Alice Programming

***Alice Programming by grace2244 (Gallery this week) on Polyvore.com

This may be triggering to unhealed survivors. I'm hopeful it might be helpful to therapists treating clients with programming. This is what I found in me. It's not necessarily what everyone with Alice Programming will experience. Likely there will be some similar components though.

Consciousness is Wonderland which has a rainbow and poppies (the Oz in Wizard of Oz). This is part of the backwards world created around victims.

Subconsciousness is Oz which has dandelions. To cross "the bridge" from consciousness to subconsciousness, Alice has to go down the rabbit hole which is represented as a hypnotic spiral by many survivors.

The ferris wheels represent spinning to forget.  I've also used carousels. When Oz is activated, consciousness is "asleep". Oz is controlled by handlers/abusers. Wonderland is a very guarded world since alters filter what the host sees, hears, and speaks.

Both Wonderland and Oz have an Alice. There might be a Dorothy but, for me, Dorothy went with a huge spin program like the tornado.

Tinkerbelle can go anywhere in the system.  Alice "reports" to Tinkerbelle. Tinkerbelle makes sure Alice does what she is told.

Alice had been fragmented into four selves who had to merge for Alice to heal. Tinkerbell was also fragmented into two or more selves. She also merged into one and then merged into Alice.

The big surprise, for me, is Mickey Mouse represented my system's master controller. Huge perp...usually very scary entity. I am guessing my protector used his ingenuity to have me process Mickey Mouse instead of an internal s*tan. Genius. I'm so grateful.  So Tinkerbelle reported to Mickey Mouse. I just became aware of Mickey Mouse's role two days ago.

I believe this was the very first structure within me, the base of my system matrix. Until the matrix collapsed, Alice and Tinkerbelle could not have healed. Alice began so early in my life and I'm still impacted by her cues to dissociate now that she's healed. However, at least I am now more aware of my environment than ever before.

Once Alice was completely healed, it opened the door for my original authentic self to emerge. Alice goes with so many keys but she, herself, is a key to healing.

This part of healing (Alice) began December 2009 and I am now working with my healed core self (who is an adult). I functioned at a very high level for several years after dismantling the matrix. I thought I was all healed. Am not sure where I am is the last that needs to happen for full healing, but am sure it's a great sign the core has emerged.

More on EMDR

I'd like to respond to two comments made on my previous post regarding EMDR. Working with EMDR and DID requires additional steps than the typical protocol which can quickly resolve current or past distress. The example given in the comment was a child with a great fear of shots and surrounding triggers such as the smell of alcohol. EMDR can be used to reduce and/or eliminate anxiety for phobias, among other issues, quite effectively.

If the therapist does not have the proper training which first teaches grounding skills to the survivor and is certain sufficient grounding skills exist to attempt EMDR, and other symptoms are controllable, only then should EMDR be tried. What was described in the comment sounds like an untrained therapist. Being certified in EMDR is not sufficient. It would be good to ask if the therapist is specifically trained to use EMDR with dissociation...and possibly how many other clients with DID has the therapist worked with using EMDR and the outcome. Understanding that some therapists may overstate their skill, the best thing to do is to stop the EMDR if it feels uncomfortable. You know best what is right for you. I know it is very difficult for survivors to be assertive. But you must assertive about what is being done to you and your body. If you are uncomfortable, you have the right to say so. You also have the right to say you will try it and see what it is like for you.

My suggestion is, as long as you have faith in the person leading you through it, allow for a complete session which gets to a resolution or a calming place to stop for later work. You don't want to stop when you are feeling distressed because EMDR is like a wave you ride. It begins with intense emotions and/or images in a controlled environment and takes you to a place of calm. If it feels too overwhelming to continue, say "Stop". The therapist should ask you to do a grounding exercise to take you back to a good place before continuing.

I was asked to describe what EMDR was like for me. Let's see if I can give a description. Each survivor is going to process information differently, so please hear this as my personal experience only. I was initially afraid of EMDR "doing something to my brain". But after my experience with drumming, that was no longer an issue. I understood it was a good thing. Engaging both sides of the brain is a good thing under normal circumstances.

