u/Electronic_Pipe_3145

This happened a few days ago. I fear it is too complex to get into without oversharing, but I’ll try.

First, I’m a low-income individual on Medicare, still searching for a therapist who understands IFS since the old one moved. I also have preverbal, early verbal trauma related to severe institutional abuse, other neurodivergencies.

This session started with a nightly “check-in” that unraveled into a full-blown conversation with a part based off a sleepwalking character from a silent film. There was also a choppy, black and white movie effect. I was in the observer role, or Self. I asked him to show me his thoughts and feelings. A pareidolia pattern on the ceiling turned into a viewing gallery. (I really need to get that checked for water damage…) Suddenly, a mirror of my actual self emerged. Like a new participant in our session, but I was still an observer as well, so… not me at the same time? It was odd, still, I understand all parts signal something about ourselves.

But she took full-bodied, unapologetic control. It was hard to watch. Even though this part looked like me, I did not feel she represented me, my aims, my goals, etc., and was not “Self-like.“ Moments later, upon “waking,” she suddenly accused the sleepwalker part of rape via hypnosis, then strangled him in rage, even though he‘d been as passive as a puppet - he even let her kill him.

I tried to pause it when it escalated into violence, only for her to resume it by force. The last thing I saw before two high-level parts - uninvolved up to this point - pulled the plug, was that “He was killed by his Master.” And then it was over. The old movie filter was gone. I recall asking if any of it was ever real. They basically told me yes but to pretend it was fake. I wrote as much of it down immediately in case I’d forget later.

That night I only slept three hours. Right after waking, I saw the sleepwalker again, but blended, perhaps. He seemed troubled. Later, I couldn’t return to that place in my mind at all. But he intrudes with semi-regular frequency without resolution now - he barely answers to me, just makes sad faces, mostly. The one time he did answer, I forgot the context it was attached to.

A note that in the old movie he was from, the protagonist (a different character) was revealed to be a delusional asylum patient all along. I only watched it once at 15-16 despite being an old film lover because the whole thing made me feel horribly ill on a level beyond artistry (as in, it was intentional film design, but I didn’t like it and didn’t know why I didn’t like it). Related, I guess.

If you read this far, thanks. I’m looking for any and all advice and insights applicable to my situation. I’m in a bit of a bind, but trying to remain open-minded.

TBH I’m not sure whether to post this here, but I’m genuinely seeking insights to improve, not just venting. I’ve been in recovery since February or March of 2025.

I was born deaf in an autistic hearing family, to two emotionally disturbed overachievers - a social worker dad and a corporate mom - who drilled the Republican anti-laziness, pro-personal responsibility mantra in over our heads (my hearing older sister and I). At my birth, my mom wept, while my dad said I’d get over my disability, and both they learned sign language from a local Catholic school for the deaf, which I grew to hate later because it quickly became proof of how much they cared.

From infancy till age 5 or so, I was taken to this school every day. It had an early childhood program functioning as daycare. I was supposed to keep attending till 18, but my parents didn’t think I was reading fast enough and so pulled me out after a bunch of arguments with the staff. I was switched to a hearing school and implanted, without any real considerations for the disruptions it would cause.

That’s not to say the deaf school was any good. I was routinely abused by the nuns there, and sometimes, a priest I called “Dad” who spoke fluent ASL, came and took advantage of my need to be seen by grooming me, making me feel special, for at least 2 years - maybe longer, I’m not sure, but he was helping me with basic functions even as a toddler.

He and Grandma were the only adults I felt seen by, though my parents even poisoned that. At home, they blamed me and spanked me or locked me in my room to cry it out whenever I had a meltdown, since I wasn’t internalizing their shitty expectations like my older sister (who did not go to the same school). They also overreacted to sexualized behaviors In private while writing it off as “kids playing doctor” to their friends in public. This lasted until I finally went on anti-anxiety meds at 17, bred a lot of sibling resentment and general hostility in the family in the meantime, and solidified expectations of myself as the “failed child” and black sheep that I never asked for. It’s especially disturbing as my real dad was trained in CSA prevention, but yeah.

I wasn’t always lazy, I guess. My mom points to the time I was 7 or so, when I suddenly had this burning desire to become the #1 reader in the new school just to prove to everyone I wasn’t dumb even if I couldn’t hear. I read hundreds of books in a very short timeframe. I won the award.

What Mom didn’t know is that in the library, an inner voice hissed inside my head: “Some of those books were picture books, you dirty cheater.” That night as my family celebrated the win, my real dad screamed at me over something I can’t even remember because I was just 7.

After that, I kind of just gave up completely and played video games or laid in bed while failing all my classwork, often lying that I felt sick to stay home, except for one time when I was 10. I’d wanted to impress a teacher I had a crush on, an older man. Another time I was 17 and I‘d suddenly found myself wanting to achieve again in school, after unknowingly introjecting my long-lost groomer as a fake college boyfriend (yikes, but also, I didn’t know).

Lots of patterns based on this basic template expressing themselves in various ways throughout life; I was so confused when it kept occurring - I was 28 or so, pacing around, questioning why - until I finally looked inwards a couple years later.

