When An Abuser Dies

I am certain every survivor will deal with this issue in their own unique way, hopefully with the help and support of friends and therapist. Those with "structured" or sophisticated DID almost always have multiple perpetrators throughout life. Although one child who developed DID from one abusive relative, may also have several abusers throughout life. Perpetrators have a knack for targeting the vulnerable.

When the main abuser(s) are still alive, depending on the level of contact the victim has maintained with them, they may not recall the abuse until after the death. Several times I have known people who did not begin remembering until the death of both parents.

My first memory was father abuse and later came the covert government and military ties along with abusers who were also the original scientists and government figures who were involved in MK-Ultra. I knew who most of my abusers/programmers were. They were the same. The doctors, scientists, and government people were also either pedophiles or knew that frequent sexual abuse maintained the dissociative process. At the time of my memories, several abusers were still alive.

Since they were all prominent, news of their death was often quite public. Most I had already recovered memories; but for at least two, more information surfaced after their death.

I used to think my father's job was "only" to maintain the level of terror and abuse at home when I was not with the program officials. I now believe he was a main player in that military intelligence/CIA/covert world. I received validation within the past two months. My father was an advisor to Vietnam in 1961 which was defined in a documentary as code for CIA before the full "war" broke out. Memories had surfaced of him being with me in settings with other programmers.

I have stated before I grew up in fear of him. After knowing of my DID and subsequent memories, I fully understand the depth of my terror for him. I have not lived near my family since the 70s and my last visit was around the mid-1990s. Earlier this week, I learned my father had passed away.

Initially I had relief that he could never terrorize or hurt me again. Throughout the day many emotions and thoughts surfaced...none of them grief. Part of me was just hoping I would not have to remember any other abuse involving him. It felt as if the news was just traveling through all parts of me and each was having their own reaction.

I had a doctor appointment early evening. After returning home and watching my favorite television shows, I decided to see the online obituary. I knew he had disowned me, but, as far as I knew, my mother and sisters still considered me a part of the family...just the crazy black sheep. However, the obituary did not mention me as one of the daughters. He did manage to get in the final blow. Am guessing if he disavowed knowledge of my existence, he was saying he took no responsibility for his actions.

The real impact came from what that meant to me for the future. Was I also dead to my mother and sisters? I don't have that answer. It's very unsettling. It took a day of emotional turmoil to realize nothing had changed. It still wasn't safe for me to be around my family even if they wanted me to be. So what difference did it really make?

While I would not wish healing from DID on anyone, especially now that my sisters are 55 and 60, in my heart I would like to have the validation while my mother is still alive that he was the person who hurt me beyond what most of the world can believe.

One thing is certain following an abuser's death: emotional turmoil. But we survivors know how to deal with emotional turmoil. We can get past it to get on with our healing toward a more complete and fulfilling life.

Surviving Intense Body Memories

This is my second month of body memories related to a specific abuser and the pain he caused in my head and sinuses doing his “programming” (work related to the  government program of which we were entrenched). Prior to the holidays I developed a sinus infection and was on antibiotics for 20 days followed by Cipro for 10 days. Thank goodness I have an appointment next week. Am hoping the infection is gone and the remaining headache, which feels like the top of my brain is pressing into my skull, is “only” body memory.

On January 1, at least two major parts of me integrated which brought on the post-integration headache I’ve been tolerating. But then more memories surfaced of the abuser, renowned for his work with brain implants, along with memories of a world-famous brain surgeon who died in the mid 70s. The abuse memory is from age 10 and/or prior. It is known both had worked together. My memory is of a removable implant through the sinus cavity which rests next to the brain in the forehead and at the lower back of the neck. It must have been extremely painful getting them into place. It also answers the question why I don’t have some microchip imbedded in me somewhere.

