This damn Covid is a trigger on its own!
Since the onset of this disease, it has been complicated for me. First, there was this avalanche of people who spoke in the media, suddenly it's "a flu", suddenly "everyone is going to die". It was battling dry inside me! Should we be worried? Am i going to die?
Then there was the period of confinement, the job to be managed, my daughters and school at home ... On the one hand being locked up at home relieved and satisfied many of my parts who felt so safe, of the other one had to manage an upset daily life, my daughters full-time, their worries, life at 3 non-stop in a small space ... The ban on seeing my shrink for several weeks and having to make my parties accept it. the fact of continuing our sessions by skype, not being able to go outside when my parties had finally agreed to do it ... It was really not easy because it put a distance at a time when I needed support and proximity and prevented me from using a new means (going out into nature) to calm myself down.
However, as usual, my games and I have adapted!
It was supposed to last a while. So we put things in place to survive:
- Block the media and ask my sister to keep me informed of essential information and not to listen or watch anything myself.
- Keep as contact and anyone close to positive people who know how to keep their concerns to themselves and cut ties with those who were too anxiety-provoking.
- Set up a routine and rely on my family to take over by skype with my daughters when managing homework and school was too heavy for me.
- Block certain parts and prevent them from expressing themselves or coming to the fore during Skype sessions with my therapist, only broaching "surface" subjects with her (Putting on hold all the parts wishing to share trauma ) like the theory of dissociation or the daily life of confinement or work.
- Act as if "everything was normal" while obscuring the "pandemic" aspect. I have parts that are very strong at that! Make me forget certain aspects of my daily life or feel an "asepsis" of affects. I no longer feel anything, neither fear nor worry nor joy ... Nothing. I then have the impression of being a "robot" and I move forward, one day after another. I don't see the masks, I don't know that all of this exists. I switch just a few minutes to think about taking my certificate to be able to go out to do my shopping then I am in a haze where time passes in a very strange way until I get home. When I no longer risk seeing "triggers" linked to the epidemic, the haze recedes.
When the lockdown was lifted, I was able to resume a more or less normal life. Go back to see my shrink even if each time I have a little pinch because she no longer shakes my hand to say hello to me at the entrance of her office. It was an important moment for some of my games, this handshake and the look we exchanged, it gave me confidence.
What is difficult for me since the deconfinement is that the world evolves according to new rules and my parties are struggling to get used to it.
The threat is still there. But it is a threat that is still unclear. In the media, people's behavior, suddenly they're panicked and keep saying it's serious, suddenly they don't give a damn. Suddenly, inside, it's the same power thousand battle! Some of my adult parts are paying attention and worrying but that worry is a trigger for almost all of my dissociative parts. The simple fact of feeling anxious or worrying wakes up whenever I have felt worried or anxious. And I don't yet have the ability not to “snowball” inside. Anguish calls for anguish which calls for terror, which calls for the impression that I am going to die, which calls for despair, which calls for suicide cravings which calls for anger or guilt, which calls for denial and dissociation to be cut off from this explosion of disproportionate feelings ... It is as if this simple feeling of stomach ache made them come back in waves every time I was raped or assaulted. I relived in sharing each moment of my past traumas completely mixed up into each other without the possibility of putting things in their place, putting things into perspective ...
So I constantly struggle between staying in reality by adapting the emotional and intellectual response to this threat and completely rejecting this reality so as not to be constantly triggered and suffer. If I consider that there is no threat, I no longer fight, I no longer suffer, my parts and I get along, everything is fine, I am safe.
Some time ago, I would probably have reacted like this. I would have taken the side of the anti-masks, I would have got angry with all these people who panic, made fun of them and I would have proclaimed loud and clear to the plot, to anything and I would have put a point of honor to refuse everything and deny it as a whole. Inside, it would have been Hiroshima, I would have slipped into depression and maybe I would have attempted suicide, seeing no escape from my suffering and my inner anxieties. I would have cut myself off from everyone and isolated I would have sunk. I would never have held this time of confinement alone. When I look at social media, I have the impression that many react this way: a cold and illogical anger, a bit like when sometimes I try to inform those around me about rape and they get angry and refuse. the obvious. Denial and building a wall of certainties around you so as not to feel the fear of seeing our world threatening and uncertain ... It is very difficult to live with a threat overhead!
