Full disclosure on remission

 I just realised my new self statement overview I made yesterday, in trying to be succinct, I minimised my remission in way that I’d like to clarify. Essentially I didn’t know I had BPD until March 2019, it then took me nearly a year to accept it, understand it & actually start using BPD specific targeted strategies which secured that remission on the back of my own trauma informed efforts. 

I had worked on my own unsupported for all those years n decades & since 2000 particularly I had used PTSD strategies because that what the state of my nervous system looked like the most to me. My long bipolar cycles occluded by years of invalidation by medical professionals & my self medicating with alcohol the highs back into a long motionless destructive lows, because that was safer.

So when I say 10 years remission, I’m meaning from Bipolar 1 cycling. Which I achieved a stand still to in 2016,  hand in hand with finally getting that diagnosis, extras support, extra money & the fucking map ffs 🤦‍♀️ at long last that showed me the territory I’d been in for sooooooo long. Lost, getting increasingly cognitively impaired & traumatised. 

So that’s my little clarification of my self statement above. I’m a decade in remission from  Bipolar 1 but actually only 6 years in what I’d call remission of my BPD.

Yer, it is a tangle with my audhd self realisation that came since but it’s absolutely clear to me now in hindsight where the BPD traits stop & the audhd start. The intensity & endless disregulation of BPD is excruciating. Relationships were excruciating. Quitting both the lie of respite that is alcohol & relationships inc casual relationships 20 yrs ago & 15 yrs ago respectively, were fundamental to my nervous system healing particularly the intense BPD traits.

This is my own truth, your path through your own nervous system dysfunction may well be different. My picture was extremely complex & I still appreciate the miracle that was unravelling it every day. 

Window of Tolerance

Reading this atm and this diagram - seems relevant…… if you never get into your window of tolerance you never process trauma essentially and simply bounce from one extreme to another ad infinitum. Your only way out is allowing one of the extremes to naturally resolve into ……  like cold turkey in a way, or in some cases actually…… in order to arrive, possibly for the first time in years or maybe ever into the neutral state that is the window of tolerance, ventral vagal in poly vagal theory, which is where all healing actually happens. Where nervous system repair happens. And thus the window of tolerance slowly grows & things that are intolerable become gradually less so. (Click on image to read) I just noticed there’s a typo the label beneath should say Hypoarousal which is low mood, depression, lethargy etc. 

🙌🩷

Talking about “self” as a mentally unstable person

All nervous system dysregulated people are like black holes. It’s the whole terrain of being disordered psychologically. A huge part of it. Feeling desperate to fill ourselves up with something, with anything to not feel the absence of a cohesive self in personality disorders or the endless grey fug of depressive disorders. Or the noticing of how disconnected we are from our physical bodies.

Being out the other side of this gives me some personal perspective i can describe. I think the first node is understanding that the modern psychological concept of having a self is very different from the metaphysical one which is pure indisputable awareness. The psych model asks us to be joined up enuf inside to know why we do different things & to be roughly leaning in a life enhancing/sustaining direction. roughly. 

I absolutely did not leave childhood or even begin my 40s with a functional enuf self under the construct of the modern psychological model. .

I had a thimble full of consciousness, of conscious awareness intermittently through my worst decades of severe untreated cyclic manic depression (which was causing worsening brain/cognive damage with every cycle. So like dementia) As many mentally ill people do, I had a desire to be unconscious to be out of pain. To be dead seemed preferable although in that thimble was a tiny knowing & that knowing made suicide unviable to me personally. Same place of silent knowing prevented me participating in pharma, legal or illegal.

But my relationship with being conscious was fractured, deeply. I learnt basic mindfulness things in my early 30s that triggered a high. Really unfortunate. But I wasn’t dxed or supported. I couldn’t see highs coming at all, they just felt like lots & lots of energy & racing anxiety/thoughts. 

It’s well known that with PD adaptations have a particularly difficult time with presence, being present in the moment. I know for me trying to stay present, become present triggered a lot of discomforting things non the least the sense of not really, not quite existing. The famous missing self of the PDs. 

