Dissociation Link Sarah K Reece

Volume 1, Issue 3

Inside this issue:

Voice Hearing and Dissociation

2

The Afternoon Tea

2

Managing Triggers

3

Are you working 3 in Mental Health?

23 January 2012 Ed. Sarah K Reece

Bridges updates Bridges will be running uninterrupted for the next conceivable while. Sarah will be running around the countryside a little bit, but on days she cannot attend Cary, fellow peer worker and co-founder of Bridges will be stepping in alongside Ben. :) For those of you who may not have met Cary, she also has a dissociative disorder and co-facilitated Bridges through the first 6 months. She’s currently busy with her psychology honors thesis (on dissociation and eating disorders) but is still part of Bridges and the Dissociative Initiative, not to mention very friendly and approachable.

We have discovered that there will likely be a couple of times where the conference room where Bridges has been meeting will be needed for a larger group— bear with us! We’ll likely meet in the Training Room on those occasions, it’s a similar space, next to the conference room at Mifsa only smaller. The ladies on reception can direct you if you don’t know where it is. If any staff direct you to the ‘DID Group’ please feel welcome to kindly correct them that Bridges is the ‘Dissociative Group’! Not everyone has worked out how to pronounce dissociative. :) Thanks for bearing with us, the room swapping won’t happen often.

For those of you who can’t, or would prefer not to make it to Bridges, Sarah keeps a blog at sarahkreece.blogspot.com Part of which is dedicated to articles about dissociation, trauma, mental health, and other topics discussed at Bridges. This is a free resource available to anyone, whether you attend Bridges but find it helps to have a memory jog about topics discussed or would like to learn more about the kinds of things that people who experience troubling dissociation are struggling with and ways we manage and recover.

New ‘Bridges’ group: Echoes A new Bridges type group is going to be launched in Melbourne on March 1st! It will meet fortnightly and is open to anyone over 18 with experiences of dissociation and/or multiplicity. The format is peer-run, with Sue and Alana facilitating. Sue came to Adelaide in December and visited Bridges to get a feel for how we were doing things. A lot of planning has gone into the launch of this group and Sue and Alana bring a

wealth of experience with dissociation to the group. Sarah has been providing some support regarding getting a new group off the ground and hopes to meet up with a number of people in Melbourne interested in creating dissociative resources when she’s there to speak at the Voice Hearer’s conference in February. For more details about Echoes, see the attached flyer.

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Dissociation Link

Voice Hearing and Dissociation

“hope to inspire people to feel more comfortable and confident in navigating dissociative issues”

Sarah and fellow peer worker Jenny Benham (who co-facilitates Sound Minds, the Voice Hearers Group at Mifsa) will be travelling to Melbourne in late February to speak about the development of Bridges from the Voice Hearer’s Group model. Sarah will be sharing her experiences hearing voices as someone with a dissociative disorder rather than a psychotic condition. Here is the abstract that was accepted for Sarah’s talk: “I will share my personal experiences with 'mental illness' and voice hearing. I was diagnosed with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder when I was 14, and later a Dissociative disorder, although my troubles started much younger. I now co-facilitate groups, one of them for voice hearers. I will share the

experience of voice hearing from a dissociative perspective, other troubling experiences associated with this, and how my recovery journey is unfolding. I will explore the critical role of creativity in my health, and how I've worked to develop greater self-awareness and self-compassion to reduce conflict with my voices. Dissociation is an often misunderstood and feared experience, I will explain common dissociative symptoms, how they feel and affect me, and what I find helpful. For many people who hear voices as a part of a dissociative disorder, the classic episodes of wellness and sickness don't apply, and identity is tangled with the experiences in a way that can make 'me' difficult to separate from the 'illness'. I hope to inspire

people to feel more comfortable and confident in navigating dissociative issues, and while the recovery process is very individual I want to encourage people that it is possible to live well with voices.”

are for more resources this year, and we’d love to hear thoughts, ideas, and feedback from other people.

email or phone, or come to the planning sessions and help out with things like setting out chairs, arranging food, taking down details for the mailing list and so on. Contact Sarah, Cary or Ben on 8378 4100 or by email [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

This is another great opportunity to talk about how common the experience of dissociation is, the potential of a multiplicity approach to certain experiences, and how assuming experiences such as voice hearing are psychotic and therefore meaningless may reduce people’s ability to interact in a useful way with their voices and progress their recovery.