The first abuser is still alive and just last week I learned he relocated from his homeland of Spain to San Diego. My fear level has risen exponentially. If he is in the United States, you can be sure he is under government contract and San Diego is right next to a huge naval base. The primary backer of his MK-Ultra time period research was the Office of Naval Intelligence and likely that has not changed. Which validates for me that mind control techniques are still being used. Today, the watch a person is wearing or the cell phone assigned might have the needed receiver to trigger specific areas of the brain. It certainly makes me wonder each time the news screams of an individual “suddenly” going into a rage and killing innocent bystanders.

My head is pounding simply writing. I’ve had several massages. At home I completely wrap my head up in heat, including my face. I hate taking drugs so have only taken Advil but it doesn’t help much.

This started before knowing about his move. Did some part of me know that? Maybe I needed to know. I’ve been very vocal about my abuse and naming names. Perhaps it’s narcissistic to think “they” would want to get me back to him for re-torturing or some other horrible demise; but that is what is on my mind…weighing very heavily on my mind and hoping coping skills and continued healing of surfacing parts or fragments will eventually alleviate this pain.

I hate, that at birth…the planning before my birth, came with a life sentence of remembering what was done to me so parts stuck deep inside could eventually heal. Often I wonder if it will ever end and if I can really continue to cope with the intensity of emotions. Some days it really is just too much. Am grateful for microwaves and heated spa wraps to keep me sane.

October Surprise

Once again synchronicity has led me to an answer...a body memory mystery I recall having since my 20s. However, in my 20s, I was completely dissociative in that insiders were trained to keep me from noticing too much of anything.

I believe I've shared about my body memory of cigarette burns in my genital area which I've tried to resolve many times in therapy because of the pain. The burns came up first as a slightly sore bump and rapidly spread from bump into the form of many tiny bumps with fiery burning for 24-48 hours.

Several years ago I became aware that prior to cigarette burns appearing, my right groin and down into my right upper thigh become sore. If men are reading this, excuse the body references. Initially it would feel like undies were too tight and I'd tug at the elastic that hit the groin area on the right. Or I assumed my jeans were cutting into me. Possibly in my 30s but definitely by my 40s, I stopped wearing jeans believing they were causing the problem. Apparently I dissociated any blisters or burning.

After memories began in my mid-40s, I was very aware of the blisters but didn't connect them to cigarette burns until later in my healing. I came to know it as a short-lived painful time. I knew the burns were a part of very early abuse...something that would traumatize a baby who only knew sounds and sensations.

The burns have become quite infrequent. Am not recalling the last time but possibly once in the past year. Last night I was tugging at my undies thinking not all the detergent had washed out in the laundry (a common first thought). By bed time, I was commando and even my numbing cream for my painful surgery scars didn't work.

Back up to yesterday when I participated in a discussion on Copperstrings about communicating with body parts in pain or bothersome. Ask it would it would like to say. This was a very effective technique when I was a therapist. People would blurt out the most amazing answers where they suddenly understood what their specific pain related to. I don't recall ever having done that for myself. I have a part (wisdom of the body) who I've come to rely on to tell me. But this groin pain is such a mystery.

Logically I imagined the upper thigh and groin pain was someone who held my leg tightly while another burned with a cigarette likely repeating "messages" that would become part of the belief system they were building for me.

One more piece of the puzzle is my discovery of a butterfly shape seared into my labia. It was not a tattoo. It was branding with a branding iron. Possibly my left leg was immobilized while someone pulled my right leg roughly to the side wide enough to allow for the branding.

In conjunction with the groin pain that arose last night, my right jaw bone (joint?) has been very sore. Pressure to keep me silent during the branding?

This morning I woke up with a very wide area of my right inner thigh too sore to touch. Am sure the date plays a role because I have terrifying memory of my first Halloween. I would have been 11 months old. While placing special cream on the sore area earlier, I recalled what I wrote yesterday and asked my thigh what it wanted to say. "Get that iron away from me!"

The long sought after answer. At 11 months of age, that butterfly was made a part of my being. A symbol to others I was officially part of the government program. Perhaps the cigarette burns were reminders of that pain and additions to the message that I belonged to them.

