Hi all, I am hoping that one or more of you might recognize this experience and let me know what you know about it. I am baffled by it.
I have one part that I experience differently from any others. Other parts show up in session all of the time, sometimes they end up being more in control, because that seems to be what is needed, but the experiences always start out very blended. I may be doing the talking, but I am talking for the child part. Or the child part may pipe up herself. Usually the points when I hand over more control is when I am dealing with the child part being very traumatized and needing something specific from Mama Bear, such as having her hand held or that child specifically needs to know that she is being heard.
But there is one part where as soon as there is any sign of her, it is like I am shoved back. I can watch, listen, and think, but I cannot act at all. Sometimes I have gone to very dark places when in this part, but I have no idea of what is going on when that happens. This part doesn’t speak. I’ll admit that I pretty automatically go into trying to ground out of this part, so I don’t know that I have ever given her a chance to just be in the session for awhile. I think that I may do that this next time, with the caveat that I don’t get taken into a traumatic memory. If I manage to force my way forward, so I can move a bit or say anything while this part is present, I feel very, very fuzzy and am aware of how dissociated I am. When I’m not doing that, I don’t perceive things as fuzzy at all.
In general, I work pretty well with how things are in my system. With this one part, I wish that if I was going to be pushed back, I was pushed far enough back that I wasn’t aware and couldn’t interfere, so she could express to Mama Bear whatever it is that she keeps on trying to express.
With all of my other parts, I am aware of some sort of identifying characteristic. Generally that is age, but I always have some sense of what the part is about. I have no idea with this part. Mama Bear wondered today if her job was to stop me from talking, but it feels as though my not being able to talk is a side effect, rather than a purpose.
As a complete novice in understanding our/my own ‘team’, don’t feel like I can offer much more than letting you know that this is something I relate to lots.
There are several (a majority, even) silent team members. They are young child-parts mainly and are holding onto v traumatic experiences and for various reasons, speech is not possible. They are holding somatic, emotional and visual parts of memory and I know for one at least it is all she knows. There seems to be no present, past or future.
Like you, I’ve been sucked into one of their worlds several time and have felt very frozen in it.
Mama bears suggestion that this parts job is to silence you, it could be correct. Its important to trust your own judgements though.
Sorry, haven’t been much use, have I?
Sending hopeful vibes your way.
Thanks for sharing how things work for you. It’s helpful for me to hear about how things work for other people, even when it isn’t the same way as it works for me.
I have found that just writing this seems to have invited some more internal communication and either I have been learning more about this part today or another who presents similarly..
I have a part entirely devoted to the sense of numbness that came from dissociating so heavily. I suppose I think of parts in this way: there is the tendency to see the parts as existing on the other side of a wall, to a greater or lesser extent. There is often one part we take to be the most “I” and is the place we generally spend the most of our time. The other parts seem foreign to this sense of ourselves, and when we experience other parts, we usually experience it as something someone else is doing. But in fact the other parts are also us with different ways of feeling and looking at things. We tend not to experience ourselves as all of these parts simultaneously with that sense of it being ourselves because that would be so terribly confusing. But as you integrate, that is exactly what happens. You don’t experience a middle ground as you integrate, with the truth lying between the extremes of the parts: you experience contradictory and incompatible views and feelings at the same time. This goes beyond merely having mixed feelings. It sounds like that is what is happening for you: you are experiencing what it feels like to be both this part and Cat’s Meow. As “Cat’s Meow” you feel very pushed back and fuzzy. But as this part, you feel perfectly clear-headed. I find growth lies at that edge: For example, if I can feel both flat and emotionless (like my Lana part) and very sad or vulnerable (like “me”) at the same time then I know how I really feel. Because being traumatized meant feeling and thinking in these contradictory and incompatible ways.It’s tempting to try to choose one that feels better or seems to make more sense, but that is actually what got me into this mess in the first place.”Parts” was a way of organizing my experience so that I could make sense of life (and myself) and go on functioning. That’s my take anyway.
I don’t think that’s what was happening with this part, but that is exactly what happened the other day when it was like I was standing on two sides of myself at once. One side knew that I am a worthwhile person who has value in the world- that is the part of me that I am most aware of. The other side was a young part of me who believes that I am completely worthless and have no value what so ever. I was aware that in different places in me, both views were firmly believed. It is a very, very weird experience to be thinking completely contradictory things at the same time.
Yes, and I think that’s where the healing occurs. So, good job.