I will first describe a conscious trauma I had that was resolved during my EMDR training--because we practiced on each other. Not knowing whether anything I chose might lead to the DID trauma, I was rather cautious but made the trainer aware of my concerns just in case. I had taken my own EMDR buzzers (tactile stimulation) with me since I don't like the eye movements. The incident I chose was something that had happened when I was 12 years old. Recalling the incident brought up huge feelings of embarrassment and betrayal and shame. I had been in the girls room where several other girls had gathered. I did not know my skirt was tucked up inside my undies. No one told me. I entered the school library and had walked halfway through when the librarian came up and helped me get everything in order. We all have those kinds of things in our past. Even singletons ;-O

Part of the protocol is to identify the most distressing moment of the event and to focus on that moment. Initially the emotions welled up as tears and streamed down my face. Following the direction of the therapist, I refocused as suggested until, in bringing up that most distressing moment, I no longer felt any distress. And it has remained that way since that one "practice session" during training. That's how simple EMDR can be.

With DID, there needs to be a very specific behavior or trigger that the survivor wishes to understand or change. The entire system can't be the target or it will wreak havoc as described in the one reader's comment. I had all my grounding skills and trusted my therapist to handle whatever response I might have. Later in my healing, when processing yuck memories became "same old, same old", I was able to say that I had a memory brewing that was interfering with my life and wanted EMDR to get the answers and get it over with. A neat thing about EMDR is you can be as comfortable as you want. My typical therapy session is lounging on the sofa with several pillows behind me and a quilt on me. I can hold the buzzers in my hands under or on top of the quilt.

Sometimes I only had a physical sensation like an aching in my gut or a twitch that I knew went with an alter. Whatever was "active" in the therapy session is what I knew was to be the starting place. So I would focus on the aching in my gut and my therapist would start the buzzers which give a short buzz in one hand and then the other, alternately at a regular speed and intensity of my choosing. While the protocol is for the therapist to ask questions of what is happening, someone with dissociation can have messages or images come out of nowhere. I usually just started describing what I was seeing, hearing, feeling, sometimes smelling. Fear almost always was/is the first emotion to rise and my therapist always knows what to say to alleviate fear of current safety and reassure the alter(s) having the memory that it was okay now to yell or scream or talk or move the body to resist...to allow my body to do whatever was needed.

My suggestion to my clients and what I did for me was internally to watch on the screen in the projector room (see earlier post). Sometimes there were very quick flashes of some trauma while other times it was if I were watching a scene from a movie. Often I was coached to fastforward through the yuck. The resolution, for me, was when I would get to the needed detail of yuck that the alter was holding so s/he could heal. Or to the message (lie) that the alter was still holding onto as the belief so my therapist could guide me through undoing it. EMDR wears me out. It wore my clients out whether they were dissociative or not. Engaging both sides of the mind apparently is exhausting. I had no ill effects except that I felt like an airhead for several hours after the session and learned not to go shopping when the brain was on EMDR. There was no balance of logic to counter emotional spending. lol.

Emotions come up and can be intense but also process quickly. The effectiveness really lies with the training and experience of the therapist. I had a great role model before I went to my own training. I hope this answered the issues addressed in the comments. Great questions!

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.

When memories begin

When a survivor begins to remember will be individual to that person. Some generalizations are known. An adult who began early life with DID will likely have no idea of the abuse until between ages 35 and 45. It is believed that there is an erosion of the amnestic barrier that goes with age that begins during that period of time. For some, memories may begin after the death of the abuser--when the mind finally deems it safe to remember.

Women who bear children may be triggered by the birth process or when their child becomes the age they were at the time of onset of abuse of a particularly traumatic incident. Along the same lines, any conscious life incident that closely parallels something that has been stored in amnesia, may trigger the first memory. An example might be witnessing a child on a bicycle fall over or be hit by a car. If any childhood trauma involving being thrown from a bicycle or pushed over while on a bicycle, might be sufficiently similar. It doesn't necessarily have to be something traumatic that happens in conscious life--just something with an element of abuse that might be ready to leak through to consciousness.

