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Multiplicity: A Box of Odd Socks
This Blog is our journey as a multiple. We’re learning to stand proud in who we are as we heal.
We are Unpretending Spontaneous.
This episode is called Parenting with DID
I wanted to write about parenting with DID and CPTSD. This body has been a parent for over twenty-four years and we have only known about our DID for three or four of those years.
This means the first two children that were raised, lived with a DID parent who had no clue they were multiple, and now we are currently parenting the second time around we have a nine-year-old and a five-year-old. These two younger ones know that mummy has multiple parts and are being raised with that knowledge. The older children who are now young adults now know their parent has multiple parts and they are working through what that means to them, how it feels finding out, how it’s changed the way they look at their childhood and what the relationship with their parent might look like for them going forward.
This System is mostly covert, which means we don’t show our different personalities to many people. Only when we feel really safe. And only to people we trust or are around a lot. So our kids, older and younger get to interact with lots in our System.
When we are grounded, regulated and feeling safe, being covert is easier and we can function in every role we have, parenting, friend, lover, manager of the home, suburban farmer and bee keeper, teacher and generally an all right kind of person in society.
However, things can become challenging for us as a system to stay covert when we are feeling overwhelmed, or triggered by something that takes our mind or body back to past trauma, or we are physically tired or unwell. During these times, day to day functioning can be incredibly hard and adding parenting into that mix can feel almost impossible.
What takes us away from functioning? Often it’s therapy.
These are the reflections from S.E. the morning after therapy last week:
“We are often really discombobulated the day after therapy and we find it very hard to ground, or to even think. For me, Someone Else, my brain feels like Alice in Wonderland when she's falling down the Rabbit hole. I don't feel like I'm falling but I do feel like everything is just floating around in slow motion including my thoughts. And it’s hard to grasp onto anything.
So when you're a parent you know and it's a school morning, you gotta get the children ready for school, pack lunches (in my country children take their lunches to school unless they have a lunch order) they take recess for morning tea they take fruit for fruit break and they take lunch. So you have to be organised and then if you have children with Autism or sensory issues who refuse to eat most foods, or anxiety issues and refuse eat at school, trying to think about what to put in lunch boxes can take a lot of mental capacity. Usually we don't have to think too much because we have learnt to be very organised so when we can’t think we can do things on automatic pilot.
If we’ve been having a pretty good week, we will have available many different food options for the kids and we fill up their lunchboxes with as many options as possible, knowing they're going to have eaten something throughout the day at least.”
We find having DID brings extra hard work when thinking goes out the window, or someone fronts who doesn’t have as much cognition to get the things done that are needed to get done. In times gone by, we might even called the day as a non-school day because we were not able to function enough to get the children ready for school and even to get to the school itself. This is something we were disappointed with ourselves but we are pleased to say that as our System is learning to work together those times have become few and far between.
One thing that we are working through are the feelings of shame around the raising the older children and we didn’t have the awareness of our dissociation, we lived 24/7 wearing many types of “masks” to get through each day. And we did manage, we managed to be a sole parent, to get a degree, then to teach full time. We did all that while putting on an “I’m a Super Human” mask until we finally burnt the candle at both ends and became physically unwell. But that is another story to come another day.
The older children had to grow up much faster and be more responsible earlier than many children do because the people in this System were not able to do what we are able to do now. We were unaware of each other and unaware we were living in survival mode, not even aware we had early childhood trauma to the extreme we know and understand it today.
Therefore parenting the older children was more inconsistent, we were sometimes present, sometimes we were absent even though we were physically present. We’d hide our fear and feelings of inadequacy and try everything we could to parent differently from the body’s own parents. Sometimes we got it right, sometimes we got it wrong, but the hardest part of parenting without the knowledge of who we were was that we were not us. We presented as a fake pretend person to keep ourselves safe from the invisible boogie men inside our head. From the ones who hurt us is the past not even knowing we were hurt. And we played the part we were raised to be, we played it well to most people on the outside. We were everything people expected us to be, but we were broken and didn’t know why. We were disregulated and childish, and each day was a burden.
Coming soon is an interview recorded with the twenty four year old with her perspectives. It is real and raw and brings up much reflections for both her and our System.
There are big feelings in some of us as we reflect on our past parenting, however we are learning to sit with the feelings and not to judge or condemn ourselves for past mistakes and it’s never too late to learn to attune, to trust and show love and compassion to those older kids now. These days we are learning not to live the fake life we used to live.
It is very different knowing about our diagnosis when it comes to parenting these younger children. When we have switched, or become triggered by something, or are just discombobulated, we know it is something in us and it isn’t necessarily because we aren’t coping with being a parent.
The good thing is that because we are working together with our system, and getting the right type of therapy, and with the extra support we are able to put strategies into place to continue to be a consistent parent. It mostly doesn't matter who is fronting now days because everybody knows that we are parents and young children need and depend on their parent, so mostly whoever fronts tries their best to be an okay parent at the time. Okay. Not perfect, not even great. But as long as the children are fed, clean, feel safe and know they are loved then I think that is Okay parenting.
These younger children have their dad around which makes things better for the younger children. The older children’s father abandoned them when they were very small so they only had one parent to be everything for them, that was extra hard for them and for that parent.
These younger kids, the nine year old and the five year old have their dad available when this System is not functioning well. The dad and everyone in the System have separated from being married. They all still live in the same home as but the dad and this System live separated, seperate rooms, seperate lives and not in a relationship. That’s another story, a long thankful story we can write about sometime soon. So many stories we can be telling y’all on our blog.
