bad time of year

[Silent Society]

the new month is a very bad month for us. a lot of trauma issues and triggers. very bad things happened. all are very scared. t keeps telling us that nothing bad will happen on the outside, but that doesnt help those on the inside. every year this happens. fear, terror, panic take over for the next two months. no strategies to work with this. dont want the month to come, but will happen in 8 minutes. very scared

silent s

[Tangled Web]

We used to have dates that would trigger us also and months. I find just concentrating on the day of the week or the number of the day instead of the month helps a lot. You can tell yourself that over and over again and it really does help.
Tangled Web

[The People]

This new month has been historically bad for us as well. People would promise us that nothing would happen but we didn't believe them. It was hard because we didn't know why they were bad at first. For this month it is still not clear.

We did 2 things. We created a safety zone, using things and people as ways of making us feel safe. Like wearing red. Red is one of our strongest safe colours. The other is purple. We carried things wit an edge that we could feel but wouldn't hurt in the pockets of what we wore so that when we got scared we stuck our hands in the pockets and felt these grounding objects. We used a night light. Now we fall asleep with the television on, setting the timer for it to shut off. All of the books say not to have a TV in the bedroom but for us it worked. We put on a station where the shows were low key. Never those stupid sales shows as the people are loud and the voices cut into our dreams. Just NCIS or something else we liked to watch. It doesn't matter if it is a rerun because these days we might fall asleep in 5 minutes. On nights when we don't use the television we cannot sleep well at all.

We have a gym in our building and before this we belonged to other gyms. Exercise and staying in shape makes us feel more powerful and able to defend the body. As T said the other day, the body is an adult now and we can protect ourselves.

Eating has been hard of late so we have been drinking one boost every day. Not more because that is too many calories but we use the protein kind which adds to empowerment thoughts. We do try to eat something good like Quinoa soup once in a while or shrimp or chicken. But cooking is hard for us.

When we go out we bring the IPod. Just loud enough but not too loud so we cannot hear what is around us. We do that all the time anyway as too loud is bad for the ears and any time can be on safe.

We used to draw and write a lot for T but not as much now. And tell your T we have probably been playing this game longer than her. It has never, ever helped us to feel safe by people telling nothing would happen. It helped best when they understood about the dark times and just helped us make a safety plan like this one. It's okay to be scared. I don't mean it is a good feeling. We just don't judge people for being scared or saying "there is nothing to be afraid of". That is just silly. There are always things to be afraid of in this world. But we can sit at home and hide all the time or when can say "f*ck the Fear" and go have some fun, some distraction. But staying safe at the same time.

My name is Fear and I am one of the People. Today I am 9. Might be 14 tomorrow. I came in half way through here. Something else. It is hard to work on the big things like why we are afraid during the dark times. Best to work on little things. I don't talk to T. Only one other one a long time ago. Well maybe 2 different ones one time each. I was just told to remind you that you can come here any time you want when you are scared because nobody makes fun of you or judges you. Against the rules.

[Silent Society]

Thank you for the suggestion. Appreciate your thoughts.