I guess what I’m really asking here is less the generic canned question of why I didn’t become an overachiever like other trauma survivors, and more this: did my groomer really shape my nervous system to respond to him that much? What I keep getting stuck on - probably in part thanks to my horrible mom, who refuses to believe it happened at all - is that he only groomed me for a few years in early childhood, and I can’t even remember most of it. Also, he’s dead now.

Sometimes I feel like I’m just reaching for the most digestible “feel good“ narrative that retains a sense of inner specialness or meaning because pop psychology says so, but there’s something that keeps pulling me back. I did use it as cope for being exposed to emotional abuse until I was almost a legal adult, but there’s still something more to it that’s not simply OCD or parental enmeshment or whatever.

Whatever it is, I want to break it and feel alive without it but I legit don’t know how, even now at (almost) 32. I have a very specific dynamic with many of “my parts” to the point I‘m confident I have OSDD or DID, but it’s mostly a solo endeavor with some therapy reflections after the fact because I can’t afford a dissociation specialist.

Also, I still have $200 to pay off from said psychotherapy that my insurance didn’t cover. It briefly pushed me over into a spiral before they dropped most of it - originally I owed $1500. And the disability barrier is a real issue, so that’s that too.

Most people describe their preverbal parts like they’re incapable of true direct communication, so what you meaningfully get will be symbolic and/or somatic.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding the concept, but so far, most of my preverbal parts have been able to talk. Like actually *talk.* Even parts that are like 2-3. There’s streams of heavily symbolic communication like with other people’s preverbal parts, but also direct words holding conversations.

I was born deaf. I learned sign language and was capable of stringing together complex requests, other words at just months old, so I acquired language earlier than lots of people. I was also said to be a very perceptive infant.

Could that be why? Or am I doing this wrong, somehow hearing my current self where I think the preverbal trauma lives?

TY for input

To preface, I actually disagree with my flair. I think I have CPTSD or OSDD/P-DID at worst, and it’s the self-led IFS that really brings out the contrast. But my inner voice is oddly insistent I have full DID, despite infrequent overt switching and good memory (I think… I can usually remember what I ate yesterday, for example). The only MH professional I could afford as a poor Deaf person was supportive of my multiplicity, but wouldn’t assign a definite label. Good overall, but bad for the lack of closure. Not a dig. I liked her a lot. Sadly, she moved away.

To describe the ‘filtering’ effect:

• Others in my head often sound like me or what I would say, instead of what they might say. Because it doesn’t always happen, I know the difference. I think in those cases, I’m projecting, imagining them (to an extent) instead of letting them truly speak, but it’s currently impossible to ‘let my guard down.’ I’ve tried.

• Once, my inner world looked, felt far different than what I was used to. This wasn’t the only time it happened (rare), but later I ‘met’ a part in a more familiar inner world and I suddenly realized I might have been in her inner world months before.

• I frequently feel like a tourist in my own mind, visiting places that aren’t really mine or “home.” (Not sure why I’m including this. This isn’t a filtering effect.)

• One time I suddenly changed and whoever was also in front (for a lack of a better term) with me looked different, our inner world looked different. But when I asked him, he was confused, like he didn’t know what I was talking about.

Thanks for reading!

It’s so hard to ask this. I’ve been avoiding it, but I don’t think I can anymore.

Some background: I’m a Deaf queer person (she/he) in my thirties experiencing possible financial abuse and/or isolation alongside emotional abuse by my family (who live out of state) for years now. I currently live alone.

It is a complex situation and I would love to know what resources to contact to hopefully defuse the situation, or get help. Therapy is no longer enough; my old therapist moved.

Thank you.

My mind really likes showing me fictional scenarios, almost like an interactive Choose Your Own Adventure type thing, to tell me what’s going on. It’s not as fun as it sounds. Actually, I hate it. It’s hard to control, let alone decipher or translate to “normal people” terms in a way that makes sense, and no one takes you seriously if they know it’s what’s really going on in your head. You get treated like a fabulist.

For a long time, I thought it was just a type of daydreaming. Lately though, I realized I don’t really consciously daydream much if at all. One day, I tried thinking of comforting scenarios. Eating ice cream, my mom being a pleasant person, that sort of thing.

… It really doesn’t feel the same. I don’t know. More deliberate and grounded (ironically), I guess. What annoys me is that at first I felt like I had full conscious control, but now I’m having those daydreams messed with too. It’s creepy, TBH. Like a NPC just popping up to tell me in a paranoid tone that a certain part of mine isn’t allowed in here. MF talking like he’s scared of Voldemort or something when I’m just trying to order fake goddamn ice cream. Lots of weird, seemingly harmless stuff like that adding to the unease over time.

Worse, I have no idea who to talk to about it or how to even fix it. My therapist is very much the grounded sort. And it’s an issue encompassing my mental functions overall, not just the daydreams. why can’t I just communicate internally like a normal person, tell myself I’m feeling bad because X and to do Y to stop it. 😞

Sigh. Has anyone else here experienced anything similar? And yes, I have OCD.