic nervous system.  Much more into the biology, I am just not getting yet, but we talked to Dr. Marvin about what we’ve always called the “Dead Zone” and he agreed that it had relevancy. 

We can also see more of the differences between Crystal and Gracie in that the infant at first would be terrified to the degree of feeling annihilation … as we’ve said many times before … Crystal (8 months) kicks and waves wildly, but Gracie (1 1/2 years) coming immediately after Crystal is very stiff and catatonic.  We think that Crystal is more like 2 ½ now and that Gracie is more like 4 years old.  But, one way or another two parts are still with us … and we’re thinking have a lot more they need to say.  We’re afraid that their lives are more based in the negativity of their traumatic situation.  I have no doubt at this point that the part out hitting herself the other night was Crystal.  Maybe what we’d been doing in being triggered back through some of her images was upsetting to her in a level she needed to make us stop. 

We’re going to do that right now again … because we should learn something from the experience as to not be pushing things.  Dr. Marvin also stated that we have plenty of time to go through it and that the book might trigger a lot of mental processing, but that we needed to balance it with other things including times in-between to talk things over, or maybe even quilting.  At least that’s our interpretation.  Dr. Marvin is just too good of a tool psychologically speaking not to appreciate his skills in handling this situation.  I have to admit though once again … we’re really curious as to what Laura is dealing with working at her crises center.  I just can’t believe how excellent it is that she cares for so much around her.  We’re thinking she had a good childhood, but she’s gone so much further in supporting others who haven’t … Just really proud of her.  I'm hoping she feels comfortable in talking of what she's doing with kids.  It will be so heart-welcoming to know what's being done out there.

I think we’ll jump things a little bit here.  As to Dr. Marvin’s there was about 15 minutes left on the end of the hour.  He had been 15 minutes late due to another meeting, but he had left a note for us so that we could deal with it properly.  I’m proud to say that we didn’t have a bad experience with it … though still remember it the day after.  The nice thing was that he gave us the extra 15 minutes we might have lost and he then let us go an additional minute after so we could complete our thoughts of excitement.

After the younger parts had been out … the next parts were talking about their sore neck and how they could see Dr. Marvin’s eyes again.  The initial parts had looked away and cower their necks as if undeserving.  I think we read something in the staring away from others eyes as being cowardly of the other or fearful.  We’ve known this about ourselves for so long, it doesn’t seem time to go into that again now because we're still not getting past it.  Just to say that we recognize the behavior.  Usually, when we are dealing with those range of experiences, we’re talking to Anniemi or one of the two Casies (Casey & KC).  Anyway after that … we knew that we wanted to spend some time talking about “the book.”  We asked Dr. Marvin if he’d seen the work, and he just smiled brightly and showed us on the table were two copies of it so that we could talk about it.  We were soooo happy to have almost 15 minutes left!

The conversation went by pretty fast.  There was a part where we were trying to figure out what Dr. Marvin knew about what was written and where he needed to be brought up to speed.  We very much appreciated several complements paid forward.  He liked the outline, he liked that the exerpts were so closely aligned with the outline, and when we asked him … he said that he seemed to understood the title.  I think there was more like it was a great title, but we maybe looking more into that then was given.  We’re not sure.  We could have used the entire time to talk about the book ideal through our excitement, but part of that since other parts needed time too, was just knowing not that Dr. Marvin had to spend too much time with it as a completed project, but rather this was just the first inkling of an ongoing work/project and did it make sense to him?  We’re taking that at this time as a big yes.

Anything else was just us being a little flighty.  Did you see this, did you see that?  I’m not sure if he had immediately figured out that the most of the outline came to us from just reading the first seven blog entries (about 3 weeks’ worth for each blogger), but I think he understood afterward.  He’s pretty quick.  If he was anything like us … it was if this was just an inkling of what is out there to mine … just imagine how good this could actually be.  His letting me know that I was very accurate with my judgment on where things could go was a big deal.  We also added on a little of the process like the part of getting from the online curators – seek, sense, and share, as well as the information about finding the mind mapping system of pearltrees.  I know by the end we were pretty choppy in getting information out, but we were just swimming in all our newfound glory.  I know sounds a little silly, but sometimes being with Dr. Marvin who really understands our experiences … it is like being high!

I know … calm down girls calm down.