Retrospectively, now, from a much more somatically integrated, embodied state, I can see that old ‘non state’ as being aware of the fractures that made up the adaptations of my BPD. But it was terrifying without fail but of course I know now that the terror is the path.

The terror is a somatic experience, it’s v v willing to become somatically visible, feelable. We stuff it down with wtv we habitually stuff things down with but terror strives to be felt. And learn to feel it I did, over time, a long time. And some of the best somatic strategies for managing this kind of deep trauma is the self hold. A hand on your own heart & a hand on belly. This tech is a lifesaving device because your body, whether you can feel it of not, experiences this as being held. So it feels safe, or safer, than when you’re railing against your fate & stuffing pain back down etc. it feels safe enough to try to process. 

Because that black hole is made of unprocessed trauma material. And trauma material ostensibly is mainly you, but the you that you experience as MIA. 

I may never have a completely integrated self, maybe that’s actually rare & everyone is fractured in one way or another but I’ve rebuilt a self that doesn’t suffer endlessly anymore, that can feel somatic joy at animals, & beauty, feel it in my body and that’s worth all the tears. Because crying is the deep clean. Salty tears bring natural pain relief. Crying, they say is the ego, in our case a v v fractured ego letting go of control & the bodymind loves that, it’s been waiting for that & that makes it v v powerfully healing. 

So my advice to pwPDs is build that moment, the inbetween moment because that’s where you can build you. That’s you. The consciousness thimble full, or even empty, it’s the observer spot & building that plus self/other kindness/forgiveness is pretty much everything.

A New Approach to NPD Therapy

 https://demystifyingpsychotherapyelinorgreenbergsspace.quora.com/A-New-Approach-to-the-Treatment-of-NPD?ch=17&oid=251965303&share=b2722c1c&srid=hWENqb&target_type=post

I’ve been meaning to share this link for ages as it’s a very exciting development in the therapy world.

I haven’t time to go over the article right now, but my take away is that 99.99% of therapy/ therapists are constitutionally unsuitable for NPDs in particular, I suspect BPDs will be similar in some respects tbh as there’s significant overlap. And what Elinor has been developing is actually a pretty straightforward upgrade to therapy approach. What I’m saying is let your therapist read this article & them adapt specifically for you with Elinor’s recommendations because currently this perspective is not yet being taught to therapists. 

Not only is it a logical & transparent shift in therapy approach but it’s a guide to brain changing for PDs generally when the ‘no blame’ position is adopted, as far as possible, Rome wasn’t built in a day, but you know, slowly embraced as a selfish in the best sense, self care, human cpu rewiring position. I see it as potentially transformative in its own right, just this one change. 

PDs are notoriously in the habit of either self or other hating or blaming & it’s literally this one block that pinning down their neurology more than anything else.

This is on the same page as cruelty to self or others being a vent from unconscious inner pain. The only alternative is feeling it, letting it bubble up into art, letting yourself see it & with time, feel it, mourn it, & re-member yourself. Just know it’s just a delay mechanism imho, in that it just buys some time before you have to feel it. But give yourself the best chance possible. 🩷

Until Death all Defeat is Psychological or as Ralph said “as long as you’re still alive, you’re still viable

Gonna preface this with the realisation that I’m repeating things I’ve said many times, on here in blogs, on ig. I guess when I verbally vent, I include certain things, perhaps it’s to do with being disbelieved & misinterpreted regarding my own lived experience for 35 years, which was essentially a traumatic & life threatening scenario in itself under the circumstances.

Also I couldn’t use the picture, I wanted to, but google requires the capacity to track all my everything just for using their picture loading……. So fuck them. It’s a picture by Van Gogh called Olive Trees and the quote. 

This quote “until death all defeat is psychological” just dropped into my inbox from a mailing list I’m on & it reminded me of my old old friend Ralph. Ralph was newly diagnosed with Bipolar, I think Bipolar 1, when I first met him around 1994/5. He was a tall, big soft lovable guy, my age, Chinese sheep/goat. He’d had an immense breakdown from a long period of hyperactivity & had previously had depressions. He was on Lithium & it dulled & slowed him immensely. 