So many puzzle pieces here. Many years of questions and painful days. Am praying this one time this traditionally precursor pain to the blisters is all I need to know. I have my answer to when and how that tattoo came to be placed on me.

Validation is a bitch.

21/111 Scraps by grace2244 on Polyvore.com

Healing Body Work

Often I see or *hear* a cringe when I mention various work I've had over the years that I believe have been an integral part of my overall healing. One of my recommended resources is The Body Remembers which explains how the body stores trauma memories just as the mind does.

More and more somatic (body) therapies are being used to help heal trauma including PTSD in war veterans. I had the privilege of attending a workshop by Pat Ogden who is one of the leaders in the field.  She coaches the client to move the body (on their own) to release where the body feels locked or tight or sore.

Peter A. Levine's book Waking the Tiger addresses the need for humans to "shake off" (engage the body in releasing trauma) much the way animals do in the wild to survive.

Ogden and Levine's methods are client initiated and do not involve touching on the part of the therapist except possibly as a target or to provide resistance for pushing.

Where the greatest resistance seems to be is in massage...another person touching the body. I know through my own massage therapist there are techniques such an Indian Head Massage where the client is fully clothed and sits in a chair. It could be a gentle way to become familiar with the healing benefits of massage.

I don't know why I had no aversion to massage. I used to have some relaxation massage before known trauma. Perhaps that is why. Throughout healing, I've had Reiki, a bit of acupuncture, deep tissue work, hot stone massage, cranial sacral massage, and today I was introduced to a technique called cupping.

I learned of cranial sacral through another survivor in the late 90s. The masseuse must have special training. It sounds like it is only the head but it encompasses the whole body. Cranial sacral fluid flows throughout the body and the therapist feels for blockages and uses a light touch around those areas for release. I always felt better afterwards but it didn't have the feel of the deep tissue or hot rock which I like...a harder touch that feels like it's really getting to the tight muscles.

It's been a long time since I've had so many knots in my head and neck and upper back, which I thought related solely to my two week cold. Internally I sensed there might be tension and should have some work done. I just needed from shoulders up worked on but I love the warmed massage table. A masseuse will work with your comfort level so you just need to communicate where you are uncomfortable with touches and/or be able to ask the person to stop if something feels uncomfortable.

The cupping was a gentle suction sensation created by cups (adapted to area of body being worked on) attached to a machine. Very comfortable. It released tension through suction instead of compression.

You can also do your own body work to some extent, especially hand and foot massage. Those appendages carry nerves to every area of the body. So if you work out a hard knot between your toes, for example, it may well be alleviating a headache. Charts are online if you want to know what is what. I just tend to feel around and massage sore spots.

I also have a massager that can reach behind me to get behind my shoulders and slightly under shoulder blades where tension can hide for a long time. A Shiatsu pillow is my favorite for lower or mid back pain.

I encourage all the listen to their bodies. For those with DID, you probably know that alters can "live" in different parts of the body. I used to have parts sometimes heal as they were released from the knot they were in. If you haven't tried body work as a healing modality, maybe it's worth looking into.

How can we know the truth?

Much of this blog has been focused on how confusing memories are to piece together, the tricks used by perps regarding the surroundings, a double language and double binds used on us as children. So how is it that we can know for sure who was an abuser?

Links are provided in the sidebar to some of the best in the field regarding trauma memory and how it is stored differently. I've used examples before but, as a reminder, those who recall the assassination of John F. Kennedy know where they were at the moment they heard, the feelings of the moment. Some remember smells, others great detail of the location...a kind of surreal experience to recall. If you've ever been in an automobile accident, you might recall the event in slow motion, what song was playing on the radio. If it had been raining during the accident, it's possible rainy days still cause some distress to your driving experience. The most recent moment in our history that was traumatic for the nation was on 9/11. The trauma of knowing, seeing, hearing...for many, feeling loss of a loved one. All sensory experience is frozen in that moment or moments of trauma.

