by Tim Roy
Tim: To bite a man’s hand and actually pierce your teeth into it. Ended up with a lump on my head, yeah got belted for it.
Dr Jan: Mmm if we think of Troy more as a life force, rather than just rage. Maybe that allows him a way to begin to calm the situation. To begin with it had to be rage for that was the only way to have a life force. But a life force can be many things. It can be manifested into other things other than rage. It can be a drive to be alive and a way to keep going, a life force in the sense of not giving up.
Tim: He (Troy) is pretty content in hearing that, cause it has been so spilt off and so individual functioning. I don’t know enough to actually talk here at the moment so (long Pause.)
I’ve got a big problem, a big problem, Little big Tim, Little Tim and Mark there are too many blank spots and to actually try and get a time line of specifics of what year and date.
Dr Jan: I don’t think that matters that we work out whether you were four or six. But I think when you have a memory like that and it’s an image of blood and it feels very distressing, what we want to do is to stay with that long enough for any part that has any memory of that and feeling that went with it, we want to stay with it long enough for them to actually know it’s a memory. That it’s actually is over. That TIM got to survive and grow up and they did well by holding the memory whilst he did that. But they need to know that happened. And being able to say that was really scary, quite rightly so.
You were only little and he was much stronger, he was actually doing something that would frighten anybody. There was a part of you, which we think is TROY who really fought for survival and we have to acknowledge that he was there as a life force. It’s all part of TIM—any part that has that memory of being there in the bathtub, whether this particular one or any of the other times; because, they might all meld together, it doesn’t matter if we can’t work out if it was that specific time or the next one.
Or if it’s two combined it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the feelings and sensations that go with those experiences get acknowledged, get validated as being quite reasonable sensations and feelings. There would have been a lot of different emotions going on, fear, rage, and maybe guilt—about getting in the situation in the first place, all sorts of emotions, all valid for a small child, who doesn’t know what to do and is totally powerless. All parts that have got any memory whether it be an image or a feeling, a sensation needs to be able to recognise that and then know that it’s over, and share the memory that TIM forgot.
SWITCH
Troy: I dropped a crumb.
Dr Jan: Don’t worry about it, it’s my carpet.
Troy: We’ll get trouble.
Dr Jan: My carpet, don’t worry about it. I’ll vacuum later.
Troy: Your carpet? This is this your place?
Dr Jan: Yes. It’s my place and I don’t get cross over crumbs.
Troy: Umm okay I did my best to keep our head out of the water. I swore and little, Little Tim went to his place of many colours.
Dr Jan: Mmm
Troy: I’m scared, really scared; always sad.
Dr Jan: Yes, you were fighting back.
Troy: It’s hard to fight back.
Dr Jan: You’re hanging on.
Troy: We want to get out of the water. (Yells)
Dr Jan: Now you need to know that you did. Do you remember when you got to breathe again?
Troy: Bite his fucken hand. (Angry)
Dr Jan: And then you got to breathe. You did well.
Troy: Peter came and had a chat. (Mumbles)
Dr Jan: Who came to help you?
Troy: Peter.
Dr Jan: Is Peter there now.
Troy: Yeah Peter is cool, we get along Dr Jan: That’s good.
Troy: I heard you telling us about me helping and my strength, cause I’m strong.
Dr Jan: Yes. You keep them alive.
Troy: Strong one.
Dr Jan: If it wasn’t for you, you might not have survived. Troy: The anger…the anger.
Dr Jan: The anger gives you strength now, doesn’t it?
Troy: I know that, I know it sorts of helps me, but I have got problems because, no one knows anger like I know anger. It’s the same as Shane sitting at the big table (Conference table) feeling anger he doesn’t know what to do with it. When I had to experience shame from Shane, it was really, really hard to know what that is about, it makes no sense so when the others know anger they don’t know how to deal with it.
Dr Jan: So everybody is getting the experience that everybody else is experiencing and its becoming confusing. I can understand that, because some of those emotions are kind of new to them. Shame for instance, isn’t something you have let your self know about. Now Shane is showing you what that’s like and you are showing him what anger is like.
Troy: But its like this, my job was to be angry. You’re telling me that I did other parts and other jobs while I did that job.
Dr Jan: While I think that being angry was the way you did your job. I think your job was actually to stay alive. I think the anger was how you got the strength to do that.
Troy: And I feel older ’cause I can understand big things like that. I don’t feel five and scared. I feel like Mark probably took most of my job when I got too exhausted… too tired I couldn’t keep up. Before it was simple. We knew how we spoke to each other. We knew who was who; we knew what age… we don’t have that anymore that’s all really bad.
Dr Jan: I know… It’s always very worrying when things change but there were some problems with that system too. We wouldn’t have changed that if it was working well. What were the problems?
