Present Day
I am using my relationship as a test subject for my research, which is why I talk so much on it.
I have been in chronic emotional pain since July 2021. Shortly after my partner told me he was afraid of his decline in intimacy with me, that planted a seed of fear in me that very quickly spread through me like wild fire.
Within three months… it was like his speaking his fear out loud caused he and I to focus on this fear and together, we both manifested our worst nightmare. The relationship quality, almost immediately, declined. Within three months, we were constantly in conflict and “problem” mode. The pain, fear, inside of me consumed me and him.
We had only been dating a month. His Avoidant Attachment Style kicked in. My Disorganized Attachment sunk its claws in. But we endured.
We spent a lot of time licking each other’s wounds. Caring for each other through it all. Taking turns, literally, providing love and comfort to the other and wiping each other’s tears while we suffered through the worst of it.
It’s extraordinary really, how deeply we love each other. That, a week after our “actual” break up, we were together comforting each other through it.
The fights worsened. My healing turned ugly. Very ugly. And still, he and I endured. I realized a few months ago that this is Stage #4 of the relationship. And what we did to survive it, every couple needs. The love and loyalty we built is still there and going strong.
He is my partner. He is my primary priority. And no matter what turns the world, that does not change. For me. This is self-awareness. I have communicated these findings to my partner and have explained it all to him. Including what I need to do to alter the beliefs that keep this perspective strongly in place. It’s my partner vs. my ethical and belief system.
Isn’t that the way of life though. It truly is our Cognitive Core System vs. the World.
I cannot begin to explain the mental pain I have been living with since July 2021. It is why I began hunting for the answer to the question: What is pain? Where does it come from? How do I cure it?
I felt like Greg House taking strange case after strange case, just so I could learn more, gain more knowledge to find my answer… And I did. That is why I am writing to you. Because it is my dream to work with NIMH one day, to tell you all I know, and to share my journey with you.
And why should I wait? So… I began journalling my own research and experience as I grow. As I learn.
Abstract – 6 May 2023
Angela B. Chrysler
Thesis – Pain and Emotional suffering is caused from the mis-alignment or contradictions created between our ethics, our beliefs, our actions and/or behaviors, our voice/words, and our perspective. The greater the contradiction, the greater the pain.
Study, Test Subject (Self)
My perspective, “Juan is my life partner,” was compromised on 20 July 2021 when he expressed a fear that he was losing interest in intimacy. Fear began inside of me, the threat of loss, which threatened the Perspective.
Fear is only the obsessive focus on a fictionalized future that threatens our current perspective.
The Fear proceeded to motive a series of actions from myself to prevent the future I was most afraid of. Which drove my partner away. Which reinforced the fear. Which panicked me and only drove me to “try harder” to prevent the future I feared most from happening.
The fear turned to pain by October 2021. A pain I could not terminate, medicate, end, or find relief from. The pain contributed to my sporadic episodes of insanity that matched my fear. My partner was subjected to the worst of this.
Despite the conflict, the pain, the fear, my partner and I endured it. The middle of our arguments were paused for laughter, jokes, sex, a kind smile. The end of our arguments were always concluded with apologies and affirmations of love.
During this procession, my partner invited me to use his home, his space, and his body to heal. And that I did. His home became something I call a Healing Home. I felt so safe within his home, that my Alters and my Core finally felt safe enough to reveal themselves. April 2022, one of my Alters, Kallan, came out and wrote a letter to Juan, telling him that I had DID, and I, Joanna/Anna, did not know.
For the record, I am writing this as Angela. The Core. I reached full and stable integration in the third week of April 2023. Nearly a full year to the day my Alters revealed themselves.
My partner is a very sensitive, tender soul. And the horrors I had to relive during my healing traumatized him. He was too close to the healing. On the last week of September 2022, nearly one year after the Fear consumed me, my partner asked to change (not end) the relationship.
My past behavior would have sent me into a series of toxic sex and dating. This time, I committed myself to healthy healing. Because only healthy healing will lead to healthy recovery. Healing is the building of a foundation. I turned inward, and focused on self-love. I was now, serious about resolving my mental illnesses.
The pain was, at this time, substantial, which sent me deeper into the world of research.
I don’t know when. I can’t really tell you which season, month, or day that I realized pain is just discomfort. I would have to go back through my journals to see. Then there was the day I realized that pain and emotions, all emotions, come from this Cognitive Core Center I felt inside my Id. Angel.
How, whenever a belief contradicted my ethics, actions, words, or perspective, I suffered substantial pain. And when I changed my belief, I began the Stages of Grief. And then, afterward, there was calm and acceptance.
I dedicated the next two days to just memorizing the emotion. Memorizing Emotions is a technique I invented specifically for this exercise. By memorizing emotion, we learn it, we are exposed to it, we open up the ability to explore the emotion. It is literally sitting with the emotion.
Today, 6 May 2023, I used Memorizing the Emotion, “pain” to locate the source of contradiction between my belief and my perspective. The belief “We are still a couple. We are still each other’s Primary” contradicted his voice and, only recently, and sporadically, his actions.
That loyalty inside of me for him, bound me to him ethically. And that my loyalty for him contradicts the reality.
The real contradiction was believing that his perspective had to match my perspective. That belief shifted this morning. And that change allowed, yes allowed, my perspective to remain separate from his and unaltered. It allowed his perspective to remain separate from mine and unaltered.
And that, so long as we had this contract between us that he nor I will terminate, the loyalty is still there. We are a couple. I feel free. In that instant, the Fear, the Pain that I had been carrying around for 2 years vanished.
For the first time in 2 years, I am pain free.
This was not an accident. I did this all deliberately and on purpose using precise exact techniques that I have been implementing since 9/11.
In a way, this cure is a direct consequence of 9/11.
Self care. The next stage of this process is Self-Care.
I call this Operation: Imagination. It is my life work. This is what I wish to share with you.
But this Shift took a lot out of me, and relieved 2 years of pain from me. Today and tomorrow are all about my self-care, self-love, and gentle compassion and tenderness toward myself. The following days will be adjusting myself to this new perspective and memorizing the emotion to make it my new familiar.
By learning a new familiar, I redefine my comfort zone.