In spite of the trauma memory being locked in from several perspectives by different aged alters with intentional confusion and attempts at making us believe that what happened never happened, we remember. And, over the course of time, the abusers remain constant (in or out of costume) for some period of life. Some alters and/or protectors remember very clearly. It has been proven time and again through drawings and descriptions through journals of survivors that incidents were recalled with remarkable accuracy, locations were internally recorded with uncanny details, and faces and voices were remembered. What comes out as a survivor's story is for the survivor to heal. The objective is healing, not suing abuser(s). What we come to know with great clarity as names, locations, faces, and sometimes dates are conveyed to us by those inside who remembered with clear "mind" and stored the information for later release.

In my personal experience, names rarely surfaced, but faces did. In doing collages, I'd find myself cutting out pictures of people. Over time, I consciously noticed that many images looked like the same person and I'd make collages for that one person. At the time I wouldn't know if it was an outside person or an inside person...very strange concept to grasp, I would imagine, for anyone who has not had inside people. Most of my collages were done in the first two years of my healing. Also in those first two years, abusers in my world at the time I was a child became known to me through researching, in documentaries, in magazines. I knew because the images cut from magazines so starkly resembled the perp collage and something about the perp's history matched my own history. This process is, of course, not admissable in court, but is sufficient validation to heal. It doesn't matter what others believe. We know without a doubt when we receive internal and external validation simultaneously and have our drawings and/or collages and journals to back it up. It's usually accompanied by a hugely triggered response to matching the name with the person or vice-versa.

I guess it boils down to that the alters can use whatever skills they have "backwards" to help in the healing process. Amnesia is a strange state of mind. Those who suffer from or who have even healed from DID still don't know what it's like to have a mind that functions for someone who grew up in a loving family without trauma. We know it gets better at a certain point in healing. We can tell when there has a been a shift in the way our brains process information after healing takes place. That happened for me after any merger, blending, integration of parts. I have used a gearshift as a metaphor for how it feels when parts integrate. I used to drive stick shift. Have no other metaphor that seems to fit. While there is a sharing of consciousness after an integration that wasn't there before, there is not a smooth transition from one alter to the other. There is still a feeling of separateness but in a different way. Over time it becomes more of a smoother process and feeling of togetherness.

I've heard from other survivors and have read in authoritative psychology books by those who have never been dissociative that true integration means *I* will have ownership of the memories. My life before my current medical difficulties was good. I hear I was a good therapist. Yet I still feel as if I've been told my story by others inside and *know* enough to understand my fragmentation and healing process. It does not feel as if it happened to me. Maybe my *complete* healing is still down the road. Or maybe sometimes what the books say should happen, doesn't happen for all.

Regardless of our individual truths, we all simply want to feel in control of our lives again. To feel that we have our lives back internally and externally. Others can stand back and judge the content of memories or watch the person blossom and grow and heal from processing their trauma. The truth that we do know about the abusers and the locations, in spite of being sometimes 30 to 40 years after the fact, can be used, if others would hear, to find the places that continue their lacivious activities to this day...where no one has ever bothered to look...or locations that have been so protected by community leaders involved in the charade that the secrecy is assured.

We, the survivors, want to be heard. We want to help future generations from experiencing our pain of having been born into an incestuous family or similar circumstances. Collaborating the truths of survivors recalling the same locations can be the blueprint for planning a new strategy to stop the madness. Why is that so unreasonable...or unbelievable?

My wish and goal is for this change to come to our nation...for people of good hearts and minds to stand back and find what is truth...to ask questions of those who have been denying our truth for decades...to help the children stuck in that world and honor and help those who have survived.

Post memory backlash a/k/a healing

Lately I've been rambling about the big memory I've been processing for quite some time. I ranted about it yesterday on Grace Uncensored. Now that I'm back in a familiar emotional place, which is not at all comfortable, I thought it might be worth sharing.