The Afternoon Tea Coming up on Feb 17th is an Afternoon Tea at Mifsa, Wayville. This exciting event will be open to anyone with an interest in dissociation, whether a person who experiences it, friends, family, carers, support workers, therapists, or just interested to learn more. We’ll be sharing what the Dissociative Initiative have done so far, what our plans

We’re in the planning stages for this at the moment, and if you’d like to be involved please tell us! You could send in some suggestions by

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Managing Triggers by Sarah K Just brushing the surface of what can be a very big topic - What are triggers? Anything in our environment that 'triggers' a reaction so quick or so strong it bypasses our conscious control is a trigger. On a simple level, touching something hot and recoiling without thinking about it is an example of a trigger. When we use the term in mental health, we're usually talking about things that trigger strong emotions, strong memories or flashbacks, dissociation, or for those with DID/ DDNOS (Dissociative Identity Disorder or Dissociative Disorder not otherwise specified), perhaps alters. Really, anything can be a trigger. Some of my triggers are certain smells, such as a particu-

lar brand of cologne associated with bad memories for me, sounds such as certain songs or music, places such as my old school ground, and situations such as encountering someone aggressive or violent. Everyone has some things that trigger a reaction in them, and triggers are not necessarily a bad thing. It isn't just strong bad memories or strong negative emotions that can be triggered. Positive memories and emotions can also be triggered by things in our environment. Hearing 'our song' on the radio, being present at a birth, smelling something that we associate with a loved one great grandma's perfume. All these things can trigger a strong, even overwhelming reac-

tion in us, and this is a good thing. To be moved by things is part of what it means to be human. So for those of us who find triggers difficult to cope with, it can help to remember that the goal is bringing them back to something manageable, not getting rid of them altogether. In the meantime, I've pulled out of my journals this poem I wrote about being triggered in a positive way. At this time in my life I was suffering from severe dissociation. Most of my senses were dulled severely, I could not taste, my sight was limited and colours were dull. My sense of touch was reduced, a hand on my arm felt faint and far away, I couldn't feel my feet touching the ground. It was a very bad

Are you working in mental health? If you work in mental health in SA and are happy to support people who experience dissociation, we’d love to hear from you! It’s time we put together a list of professionals that we can give out to people struggling with what may be dissociation, their carers or family. We’d love to hear from anyone, psychologists, social workers, counselors, psychiatrists, general practitioners, disability workers, carer group facilitators… If you have an interest in this field and a heart for the people with these experiences, we’d love to be able to help people find you. You don’t need to have extensive experience in this area, we are happy to provide support, recommend good books, and hold talks to help you become more knowledgeable about these issues. If you have an interest or any experience in trauma or attachment they will also likely be helpful. Please email Sarah, Cary or Ben at [email protected] [email protected] or [email protected] or call any of us on (08) 8378 4100. We’d like to see better support for workers in this area and are talking about how to make that happen. If you’re interested or have suggestions please get in touch. :)

“To be moved by things is part of what it means to be human ”

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Managing Triggers cont from pg 3 time and very distressing. On that evening I was coming back from an event, being driven through the city. As I came along King William Street, the bells of St Peter's Cathedral rang out. And the sound triggered me, I surfaced through the dissociation and suddenly felt alive again, for a brief moment.

“One of the first options most of us try is to avoid”

The Fire Yesterday I woke with a fire in my chest. All the leaves of autumn burned. My thoughts were sharp and clear The night was sharp and clear I awoke From where I had been lost In dream-haze, in exhausted slumber. I reached out To the sound of bells that rang Through the city. I tasted the air and felt my mind inhabited I turned and looked with eyes that turned and looked with me. Like a vault opened to the light Like a moth from a cocoon I awoke The fire stirred me. And beneath the clarity like diamond-fire