Okay, back to parenting. So as we grow, unlearn, learn and heal we, Unpretending Spontaneous are for the most part a fairly functioning parent. When, however, we feel completely off the planet, not regulated and it's somebody fronting who believes they don’t belong here, or somebody fronting who lives in the past rather than in the present, or when we cannot work out who we are, those people tend to flight or freeze and hide away into our room. These times they can be terrified of the children or of anyone including the pets who come into the room. Sometimes we can be so frozen that the body can’t move, although we have to be very triggered for that to happen. It is so exhausting on the body and even if we’ve eaten, we feel a deep tremor, an anxiety feeling really really deep inside of us. It feels like it's on our nerves. The only way for that to dissipate is for the feeling of safety and regulation to return.
That usually takes time and in the past it could last days. These days however we are learning to trust people who can sit with us. Or as we begin to know where we are, someone in our System will be able to take over and front to do some art or something similar regarding the fear inside to show them safety. And that attunes to the System and we can become regulated and be able to function. Usually someone else will front for a time until The Body’s Name and Unpretending are able to function. Often it’s Spencer, Jo, sometimes Max’s Alter, sometimes it’s Someone Else.
These days of healing we are more attuned to our feelings due to knowing who we are, and due to being able to freely be who we are without fear of condemnation. There are times when we are doing well or even when we aren’t doing well and we realise we’ve switched or one of the kids do.
The nine-year-old might say, “Who are you right now?”
Because she'll realise I'm not me, or I'm not the Mother or the Body’s Name or something and then when that happens that person who has fronted gets surprised and is kind of taken aback.
For example; we were playing a game with the kids outside or something and there was this person fronting and the nine year old asked who we were, and not in like in a mean or scared way, just in a curious way like who are you right now and this person said,
“I don't know? What do you call the farmer person Farmer John or Farmer Brown? Why don't you just call me the farmer person?” And we continued to play the game with the Farmer Person.
Sometimes we worry a bit because we seem to have a lot of people in our System. And we wonder if that might be confusing to the nine and five year old. The five-year-old doesn't really think much about us being different people, either that or she doesn’t say anything like. I do worry about maybe she’ll think it’s normal to have multiple personalities because sometimes she's happier pretending she's a cat. But maybe that’s just because she is five and five year olds love to pretend. I’m sure one day she won’t be like 20 or 30 and just say, “I identify as a cat now Meow.” Hopefully we have been able to give her and the nine year old a fairly safe and consistent upbringing.
So it is interesting and is different parenting knowing that I have DID and knowing I have different people who come out and hang about with these children. I guess it seems easier than when we didn’t know because we can explain things about how we are feeling better, because we know what's going on, well for the most part. We can also explain things better to our System, especially if we are triggered. We can say to our Insiders, “These kids are okay. They are not our brother and sister. They are allowed to play and to have feelings.”
Sometimes this System gets really scared and we’ve learnt that it’s because as a child, this System was held responsible for the behaviour of the younger siblings and would be held accountable and blamed for anything that happened that made the parents mad. So it is important for the ones in us who are able to recognise that to attune to the ones inside and help them feel better, or nurtured, or safe.
Other times when we are dis regulated we are unable to be cognitive enough to help others inside of us feel safe.
For example yesterday the five and the nine year old didn't want to get ready for school so they were doing what many little children do and just giggling, mucking around and playing together.
There are several ways this example could go depending on our System’s feelings of safety, attunement and the capacity levels at the time. Below are the different ways this could go:
1. This System is grounded and present. We are able to think, “it is okay for the kids to be playing and having fun as long as they are still getting ready for school.” And she can remind them of their picture list for getting ready and show them on the clock what time they are leaving. Giving the children a sense of autonomy and age appropriate responsibility.
2. The System is discombobulated, not grounded and not feeling very present. They may think, “Ok, we just have to keep quiet and away from these kids and hope they get ready so we can take them to school, then maybe we will be able to think again. Let’s put our music on in our headphones and just concentrate on our morning jobs. Keep breathing, we can do this.”
3. Or if this System is not coping at all it might be very overwhelming and whoever is fronting may not have any cognitive ability to be able to stand up, let alone keep the children on the task of getting ready. The brain would be hurting just trying to think and this fronting person would be trying so hard to keep a thought. And might be saying in our head, “How am I doing this? What am I supposed to be doing? Why am I here at this time?” And then there's a child standing in front of her about to ask a question like, “Have you seen my socks?” But the child standing there with the question just throws all of the other thoughts out of the head of this person who is fronting and so of course they are so overwhelmed. This is an example that actually happened the other day she did okay, I really have no idea what happened maybe somebody else came out instead, I don't know who it was but all of a sudden the children started getting ready for school and we managed to get the morning jobs done. And the children ended up at school on time.
Most of the time it is option number 1, and only rarely does it get to option number 3, when we get so overwhelmed that we switch out. If that does happen, it takes a long time to get back into some sort of Systematic order, maybe an hour or two or even the rest of the day.
So as you can see parenting with DID can be challenging. It’ll be interesting to see as the younger children grow how it continues to impact them. Hopefully as I continue to heal it impacts them in positive ways and they will learn empathy, resilience, and kindness for others who come into their lives who are different in one way or another.
Thank you for coming to our blog. This has been (quite a few of us) for Unpretending Spontaneous.
I hope you have a lovely day.
Photo by Alexander Grey: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-s-hand-forming-heart-3802075/
Photo by medinegurbet: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-man-in-gray-long-sleeves-standing-on-green-grass-field-13463293/