Learning about my system with data

Life is moving very rapidly right now. I wrote the previous post (Waking up to the present) six weeks ago, shortly after I had split a new cluster of parts. Then, three weeks ago, I split a whole new cluster of parts. Both six weeks ago and three weeks ago I had very distinct changes in my behavioral patterns and how I operate. I have two very distinct “jumps” in my continuity of memory both three and six weeks ago.

I have been creating new clusters of parts due to stressors for my whole life, but up until recently I wasn’t aware I was doing it—it was “normal” to me, so I didn’t know anything was off. Until I learned that I had DID, I didn’t have a framework from which to understand my experiences. Since starting therapy for DID, I have become much more aware of my internal states and, with lots of practice and observation, I am now generally able to tell when I have switched between or created new compartments of memory.

While cultivating my internal qualitative awareness of my system is important, I am a very quantitative-minded person—I want hard, solid evidence that what I am going through is actually happening. And now I finally do.

A few years ago, I started tracking information about my life and logging it in a database. I started small, tracking simple things like medications taken, my weight, and when I showered. Over time, I started tracking more and more complex things as I became more aware of patterns in my life. For example, there are times when I have a distinctly different gait than normal, and other times where I chew my tongue habitually in a distinct way, along with many other factors. I also automatically log certain things such as the activity on my computer and phone, along with steps taken and when I fall asleep/wake up every day. I generally log the activities of what I do in a day, in broad categories such as work, eating, and walking, over time. I now have tens of thousands of data points about myself, spread over a few years, from which I can draw conclusions off of. I also journal every day, in both a personal journal and a work journal, so I also have a lot of free-form data along with handwriting from that.

Now, looking at my data, across multiple factors, I see distinct changes in how I operate both three and six weeks ago. Internally, I already knew this, but having physical data to back up my internal awareness definitely validates my understanding of my system. In addition to providing solid quantitative evidence of my system, logging data about myself requires me to be observant and mindful of my life’s activities, which in turn helps me to gain internal awareness of how I operate.

In a way, I am collecting data about myself to solve an inverse problem. Given the data that I acquire about myself, can I determine the underlying model about how I operate? With time, as I acquire more data, its becoming increasingly more clear. I am figuring out how I operate, slowly but surely, using the best way I know how—using data.

I feel I am in a different stage of recovery now than I was even a few months ago. I have become much more aware about who I am and how I operate. I am an amalgamation of hundreds of parts who are working together, with varying levels of cooperation, to live life. As life goes on and the data I collect about myself along with my awareness grows, my confidence about the way that I operate increases. I can now definitively say that I am a polyfragmented system operating with hundreds of parts, many of which are fragments. I split parts regularly, and switch between my parts a handful to hundreds of times a day. I have different scales of parts—while I have parts that I switch between every day, I also have longer-scale parts that I shift between on the order of days to weeks. My longer-scale parts seem to be roughly cyclical, and seem to repeat on the order of a few months, seemingly dependent on life stressors. On the other hand, my daily parts seem to come out much more consistently due to more concrete triggers, such as task-based reasons or reminders of trauma.

Since capturing long-scale variations in data is much simpler than capturing short-scale variations in data¹, I am currently more focused on capturing my long-scale parts. With time and increased awareness, I hope to be able to acquire more data about my parts that switch more frequently. But with the data I have now, I have made a few observations. Depending on which “part of the cycle” I am in (in other words, which long-scale part is out), the way I operate in life is distinctly different. This includes things like my bedtime and morning routine, how well I cook and the foods I eat, my hobbies and interests, how aware of/productive I am at work, how often I shower, how long/frequently I walk, my handwriting, my gait, how often I socialize/interact with others, the video games I play and how often I play them, how interested I am in/how frequently I use marijuana, how much I am aware of/interested in my pets and plants, my awareness of my past and my future, how clean my apartment is, how aware I am of my appearance, how connected I am with my body/how sensitive I am to pain, my outlook on life, and many other things that are too abstract or personal to list here. While for a long time I was suspicious that this was my system structure and the way that I operate, I now have sufficient enough data for me to be convinced that my model is correct.