Seeing that makes me laugh too ... Because I tell myself that in a certain way these people have experienced what has been my daily life since my earliest childhood ... It's not easy, isn't it to live with a threat, a bomb over the head that is present on a daily basis but without being really palpable, without being really identifiable and having people around who say everything and its opposite above ...
Finally, this is where I see that the backup operations I have are universal! Everyone struggles to deal with the anxiety of dying on a daily basis, everyone struggles with things that are not clearly identified and named and everyone needs to black out every now and then for a breath. We all want to have a "savior" or a "miracle drug" that will ward off the threat. We all want to know if it's a threat or not and be told what to think and do in a clear way. We all want the threat to go away to resume the course of our lives but when it lasts, we must compartmentalize to be able to continue to have a "normal" life and not to distress our children and deny ...
The daily life since the deconfinement is difficult for me because when I go out and that I meet people with masks, my observing parts are lost. The fact that half of the face is hidden means that we lose much of the information that helped us to judge whether or not we were in danger. The micro expressions of the mouth allow to have a lot of information. Seeing only the eyes greatly reduces our analysis and makes me feel a lot more in danger and feel a lot more like I'm facing hostile people. People also speak less or louder and I feel more assaulted. And wearing a mask also makes people look more closely, so it also increases my feeling of being watched, judged or in danger. When I stand in line at the checkouts in a store, it is torture for me. All those looks, no longer having reassuring smiles, people's voices louder ... all of this scares me!
I also feel anger and conflict because now, the slightest suspicion of a cold, the slightest cough makes people look at me as if I were a threat and it explodes my inner reactions. Going to a pharmacy and having these gestures of distancing makes me feel rejected, observed, seen as a threat ...
All of my interactions with others are a trigger. Touching the other becomes a danger, signs of affection are prohibited, seeing his family weighs down the guilt of transmitting death, others and ourselves become a threat ....
All of this is unbearable!
And this pandemic really comes at the wrong time! I'm trying to teach my dissociative parts lost in past traumas that my "here and now" is secure, and in fact it's not ... security ... Ah! But in fact no! There is a disease that kills thousands of people around the world but come on it's safe, the "here and now" is worth it! You speak ! They have the impression that I am lying to them, that my therapist is lying to them ... And all this does not help in my therapy at the stage where I am!
If I have to stay home because I have a cold and can't go to my shrink, my inner anger explodes. Why does my shrink refuse to see me? She doesn't help me, she doesn't give a damn about me. She participates in what I suffer since she is afraid of a simple cold, making me suffer pleases her. I sulk and scream at her inside. And it battles internally between the parties who understand the rules and obligations that my shrink has with respect to his patients and the State and find that these rules are are fine and all of my younger parts that don't understand these aspects and feel unheard and unheard and abandoned.
And wearing a mask is also tricky. If I switch to a "small and shy" part, speaking is very difficult for me so I keep quiet. Wearing this mask is as if I were told everyday "shut up, we don't want to hear you". And feeling this tissue on my face also reactivates the moments when I have been strangled or gagged and I have to fight against the panic that sometimes invades me ...
I nevertheless manage to put things into perspective and I tell myself that this period is formative. My parties continue to learn that the world is not all black or all white, there are threats but they are not omnipresent, you have to measure and take a lot of parameters in their entirety to decide what to do to do, no one has a "miracle solution" or "the answer to the problem" ... This period was beneficial in a way because it forced me to share certain things, to move faster on certain points in my therapy. This forced some parties to accept reality as it is because we could not move forward on our understanding and sharing of our daily life while remaining stuck in stereotypes of thoughts and views.