I think then that was the gist of our experience.  Looking back as to a time trail … I think we added the Curation Outline to the blog on Monday, and yesterday we went through about 15 blogs, and then Saturday and Sunday we’d gone through the outlining process and fine tuning it.  We had discovered PKM before we did the major work, and then the last entry before that was on Friday, but posted on Saturday.  At that time we had started with quilting thoughts and had done an outline as to what we had been doing loosely over that last bit of time.  So, I’m thinking pretty much that you are caught up.  I’m  thinking I’m going to leave the past now to get some work done on present and future thoughts.  There is one thought on Maury … I think we met on Sunday.  We treated to Panera’s.  Yay Blackberry Smoothies!  It was great to talk to him about things, and now he’s in Florida with his girls and Lady and they are going to be seeing the girls grandparents.  I’m afraid they might be divorcing though so there will be some uncomfortable parts too.  I don’t know how the girls are going to understand grandparents divorcing and it might bring up some frightening thoughts as to not being connected to them properly.  There's always something to worry about through "abandonment" real or imagined.  I’m really glad that the kids decided to see both grandparents even though right now they are in different states.  We hope the best for that situation.

We also have some time coming up with Joe maybe over the weekend.  I’m not sure if Cari will be there too, but either way is fine.  Just thinking Joe was going to find some time.  We’ll give him a call toward Friday to see if anything has loosened up as to schedule.  I’m not sure when it is, but I think Joe and Cari are going to California pretty soon though it seems right now they are still here.  Cari is talking about kickboxing and they are both talking about Herbalife Products.  The Herbalife is why they are going to CA.

Hmm, Rich just called.  He got behind in his schedule so will be going directly to his Mom’s without coming home first.  I think he plans on spending a few hours with her and then will head home … YAY FOR US!  Rich has been tossing and turning as to going fishing with the guys this weekend.  It is up at that same lake in Madison, WI.  He’s worried about having enough money or getting his business work in.  There’s also a complication in that he had a partner and the guy cancelled out.  When that happens the club will pick-up half of Rich’s expense, but now there is someone who MIGHT come with him from the club.  BUT, the guy is not sure yet which with all these variables being out … Rich has been sitting on the fence shakily.  I think he really wants to go … is nervous again because of the money, but also because he’s not sure of fishing on his own for so many days.  I think it could get cumbersome for him.  Partners share fishing, travel, eating, and rooming, so not to have a partner has far flung consequences.  I think already he’s deciding to skip Thursday and maybe go on Friday, but his partner might only be there Saturday and Sunday.  Least that’s the most up-to-date version we have.

Linda is also out for awhile.  She was working on quilting, but then decided to get her hair done today.  We’ll catch-up later in the afternoon.

So, then knowing about where people are at … so what comes next?  Ok, we’re good there we just caught up our social media through email, Twitter and Facebook.  Just gotta run all the Pony’s right?

I think if we get this blog in … we’ll go back to the reading of blogs.  There was some time this morning spent rereading and rereading the information given to Dr. Marvin last night.  It really helped he had read – or at least skimmed some of the material before we got there.  There are a few pearls I would like to move around, but we needed to consider something which will change the architecture of what we are doing.  I think the question comes down to referencing.  So far the greater majority of the referencing of other peoples blogs has been done through their central page with obviously the newer blog entries toward the top.  And, all that’s fine, but when people click back on their blogs name through links, because we are collecting information from the center page and not individual entry pages … we are losing information as to perhaps the date (or about that range), and we are losing direct connection back to the specific entry which would seem more the right thing to do from a reference point of view.  One way gives the blog writers a little more privacy, but then on the other side - if I were a psychology researcher studying what we were writing about, I would like to resource back to the quote directly to get a better feel of the blog writer's written effort.

I’m not sure though how that would affect the way Diigo has been aggregating our information.  Maybe it would be for the better, maybe not.  Right now it’s a crap shoot of which links appear when I’m ready to look in the Diigo library for my highlighted annotated quotes.  Sometimes they appear and sometimes not, so since I can’t get to the bottom of anything logical to do with that, we’ve decided to take the attitude that the right things will show up at the right time whether I’m part of making that decision or not.  Sort of like believing in … shoot forgot the word.  We always mentally attach it to a picture ohh PROVIDENCE!  Yes, that is it … the picture we attach that word to is a picture of a stormy looking cloud while we were at the homeless shelter.  Funny how that kind of stuff turns out in the turning of one’s mental processes.  So, though basically, we do the work – and whatever results – hopefully good … we just keep doing the best we can and hope for good results - because that is Providence.  I think that Harold Jarche is correct when he says that doing the curating increases serendipity.

I will all make sense somewhere down the line.  No telling what’s going to happen, but if we weren’t doing what we are doing, then we would never know the potential of something special coming from it.  Right?

I would like to write some more, but we’re running out of things to talk about.  The cat sitting next to me staring at me because it wants to be petted … just might not be newsworthy.  SOOOO, I guess we’ll move on … that be just the thing J  Our hats off to you!  Thanks for sharing a bit of our world :)

(5,665/817)

Related articles

• We've got a DID/MPD NEWS BLOG!
• Adding Learnist and Scoop-it
• It's not really too much about the dragon, BUT he's cute!
• Weekend with the Girls!
• Introducing the DID/MPD Syntopicon