For me, it was imminent contact with my family. I had avoided visiting them for several years and had dreaded the next visit which was a family event I was expected to attend. As the event approached, I grew more and more apprehensive but knew I had to go. I purchased the airline tickets one day and the next day I had my first memory. I believe my memories stopped me from visiting the family and walking into a dangerous situation with my father.

There is no one reason memories begin. Even if someone is diagnosed as DID, memories will not begin until they are ready to begin. But working with alters and developing grounding, coping skills, and internal cooperation and communication can start with a qualified therapist. The many variables of each survivor healing make it as challenging as it is rewarding to work with survivors of trauma. We need so many more therapists to help our population of survivors. Many areas of the country are in dire need of qualified therapists. When memories begin, the survivor needs professional guidance. That would be part of the greater societal problem created by the propaganda machine who denies the abuse, denies the therapists to work with survivors, and denies the ability to have intensive therapy covered by insurance. It's one big web just lurking out there interwoven into every fabric of our societal being.

How it works (being aware of the dangers)

Several life shaking concepts surface in conjunctioin with memories leaking through. Being DID is one. Realizing you are DID because someone did horrible things to you for likely at least several years when you were very young is another whammy. My memories began with father abuse. The people in robes didn't come up until later and I knew it was my father and his friends...not demons, although one could argue they were. Then came memories for intentionally perpetrated harm for specific tasks.

Here's the cover within the cover. Memories of being in some kind of "ceremonial" group that are very similar to what was done to create the job(s) to be exploited are very similar. For example, one will be done to a child alter so that emotional hypertrauma shrouds another alter being trained to manipulate men through sexual ploy(s). In this scenario something like being raped by a "demon" might overshadow training for how to drug a "trick" and steal his money. Because it's all about the money. I want my share of whatever I earned. To pay for my years of therapy. To put in my retirement fund so I don't have to worry for having missed over five years of work healing from the harm. For the emotional harm and having my will zapped so decisions were never really my own.

You can see how there is an investment of time and training for each victim, initially in the form of a child with jobs that transition as the child ages into a teen and then into an adult. This explains the manpower to interfere with a healing adult. They try to ensure loyalty to the group along with terror of telling and terror of getting help because one person healing means a loss of money to the group.

What are likely to surface are messages to let someone specific know you are healing or to go to a specific location where someone knows how to reinstate the dissociation, delaying any chance of healing. I did not have the experience my two actively abused clients continue to have. If I was followed to therapy, I didn't see it or remember it, thank goodness. But I did have "I think I'll go away for the weekend and hole up in a hotel to pamper myself." Or, an overwhelming urge to call someone from my past to include a family member. This happens in one child, one pedophile situations as well, if the pedophile knew how to use dissociation.

The best tactic when healing begins is to have a safe person. Someone who can tell you if you are being logical. Don't respond to any "spontaneous" thoughts to take a trip, visit someone, call, email or write someone you don't typically contact. Try to not answer any phone calls. Let them go to the answering machine or voicemail first. Many times, cues for alters to act are given over the phone. Because adults usually have full time jobs, their dissociated "job" would have been done at night.

Remember the unbelievability factor. You go to bed. The phone rings. You might answer the phone but an unhealed dissociated alter could respond to the cue which could be words, a sound (like a tone), both, or something else entirely. All you will remember is having a good night's sleep. *You* will be back in bed before the alarm goes off and be clueless as to any other activity. That's how life has been unless you were able to somehow disconnect through other conscious life events. Regardless, those messages surface when you heal if they were ingrained into your psyche during the trauma years.

Hopefully a survivor will be in therapy and work through these urges to call or visit to help the alters with those jobs to heal. Once the alter heals and no longer responds, the survivor heals from that particular cue. Who knows how many are inside with different jobs and cues. That will be different for each survivor. Just know it can be undone. Being very aware of the thoughts that spontaneously come up and grow into nagging, overwhelming thoughts is helpful.

You may have a few slip ups and might, for instance, send email to people thinking that "so and so should know"; but no harm is done (aside from being freaked out when you realize what you've done). The harm comes when an email is returned with a highly triggering phrase that may not click as a the source of feeling exceptionally sick or being overwhelmed with a desire to vacation in Tahiti or whatever comes up. It's following through on delivering yourself to a person or location that is dangerous. They never came to drag me away. They counted on my ingrained messages to work. They counted on a cued adult alter to drive the body to them.