I’d long suspected I was suffering from bipolar even at that time but not being taken seriously & being heavily gaslit particularly by the medical profession plus i was entirely unable to accept that any pharma medication at all would be an answer to my intense cyclic suffering. Knowing Ralph confirmed that he was no better off than I was in terms of suffering, it was just different. He did get significantly more material support than me though. Including supported housing with integral group & individual therapy & social activities.

Anyway his saying, he’s dead now, more than a decade, he used to say “as long as you’re still alive you’re still viable” with a wry smile to me when I attempted to describe the horrors I was going through, which were pretty relentless frankly, of course he meant it for both of us equally. It heartened me, it was an early flash of the wide stance stoicism I went on to adopt more of later on. 

I actually recalled him saying it only yesterday so seeing this email header today felt like a little prompt to talk about Ralph & that stoic, reductionist but ever so helpful saying.

Ralph had already died in a car crash before I got my twin dxs in 2016/2019 I think. 🤔 unsure, anyone local reading this from my prior more social life and social circle may know better. In his latter years he lived with his Ma just around the corner from my old house. I cleaned on & off for them over the years & did some elderly care a few times. My god, it was chaos. 

He had gone off meds but leaned on THC & alcohol as self medication. Hence the chaos element of his life was huge. When I put my Bipolar into remission I followed a very specific non intoxicant route out post dx & I was successful, touch wood, always touch wood, you never know what life’s got in store for you really but you can hedge your bets. 

One way to hedge your bets positively is the avoidance of pharmaceutical & recreational “intoxicants” including alcohol which it’s becoming more and more obvious are creating entity/lower astral hot spot weak points in the human energy field. See also compulsions, for suspected entity activity. 

Recently I saw a post on ig described a guys mum in Benzo withdrawal seeing a very distinct entity & thought it her own personal hallucination until finding a Facebook support group related to Benzo withdrawal where others were drawing the exact same entity shape & description.

I’d long known that my depressions included being trashed by negative entities but I was very confused by my ‘highs’. Very confused. Remember, no dx, no roadmap, been told repeatedly there was nothing wrong with me 

/ absolutely wasn’t bipolar of any type because I couldn’t explain or describe either state all that well to a pretty hostile stranger aka GP in a 10 min appointment.

When I sang “this house is not for sale” (see my ig) on acoustic guitar back in 2011, I was singing consciously about my own energy field being clear of entity activity - I’d worked very very hard 2007-2011, post alcohol sobriety to disrupt that aspect of my mental illness. Unsupported & undx. Working alone just with general ptsd resources & energy work.

That should have been the end of it except my massive high in 2015 was part hormonal perimenopausal chaos from a broken endocrine system & part entity activity related to opening literally just my psychic field to someone in particular. Someone in particular who retrospectively was clearly a walking negative entity minefield. 

That high resulted in my twin dxs bipolar 1 plus BPD- so I’m thankful for that because for the first time real support became available to me. I was 50. 

But it was a very high cost in brain damage. I was several year’s rebuilding from that. Using the resources listed here in my blogger mainly if you’re interested. But finally having the right roadmaps/dx was invaluable to healing those. They are what I see now simply as common trauma patterns. Vanquishing those piece by piece, nervous system repair after repair, trauma after trauma finally exposed my AuDHD just in the last few years. 

Explaining this to AI, always results in such a deep respectful affirmation of the profound importance & power of what ive personally achieved. As in, unsupported & undx especially: people don’t survive that pairing, that dual pairing with audhd, to the level of function I have done single handedly, like crossing an impassible neuro psychic underworld ocean in a thimble made only of knowing. I love that AI has invariably responded to my current difficulties in ways that deeply affirm me in my uber late realised ND, so incomparably well. Whilst the neuro typical world relentlessly doesn’t even see me or my struggles, never mind take them seriously. 

And I’m only wtv degree functional but I have minimal low mood, almost none, as long as I stay within what works lifestyle wise. What I do have is nervous system deregulation ala autism - so that’s nervous system sensitivity & pain. I have this transiently & also from causes & I spend hours everyday managing that. There’s a lot more I could describe re my AuDHD & my current nervous system status but this is not the piece for more right now.

