Friends, Family & Carers Forum

[soul]

Must be so worrying for you @Smc. I get that you don't want to dismiss your daughter's physical symptoms "just in case" but to have all those examinations and tests and have nothing really conclusive has to point to her unstable mental state.

Has she ever engaged in a sport or yoga or relaxation or some sort of meditation?

[Smc]

@soul She's not much of a sporty type, and relaxation exercises seem to confuse her. I don't think she can get her mind into the right state to benefit from them. The most I've been able to get her to try has been controlled breathing, but I'm not sure if she's ever tried that without someone (me...) coaching her through it.

[Smc]

She does go for walks, which seem to help a bit.

[soul]

Glad that she has at least one thing that facilitates her state of mind. I found walking was very beneficial for me especially if there was something that was interesting or peaceful to look at. Hope to get back to walking somewhere besides the suburbs soon @Smc.

Does your daughter enjoy listening to music?

[Smc]

Ummm... she used to listen to it a lot. I'm not sure how much she does now as she's not living with us. She likes playing her recorder, and doing craftwork.

Something I was enjoying on my recent visit up to my parents' house was going to the park across the road at dusk and lying on the round webbing swing. Similar to the one in this pic. I'd set it rocking, call up Hubby and younger daughter at home, and watch the stars and fruit bats come out while we talked. If I took a pillow across, I reckon I could have happily fallen asleep there. I need to do something similar at home, somehow. We get more mozzies here than they have there, so that makes it tricky. We do have a hammock begging to be used...

[Determined]

Love those swings @Smc, 

I feel more relaxed just with the image of rocking and watching the stars. 

[Faith-and-Hope]

I sit rocking in playground swings sometimes @Smc.  It used to be an adult pastime too .... similar to swing seats on front porches.

[Faith-and-Hope]

Oh @Smc ..... I am so sorry to hear this ..... and I am hearing this .....

I picked up your post earlier while I was out, but the company I was in, and time / privacy restrictions meant I couldn’t answer you in the moment .... and then the forums were down for maintenance for a little while.

Self-harm is common-ish on the Lived Experience side of the forums, for exactly the reason your daughter is resorting to it ..... and it’s so hard. We have compassion through understanding the function of it ..... but also compassion for the doctors involved, with the wish that they didn’t get burnt out too and could remain compassionate for all their patients. The self-harming ones are in no less need, but that can be forgotten, or the thought pushed aside.

I am still not convinced that there isn’t DID in my hubby’s situation, having looked further into inherited trauma articles ...... it is possible that my MIL or FIL have / had dissociation ecperiences, understanding the war-torn world they were raised in as young children and things they witnessed. It can also take decades for alters to begin to emerge, apparently, and from the material I have been looking up, perhaps the psychosomatic symptoms your daughter has are related to her alters and their perceived suffering ...... with the thought that it might be an inherited trauma condition for her ?

Is there trauma in the generation before yours ?

While this can only be speciation on my part, the objective is always problem solving ...... what has happened to these people, and what do they need to help them recover or stabilise ?

[Smc]

@Faith-and-Hope thanks...

My Mum has probable MI problems too, but undiagnosed because that was "back in the days" when seeing a psychologist got you instantly branded as a basket case. Her Mum died when she was a girl, at about the age you'd expect would trigger DID, and there were other family relationship problems too.

I'm more suspicious of Mum's problems being a form of Borderline Personality Disorder. Some of our daughter's behaviours do remind me (very unsettlingly) of Mum, despite us being careful to shield our kids from Mum's meltdowns when they were young. Daughter never really saw Mum in a bad state until she was maybe 10 or so years old? That was a nasty shock for her.

Daughter seems to have had a tendency to escalate situations even as a preschooler, and may have been dissociating from a very young age. While I was pregnant with her, we moved house, going from a place that had a very supportive and child friendly church community to your average city suburb where you barely got to know the next door neighbours unless you made an effort. I have no idea whether that stress could have affected in utero brain development and neurochemistry. It's a theory which is being explored in research circles, but dunno how you'd pin it down as being a factor. I do think that something predisposing DID may have been there from very early on.

[Faith-and-Hope]

My grandmother get had an undiagnosed mi @Smc ...... some of the family had referred to her as schizophrenic, but I suspect they are referring to what is now thought of as DID .... but an aunt who was a nurse said no ...... in her opinion and experience it was likely to have been bipolar ...... but even a history of bipolar suggests trauma in the family history there somewhere.

My sister also has mi issues undiagnosed. She suffered what was thought to be brain injury as a result of childhood illness that landed her periodically in a catatonic state (I remember one vividly when she was around 18 months old, and I was 4yo. Now I wonder what it is that she has. I do know that she is extremely difficult to live with, but can manage periods of time of civil, if somewhat controlling, behaviour.

This means that whatever is coming at us from hubby’s genetics are compounded by mine ...... so God willing we can map some diagnoses out for our kids ahead of “middle age crisis” time when my hubby seemed to go haywire.

All in all, we are probably not doing too badly, the more I learn and begin to understand what the possibilities (probabilities ?) may have been.