body memories

darnold1975

Advocates

Advocates

“Momma D, Why Do You Act Weird Sometimes?”

–Marshall Landrum-Arnold

The above is a question from our 6-year-old son.  The one thing I’ve learned about having this disorder is that no matter how hard I try to be “normal” I’m not.  The term “normal” is truly a subjective term that only fits perfectly on a washing machine.  Maybe I should say socially acceptable.  Regardless of what term I or anyone else tries to use the fact of the matter is that a lot of times I’m just not.  I have awaken many times to face the day with the attitude that I don’t nor will I ever have some type of mental disorder.  No sooner than the words roll off my tongue do I realize that I, in fact, have a mental disorder that can, at times, be completely debilitating.

I have come across many people who are of the opinion that “you just need to look at things differently” “you just have to think more positive” or “the past is in the past.”  I would instantly become infuriated even if the emotions didn’t reach my face.  A lot of statements are not malicious but rather out of ignorance.  Also, with trauma you just can’t “unbreak the plate.”  There is no possible way to just pretend that things didn’t happen…..THEY DID HAPPEN.  Everyone around you can be in total denial with their heads in the sand but the fact is that the images, words, feelings, body memories and mental torture goes everywhere I go all day long every single day.

Having a diagnosis like Dissociative Identity Disorder is not one that’s easily hidden from those closest to you.  When you have a spouse and children the inevitable will surely happen.  I’m talking about sometimes very rapid mood changes, alters emerging, rages, voiced self-hatred, noticeable self-harming behaviors, etc.  I realize that not everyone with this disorder operates the same as “systems” are as unique as fingerprints.  But for our little family we have chosen to educate our children as things happen.  Please understand that I’m not talking about telling our children my trauma history in detail.  We educate them on an age appropriate level.

We’ve educated and continue to educate our children about being from an LGBT family and how families look differently.  I have found that children are pretty satisfied once their questions are answered even with the most simplest of answers.  Throw the taboo topic of mental illness that most cringe to discuss in there and more questions emerge.

As a child, I credit my parents for exposing me to individuals with mental retardation and other disabilities.  Maybe this is why I don’t shy away from anyone with a disability.  I truly accept anyone as they are regardless of disability or difference.  Within our little family there’s no denying “difference.”  Marshall has been noticing for a couple of years now that I’m just that….Different.  He might not know the name for what’s happening when alters come out or when I become completely non-functional.  But make no mistake that he knows something’s wrong.

One of my biggest hurdles everyday is anxiety.  I can range from just a little uncomfortable to vomiting and diarrhea.  So, while living in Albuquerque I found that the gentle vibration of a moving vehicle combined with my favorite music can soothe the soul.

survival

 One day Marshall was riding with me which was always our special time to sing together and get a snack from somewhere without little brother.  He said, “Momma D, can I ask you something?” Me thinking this would be a typical little boy question similar to “Why do birds poop when they fly?”  But what he asked me for the first time caught me by surprise.  He said, “Momma why do you freak out and act weird sometimes?”  Instead of further fueling the shame of the having the disorder by saying, “Don’t ask questions like that.”  I simply asked him for clarification by saying, “Baby what exactly are you talking about?”  He said, “Like when loud motorcycles drive passed you and other loud noises scare you. Or when we are playing with my toys and you act like a kid.”  I told him, remember age appropriate, “Son when momma was younger she had some people that scared me really, really bad.” He said, “Did they like jump out and scare you?”  Not being too far off the mark in some instances I said, “Well sort of but mommy just got really scared and things still scare me a lot.”  He said, “And that’s why you freak out sometimes and get scared by loud noises?”  I said, “Yes, baby.”  He then asked, “Is that why sometimes you have to go to the hospital?  Like to help you not be so sad and mad?”  I thought to myself, “Why is he so perceptive?”  But I replied, “Yes, baby.”  He said, “Is that why you see people like Tina so they can help you not be so mad and sad?”  Proud to answer the questions of such a smart little boy I said, “Yes baby.”  His instant reply was, “Ok can we go to Toys R’ Us and not tell momma Mel?”  I chuckled as I said, “Heck yea!”  You will be entertained to know that all teenage and child alters were shouting with excitement when I said that.  When we arrived at the store he said to me what Mel has told me many times prior to going into a very overstimulating situation like a toy store, “Momma D, I will sit in the buggy and will put my hands on your hands to help keep you to the ground. (He was talking about staying grounded.) Don’t worry, it’s just a store and people and they won’t hurt you.”