If in doubt, don't do it. Have someone trustworthy in your life do reality checks for you regarding trips or visits. Even conferences or seminars in your conscious life might be used as opportunities for dissociated jobs or, once healing begins, being drawn back into that world. Having someone accompany you to stay overnight to make sure you don't go wandering out after bedtime and to answer phone calls is strongly recommended. I guess that's as thorough as I can be for this format. Safety first.

"Waking up"

Sometimes a single pedophile with knowledge of DID can create messages within alters for when the child begins to heal, whether in childhood or much later in adulthood. Those in the early stages of healing need to understand certain messages that might be dangerous.

Here is one of the unbelievability factors of this sophisticated abuse. An alter or even group of alters can hold messages that do not "trigger" or come to consciousness until a certain date or time or event. The big event is beginning to remember. Not only do many messages of fear of being killed come up, often very strong messages of self harm surface. Pedophiles do not want their victims remembering.

If the survivor lives beyond those initial self destruction messages, there may be "back up" messages. Aside from self-destruction, the perp, if still alive, will want to know their former (or possibly still current) victim has begun to remember. When healing becomes known, the survivor may feel overwhelmed with family trying to invalidate memories, malign any therapy, encouraging the adult child to move back home "to heal", etc. The danger in being around family if any family member comes up in abuse memories is to maintain distance until more of the life unremembered reveals itself. Trust your gut if you sense fear about being around anyone who has been in your life until further along in healing.

The complexity of this issue is difficult to address briefly. Suffice it to say, survivors have many obstacles to overcome just to be able to focus on healing from the abuse as opposed to preventing the self from responding to subconscious cues. Cues and triggers can come from inside as well as outside. However, it has been my experience that alters believe their job is to help the host. Somehow the perp will have convinced the alter that the job is helping. A quick example: One alter may hold a very strong message of suicide at the time of remembering. The "logic" would be that the suicide protects the host from even greater harm believed will be inflicted on the host for remembering. Most alters in the system of a person abused by a sophisticated pedophile will have a job. While it may feel differently in early healing, there are no bad alters--only alters with yucky jobs. All have the capacity to heal.

I do not believe all parts of a system are impacted. Some survivors have protectors who do not hold the trauma but know of the trauma and can indeed help from within. Some in the psychological community disagree that any alter can escape the impact of the trauma. I must take exception. My experience was several protectors who "knew/know everything" and were witnesses but not participants in the trauma. Other survivors have had this experience as well. I learned quickly to trust that knowledge to include guiding what I needed to remember and when. For me, that was the foundation of my waking up to my subconscious world. This is an area that is likely different for each individual.

Other kinds of messages need to be reviewed for the safety of survivors especially during early awareness and healing.

PHOTO COURTESY OF BRENORTON

Roadblocks to healing

Let me count the ways society prevents survivors from seeking and/or getting qualified help.

The well-fed propaganda machine that tells the world that delayed memories can't be trusted and those who claim to have such absurd memories are liars or crazy. Rather than focus more on the group promoting the propaganda, I'm providing a website that can guide you through the ways the False Memory Syndrome Foundation misleads.

Wikopedia provides this as part of their definition: The FMSF coined the term false memory syndrome to describe their theory that some adults who belatedly remember instances of sexual abuse from their childhood may be mistaken about the accuracy of their memory. The term does not have wide scientific use. From this, the Foundation hypothesized that the so-called false memories may have been the result of recovered memory therapy, another term coined by the FSMF in the early 1990s.

When memories first begin to surface, survivors are inclined to jump on the internet and see what's going on. Don't we all do that for symptoms of diseases? When I did this for myself, I kept running into false memory information and how some therapists did not believe memories surfacing at a later age. Add to that information that some people trained to be therapists have another allegiance--to report people who are healing to organized pedophilia so actions can be taken to attempt to bring the healing individual "back into the fold". I was terrified to seek help, which I have mentioned before. Thankfully my fear subsided within two years to seek a qualified therapist.