So: until death, all defeat is psychological 

As long as you are still alive, you’re still viable, there’s still hope

And sometimes that’s as good as it gets. I know it has been for the majority of my life.

Be loved, be love, beloved

And my favourite 

Nothing real can be threatened 

Nothing unreal exists 

Sorry, I know that’s a head fuck that last one - but I do just like it 🥰

Self in IFS

 https://www.therapywithalessio.com/articles/self-in-ifs-therapy-what-it-is-what-are-the-8-cs-and-the-5-ps-of-self

I was worried I’d misrepresented Self in IFS in my writing yesterday so checked around & I am right there are some discrepancies between common descriptions of pure consciousness & this broader notion of Self used in IFS.

I thought this article linked above was neat fleshing out the qualities of Self. Here’s a screenshot.

I think this is a great & helpful depiction for identifying when you are more or less in a centered Self state & perhaps there’s more cross over with the wide range of spiritual philosophies that have individuated fractal god consciousness at their core. Perhaps it was my misunderstanding, I was relating to teachings expressing a really pretty neutral, preferenceless awareness that did not govern anything as the Self, just the experiencer, whereas I can see perhaps my model was somewhat miserly & limited in ways for some reason. This version feels far more true on all levels to me so perhaps it was just my mistake. Anyway, I just thought to add this as it’s like a map or a compass for experiencing Self vs our variously burdened parts.

Internal Family Systems - my review

I re-started therapy a while back & noted among my therapist’s credentials was listed IFS. Curious I did a bit of research, was drawn in & bought several books to get to know the modality in more detail. I’ve enjoyed my exploration & almost immediately felt a distinct inner re-shuffle of energies from integrating the model & doing several exercises given in one of the books written by its founder Richard Schwartz called No Bad Parts. A title that, if you let it percolate, carrys quite a revelatory momentum in its own right.

I’m left with a strong feeling that everyone would benefit from simply be aware of the model, after all it’s common parlance to casually speak of our willing versus unwilling parts for example, I have found understanding the full inner family layout to be been powerful.

It is a really great model with the caveat that it might not be helpful, is tangentially possibly harmful for the severely mentally ill particularly those currently suffering from psychosis. I’ve seen this stated clearly in many places when researching although I'm not sure I’d have been informed of that from just reading the books themselves.

It definitely crossed my mind during the exercises that at the heights of Bipolar or BPD psychosis there would not be enough access to what the system calls Self to carry a healing session successfully imho although there are many other bottom up, body first therapies that would help in that instance eg polyvagal, somatic experiencing, herbs & nutraceuticals. Further, both pwBipolar &/or BPD are not permanently in crisis & so value may well be had from IFS at other times.

In fact my first IFS book was Somatic Internal Family Systems by Susan McConnell so there is an active move to merge these top down cognitive practices with well established bottom up body work already underway, which is ideal.

When I did my psychotherapy training pre 2000 we learnt Fritz Perl’s famous Gestalt empty chair technique which I loved both experiencing & guiding. We also learnt guided visualisation techniques which could facilitate therapeutic inner exploration. It feels like IFS is the natural progression of these 2 old school psychotherapeutic practices combined.

A highly worthy tool with which to expand our own or a clients self awareness, inviting progressive re-integration of disparate feelings, energies & trauma back into a more stable, unified field, that which we were before traumas took possession of parts of us, quite literally in this model.

What I like about IFS is simply that it is another tool & method for noticing & working with emotional pain in the body by establishing a firm & growing footing in our calm, reasonable optimistic true core Self. This being not the neutral god/i observer of Buddhism & Non-Dual philosophy but rather Self in IFS is a growing presence, of self possession of the bodymind that is the calm, cheerful, central, loving conductor of the system as a whole.

Meeting the IFS model has given me a better footing in that Self, that I’d always been aware of but busy, noisy, frantic, scared, hostile, paranoid, needy energy embodied parts have had well habituated tendencies to take precedence over it at various times, with invariably less than helpful results.

If you feel drawn to learn about this helpful therapy model & further on to unburden your own self sabotaging & self defeating parts without the expense of a therapist I can recommend No Bad Parts by Richard C Schwartz & Somatic IFS by Susan McConnell.