These were some simple situations with some very powerful answers and outcomes.  And how you choose to educate or not educate your family about mental illness is your business.  Some might disagree with how we choose to do this with our children.  My answer has always been, “That’s the beauty of living in a free nation.  We don’t have to agree.”  But what a disservice it would be for this little boy if we weren’t honest with him.  I wasn’t inappropriate in any manner.  I was simply answering something that had been bothering him in a very age appropriate manner. I didn’t get into specifics about my trauma as at age 6 he is not mature enough to handle that.

The fact is this…..I’m one of his mommas and he and Copeland both love and miss me dearly.  He knows I’m different and yet without judgment he still loves me unconditionally.  Being away from Mel and the kids living in Texas and working with someone determined to help me is extremely difficult.  Take away all of my mental issues and what’s still left is a momma and a wife who misses her family dearly.  Things I’m missing being away from them I’ll never be able to get back.  Through necessity we are raising our family to be….ADVOCATES.

“A lot of people are living with mental illness around them.

Either you love one or you are one.”

–Mark Ruffalo

#thispuzzledlife

darnold1975

Silencing The Lambs

The Silencing of the Lambs

3.16.15

“What makes psychopathy so different, so surreal…that it knocks her head off?  The inability to wrap her head around the emotional-physical-spiritual-sexual gang bang that just happened when she thought she was the most wonderful person.”

—Sandra Brown, Women Who Love Psychopaths

I was trying to decide on a quote this morning for this particular blog post about trauma that would cover the spectrum of how trauma effects different developmental stages from a personal perspective.  While quite blunt, this quote pretty much describes the ‘rape’ on so many levels of each of my personal traumas.  When people ask, “If things were so bad, why didn’t you leave? Or, why didn’t you just tell someone what was happening?”  Honestly, I just have to see and understand that I’m talking to someone at that moment who doesn’t and might not ever understand unless in that position themselves.  Individuals who have never been abused or been so scared that the last thing they would or could ever do is tell the ‘little secret’ to expose their perpetrators, can’t comprehend that level of fear.

Keep in mind that the ‘little secret’ about my molestation by our preacher’s sons was mentioned in passing only a couple times until I told what happened, not even in detail, less than 10 years ago.  That secret I had been holding since I was a 5.5 year old child.  Why do kids do that if they know and are confident that their parents can help?  The problem is not with the child or the parents.  The problem lies with the perpetrators.  If the perpetrators are the parents, then that’s a separate topic.  Even when I got older and new no physical harm could come to me, the seed of fear was planted many years ago.  All I knew was that the topic scared me.  I knew what had happened through broken memories.  But, I was completely detached emotionally except for the emotion of fear.  My parents being the very loving and understanding couple that they are were revealed additional pieces of that time in my life last summer for the first time.  Can you imagine how they felt knowing some additional information about things that transpired?  Then how do you think, as a child, I felt with it being done to me?  The fact that they were connected to religion has always had an influence on my view of religion and religious figures.

In my abusive previous relationship and consequently a marriage, I kept holding on to the false hope that one day I would again be in the relationship with the person that charmed me.  I was so young and naive that I couldn’t see what was happening to me every single day.  His grip just became more and more tighter emotionally until I had been convinced that I was too stupid, dumb, uneducated, ugly, retarded, unwanted by anyone else and whatever else he could come up with in the moment to call me that I felt too weak to be able to stand on my own two feet.  My view of survival was…..well….him.  I was also extremely scared, at that time, of the repercussions of his or his family’s anger.  But, he had his own techniques about how he would ‘raise’ me as his wife.  He just didn’t know that there was a term called gas lighting that would describe parts of his abuse.