While each survivor will find their own rhythm or sequence of the mind providing answers, it will become familiar. Processing horror can actually become "same old routine". We process so much we become desensitized to our own sh*t. Sort of like watching yuck on CSI or Ducky on NCIS. I prefer to change the channel and usually do. But when it's the main presentation in the mind, there's no changing the channel.

Because the details are being relayed by a previously dissociated self, it feels second hand. "This is what happened to you. I saw it." It is not experienced as first person even though we may have some crossover of body memory and/or emotions. For me, first there is the shock or surprise of knowing (the silent gasp) followed by any emotions or words that need to be immediately released. Once knowing the emotional/physical pain or piece of knowledge is out, there is the acknowledgment and healing of the parts involved in revealing the previously unknown.

I have often experienced a specific sensation or knowing in my mind or body that the healing happened. Sometimes a bit more processes over the next hours or days before I know the healing of the alter(s) has completed. Then comes confirmation of the healing process--the brain making new connections. Some call this an integration headache if parts tend to merge or integrate post healing. Whatever you call it, the brain DOES make new neural connections. It has been proven in research conducted in the Netherlands by Ellert Neijenhuis, et al. using PET scans on clients with DID pre-healing and following them through to post-healing. Before I knew of the studies, I described the headache as feeling as if my brain were making new connections. Hmmm.

Within a day or two of processing my recent chunk of trauma, new information continued to flow related to the newly disclosed information. I would describe it as information that was unable to be relayed until the healing and the new connections. It feels different. It's more like thoughts landing suddenly in my brain.

My recent memory began several months ago but became quite intense around Halloween. The next round happened surrounding my birth date earlier this week. I felt the healing acknowledgment during my nap following the therapy session. The next day was headache day. I'm still getting tidbits here and there and being led to information that doesn't make sense to me yet. But the main content of the trauma was processed. This was my first big memory processed since beginning the blog. It may have been my first this year. Since my last major healing event, processing has slowed down greatly, thank goodness.

The big unknown is whether this memory still has unprocessed aspects that I will need to know one day. This particular memory has come up several times over the past 10 years because of the intensity and the different messages. I've shared before that I have had several major integrations. This last healing felt like three previously integrated parts coming back to give me the new pieces.

The backlash, as I call it, is that the emotional distress that I had been feeling in the background as depression is now surging through my body as "mine" and it feels awful. I wonder how I survived knowing most of me has always been THAT depressed and THAT terrified. I can barely stand it when three are sad and/or scared. And that's where I am today. Caught in that place of wanting to die just because it would be easier and knowing I could have a better rest of my life if I ride out the discomfort.

When all settles down, one day I will realize that "today is a good day" and the worst will be over...for now. We survived our horrors because our innate will to survive triumphed over the trauma.I personally believe we all survived for a reason. What if we don't allow ourselves to live to know that reason? Maybe the reason is giving DID a strong voice so we can change the world on this issue. And that means we need every survivor joining together to be heard.

Our time is coming. Changes are being made slowly in our country. Massachusetts has already figured this out. Maybe they will be the nation's role model. The Obama Administration promises resources toward protecting the children. Grassroots efforts will finally have as much weight as the formerly big lobbyists. There will be a way we can finally be heard.

DID etiquette

People WITH DID are not people who ARE DID. They are not their diagnosis. It would be paramount to speaking of a person fighting cancer as "she is cancer". I'm more aware of that language since my therapist training. It's okay for a survivor to say "I am DID" because that's where they are in their healing. The rest of the world should be viewing the person first. DID does not define the person. A survivor has a core personality and all of her is working toward becoming the person she was always meant to be without all the internal conflict. A gentle soul born into the world is going to be gentle soul. And since DID generally begins with abuse as an infant or toddler, that personality never had a chance to blossom. Healing is about that beautiful blooming.