Many resources that were available to those with DID ten years ago are no longer available. The FMSF has taken it's toll. Highly respected experts have been successfully sued and many facilities to help those with DID (beyond what an outpatient therapist could provide) have been closed. I'm sure there is a statistic somewhere, but the number of survivors who actually sue their abusers is quite low. Ethical therapists working with survivors have the goal of healing--not preparing a client for legal action. Yet that is the focus of the propaganda machine.

Another roadblock to healing is the diagnosis. Why weren't there more with DID prior to the "surge" in the 70s and 80s? Mainly because of lack of training to diagnose as well as misdiagnosis of schizophrenia. Hearing voices was schizophrenia and the poor survivor was placed on very high doses of medication that impeded healing. Research is available on this misdiagnosis if you care to research. The latest new diagnosis for DID is Bipolar Disorder. It definitely can appear that a survivor is bipolar because they embody the extreme of every possible emotion. What appears as bipolar may be switching. In addition, there is a higher reimbursement from insurance companies for a diagnosis of bipolar versus DID. An easy to administer screening for level of dissociation is available but not widely used among the greater medical/psychological community.

In the same light, a diagnosis of DID warrants fewer sessions per year typically by insurance over a diagnosis of major depression. Healing from DID initially may require outpatient visits 2-3 times a week and possible hospitalization for survivors who require more than outpatient care. Nationally, there is a lack of education for hospital staff, including psychologists and psychiatrists, who acknowledge or are aware of DID. Because of the reduction of facilities nationally to less than five, that is rarely an option. Medications have limited impact on DID. Other than anxiety and depression, medication doesn't help. Some very small dosages of some potent antipsychotic medications can help stabilize someone with frequent switching, but too few psychiatrists are knowledgeable in such information.

Another Catch 22 to having been abused as a young child to the point of DID, is survivors are as likely as not to have a past history of hospitalizations, emotional turmoil, erratic behavior, and long-term therapy, all of which create a "witness lacking credibility". The pedophiles win no matter what. By virtue of the abuse, they create a human being whose testimony is likely to be dismissed by the U.S. judicial system.

While a war wages on memories of survivors (which only serves to invalidate a survivor's healing), a war has already successfully been waged in the insurance realm. Trying to gain approval for a survivor to gain appropriate care for DID is a nightmare, to say the least.

This is how society treats those children who were horrifically and sadistically abused by sophisticated pedophiles and who managed to survive through DID. How can this be? What is that saying about when good people do nothing? If you didn't know before, and you are a good person, please spread the word. Speaking out--taking this out of the realm of secrecy--is a good first goal.

From internal chaos to cooperation

Children who have DID grow up as the most wounded of the wounded. Yet, because of their unchosen coping mechanism in childhood, their coming out of that state of amnesia can appear as anything from sudden mood changes to not even visible to anyone except one trusted support person. It is rare that a person becomes an ever switching person, going from alter to alter. Most can relate multiple personalities to the movie Sybil. While Sybil's story was an accurate depiction, it condensed years of treatment into a two hour movie. A few things I'd like to clarify about people with DID.

Switching (changing from one dissociated state to another and/or from consciousness to a dissociated state)
Prior to a survivor entering treatment with a therapist, it is possible others may have never noticed. It is generally with a safe person that a person with DID may begin to have dissociated parts come forward. Generally, when a survivor "switches" (think of changing the channel on a television), something has just been said, heard, or seen that triggers the dissociated self out. People who switch frequently are the exception. Someone who is triggered, however, may begin to switch suddenly and rapidly until the PTSD level of adrenaline calms down.

How many do you have?
Dissociated self states (a/k/a alters, parts, ego states) develop differently in each individual with that coping mechanism. Numbers are irrelevant. If a child has one self state who takes over when the host child is angry, that one self state may have that job for the entire life until healed. In another person, their mind might create a new dissociated self state for each trauma memory. Often several self states recall a single trauma but healing would still be the same. Yet another child may create anger self states at various ages. It is not uncommon to find the name of one self state at various ages. In addition to being irrelevant, someone with DID really doesn't know how many are inside. They only know what they know. In other words, DID has the component of amnesia. A person may be substantially healed but find themselves still occasionally working with a self state that surfaces.