A very common form of brainwashing in which an abuser tries to falsely convince the victim that the victim is defective, for any purpose, such as making the victim more pliable and easily controlled, or making the victim more emotional and therefore more needy and dependent. {You’re reading “Definition of Gas lighting” by J. E. Brown.}

Often done by friends and family members, who claim (and may even believe) that they are trying to be helpful. The gas lighting abuser sees himself or herself as a nurturing parental figure in relation to the victim, and uses gas lighting as a means for keeping the victim in that relationship, perhaps as punishment for the victim’s attempt to break out of the dependent role.

Here’s an example…If an abusive person says hurtful things and makes you cry, and instead of apologizing and taking responsibility, starts recommending treatments for what he or she calls “your depression” or “your mood swings,” you are in the presence of a gas lighter.

So, next time, when someone says, “If it’s true, why didn’t they tell?” or “Don’t feel sorry for someone who just stays in a situation like that!”  Understand, that there is so much more going on psychologically that you nor anyone else who’s never experienced brainwashing can comprehend.  True the victim does protect the abuser most of the time.  Trust me…..”IT’S OUT OF FEAR.”  This is how perpetrators ‘silence the lambs.”

Mentally and physically, the effects of 14 years of ‘gas lighting’ took a big toll on me.  My ‘alters’ protected me from feeling much more of the abuse than was felt.  Did I develop maladaptive coping skills from a very young age?  Yes, of course.  They worked well at the time to help me survive some of the horrific traumas of my life.  Now, they just interfere with daily life.  PTSD, social phobias, OCD, rages, flashbacks, body memories, etc. are what my days and nights consist of these days.  Life is better on some days rather than on others.  This, however, are the effects of a lifetime of abuse perpetrated on who ‘had it all’ and became a ‘head case’ over time.  Look at the events of many forms of abuse in my life and tell me who were and still are the ‘head cases?’

Dissociative Identity Disorder is in no shape, form or fashion an easy thing to deal with on a daily basis.  It’s scary as hell for me most of the time.  I won’t nor can I even begin to imagine what it’s like for my wife.  Our son, he’s learning on a different level all of Momma D’s parts.  Every single day our family is in a battle with this disorder.  On an individual level, we’re in a war to put the pieces of the memories back together and deal with them as they should’ve been dealt with many years ago.

Every morning, as long as I choose to put one foot in front of the other, they don’t win.  The day I lay down directly or indirectly in a permanent manner is the day they win.  I think you know enough about me to know that I come from a long line of coaches that demanded and would accept nothing less than winners.  ‘Winners’ in their eyes were more than just numbers on a scoreboard.  There’s only one way I know how to operate….”Get knocked down 1000 times.  Get back up 1001 times.”  This too is a gift.

This lamb is no longer going to be silent.  Abuse is real.

#Thispuzzledlife

darnold1975

Under The Cover Of Darkness

Under the Cover of Darkness

3.9.15

 “PTSD is a whole-body tragedy, an integral human event of enormous proportions with massive repercussions.” 
― Susan Pease Banitt

And there you are again as you begin to arise with the memories of your vulgarities of control, hate, bitterness, soul shredding and belittling.  Once again you’re not seen but you are heard again by the one it has all been intended for….ME.  You have a paralyzing fear to you that can’t match anything in my life so far.  I watch it. I hear it. I smell it. I feel it all over again.  Yes, you are alive and well during the day.  Nighttime, under the cover of darkness, you are at your most evil.  Finally, no distractions and I can be all yours, once again.  You remind me of everything they did and you convince me it was all my fault.  You tell me that it was my fault that no one helped me because, I kept the secrets.  You have me convinced that people are constantly staring at me and all of my imperfections both seen and not seen.  I didn’t somehow make amends by surviving it the first time?!  You have attacked my mind and body too many times to count.  I go to bed in pain and wake up in pain.  There’s not a medication for ailments that no one else can detect.  You hit me with waves of sometimes debilitating physical issues that make me wonder why I ever wake up in the mornings.  The body cramps, nausea, vomiting, migraines and diarrhea are worse than detoxing from opiates.  You interfere with my sleep time and time again.  Yet, life continues every single day.  But for me, I get ready to stare you in the face while constantly looking over my shoulder yet again.  This body that I live in is still being perpetrated while they continue to live as though nothing ever happened.  Sometimes the pictures are just snapshots.  Tonight, however, they’re scrolling on a marquee sign.  What people don’t see is what happens on the inside.  You are a killer of many and a disabler of many more.  You are PTSD.