If a person subjected to horrendous abuse was going to become a "bad person", it would have been evident long before amnesia began to leak. If a child or a dissociated self-state of an adult was made to commit an undesirable act, it is not the will of the conscious person and, in fact, is unknown by the conscious person. However, if the dissociated self is arrested in the act of doing something at the command of a perpetrator, the DID is not an excuse. Unfortunately, that would be crazy making to the conscious self who honestly is clueless. Hence, the reason this underworld uses people in dissociated states to do their dirty work. Not only would the dissociated person be prosecuted, that person has no conscious knowledge of who the bad guys really are.

"We are a multiple" is correct. Or "I am a multiple" is correct. I've stated before that many theoretical views of personality reflect people as multiple. Years ago (in the 1970s) there was I'm Okay, You're Okay which presented the personality as Parent, Adult, and Child ego states. Ego state therapy (which is different than I'm Okay, You're Okay)views personality as an internal family. Early in the blog I presented the different roles any individual has in life, shifting from one to the other as needed. All the roles define who you are--not any single role. The difference for people with substantially healthy childhoods is there is no amnesia or repression of trauma influencing behaviors or change in roles.

A very high percentage of people, at least in the US, have anxiety and issues with panic attacks. Anxiety is socially acceptable. People tend to understand panic attacks. "What can I do to help?" "Let's get you to a quieter area." "Sit down here and I'll get you a glass of water." But have a startle scream or other PTSD reaction and it's faking or overly dramatic. I recall being in a large store in my early years of healing. I was in an aisle holding a large poster board which was for a collage. It was almost as big as me. So it was awkward to hold. A man walking down the aisle bumped into poster board from behind. You could have heard the startle scream in every corner of that store. The man sarcastically said, "Well, THAT was an overreaction." Well f*** you! Really. How about "I'm sorry I frightened you. I didn't mean to." That would have sufficed.

The most bizarre aspect of DID is the switching. Rarely do multiples noticeably switch in public unless there is a huge trigger. I try to remind people that the movie Sybil was her whole healing life crammed into two hours so she was always switching. I used to be so offended when someone with DID appeared on television and allowed other selves to come forward like it was entertainment. Yet, in my work as advocate for a client to get her help, it was necessary for "helpers" to see the active child who typically needed the aid. Her being able to come out and meet someone and willingly go back inside to allow the adult to remain in charge was a huge success in her therapy. But it was viewed as a "sideshow" of sorts.

Within the past few days, I had a horrid experience online. Someone asked about the new television show My Own Worst Enemy. I responded as someone with knowledge of DID and commented it was not an accurate depiction except for one personality's realization that another part of him had been "out" and active. The person who asked the question immediately cut off communication. When I posed the question to others who had witnessed the exchange about the fear factor, the response I received was that people believe those of us abused for so long must be offenders! OMG. I never knew that to be an issue.

Dear World, if a person is actively working on healing, they are a very wounded and typically withdrawn person. If the person were an offender, they'd never show up in a therapist's office or be openly speaking of the issues. This is also a huge fear on the part of most women who have had children about having harmed their children in an alter state. While that is a possibility, that would only be true if the child had injuries that the parent did not recall inflicting (in which case the children should not be in the person's care). In my personal experience, the women with children had a very strong mom part...lioness protecting her cubs. Yet the guilt was there just in case.

Knowledge is important to change the worldview of DID and its complexities. Being fearful because someone has been horrifically abused is just fear based on misinformation. A very sad commentary on society if that is the case.

The body remembers too

Body memories are weird, scary, freaky, fascinating and an important aspect of healing. While more and more therapists working with dissociation are aware of the need to work with body memories, most physicians, specialists, physical therapists...okay the whole medical community... are unaware and/or dismiss them. The good news is survivors know they exist. Two good resources to help survivors and therapists are The Body Remembers by Babette Rothschild and Trauma and the Body by Pat Ogden.