Troy: No one knew what each other were up to.
Dr Jan: And why was that a problem? It wasn’t a problem when you were little, why was it a problem now that Tim is bigger?
Troy: Cause he can’t get angry when he is late. Cause I’m angry. No one tells him where he is meant to be and when he is late, he doesn’t know how to be angry about being late.
Dr Jan: So what you are saying is that when it’s all spilt up like that, even though you know its familiar and got you through those hard times, it now has been creating problems. Because trying to function as an adult in the adult world that’s making life very difficult because the adult Tim can’t have some emotions when he is supposed to have them. He doesn’t know what is going on for him, very confused, or he’s not fulfilling some of the things that he is supposed to be fulfilling because he doesn’t know about it. So it ends up being too confusing; he doesn’t want to not be able to function in the adult world. To be in the adult world you have to remember where you have been and what you have said and what’s going on, and then you have to have a whole range of emotions so you can be a whole person. So the splitting that was keeping the pain away still keeps the pain away to some extent but it makes everything else harder. So now what we are trying to do is to get it so everybody knows what that pain was about, that now they know we are actually big enough to know about it: because now it’s over. While it’s still happening it’s too scary to let everyone know about it, especially if you are still little, you can’t do anything about it. You just have to find ways to survive. But when it’s over and you can start to know about it. It is not still happening.
Troy: See when we were young, everybody was like this, we knew that. We knew everybody was like us. Now that’s wrong. Imagine a fish bowl and we are all the goldfish and you put a shark in there, which is the new stories, we are going to scatter to feel safe.
Dr Jan: I think it’s important that only the parts that are ready to hear the stories should be hearing the stories. If there are some parts that aren’t ready to hear the story yet then they are not ready to hear it and we need to respect that. Don’t you think?
Troy: We don’t know when ready is ready. We don’t know when the shark going to appear or when we are safe to come together. (Big sigh). Everybody trying to please everybody, you have got no idea you really have got no idea. You have, bec
ause you’re the boss of fixing these things up. But,
Dr Jan: I know, in the end you know it’s hard when you are trying to please everybody; with me you don’t have to please me at all, I’m on the journey with you.
Troy: Yeah you’re the boss of fixing things up. We all know that you are the boss of fixing things up but we don’t know how to fix things up.
Dr Jan: Ok one of things that worked really well a long time ago when we started working and I actually think it might have been Little Tim. One of the things that worked really well, to show if there was a trigger/shark like memory and parts don’t know about it and are getting very anxious about being back there. The way that helped know that it’s just a memory is to start to change things in it. You can actually allow the parts that would normally disappear to stay but let them do what they would’ve liked to do. Do you remember the time we got the baseball bat?
Troy: The big guys can do that all the time. What I’m trying to get you the picture of to get you to know about. (Long-pause)… I can be older, I can be five, and I can be what everyone wants me to be. But I can’t take on things that have happened thirty years long. I don’t understand, I don’t understand Shane’s job, I don’t understand Gary’s job, I don’t understand Peter’s job I don’t understand Mark’s job, I don’t understand, I don’t understand all of these jobs.
It’s too much, its big, it’s a long time, they’re old, Don’t understand things, feelings, and thoughts and whatever happen and all those things being flooded onto me and I just don’t understand. And then same-as equal maybe. I give them my stuff they don’t understand that. Why are we so scared like a child when we are big now? Everyone shuts down it all comes back to me, who’s got to cope with the anger again because they don’t understand that its anger from a little person who has still got little feelings, little thoughts, little actions and stuff they just don’t understand.
Dr Jan: Mmm Mmm.
Troy: It’s too hard sometimes.
Dr Jan: So what might be a way for us to start to do that a bit better so that people don’t get flooded like they are. Does it need to be trickled a bit more? Everything is happening in a big hurry? You can’t do thirty years as you say in five seconds. And it is a lot and it takes a long time to process and a long time to work out what that’s about. Maybe it just needs to be trickled.
Troy: Little Tim and I used to play a lot, invent things and build things. What I’m seeing to answer your question you know those things that you put peas in.
Dr Jan: Colander?
Troy: No, no the wire thing.
Dr Jan: Like a sieve?
Troy: Yeah sieve. We are in a situation where we are using a sieve and realise how quickly water runs through the sieve. We were working out a dam sort of thing; the water, a certain amount washed away the sand. On top it quickly washed the sand away but when we put the sand in the wire thing and then water, the water slowed down and trickled and didn’t wash away the sand as fast. You we need some sand.