Since almost a year ago, our lives as a person and a family have been shaken to its core.  My wife and I look back and try to put the pieces together of a very emotionally charged year.  Now, bigger changes have happened in regards to my therapeutic care at an extremely crucial time in my life.  I’m truly at a loss for words at the reality of the situation.  My brother, Levi Pierce, taught me a lesson during our middle school tenure about being a fighter.  My athletics taught me about not giving up and about how pushing beyond known limits is possible.  This combination makes me a fierce competitor but an even more fierce survivor.

One of the most powerful quotes I learned at a young age that has also made its presence known both on and off the field is….

“Little things make big things happen.”

—Coach Nick Kolinsky

#Thispuzzledlife

darnold1975

The Levees Have Finally Broken

The Levees Have Finally Broken

2.24.15

 “When a friend of Abigail and John Adams was killed at Bunker Hill, Abigail’s response was to write a letter to her husband and include these words, “My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.” 
― David McCullough

I find myself this morning at a point where I seem to be consumed by grief.  The losses in 2014 and now already in 2015 have opened the door to the room where I like to store grief and remain strong.  Grieving has never been something that I’ve just been able to embrace as a part of life.  I was shown, in many different ways, that grief is a sign of weakness.  I was belittled for this naturally occurring emotion in life so many times that my attitude has always been, “I’ll deal with it later.” At almost 40 years old, “later” has become “now.”  My body and mind have reached their own limits on storing grief.  There is no more room to stuff one ounce of grief into my body.  This doesn’t mean that I never cried during life.  It means that I never fully dealt with what has hurt me during my life.  Through all the abuse, the only option was to put it aside and fight whoever or whatever situation was in front of me.  There is a lot in almost 40 years that I must now take the time to sit with and just let the grieving happen.

Sarah Pardue always would tell me in only her gentle kind of way, “Dana, it’s ok to get down and roll around in your sadness and grief.  Just don’t make your bed down there.”  She knew that her death would be very difficult for me to bare.  However, someone bigger and higher knew that her death would also be the “final straw” and key to forcing me to finally be able to grieve properly.  Where I have been able to suppress most feelings connected to events in my life, my feelings attached to her passing are ones that I cannot hide.

The wounds from my lifetime have had the scabs ripped off them and have started to bleed again.  I have bled blood. Now I bleed tears.  The muscles in my body twitch and cause excruciating pain that look at the medical marijuana as though it were candy and fly right through any attempts at pain relief.  This is what I personally see and experience as my body crying.  What do I grieve?