If you are not familiar with a body memory, it is when the body holds a piece or pieces of a trauma. Research has proven memory cells exist within the entirety of the body, not just the brain. However, as with all of recovery from DID, there is no simple explanation. What looks like a body memory may also be a fragmented self "living" in a specific area of the body. Or a fragmented self could be causing part of the body to move to convey a message or it could be a true body memory of trauma being released that's been stored since the original memory.

Body memories can be rather dramatic or as subtle as a twitch. The importance is on the survivor understanding that pain and/or movement might be re-enacted. And it is important for the therapist to understand this may happen to help the survivor release the trauma in a safe manner. I have read texts that encourage therapists not to allow body memories in the office. Ummm...it's not always a choice. Some therapists have the opinion that body memories are intentional drama by the survivor. As if survivors don't have enough to work through, they make things up?

Resolving a body issue can have truly dramatic impact. I had two long-term health/body issues resolve after working through a memory or experiencing a healing event. I'd had allergies since I was a teenager. Early in my memories, while in my mid-40s, I processed a memory having to do with feelings of suffocation as a very young child. I knew as soon as I processed that trauma that I would be free of those allergies in a few months when pollen season began. I was right. No hayfever since then. My nose was trying to expel the trauma through sneezing? It doesn't matter; allergies stopped.

I also had a sore lump on my left breast below my arm pit. It was monitored by mammograms since my late 30s. Before I turned 50, I came to know that a number of alters "lived" in the vicinity of my heart. I felt them integrate after processing a memory. It was actually painful as they passed through the heart muscle but a relief at the same time. The lump in my breast was gone at the time of my next mammogram and hasn't returned.

My question to the medical community is why they don't understand about the impact on the body of child abuse both physically and mentally. Or why don't they check for a history of known child abuse for their patients? And how many survivors are taking drugs for something that needs to be processed psychologically to resolve? I took allergy shots for over 20 years and they only ever seemed to make the allergies worse. This would be where the doctor would say "it's all in your head". If a survivor is aware of his or her DID-ness (?), that is a physical issue that could be targeted in therapy.

I do know this is difficult to grasp even for survivors. Many suffer from multiple physical conditions, many of which can be or must be relieved through medications or surgeries. For survivors going through the healing journey, just as you tune into your internal world, you can learn to tune into your body. Wonder "what else could this be" if your body develops something "out of the blue". Often I would have some strange body twitch or pain begin as I entered my therapy session. I came to know that was where to begin for that day.

Body work is helpful even for those not holding onto trauma memories. I've had clients mention a recent headache or pain somewhere in the body. I'd ask, "If your knee could speak, what would it be saying to you right now?" The strangest answers would come out more like free association which always got to some issue right away. No one can tell you what anything in your body means except you. No one on the outside can translate. As much as survivors hate the phrase, "Ask inside," that is how you will know.

Under the category of possible too much info, I'm going to share a body memory I would not have believed could happen to anyone, let alone me. It was huge validation in an extraordinary way. I think I already spoke of a memory with ants. I also had memories with other creatures to include spiders. About a year after the memory surfaced about being enclosed with ants on me, I woke up with big red blotches all over my body. Since I lived pretty much isolated from the outside world, I knew it had to be a memory. And it itched to the point of pain. Always having my internal guide, I used the internet to research insect bites and found my welts identical to army ant bites. I hadn't made the connection that the ants in my collaged memory were "army ants", but on words taped to the collage it said "an army of ants".

A few weeks after that outbreak, a different type of bite covered my body. I have photos of this stuff but any naysayer would just say I did it intentionally, I'm sure. Like people would choose to have insects bite them all over. Anyway, the second round was fire ants. Very distinctive bite. And another couple weeks of constant itching and flare ups. Finally, I broke out in what appeared to be a bull's eye target. It goes with a spider. I think it's from a black widow which isn't poisonous. But a child can get sick from being bitten so many times. Shortly after I began to publish this blog, the ant bites surfaced just on my left leg, hip and lower back. Nothing on my right side. Leftover reminder of telling? Or possibly still fearful littles remembering what happened when we told at age 5. Definitely bizarre. Definitely validation. The body does remember.

