Part 2 of 3 discusses practical suggestions for self-care. This Part 3 of 3 continues that discussion.
E. Slowly Engage The Practice Of Mindfulness – Including Walking Meditation
This kind of practice is allowing your mind to become more stable. You begin by holding your spine as straight as you can. You train in focusing on the here and now. The most important thing is to accept yourself and simply start taking one breath at a time. Do not congratulate yourself when your mind seems calm just as you shouldn’t get annoyed and scold yourself if you drift off course. It is the nature of mind that we keep drifting off the course in meditation. The practice is to always come back to the here and now when you notice that drift.
Begin with very short sessions. Do not aim for even 10 minutes to start with. Aim for doing it during the time that you are taking just one breath. Then do another breath. You can just start with 1 breath as the entire session until you feel at ease.
Ordinarily, our mind is always chattering and full of distractions. When you can stop this chattering, even for a split second, or the time it takes to breathe in, you are into the practice of meditation – paying attention to the reality of the now. This is no mean feat. It may seem like a drop in the bucket, but the ocean itself is made up of water droplets.
I suggested very short sessions for a reason, a warning. As always, one must be aware of the very real risks of re-traumatization. For individuals with DID, sometimes creating that little space results in the alters seeing it as the opportunity to emerge uncontrollably, flooding you with their many separate agendas. These usually include retraumatizing flashbacks.
While taking one breath alone is unlikely to provoke an immediate flood, please check yourself. If you begin to feel the flooding of a flashback starting, stop the mindfulness practice by moving your body. Stand up from your seat. Stretch your arms fully. Straighten your legs completely. Identify the room you are in right now. Perhaps start your journaling ritual (see below) and allow some communication to happen in that way.
Go back to the mindfulness practice the next day, but don’t try to just jump back in trying to extend the duration of the practice. Always check your sense of safety first. Take this approach until your mindfulness practice is stable enough to allow thoughts to arise without the retraumatizing flooding of flashbacks.
When your mind begins to stabilize, you start to be aware earlier on and ever earlier on in the flashback cycle. The sooner you see the cycle start, the easier it is to ground yourself and avoid retraumatization. Consider how much easier it is to stop a car going 5 miles an hour than a car going 100 miles an hour. In that same way, grounding yourself at an ever-earlier stage of a flashback cycle is far easier than trying to put the brakes on a full-blown flashback.
Remember to take baby steps: Connecting to the safety of the here and now for even a fraction of an in-breath is better than just digging into flashbacks and being trapped in the retraumatization cycle.
F. Establish Empowering Rituals.
We can make a positive ritual out of a simple sequence of thought and/or conduct so that it is turned into a daily habit. It only takes repetition to build a habit and a routine – good or bad. So, take the steps necessary to build a positive empowering habit.
We all already have a routine when we get up in the morning and one before retiring at night. We have already ritualized and habituated ourselves to these routines. So, we do not have to struggle thinking about them. Build into this existing habit the focus of learning to feel safe and secure.
For example when you wash, at the sink or in the shower, imagine that you are not just washing the day’s dirt off your hands and face, but that you are washing down the drain the feelings you might have of having been dirtied by abuse. When you wash your hair in the shower, as you rinse out the shampoo, imagine that all of the physical and psychological dirt along with the sense of being soiled, simply goes down the drain. Imagine that you leave the shower both physically and, even just a little bit, psychologically cleaner than when you entered. You can extend this into brushing your teeth and other ordinary cleaning activities.
I often encouraged my DID patients to establish a clear ritual for safe communication with and between alters by ongoing journaling. In essence, it is creating a form that is empowering because it is within your control. Pick a book to write in that is only for this purpose. Establish a place and regular time to journal. It can be used for meetings of all the parts, it can be used for parts to leave messages for other parts, it can be one of your places of refuge. Always begin with some grounding exercise(s), open the journal, allow everyone inside that wishes to say something to do so by writing in the journal. In that way, communications from different parts can be shared with the host and other alters.
A critical point of this approach is to authorize the closing of the journal if things become triggering. In such circumstances, close the journal in accordance with the ritual you have established, with the express intention of allowing what has been raised to be processed. Include the promise of allowing further journaling on that triggering issue as soon as the system is able to process it. Then, and most important, following closing of the journal and always putting it away it its designated place, do a closing grounding exercise.
Often, the best grounding following journaling is to go for a walk outside. When walking, keep your senses as open as possible to the air that you breathe, to the trees you walk by, to the stability of the earth that you walk on. The earth, in particular, has the capacity to ground the energy the journaling has generated, in the same way that when you connect a lightning rod to the earth, the lightning’s electricity is safely absorbed.
Concluding Remarks
All healing that is effective has to come through one’s own effort. So, consider working on self-soothing practices before you have a therapist. The more you participate in such practices, the more effective and self-empowering is the healing. This way, when you are able to connect with a therapist, you will have already started to build a strong foundation for the therapist to support your continuing healing journey.
All the above may be used as complimentary tasks for healing even after you have found a therapist, but make sure you tell the therapist what you have been doing in terms of self-care. It is an opportunity to assess the therapist and for the therapist to assess you – and for the therapist to give you further direct guidance for self-care.
None of these self-soothing approaches are a panacea, a cure-all. They are merely, but potentially powerfully, supportive of the overall healing process. Remember that DID is not the pathology, it is the resultant display of extreme trauma. Its manifestation in alters is the message, the instant emoticon you could say, that there is deep unprocessed trauma. In my opinion, the problem is not the alters. It is the amnestic barriers and the resulting internal conflicts, which get played out both internally and externally, that are the problem.
Above all, understand that healing is possible and is within your capacity.