I've been using the terms self states, dissociated states, dissociated selves, alters, and parts interchangeably. The literature is not consistent and some argue that there are distinctions among terms. As a therapist, I always asked my client his or her preference for a term. And that's what I used. Sometimes a little humor added to a very serious topic can help give the reader time to catch his or her breath. In that vein, to quote a certain fast food commercial from about 20 years ago, "Parts is parts." At least for purposes of this very broad explanation of a very complex process, the terms are interchangeable. Someone who has DID as the result of a main caretaker (and possibly one or two other family or relationship perps) is going to have less internal turmoil than someone abused from a very early age by many to intentionally induce dissociation. The process of healing alters is the same with some added complexity. But it can be done with a dedicated therapist and a survivor committed to healing.

As for the survivor, coming to terms with having DID can be daunting. While some find it easy to embrace that all parts of themselves did their best to help her survive, others fight it with denial which tends to cause more disruption. For people who have successfully healed, there has been a slow and steady journey of creating an internal world of cooperation and safety. Once that is established, identifying and working with new self states becomes mostly a pattern of allowing the part to speak and to be acknowledged—and especially to see that there is no punishment for telling or crying. Since most parts are dissociated from each other inside, each needs to hear the same messages of current safety. Sometimes, there are families of alters or pairs or groups. In my experience they also heal as a group.

It is important to know that most with DID have the capacity to heal and develop strong coping skills over time to stay present (not switch) and work with assistance from inside rather than alters having to take over externally. There are various phases to healing. I prefer not to label them because I’ve learned even those are different for everyone. The goal is to be functioning to where the survivor is back in control of his or her life rather than having dissociated selves disrupt existence.

Whether at the hands of one or many, the emotional impact is very damaging. Some of the damage is healed as internal parts heal. What remains after functioning returns is learning to work as a unit in a healthy way for interacting with society and in relationships. Realize, those with DID have had different thinking processes and only have known one way to process information. It has been proven through the work of Ellert Nijenhuis and others in The Netherlands that brain connections that disconnected through the dissociative process reconnect in healing. The transformation of a healing survivor is incredibly beautiful.

Unfortunately, while healing survivors have amazing courage and would like to share with their friends and greater outside world, we learn very quickly it is a taboo topic. People would rather not hear or know, some preferring to disbelieve. We hate the people who do this to children and then silence the adults who braved the years of abuse and came through their trauma to heal. It's a very unjust world in this respect.

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.

The abc's of organized pedophilia

Since it typically takes three to four decades of a person’s life before remembering dissociated early childhood abuse and beyond, the first survivors “en masse” globally began to surface in the 1980s and 1990s. Therapists were cited as being overly generous with a diagnosis of DID when, in fact, survivors of abuse from the 1950s and 1960s were beginning to wake up.

Large numbers of survivors had horrific (unbelievable) memories related to the military, government, and other high profile locations. Those survivors acquired the letters MC as victims of mind control. In spite of similar elements to the abuse worldwide, this group of survivors was claimed to have high fantasy quotients or very distorted memories or memories implanted by spurious therapists. Apparently these therapists conspired globally to implant the same memories in thousands of survivors for unknown motivation.

Prior to the “epidemic” of DID in the 1990s when the FMSF had to swoop in and sue therapists for causing clients to falsely accuse innocent parents of unfathomable abuse [excuse me while I roll my eyes], there was the category of extremely rare occurrence of DID in survivors claiming to have memories of devil worship and bizarre, unbelievable ceremonies.

These survivors were given the letters SRA for satanic ritual abuse and also claimed to be liars and fabricators and have therapists who were somehow all secretly trained to implant a lifetime of false memories in a client. A history of ceremonies and masks and similar worship goes back to Pagan times but no perverted mind would ever think, “Hey, there’s a good way to abuse children in horrific unbelievable ways and also be able to have our pedophile sex parties with no one bothering us”...or would they?

And of course this type of abuse also occurred in unlikely places such as graveyards or church basements or in buildings where pedophiles gathered under the guise of community organizations. So all survivors who remembered such places had memory that was highly questionable.