The "wtf?" of remembering

Imagine having no knowledge of a childhood filled with adult men (and possibly women) constantly invading your body in every manner possible. And then you get a glimpse of some piece of trauma coming through as a first time memory and your body rattles with terror while body parts relive the sensations and the mind flashes strange and horrific images. What does it mean? What just happened? Am I going insane? Am I hallucinating? All or some of it happens. And then it happens again and again and again over the course of years. It's so intrusive you may no longer be able to work, you have no energy to be a wife or mother, perhaps you don't realize a therapist could help. More likely you've been raised to avoid therapists and psychiatrists at all costs. What a quandary.

And then you start drawing pictures or creating collages like this:



WTF? And there it is. The wtf factor for every memory. One puzzle piece at a time. The above collage had no meaning to the survivor but it is disturbing. One can only imagine but that doesn't help. Because whatever was done by organized pedophiles to intentionally create trauma is impossible for unperverted minds to conjure. That is why we can't make this stuff up. What totally baffles me is how these perverted men for generations and generations have had discussions of the best ways to intentionally induce the worst possible trauma without killing the child and leaving no scars.

The emotional havoc to one's mind and body from remembering bits and pieces of trauma is indescribable. Especially when that first memory ekes out from a world inside that the survivor never knew existed. It may begin in a nightmare and continue when wide awake. It may begin when wide awake and the experience will be terrifying and disorienting. The art the survivor may have been producing or begin to produce might be filled with images with no meaning--some seemingly mundane, others clearly of something awful. When meaning comes to art, it's another whammy. It's not as much an "aha" moment as a "wtf" moment with a bout of terror.

Flashbacks are pieces of frozen trauma playing like a disjointed movie preview. Or the survivor may begin to hear different voices or different noises inside. Other parts screaming or crying internally, heightened senses, a constant state of PTSD for days or weeks at a time are all examples of what a person might experience. It's different for everyone. The common theme is that it sucks. Also, this past trauma surfacing does not feel like it belongs. I initially remembered father abuse as opposed to graveyard things. My first memory with a graveyard was my "wtf" moment.

Survivors don't want to belief it either. It's not like we have these nightmares and assume it happened to us. Once the amnesia begins to leak, it doesn't stop. The best that can happen is a survivor can learn containment and coping skills to better work with the content. It's easy to deny. Especially when the outside world says cults don't exist and people in robes and chanting and graveyards come up again and again.

I had personally set out to prove that what I was remembering couldn't possibly be true only to find information that validated it. Knowing something that awful happened is not accepted easily. So when a survivor says "I was abused by a cult and made to worship satan", it's as incredulous to the survivor as to anyone else who hears it. During my early healing period when I had connected to other survivors for support, we had all figured out on our own there were bad people who were dressing up as something scary in rituals. Realizing we were not alone in our "craziness" was a relief. Something dastardly was going on nationally and globally.

For anyone who has DID, through organized pedophilia or a single pedophile parent, remembering is awful. Finding a good therapist to help is a frightening proposition thanks to the efforts of the people who would have you believe anyone who claims to have been abused in childhood (including a child) is lying or has vastly distorted memories that can't be believed. Actually, that's not the issue for the survivor. The survivors of abuse, for the most part, just want their life back. They want treatment to heal from the emotional devastation and to heal their internal dysfunctional dividedness. Remember that division of self was extremely functional during childhood. It only becomes dysfunctional in adulthood.

No one can attest to the validity of another's memories. Sometimes a survivor has proof for some things. Many have memories that are so accurate as to names, locations, and/or landmarks that it would be absurd for law enforcement not to tap into that knowledge. Survivors remembering sufficiently to get to those other layers is a way to transform the years of suffering at the hands of these disgusting people. Survivors have fought a war. Their bodies have been the battleground. Their minds have been raped. They don't deserve society's scorn when their truth becomes known.