  1. I grieve the loss of a relationship that was never formed with my birth mom.
  1. I grieve the reality that she was so damaged that she never had the capability to love me.
  1. I grieve the loss of coming face-to-face with her and being very blatantly rejected again.
  1. I grieve the loss of my innocence as a child to those I trusted to love and care for me when my parents had things to do.
  1. I grieve the loss of the trust in genuinely good people because of the bad intentions of others.
  1. I grieve the 14 years that I allowed myself to be perpetrated in some of the vilest forms at the hands of someone who said all the ‘right’ things to get his hooks in me.
  1. I grieve the loss of happiness of my teenage years that began a life that became consumed by addictions.
  1. I grieve the loss of horrendous things that were done to my animals in a final effort to destroy what was left of me.
  1. I grieve the loss of friends and family due to ignorance on different subjects.
  1. I grieve for my family, the things that they never knew and that came out in many other forms towards them.
  1. I grieve for the unknown in this journey of recovery.
  1. I grieve for my wife, as she struggles with me to make sense of a disorder that neither she nor I were prepared to deal with.
  1. I grieve for her sadness as she has come to understand the true meaning of “helplessness” while watching the torture that I go through both mentally and physically, as a result, of the pathology of a lifetime of others.
  1. I grieve for the loss of one of our unborn children.
  1. I grieve the unknown for our son being in a minority family.
  1. I grieve about the ignorance of others and how someone’s genitalia are more important than a genuine love or authenticity of a person.
  1. I grieve the mental health system in this country where instead of embracing people that ask for help, there seems to be the attitude to snicker and shut the door.
  1. I grieve for the sadness that I see and feel from other people that I cannot do anything about.
  1. I grieve for the children every day that are just beginning their own journeys in the world of abuse.
  1. I grieve the fact that even my own knowledge and degree can’t undo what has been done.
  1. I grieve the fact that it’s taken me this long in my life just to be able to properly grieve.
  1. I grieve the fact that I have to be the one to take this painful journey when I’ve already survived it once.
  1. I grieve for friends and their families as their lives were lost for reasons unknown.
  1. I grieve the loss of my grandmothers who have also become guides.
  1. I grieve my professional career that has been put on hold because there were people that didn’t deal with their own trauma.

There’s so much more to list that I could spend weeks doing nothing but typing things that I’m grieving over.  This grief has also led to people that are back in my life after many years because as one person put it, “God has a sense of humor.”  I have met and maintained relationships with people that give me hope that there might really still be some people in this world that accept others as they are with no strings attached.  For these people, there are no words to convey the appreciation and comfort that you continue to provide to both me and my family.

The only phrase that I can feel that can possibly describes this personal view of where I am right now……..”The levees have finally broken.”

#Thispuzzledlife

darnold1975

Life On Life’s Terms

Life on Life’s Terms…

2.21.15

“So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

The title of this post is very cliché in the 12-Step community. However, recent events from the last few months have finally answered, for me, how this fits into my life. I know…I’m a slow learner. “Living life on life’s terms” recently has come to have meaning by my own disorder that I struggle with both mentally and physically every single day I open my eyes. I manage my DID the best way I know how, at this point. I have excruciating body memories that often leave me in tears, migraines, diarrhea, severe anxiety, nausea, vomiting. Not to mention how crazy it can get ‘upstairs’ sometimes.

Just because I have Dissociative Identity Disorder or someone else has bipolar, or depression or whatever your current diagnosed or undiagnosed opinion of your situation is doesn’t mean that life just ceases to go on. This disorder in itself can be very tricky and dangerous depending on what alter is in charge at the time. This too is a work in progress.  My point in general is that just because I have a disorder doesn’t mean that people won’t die, people won’t be self-centered, people won’t reject us as a family and as it’s been going lately even one of our own unborn children might die.

Yesterday was one of my proudest and saddest days of my life. I had it all set up before the day began. I was hoping for a therapy appointment so that I could process what I knew was soon going to happen a bomb was going to go off inside my head and body whether I wanted it to or not.   Whatever was going to happened, I just didn’t want it to happen while I was alone. So, also knowing that grief was a part of this process that was about to ensue, and how acupuncture is helping with the release of trauma from a cellular level much like writing, I took my very sore and aching mind and body over to where I was to have acupuncture so that the grief could also be helped to be released soon after the service was over. Loneliness is a feeling that I don’t handle very well. I needed my wife, one of my therapists or someone to be there at that moment.  But, alas, I was there to face yet another demon alone.



I took all of the medication that I thought I would need for this event and kept it very close at hand. Mom and Dad were going to try and FaceTime Sarah’s service for me.  I begin getting so anxious that I would miss this service that I was nauseous. I was already in excruciating pains from body memories and knew that another bomb was about to go off in my physically and mentally. This wasn’t going to be an incident where not just one alter was going to be effected. All would be deeply affected and hurt.

