In my last post I wrote about being reckless: buying lots of party wigs, wanting to go clubbing, and wanting to cut off my long hair. My recklessness continued on Friday after my session with my psychologist. She said she’s been feeling disconnected from me lately. She seemed distant and cold. She has been the closest person in my life, and I left feeling incredibly cut off from everyone. Like a drug addiction, my mood always plummets after I leave my psychology sessions because there is little else I enjoy. This time, I was particularly upset. I got in the car with my disability worker and was teary and quiet. We went out for dinner but all I wanted to do was go back to the hospital. I couldn’t make any decisions about what to eat. Suicide was on my mind. When I got back to the hospital the nurses did their best to help me. I was given some Valium, which almost put me to sleep until they came back and raided my room, confiscating my pentagram necklace, shoes and other things I might use to kill myself. I understood why they did it, but it was still upsetting.

I guess Friday was a build up of a few things. I was an event host in a group on MeetUp.com. The main organiser who has the executive powers in the group stepped down, so I had been chatting with some other ladies in the group about where to from here. I would have stepped up as organiser, but I already organise three groups and am not allowed any more under my subscription. I scheduled an event to talk about the group and meet each other. Then, a bloke I’ve known through MeetUp for a while swept in and took up the role of organiser. He removed me as event host and deleted my event without any consultation or explanation. I have had some issues with this member before. I have felt pressured by him into more contact and a personal relationship which I do not want with him. He is part of a mental health group I organise and another member in this group also told me they were not comfortable around this man and didn’t want to come back. I still felt I did not have any substantial reason to remove him from that group, so I kept him in the group until this week when I made the decision to remove him from the mental health group I organise. He abused his new power as organiser and I came to the conclusion he is narcissistic. I will be backing off from the group he now organises. He’s probably removed me anyway out of retaliation. So I guess I had been dealing with a lot of interpersonal problems, which triggered a reckless part of me to come out again. On Friday night I tried to abscond from the hospital with a towel. I wanted to go for a night swim in the Yarra river, even though it is filthy. I even felt like jumping into the river off the bridge. The thing with structural dissociation is that we have many different “parts”, or subpersonalities, which have developed through trauma. Each can be so different that they have different physiological aspects (e.g. respond differently to medication, have different vision, allergies, plasma glucose levels in diabetic patients, heart rate, blood pressure readings, galvanic skin response, muscle tension, laterality, immune function, neuroimaging readings), have different ages, have different genders, different names, different roles or functions, different ways of speaking, different perception of their appearance, and different memories (e.g. some carry memories of trauma while others have amnesia). I’m not quite sure to what extent my “parts” are separated, but the parts model, or Internal Family Systems, can be used with everyone, regardless of their level of dissociation. Charles Mills writes a bit about the IFS approach to reckless behaviour:

“Perhaps you notice a trend of reckless behavior in certain situations that keeps popping up in your life. An IFS therapist would approach this by asking you to explore, visualize, and begin a dialogue with this part of yourself. To continue the example, maybe you imagine this part as looking like a teenage punk-rocker with a disdain for authority and a thrill-seeking attitude. Once you start to think about your life situations in terms of a part of you engaging in this behavior rather than simply you making decisions that are very out of character, it might start to make a lot more sense to you. Furthermore, once you start listening to and “speaking” with this part, you may discover things about its motivation and actions that were completely hidden to you before. This process represents some of the power that taking an Internal Family Systems perspective or using “parts language” can lend to a therapeutic encounter.”

Thankfully, my other parts were able to stop the reckless part from absconding (there was also a security guard outside asking where I was going). Because the different parts were at war with each other, I was apprehensive, quite out of it and didn’t get far. I get the feeling the reckless part that night was quite young. While the other reckless parts felt like angry, rebellious teenagers, this part, though also impulsive, felt more like a child. They had limited speech, often replying with only one or two words. I have always felt such a strong connection to water, especially as a child, so I think they were trying to comfort themselves and be reminded of who they are. They may have had other motives, such as testing the hospital and trying to get them to see just what a bad way they were in, but I am not sure.

It’s hard to explain to the hospital that it wasn’t really “me” who tried to abscond. I was put in a locked ward overnight and almost sent to a public hospital. I’m still facing the consequences of this part’s actions as my leave has been taken away. The weather is really beautiful this week and I’ve been wanting to get chai and go for a solitary walk to the yarra but I can’t. I am hoping my doctor will grant me unescorted leave tomorrow and these reckless parts will settle down, especially as I have some autism meet ups coming up.