*sniffling* I couldn't even remember that I was looked after by them... I didn't even remember that
it's a good happy [feeling], feeling a bit
overwhelmed because I'm not used to these...
these memories...
This will be a little bit
different today, I hope you guys are
willing to join me with a nice hot cup
of tea and some snuggly pajamas
Hi puzzles and pieces, it's Jessica from MultiplicityAndMe, a channel dedicated to
ending a stigma of DID otherwise known
as dissociative identity disorder
Okay, firstly, this is not how I wanted to
shoot this video, today it's more about
pajama time and story time along with a
cup of tea.
I originally did this video and I was all dressed up and I felt really pretty
and then I watched the
video back and I was like "oh no" and I got in to edit, and the new top that I bought
showed far more cleavage than I was
anticipating... I just felt this grimace of
dread and I was like "oh no"... I know it
probably sounds really, really stupid but
I hate the thought of being overly
s*xualized for my body in any way, so I
just like, shut down and I initially
got kind of triggered and upset and I
thought "you know what no, I'm gonna come and do this thingy with my pajamas on,
with no makeup on and a cup of tea" so
that's what you guys are getting today, I
hope that's okay.
So some of you guys made have noticed
that we didn't upload recently and I
guess we've had a lot going on, and one
of the biggest things is that we hit one
of the biggest milestones ever, I guess
for us in our treatment, like just
something that really was like "wham"
you know, I think a lot of what we've done
has kind of been like a slow drip, but
this time... we recovered memories! Wow!
Memories of our childhood that we've
never been able to remember, it was
amazing!
Hello everyone, my face is very puffy and red... just finished therapy
I have childhood memories for the first
time ever, like really positive... memories
and they started coming through this
week, speaking through it then
I was able to just... remember so much... [getting upset] and I've never been able to remember anything... i've got details
Sorry, i've got a towel, that's all I could grab, I didn't expect to cry in the thing [therapy]
Recovery is not a linear journey and there will be bumps along the way
you know I think
being in specialist therapy has really
changed our lives in so many ways that
we just weren't expecting, it's changed
our ability to kind of just float
through life and you know, get on with
things, work on communication ,work on
cooperation, so that is of course until
six weeks ago-ish...
seven weeks... eight weeks... what is time?!
until we suddenly had these memories
hit us of the first kind of five years
of our life, you know, kind of the
backstory of our life that we had
completely forgotten about, and it
seems bizarre now like how could I have
forgotten that? So within DID treatment
the first step is safety and
stabilization, you know, we kind of
thought we've gotten there with all
the self-therapy in the world, you know,
everything that we've done, we've worked
on ourselves for years and years and
years, I guess that we found that we just
kind of plateaued, we couldn't really do
anymore than we were but we were still
having like PTSD effects hit is in the
face, so that's when we sought out the
specialist treatment that we are now, to
kind of progress through stage two, which
is trauma processing, and trauma
processing is essentially that you're
processing your trauma, your history
overall I guess, we're trying to kind of
rebuild a picture of who you are and
what makes you-you, he asked us to make a
timeline of our memories and I remember
Jamie actually suggested that we get our
medical history because it would kind of
help pinpoint maybe our journey or
something would come up that would be
like "oh my gosh I remember that" you know?
but when we got them through we kind of
skimmed through them
and didn't really feel like touching them
again, it just didn't feel... I don't know... I
want to say necessary is not the right
word but I don't know if we're also
avoiding? And part of this therapy is
putting the puzzle pieces together of
who you are and what makes you-you and I
guess with all that going on in our head,
we were kind of thinking it and I just
remember seeing this butterfly when it
was a really sunny day and then I
remembered the butterfly but on a really
sunny day when I must have been about
five years old and suddenly my memories
came back to me! This butterfly was kind
of the catalyst to bring everything back
just by seeing it in real life
I've never remembered anything like this
in my childhood, I remember the butterflies... he
used to have this like awning... there was
a side door... like the back garden... or we
could go through the gate, which was like -
there, and there was this awning that
I'm assuming was buddleja or some
kind of plant that butterflies love
because I just remember them always
being there... these butterflies... and I would catch
them all the time.
And it was like "whumph!" everything came flooding back in seconds
and so we had this vision of the
butterflies and the grapevines and the
buddleja the hydrangea... and being
at my grandparents house... like I'd
forgotten all about them, like I knew I
had grandparents, obviously, I knew their
names, I knew - but you know, I had no idea what impact they had on my life to the degree
that they had, they've been looking after
me almost every day since I was born, I
think how did I forget that? how did I
forget that...? when I asked my therapist
about it, like "how did we get here" he
said that you know, having a specialist
therapist it's kind of like you're
walking through a corridor with all these doors and it's up to your therapist to kind of
guide you into noticing these doors
exist and to even step into them, you
know, so simply by kind of tapping I
guess on that idea of who made you the
person you are now
and you know, what was your life like?