 And suddenly there was the call from my mother and the FaceTime camera was going perfectly and I’m so relieved at the moment that I’m able in attend. When Doug passed away, there was no possible way for us to get home so, I was bound and determined to see Sarah’s service.  When the service started, I was once again thinking, “Is this funeral for the Sarah I called mom?” My heart begins to ache and my eyes fill up with tears as I keep my shades on and ear buds in. I try to be as inconspicuous as possible. Crying in public and around people tends to be dangerous for me in the past and shows that you’re weak and an easy target. I choke back what I can. Eventually when the reality hits me that she’s really gone and I’ll never be able to ask her for her levelheaded advice again, I’ll never be able to sit on her couch for hours talking and laughing about experiences both good and bad about being therapists. Or about what a handful of a patient I could be. Or about the precious woman she introduced me to and our little boy and one in the oven.

I cried but seemed to maintain a calmness all through the service.  My heart was going out to her family and the friends and former co-workers that spoke.  The things they said about her couldn’t have been any more truer words.  With the many people’s lives that she touched, I was even able to say a very brief “hello” to one of the former therapists that worked with Sarah at the same time I was a patient.  They played “good cop, bad cop” very well together.  However, this person also is a very highly respected person by me to this day for what she helped Sarah accomplish….getting through my extremely thick skull.  I’ll leave it at that for now.

I held most of the grief in until I said goodbye to my parents.  In that lonely parking lot, I cried like a child that had just lost her parent and for me she was just that.  I sat there and cried and cried until the cries switched over to crying about the pain in my body.  The bomb had been set off and exploded.  My legs are now throbbing and I’m sobbing uncontrollably while trying to keep anyone from seeing. Why?!  I just don’t understand.  She was suppose to be fine from the chemo.  Oh how my heart still doesn’t understand.  The emotional level of this grief has brought on nausea to a point that I’m terrified that someone will see me begin to vomit.  I take a couple of hard swallows making sure I keep, I guess air in.  I made sure with my eating disorder that it was ok to not eat since I was going to be dealing with something so difficult.  The eating disorder agreed that food was not the best thing plus it would make me look horrendous.  Even dry heaving would’ve embarrassed me to the point of never returning as a client even though no one was around to really see anything.

My body was screaming and my mind, heart and soul were in shambles.  “What do I do now?” I keep asking myself.  She was my voice of reason.  I’ve lost all track of time and there she is, the one I’ve been waiting to help relief me of some of the agony.  Yes, she’s an unbelievable acupuncturist but she’s also a human being.  She instinctively knows that something’s wrong.  I proceed to chat with her a moment about it.  The tears as hard as I tried to keep them from falling and save myself some embarrassment, they just kept falling at a rate that I rarely do around someone other than my wife.  I knew that I had no storage left in my body to hold anymore grief since many years of grief have accumulated.  I had strategically schedule this appointment for this reason.  I wanted to grieve and let it be released at the same time.  I vividly remember stepping out of the vehicle, waiting to be made fun of for crying, and it never happened.  I could hardly walk because with each step the fire in my legs became more excruciating.  She took time with me to just let me talk about my grief but the pain in my legs and my soul was too much for me to handle.

I woke up to almost non-existent pain but more like soreness from the tenseness of my muscles.  I was lying down which rarely happens because of the sexual trauma from my past.  I wake up with a horrible headache and very disoriented trying to put together the pieces of how much time had gone by and what had transpired that I had no knowledge about.  I know that something has happened because I was lying down.  The embarrassment of her seeing me in the condition that I was in when I remember walking in was starting to flood me.  Honestly, I’m glad that someone that I trust was there with me.  I don’t know what all happened.  It happened on life’s terms and so did Sarah’s death.  What I do with that hole in my heart and soul remains to be seen.  I’ve felt powerful grief when my grandmothers died.  This grief while just as important was just different.  She was like my guardian angel on earth.

I have little to no knowledge of driving back to meet my wife for another appointment or the rest of the day.  I awoke this morning pain free with what I like to call an “emotional hangover.”  I was greeted this morning with a migraine and nausea.  But, for the first time in quite a while I woke up on my own and not courteous of excruciating body cramps.

#Thispuzzledlife