The last group of lettered survivors falls under the letters RA for ritual abuse which is abuse of a ritualized nature (religious based or not) but without the satanic elements. Again, survivors worldwide have similar memories of experiences at the hands of pedophiles in this category. I’m advocating that we stop with the letters and simply categorize all abuse of children who remember group activity as under the heading of organized pedophilia.

What I see are different levels of sophistication (technology and knowledge of pedophilia)—not different categories of abused. It doesn’t matter what a survivor remembers because we know it was made to be unbelieved by the pedophiles. We need to look past what gets seared into a child’s trauma memory and hear they were abused in a group setting. I also highly suggest that those not familiar with trauma memory refer to the work of Bessel A. van der Kolk whose research in trauma is renowned and respected in the psychological/psychotherapist professions worldwide.

As survivors are identified and healed sufficiently to take a survey or speak with law enforcement assigned to investigate pedophilia, information can be gathered. Area law enforcement would be able to see similar locations, descriptions, abusers, etc. to know where a particular group gathers (and it would be more than one location in a community). Think of survivors as resources to be treasured. They have knowledge of the pedophile rings from a perspective no one else on this planet has. They also have knowledge of how they were used in the organized pedophile community as they became adults and were manipulated in dissociated states. That insight would be quite an eye opener for the country, I’m sure.

A large percentage of survivors who recall groups of abusers have kiddie porn memories and startle responses to cameras, clicking noises of cameras, flash bulbs, and more. This is the common denominator. Pedophiles are using the children in their rings to earn huge sums of money marketing kiddie porn and beyond (when adults in dissociative states continue to be drawn into the ring)...not to mention fulfilling their perverse proclivities.

No more ABCs. We all need to acknowledge that pedophiles have various levels of technology, knowledge, and access to various populations. Children could become prey to any group of pedophiles—and pedophiles at different levels exchange knowledge and techniques so many similar elements will be found across all groups. It’s time to take the blame off the survivors and realize they would not have DID if they hadn’t been repeatedly traumatized prior to age 6! Children don’t acquire DID in a vacuum. Something happened. Something very very bad.

The telling from inside

We all hear voices. I know this because the majority of my clients were not trauma survivors. They had issues. Any therapist who works with DID needs to find a balance of trauma work and less intense work. It was my experience that any client willing to enter the domain of their mind and engage in imagery or do "ego state" work, would likely get to their issues more quickly and heal more quickly. Most people can grasp the parent, adult, child selves. I spoke earlier about mother, daughter, sister, wife roles. So we all have parts. It's normal. It's good.

You might not categorize what you hear inside as "hearing voices" but they are there. When you reach for that second piece of cheesecake, you might hear "You know you're going to have to pay for that" or some other critical message. You might also hear "Go ahead. You deserve it. You haven't treated yourself in awhile." You might categorize that as a thought. Either way, it's a message you "hear".

In the medical and psychiatric community, anyone admitting to voices was likely diagnosed as schizophrenic. While there are some similarities, a main difference is someone with schizophrenia will describe voices outside of the self telling him to do something (from the television, from aliens, from demonic voices).

An objective of therapy is to change the messages to something positive and supportive--not to get rid of the messages.

Anyone with DID is likely to describe her experience using different words. Those of us who have had that moment when the first horrific memory leaks through is beyond description. As depicted in one of the collages, "It sucks". It's like falling into a black hole. "It feels like my head is going to explode". Dizziness may overwhelm the person.

Responses to knowing there are other aspects of the self inside vary from terrified to feelings of reassurance. Many have initially described "a lot of noise" inside. For someone with DID, hearing a voice is good. It means a self state is crossing over into consciousness. Healing can't occur until a trauma becomes conscious. Trauma becomes known to the healing host when it is conveyed by one or more self states who experienced the trauma. The message may come from telling of the trauma, writing the trauma, conveying the trauma internally on a "movie screen" (less intrusive than a flashback), through art (real or metaphorical images), flashbacks (which appear as a "real" moment of trauma happening in the mind) where one or more senses engaged in the original trauma might re-enact images, pain, and/or position of the body as well as the emotions including terror. Flashbacks are intense.

