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lb_leePrevious Chunks: Part One! Part Two! Part Three!
Crisis Planning and External Support
What is your mind’s catastrophic fail state? Do you plummet into self-annihilatory despair? Explode in homicidal rage? Sink so deep into dissociative fog that nothing matters or means anything? If you don’t know how your mind reacts to intense pain or how it breaks down, well, memory work will teach you, but better to use what you already know.
We homebrewed our own individual scale of psychological badness, a mental equivalent of those universal pain scales used in doctor’s offices or by chronic pain organizations. (Our scale is in the back; you can find the universal ones by searching online under the name “universal pain scale.”) We highly recommend that you build your own, using your own personal metrics, since everyone’s brain reacts differently to soul-crushing agony. Trust me, you won’t be in much shape to figure it out when the pain hits, and it’s imperative you have a way to differentiate between manageable discomfort (however intense) and crisis.
So, as you build your psychological pain scale and learn to chart your distress, what is discomfort, and what is crisis? What is a sign for you that things have gone off the rails and you need external assistance to prevent irrevocable disaster? (For us, it’s when we stop feeling or minding pain.) If your distress is ticking up, how can you halt things before they get too bad? What things help, and what things hurt (and which are either/or, depending)?
For some folks, there is a certain pride in hitting maximum agony over and over again; they think such pain proves their toughness, or woundedness, and that they don’t deserve care unless they’re about to die. If this is a problem for you, time to let go of the hair shirt. Go work on that before you try memory work.
If you do go into crisis (and just assume you will if you’re doing narrative memory work), what is your plan? If you are a danger to yourself or others, or completely unable to care for yourself, what should be done? Is there a mental hospital you have had a good experience with or that’s been recommended by someone you trust? If so, make sure you and your trusted helpers (headmates included) have the name, number, and location, in case you need it. Make sure everyone’s on the same page as to when it’s time to tap out! When people are uncertain, they tend to freeze or flail, and no need to make a bad situation worse.
If hospitalization isn’t an option, are there people who can help you, who you can stay with? Are they actually up to that task, physically, emotionally, financially? Do you have others in line in case one gets the flu, goes through a messy divorce, or is otherwise incapacitated? When we went into crisis in 2012, it took us a few days before we could get ourselves into the hospital. During that time, roughly half a dozen friends, in person or by phone, alternated duties of checking in on us, feeding us, or just keeping us company while we slept on the couch. It was a jury-rigged improvisation, but we got lucky; we had great friends, and they managed to bear up under the strain.
We got lucky, but better to plan this in advance. Talk to these friends, families, or loved ones and ask if they’re up to helping out, and if so, in what ways. If you go into crisis, can you trust yourself to contact them, and if not, what are the signs they should be aware of? See the “Get A Spotter” section on questions to ask and ways to talk about this.
Do you have a trusted healthcare team to help you on this journey into hell? I truly believe that a good solid therapist is worth investing in, if possible. They have specialized skills and an emotional distance that your loved ones likely don’t. They also might be able to help you seal back memories that are beyond your ability to deal with alone, and a brain-meds doctor can also prescribe things that might take the edge off, though as far as I know, no medication on earth will "fix" memory work.
(Apparently there is some new research in using hallucinogenic drugs in the treatment of PTSD, but it looks to still be too early for anything to be sure, and good luck getting into clinical trials for one of them. We certainly don’t know enough to have an informed opinion, and since what little we have read suggests that we ourself would be the worst possible candidate for that kind of medicine, we’ll likely never know firsthand.)
If you don’t have a healthcare team but can afford or access one, get it before you start memory work. Nobody wants to interview doctors and manage health insurance with a screaming Tartarus brain. Do it while you’re stable, or as close as possible. (For assistance, check out sidereas’s Shopping for a Therapist!)
If you don’t have a hospital, health team, or a robust social support network, we can not recommend memory work. Same thing if your medical team is your only support system. Seal those babies until you’ve got more back up.
That’s your external support. Let’s talk internal.
Building Headmate Trust
Are you on good terms with your headmates? If you are out of commission, can and will folks take care of things without you? Do you have ways of handling conflict or disagreement among each other that don’t involve coercion, threat, scapegoating, or abuse? Do you have a fairly good idea who all’s in there with you, how they feel about memory work, and how they handle intense pain and stress? Are y’all in agreement about memory work and willing to go through it together?
If you answered "no" to any of those questions, try to seal those memories until you have things sorted. Y’all can’t afford to go Lord of the Flies.
Getting your group together and becoming a team is beyond the scope of this essay; entire books and websites are devoted to it. If you want to do that, check out Crisses’ United Front Bootcamp or ATW’s got parts? (see Recommended Reading in the back). However, a few pointers:
Old bad habits will likely resurface under the stress of memory work—addictions, denial, self-destructive behavior, stuff like that. It’s your brain attempting to compensate, however badly. Prepare for this, and if you don’t feel you can get these habits under control, it is totally legitimate to try and halt memory work until you do.
Try to remember that y’all are in this together. Y’all are a team, and united is the only way you’ll succeed. You have to learn to keep that at the forefront of your mind, because over the course of memory work, violent acting out is likely to happen. When it does, how will y’all de-escalate the situation? Can so-and-so be talked down? Do they need a hug, or to be left alone for a while? At worst, can they be contained for a while without making the situation even worse? (And if you’re the one who goes ape, how would you like your headmates to deal with you? Always remember to say sorry and make amends when you’ve calmed down.)
Don’t just avoid the unpleasantness. Talk about this and make a plan together. If y’all make the agreement in advance and everyone has a say in it, a lot of anger and resentment can be avoided. Write it down so there can be no arguing or forgetting later, and also so y’all can amend it as needed. Keep in mind that lashing out is a common response to overwhelming pain, and try not to take it personally.
Okay! You’re as ready as you’re going to be! Let’s get on with the memory work!
--to be cont. in Part Five!
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Date: 2019-09-10 12:21 am (UTC)--hikaru
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Date: 2019-09-10 02:53 am (UTC)Oh shit, thanks for catching that! Fixed.