Posted by Dinah on August 14, 2004, at 21:21:55
In reply to talking to who shows up..., posted by Pfinstegg on August 14, 2004, at 20:58:57
It's hard for me to talk about. And I suppose some would say there is just one Dinah. That I just gain access to a deeper level of consciousness or something. And maybe that's true. Maybe there is no me and me at all.
I don't have a dissociated child self. Despite the fact that the part of me that formerly did not have access to the ability to speak or be "out" has a visual picture of my(her)self as looking like this:
http://f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/bullyforyou77
I(she/whatever) also realizes my actual chronological age. I just have an intense fear of being a woman and refuse to admit to being one.
I and I have completely different feelings/thoughts about a fair number of issues and people. Diametrically opposed often, but often not. My therapist instantly knows who he's talking to because style and posture and things down to laughter are different. My therapist once remarked that our laughs were different, but the fact is that my emotional self doesn't laugh at all. My husband and work associates generally don't have any clue, although my husband might ask if something's wrong. I've posted here when I was each, and I don't think anyone's noticed unless I tell them. There's no amnesia. I don't have DID. I don't know whether it's truly two separate ego states or not. I and I certainly prefer to think of ourselves as two separate ego states. But that doesn't mean it's so. It might just be two separate layers of consciousness or dialectics in action - conflicting feelings about things. But each part of me is pretty congruent to itself. I can predict what I will do and what I will do. :) It used to be that I didn't have any idea what I was going to do. So if this is a fiction, it's a useful one that helps me understand why I do the things I do.
It's as clear to me who I am at any given time as it is to my therapist. Sometimes there's a lot of leakage of feelings from the part of me that doesn't control consciousness, so that whatever part does have consciousness is influenced by the other. Sometimes there isn't.
If you are wondering who you are speaking to, it's almost always rational me. Although I present things from the point of emotional me a lot, particularly on Psychological Babble, where my own point of view wouldn't be terribly interesting. My therapist is an idiotic hack who's trying to take me for all I'm worth. Etc. Etc.
poster:Dinah
thread:376265
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040812/msgs/377761.html