Was the little tightness The knowledge that fatigue, like wolves Would return when the flame was ash. This respite from the haze that is my life Was brief. For a glorious moment I touched the night. I knew myself familiar. Stranger! I cried I had missed you Lost you Loved you And I know you will not stay. However, triggers can make life very difficult. If, like me, you find that you are very reactive and struggling to manage many triggers, here are some starting points on ways to try and calm things down. One of the first options most of us try is to avoid. It's worth mentioning because it is a legitimate option! If the trigger is something easy to avoid, like a particular location you don't need to go near - for me, my old school, then avoid it! Easy. This option falls apart a bit if you have lots of triggers or triggers that are really common in your everyday life. Then

you end up not being able to get out of bed. But there's no prizes for stressing yourself out trying to make yourself cope with a bad trigger you don't need to confront. Desensitisation is another approach. This comes from treatments for anxiety and phobias. The idea is that you gradually build up your ability to cope with a trigger, until it gets to the point where it no longer affects you. For example, for awhile there the smell of rosemary was a trigger for me. It would immediately make me feel extremely nauseous. So, I used to occasionally put an oil blend containing a tiny amount of rosemary in an oil burner on days I was having a good time, friends over, feeling good. It would bother me a little bit but not much. Over time I increased the amount slowly, and kept linking the smell to good, fun experiences. Now, it doesn't bother me at all and own a rosemary plant I cook with all the time. This concept of association is what gives triggers their power to affect us - they have been associated with a strong feeling or memory. Sometimes you can in time break down that association and create a new one. I often cope by trying to overpower triggers. Smell is one of the most potent memory triggers for all of us, and I use my perfumes to help me cope with other triggers in my environment. I find the smell of strangers upsetting, so in situations like public transport I can become very distressed. If I am wearing

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Managing Triggers cont from pg 4 my own perfume, a smell that is comforting and familiar, I can breathe this in and literally overpower the other triggers. But it can also work on other levels for example, I have a ring that reminds me of my sister, which is a comforting thing to me. I wear it to work on days I know will be stressful, and I touch it and look at it to ground myself and remind me I am safe and loved. I use it to overpower those things in my environment that are triggering fear and threat in me.

the green zone down the bottom is you feeling all chilled out and okay with the world.

If you find yourself jumping at shadows and reacting to everything, then going through each trigger one at a time is probably going to be time consuming and frustrating. In that case it may be a better idea to work on lowering your reactivity. If your baseline stress levels are really high, you are much more sensitive to triggers. What do I mean by that? Your baseline is what you return to after stress. So, in this picture, those red spikes are periods of massive stress, while

As you can see, for some of us, when we go through major stresses, we don't ever quite get back to as chilled out as we used to be. Each episode leaves us more stressed and anxious and highly strung than the last. Our baseline - how we feel when nothing is actually happening to stress us out, gets so high that we feel permanently stressed out. When we're in this space, we are highly reactive. Nearly everything is a trigger. The idea is try and recover better from stressful

events, so our baseline looks more like this:

When we're getting good time cruising along in that green space, we're less reactive and will find triggers easier to manage. Something else to bear in mind if you're having troubles in this area, is that you may find taking some time to process your stuff can help. If, like me, you get through the day by burying a lot of what you're feeling and thinking this can come back to bite you. Sometimes triggers are the price you pay for using

suppression to cope. It can be like trying to hold a beach ball under water - at some point it will get away from you and come hurtling up! If you have grief or trauma to work through, making some space for that in your life can help to reduce your reactivity to triggers. This doesn't necessarily have to be intense, anguished and time consuming. It can be as simple as starting a journal where you write about some of those feelings, going to a counsellor to talk about grief, or putting up a photo in memory of someone you've lost. Sometimes very small things that signify to yourself that you are listening and paying attention to your own needs can make a big difference with how well you cope in other areas of your life. And lastly, for the multiples, if the big issue you're having is trying to prevent things that trigger alters, then you can try everything listed above - and it may indicate you have some system work to do. If you're functioning by suppressing everyone else in your system - some of them are going to fight you. And they can gang up on you, be very persistent and wear you down. Working to make some safe time and space for everyone to get a little of what they need - which sometimes is just to be acknowledged that they exist - can make a big difference in coping with triggers. If your team are working together instead of fighting each other, then things that trigger switches aren't such a big deal. How to try and do that is a topic for another day!