Please send your responses to Veronica.

Hi Veronica,

When we were early in treatment we had all the same problems. Our therapist only took calls until 9 pm. After that we had the number to the crisis hotline at the women's center. So it turned out that every night at about 8:30 we would check and see if we needed to talk to her. At first we allways called. Then we got more confident and started getting through the nights without having to call. We have a new therapist and we hardly call her at all. You might be able to call River Oaks Hospital's crisis line or another hospital. I don't know where you are with your son and if you have anyone who can help care for him. There are times when my neighbors will take my kids, but mostly I tell them I'm not feeling well and go to sleep. As I have gotten better I have been able to focus on the fact that they need a mom and no one can do it as well as we can. One of my suicidal alters said that was not an option because we weren't going to hurt them as we had been hurt. We want them to grow up happy and mentally healthy.

Jenn

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To Veronica

Regarding your extreme anxiety, cutting, and etc. - one thing very effective in redirecting the energy caught up in this is homeopathy. You may consider to do some basic research into homeopathy itself first on the internet. The remedies are not used in the same way as prescription or over-the-counter medicine. You might also consider to track down a homeopathic doctor in your area. I know that doing this has saved my life, sanity and all else. I am returning slowly from that place far away, back into the light of day. If you are open to this, do check it out.

Living Earth

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Dear Veronica,

First of all, when you can handle it, you may want to look for a therapist that does handle emergencies. To us it doesn't feel very supportive to be told to call 911 in the middle of a crisis! But for the moment, it sounds like you need more support in general. What has worked for us and for people we know, in various states of crisis, has been finding meetings of groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, Self-Mutilators Anonymous, Survivors of Incest Anonymous, Suicide Anonymous, et cetera.

They usually result in gaining a strong community of people who can relate to some or all of what you're going through, even though they may not be multiple (although we've met several other multiples that way too)! People in AA in particular, in our somewhat limited experience with it, are very focused on "program calls," which is when you can call absolutely anyone else in AA when you're in crisis or just need to talk. They really tend to be people who understand the need for support in a crisis, as well in the everyday work to overcome addictive behaviors like drinking and cutting.

The blessing for us as well has been finding a very non-judgmental environment in these meetings: even though individual people might still be in a place where they think that it's okay to tell other people how to live, by and large one of the main messages of those meetings is that you are exactly where you are supposed to be (even when it seems like a very chaotic and painful place) and that we need to support each other in finding our own paths. So we (eventually!) have felt safe in having different people in our system go to different meetings and use their own names - for example Dani goes to Codependents Anonymous, Mouse to Survivors of Incest Anonymous, Birrd longs to go to a Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous meeting, and we all try to go to Debtors Anonymous to learn to handle the money better!

For us, it's helped tremendously to meet other people who can relate to us because they've experienced similar things, and to see how much safety they've gained and can share with others. Your son would probably benefit from Al-anon or Alateen if he is willing to check them out and can get to the meetings; most areas have at least AA and Al-anon meetings available. Even though they're specifically about alcoholic family members, many of them are very familiar with the other kinds of problems you describe.

People generally recommend that if you're checking a program like that out, you try to go to six different meetings to decide whether it's right for you, because each meeting can be very different in the people there, the way it's run, et cetera. If you do check any of those sorts of meetings out, people there can tell you more. Warning: they tend to like to hug you a lot! :)

Some places to find meetings near you:
http://alcoholicsanonymous.org
http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/
http://siawso.org (survivors of incest)
http://www.selfmutilatorsanonymous.org/
http://www.geocities.com/samemphis/ (suicide anonymous)
Many of them have online meetings or mailing lists as well.

Hope that helps!

Kaleidoscope