think about your timeline, I'm guessing
that just kind of opened the doors so
when we saw the visual catalyst of the
butterfly, it just set everything free
and we were able to finally walk through
this door that we hadn't even noticed
before and for the first time we could
see these memories and when I was having
these memories it was like I suddenly
could remember things about them like my
grandpa was a veteran from the war, he
was an immigrant that fought for the
country, came over here, fell in love with
a Welsh woman and got married, I remembered
his accent, I could suddenly remember
sitting on his lap while he was telling
these stories of the boogey man and the
boogeyman's son who only wanted to be my
friend, you know he was trying to make me
not scared of the boogeyman... I'm not
quite sure if his stories worked but
this is where it gets even weirder, it
wasn't just my memories; Jake could
remember going to collect tadpoles down
in the pond with him and working in the
garden and picking apples from the
orchard... Ed could remember sitting on the
kitchen table with my Gran, shaving
carrots ready to make a roast dinner and
Jamie could remember helping my gran who
was diabetic and he would be taking her
bl**ds because he wanted to help, she
didn't have much mobility towards the end and he was happy to be a help her in that
way, so we all had memories basically
kind of pre-DID of this
specific household with these moments
and so they all very much feel like me
but a version of me, and the guys feel
exactly the same, it's them but a version of them...
so you know if we go by the theory of
structural dissociation, which obviously
says that every child is born in parts
and we come together over time we
integrate, and by the time our
personality is fully developed
if trauma happens it prevents that from
happening and you end up with DID. And that
was a bizarre perspective just to have
that, like "oh my god, like it's my memory
but equally it's Jake's and equally it's
Jamie's and equally it's Ed's" it was
just... it was just honestly mind-blowing!
We enjoyed helping them and being with
them so much, and you know we started to
remember the memories of them becoming
really sick and being told they couldn't
look after us anymore...
and like, I guess that's where the issue
started and what led to my major trauma
at six years old, so having having that
memory suddenly was indescribable I've
tested the water telling the story to
see how I feel, so I've said this a few
times now, you know, I've ran through so
each time I'm getting a little a little
bit less kind of overwhelmed and we've
had several weeks now to process
everything and I think for us in a way,
it felt like a mourning process, it felt
like a grieving process because we were
having to remember that these people had
such a big impact in our lives and then
obviously just kind of remembering that
they're not there anymore, it just felt
like because we remembered we also
had to grieve again, so I think that's
also why the last few weeks have been
quite difficult for us and the fact that
this kind of came from a point where we
were all pre-me!
We were pre-DID, and that was the most
bizarre notion to me, because I remember
just coming out of therapy and thinking
"holy crap... this is what it's like to have DID"...
I know that may sound bizarre, but I think
it was just that validity that certainty that
I didn't have these memories and
then suddenly I did, suddenly they were there
and you know I guess people may be
wondering "well was it iatrogenic?
did the therapist implant anything?"
absolutely not.
none. it literally just came to me and I
think even I kind of worried, about you
know, "is there a chance of any false
memories? is there a chance of, you know,
kind of being misguided?" and I can just
say with absolute certainty, that no -
those are wholeheartedly my memories, my childhood memories that I genuinely
didn't think I had... [sob] it's still a little bit raw..
I'm still getting used to this idea... that I suddenly have childhood memories and
it's something I kind of got used to the
fact that I would never recover and I
would never remember and I'd gotten
complacent with that. Yeah, it was a
pretty incredible moment, and like I said
just so validating, "oh" like "oh... oh I have
a memory disorder!" Cheers! So that's the
good side and that's the happy side I'm
kind of happy to share, I am both
apprehensive and excited to explore that
further, obviously it's really important
that you do get that from somebody who
really knows what they're doing, because
the last thing you want to experience is
flooding, which is where kind of all
memories just come through all at once
because that can really be destabilizing
so it's kind of a good therapists job to
kind of help you kind of drop droplet
that in bit by bit, so I guess this was
just kind of a story time that's my
experience and I just wanted to share
that with you guys if anyone's going
through the same it has to be right for
you and nobody can pressure you to do that
nobody - not a therapist or anyone - this
has to be a you decision and for us,
it felt like the right direction to go
in, this path is really scary and you know the
fear of the unknown is super high,
because if this has just come back to us
what else could there be? and I guess in
a way it's strange to be healing... thank
you guys for listening to my story
tonight tea
is Pukka night time tea, so hopefully it'll
help me doze off and lessen my anxiety
anxie-TEA! So thank you guys for listening
to my journey and I'm so appreciative of
all of you guys thank you for continuing
to support us and just for being here
listening to this right now, this is the
first time that we've talked about any
kind of thing of our history or our past,
but equally is what I want to say to
people to please not make any
presumptions about somebody's trauma and
I think that's been one of the hardest
things lately- is kind of... people making
that assumption about what happened to
us or what we've been through and you
know, who was involved etc but I think
that does a lot more harm than good, even
people like, expecting a huge trauma, and
this beyond extreme horrific ongoing lifelong
thing, when actually even in my case, my
grandparents dying and then not being
soothed about it correctly, could have just
caused the DID, and they were such
important caretakers for the first five
years of my life, so you know, even that
is enough to develop DID and I
think people have this really skewed
view about how much trauma somebody
needs to have in order to have this
disorder, so I kind of just wanted to
raise that point as well,
you know that wasn't the be-all and
end-all to what happened, but I'm just
saying that could be enough for someone
because our brains are all unique and
we're all unique and our responses and
windows of Tolerance... they're all
different, so on that very important note,
I'm going to drink the rest of my tea
and I wish you guys good night... okay bye!