Dr Jan: Exactly
Troy: (Big sigh)
Dr Jan: Exactly, that’s a lovely way to describe it. That’s what we need. It’s not to be dumping but to actually be trickled, sprinkled. It doesn’t have to be each part is going to get everything it ever did. Everything it ever felt, dump on top of any other part. Maybe if something comes up and reminds them of their job that they allow the other parts to get a bit of that.
Troy: Yeah Yeah a bit of that.
Dr Jan: Say if something comes up in everyday life. Like in Tim’s life now that one part is carrying something, instead of just doing it on their own they can trickle; ‘Okay here’s a little bit of what I feel in these situations,’ rather than do it on their own, they trickle, could that happen?
Troy: Yeah yeah this is what I have to get across to the fixer upper. Me just me sitting here trying to talk without getting angry is really a lot of hard work. Me stopping the angry noise coming out is really a lot of hard work. Because that’s who I am. You say to me ok, we just trickle. We understand we need the sand but to get something happening WE have to actually have the memory given to us of the thing that happened, right?
Dr Jan: Mmm.
Troy: Let’s talk about what Shane did when he told William the writer about all this stuff when me and Shane meet each other, in the abandoned building. Right? Big sigh!
Let’s talk about that, what happened there is that all of a sudden… I don’t know how many years later… A long time… I’ve got to feel and remember that situation. Now, I look after anger; I look after being naughty and I make sure we’re strong and we can breathe tomorrow. That my job.
Dr Jan: Yep.
Troy: We’ve got a situation now that where I got to feel shame because that’s Shane’s job and I got to share that feeling. But it’s not just painful (very angry)
Because it’s it’s everything, it’s the whole bloody thing.
It’s like the building and the noise, the crap on the floor, the fear, it all comes in. You just don’t know. (Extremely agitated)
You don’t know if it’s going to stop or is it just going to keep going. I’ll come back to my cupboard because it’s safer there. I just don’t know, I don’t want to be angry anymore, I’m tried of being angry. I want to be part of this that’s going on, but us little people we just don’t understand, too much time. Not only that he (Shane) has hundreds and hundreds of times he was shamed. He’s telling his story and I don’t know I don’t know how to find the sand.
Dr Jan: Somehow I think what the sand is. It’s something like a video.
Troy: I don’t even know what a video is!
Dr Jan: Like a Movie. Do you know what a movie is?
Troy: Yeah we had movies
Dr Jan: I’m wondering if the parts that are learning that, could let the other parts know to do it like a movie. You get to see it, if it’s going too fast you can slow it down. If it’s going too slow you can speed it up. If you want to know what happens at the end you can move to the end and then come back to it. If you want to turn the sound off you can turn the sound off.
Troy: Little bits at a time.
Dr Jan: I’m hoping they are all listening now. It’s the way you can also do it when you’re trying to let someone know about your anger or when you were surviving. You can just do a little bit about it then say ‘ok I want to stop now, we do some more another time.’ You can do it in black and white or you can do it in colour. You can do it with sound or without.
Close your eyes at sections if you don’t want to see it. You can watch it another time with one eye open if you want to, you can do it any way you want to. And Shane and the others, whoever is showing you, needs to let you do whatever way you want to do it. In that same way, they get to hear the other people, including you, any way they want to. Every part needs to do it the way they want to. They can go over it as many times as they need to.
Troy: The little people are saying that the others forgot us, we don’t see them helping us. They forgot us. They forgot that we were around. They want to know how you think they are going to help us? They forgot us; they didn’t know us until writer (William) came along.
Dr Jan: Was that because you didn’t want them to know you were around?
Troy: The situation was that we were pushed out in the first place.
Dr Jan: Did you go very quiet, or did they shut the doors down or what happened?
Troy: They didn’t need me when Mark stopped the belt there was no need for me to do the job. There’s only one job you don’t get two people doing the one job. (Angrily)
Dr Jan: Ok. It might not have been pushing you out, it might have been someone else taking over the job and you got a rest.
Troy: Did they forget us?
Dr Jan: They might not have known about you They might have only just started… what they knew was when they started. They might not have known what came before. They might just be learning now that you were there before.
Troy: So I got to tell the
young ones, the little ones, for us to have some sand we have to tell the older ones to slow down.
Dr Jan: That’s right. And if they don’t know that, you can just go out of the room, close your eyes, whatever you have to do if it’s too fast just say ‘that’s all I can take right now.’ If they don’t hear that, then you can go out of the room. You only stay in the room if it’s not too much, if it’s too much you go out of the room, come back when its playing another time.
Troy: They are getting angry at me because they don’t understand how, it all works. Like I used it in the beginning, that those times I used anger like they all do now. The memories of the horror, pain, fear, everybody always scared.
Dr Jan: They don’t have to, every time you use anger or if any part wants to use anger to be strong. They don’t have to remember every single thing that was part of; they can just use strength.