Staycation: Not Off to a Good Start

by Allegra

[Posted on three different forums for multiples.]

In our system, the bigs are the ones who have the greatest amount of healing to do.  Older teens run the system day-to-day, and this has been a great source of stress and conflict for the system as a whole.

Charity is the oldest in our system, and her healing is very central to our collective healing.  She has trouble accepting this, and the issue often keeps us stuck.  That being said, the other four bigs' healing is also very important, both to each other's healing and to the whole system's healing.  Yet for all of Charity's struggle in this process, she's the one who's making the most effort.  The other four bigs hide, isolate, and resist--some more than others, but all of them to a point where it makes everyone's healing very difficult.

There are several times in Charity's history that were painful to her and which figure prominently in the work that she needs to do.  One of these ages is seven.  This was not when she actually experienced the most or worst trauma, but it is when she began to see how traumatized she was.  Age seven is commonly referred to as the age of reason, when children learn to think in the abstract and start developing a sense of self that's separate from those around them.  For Charity, age seven was a time that she began to see herself as powerless, worthless, dirty, disgusting....you name it.  And she saw our life as hopeless.  Seven is the age when a part of Charity gave up for good.

This seven-year-old side of Charity is not a separate self, nor a part of her in the sense that many multiples use the term "part."  It's probably not the same as DDNOS/OSDD parts either, but rather a dimension of Charity that's frozen in time.  We probably can't describe it as accurately as we'd like, so we hope that you understand.

This seven-year-old side of Charity figures prominently in Charity's healing.  Charity has had several discussions with our T about how best to deal with this--whether the seven-year-old side should work with the T directly, whether Charity should just do her own work and let the seven-year-old side heal indirectly, or some combination of the two.  We haven't come to a definite decision.

Last week we needed an extra session, so we had a Skype session with our T on Saturday.  Toward the end, Charity told our T that she needed to take a minute to do a mindfulness check to see if our body was telling us anything that Charity should mention or work on.  We are normally very resistant to mindfulness, so our T was pleasantly surprised when Charity mentioned it.  Charity said that she had a feeling that something was going on, but she couldn't sense anything specific.

Sunday and today were very difficult days for us, especially today.  The seven-year-old side kept us in bed all day.  She was angry and depressed and strongly resistant to any attempts to engage with her or help her.  Charity as an adult was nowhere to be found.  The only thing that got us out of bed was the fact that our credit-card payment was due today, and we wanted to pay it before it was too late.

So this is where we stand.  We don't want our staycation to end up like so many other staycations in the past--filled with pain erupting like a volcano, and no rest or healing at all.