Weâve been going through a book called Got Parts? An Insiderâs Guide to Managing Life Successfully with Dissociative Identity Disorder and itâs been...interesting.
Donât get me wrong, there have been some good and interesting things about it, but there have also been some things about that...just sit weird. One portion talked about how it is necessary to always know who was fronting. Paraphrasing, âI donât know isnât an answer.â that was a few days ago we read that part and itâs taken up to now to realize why that sits so wrongly with me.
âI donât know isnât an answerâ was something we heard a lot growing up. It was something that was said when we were in trouble, it was said, often times, when developmentally or due to difficulties with neurodiversity, âI donât knowâ was the only answer we had.
We didnât know why we were struggling with staying on task because we didnât have a word for dissociation- which everyone labeled as daydreaming- we didnât have the words for executive dysfunction, hell, at that point, according to our therapist, we didnât even really have executive functioning because that doesnât actually develop until 15.
It was like being told, âThereâs something wrong with you and you have to tell me what it is.â except that youâre 10 and you donât know either, you didnât even really realize there was anything wrong with you. On top of that, for us, there was the added layer of what was happening and had happened outside the home that had caused a lot of the âdaydreamingâ. Things that we should have been protected from by the adults in our lives, but we werenât, so we had to learn some way to protect ourselves. And that was âI donât knowâ.
Because we didnât know, we didnât understand. âI donât know whatâs happening to me, so Iâm going to pretend itâs not.â
âI donât know if Iâll be believed or if Iâm going to get in trouble or if theyâre gonna get angry and hurt me more. So Iâm going to pretend this isnât happening.â
Weâve been striving to bring âI donât knowâ into neutral territory, to make it not a trigger, to be comfortable in the realm of âI donât knowâ, âI donât have all the answersâ, and seeing such a...firm take, really did a number on us. Especially from a book that should, in theory, be meant to help us. Itâs really made it hard to digest the parts weâve been reading most recently. It made it feel not safe in some ways and has triggered a lot of the doubt and denial in others.
If we were really a system weâd know all these things and be like they outlined, but thatâs not true. I donât know can be an answer. And it is a lot of times for us. We are very new at this still and pushing for answers isnât always helpful and cause some disruptions, which we have seen first hand.Â
Donât get me wrong, there are good things to this book and it is interesting, but I think there are parts we may have to go back and reread after weâve processed a bit more of the âI donât knowâ issue. Maybe the second time around we can be more receptive and a little less triggered.
