Sleepy Times

One of the things PWW provides is a bridge for the gap between when PIC decides we can sleep and the time when sleep (or whoever runs it) meets us. This space can be full of restless terror; one of the things PIC provides is management of thinking and while letting that go is necessary for sleep the things my brain does without management aren’t all restful.

There are other things that can navigate that gap. I often use verbal storytelling in the same space, so I have a through line to guide my thinking as I detach from my own motivations. I use food in that space too, after PIC has given up someone else can get up and compensate for all the eating I skipped that day, using the biological feedback that provides to reduce the space between here and sleep.

If stress is high sometimes “productive” work toward those stress goals is an option, though I rarely appreciate the outcome of that option these days. Drugs for escapism can feel like relief from the terror, but also rarely do what I want, and can complicate biological aspects sleep. If stress is very high PIC can stay and intersect sleep directly, though not until I am quite tired.

I’m not sure yet how sleep works in my dissociative framework. PIC is always here when my consciousness changes – it’s their job to figure out how to respond to whatever bullshit I find when I come to, and to protect me until something more sustainable is happening. PIC is often here when I decide to go to sleep. But there’s often space between when PIC gives up for the day and when I actually sleep, sometimes hours. Sometimes in a way that produces time dilation and/or amnesia. And I suspect that sleeping me is rarely if ever PIC, though it’s difficult detect directly.

So what is the terror in that space? It’s not merely being alone with my thoughts, giving up distraction. Sometimes that’s a factor but most days PIC is prefectly happy to be introspective and centered, particularly at the end of the day, and has put us there before checking out. Stress about upcoming life has an influence too but again is rarely a driving force – typically PIC has arranged some way for that to be tolerable before bedtime, and the terror is not correlated with it.

I suspect some of it is learned terror, from the sundry of ways I was hurt in and around bed. It is a place of some refuge but also great isolation and a fair deal of general suffering. It’s definitely a place where I waited (or hid), afraid and alone, I was hoping for relief or at least the opportunity to be distracted from my suffering. Some of it is probably structural space I’ve built to be sure the things PIC doesn’t do (like eating) still find a place in most days.

Some of it is the way I fear sleep itself. While necessary and useful and relieving it doesn’t feel safe to me. Who knows what state my brain will be in when I come back? Who knows what state my life will be in?

I wonder if that isn’t, at least in part, a fear of switching. While it’s safe these days, failing to keep up PIC to protect me in bed could have serious consequences in the past. And there’s the related fear of coming back to consciousness – that I will become me again before the terror I left for is over, or that I will come to without the information I need to stay safe. Even without external (or at least remembered) threats my brain could end up in a state that makes being PIC difficult, without the context that might help them find safety.

I suspect that sleeping me isn’t PIC. PIC doesn’t remember their dreams ¹I can’t identify a time when I have remembered a dream since I was 11. I remember doing something to train myself to sleep differently around that time, after months of nighttime panic, but I couldn’t tell you exactly what or why it means no dreams., even when coming promptly from REM. I don’t remember the things they do at night, even when evidence suggests more consciousness than sleepy fumbling. But it’s hard to say. Sleep is weird even in normal people.

There’s good reason to believe that some of my sexual abuse was at night, when PIC wasn’t around to protect me. When PIC wasn’t around to remember. I think that might be a reason I trained PIC to be here first, or at least trained everyone else to wait for PIC to arrive. If I’m no one until PIC gets here then no one will be hurt.

In any case, I should arrange to sit with the terror and try to pick it apart. Beyond the usual bits of anxiety there are definitely other parts, and maybe with a dissociative framework I can know different things about them. Maybe it’s a place to find that abused toddler I keep thinking I killed. Or at least maybe a place I could teach whoever does sleep to keep my mouth guard in at night.

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Last week my hair thoughts went something like this: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJp3o8ch/ and then like this https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJp3EQJD/ I did not end up with stripes this time but I did bleach twice and go full Furry blue before eventually adding some purple to get to Grover blue.

Hair maintenance still feels like a bit of a punishment but it’s getting better. One place I’ve noticed it’s complicated is the way showers seem so high stakes to me. Despite colored foam while I wash out dye being an exciting part of hair colors the water-related cleanup from haircuts or colors can be intimidating. For all sorts of reasons PIC has trained to a) be in charge of showers and b) not have an opinion on water temperature (or several other shower facts). My life no longer requires me to regularly tolerate any adverse conditions for hygiene, but it did for a long time and it’s hard to feel safe wanting the water to be a safe temperature, or taking any time to feel comfortable.

Which is yet another aspect of my efforts to feel better about the things I need to survive. I can skip hair maintenance and for decades I mostly have, but it would be nice to live a life where hygine didn’t seem like a scarce resource. To live a life where hair care didn’t seem so dangerous, and my daily survival could be pleasant (or at least neutral) instead of tolerated terror.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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