All of my abuse feels like it was told to me by someone else. It has never felt "first person". I've had validation for some important information to know that at least some elements were true. I can never know how much was real or a very well orchestrated environment to make it appear certain things happened. Whatever happened--and something happened or a trauma would not have been stored--needs to heal. The self states who recall a trauma may come together to relay the memory or the host might receive the same memory from several parts at different times on the healing journey. The images shared in this post are two views of the same memory by alters of different ages.

Because of the fear to tell, sometimes drawing or collaging can feel less intimidating to the self states, all of whom were constantly threatened if they ever told. An advantage to art is it provides an outlet for the self states to process memories that the host may never need to know. She just sees images that have no meaning or may come to have meaning further down the healing path. The mind is incredible when it comes to watching how others have the capacity to heal. Several of the excellent survivor blogs I follow present art therapy. It's a wonderful tool. Art is telling in a different way.

This is such a complex topic and the purpose of this blog is to simplify the complex so readers can get a good feeling without all the details. Know that an objective of healing is for the host to embrace that she is multiple and work with her selves, as they become known, to heal. Are there scary insiders? Yes. But they all have the capacity to heal. And often the scariest parts turn out to be a very young scared child "made to be" mean or scary. They are so relieved to be rescued.

It's rare that a healing survivor does not discover protectors. Protectors can be a stabilizing, reassuring voice throughout the healing journey and beyond. Protectors come in various states of being, at various ages, with various jobs. Some might encompass very loving and nurturing traits much needed by littles who have never known safety in the outside world. Some may become internal friends to the healing adult. I often describe the major part of healing as becoming very internal. The survivor may well withdraw from her external world except for therapy and other support or responsibilities such as wife and mother.

On the far side of healing, either the host makes a natural transition back to the outside world or, in my case, protectors push you out because it's no longer healthy to be inside as much. Healing from DID is similar to watching a flower bloom. The host opens one petal at a time and learns how to maintain growth and nurturing and self care to continue blooming. It's an arduous process. Having those internal friends is a blessing. Knowing those selves protected us from the horrors is difficult for most to imagine. It allows for an element of internal trust to guide the healing when the survivor is not knowing who in the external world is trustworthy. It is for those with DID who have been so shattered that they constantly fear what is happening inside in addition to not trusting the outside world that self harm thoughts and attempts are increased and healing becomes extremely challenging.

People with DID grow up being silenced in every possible way. How tragic they awake to a world that continues to silence the truth and treats them so cruelly. Ignorance is not bliss for the world. Please open your minds to all of the voices trying to speak the truth.

Life with DID before the memories

I'd like to share, as best I can, in broad terms, what it is like to grow up before the abuse becomes conscious. This is my story and several other stories known to me. I had one big symptom of DID that no one caught. I had no idea it was a symptom until I already knew I had dissociated my abuse and was reading the checklist in E. Sue Blume's Secret Survivor. I had two failed marriages prior to remembering which is no red flag in and of itself. I changed my last name though each time I was married and returned to my maiden name in between. And I was always fussing with my first name and middle name since high school and went through several legal name changes for that.

Apparently it is not uncommon for abuse survivors to change their last name to dis-associate from a perp parent. Most anyone would laugh at my name history. I couldn't believe it was on the incest checklist. (Most with DID would score extremely high on the Secret Survivor checklist.) Outside of that, I could see that I always had a very intense internal world. I created a "safe place" with protectors when I was 5. I met several survivors who had done something similar. I would "pretend" that certain television characters were my real relatives--loving, protective, safe. I had inside imaginary friends. I loved to nap and sleep because I liked being inside more than outside where I was sad and lonely.

The others with DID who had done this absorbed one particular television show with a healthy family and that was their pretend world and family. Some did have very memorable external childhood imaginary friends (in addition to or in lieu of).

Until that first abuse memory hits though, and that amnesia barrier begins to crack, people with DID usually have no idea they were abused and can't imagine having been. We all say, "I would have REMEMBERED THAT!" Well, no. If you have amnesia, you wouldn't remember. People with DID, where the amnesia is in tact, are clueless about the reality of their childhoods and any present danger.

There is no typical way someone will behave if they have DID but not identified as such. It is as invisible as the pedophiles for most and usually misdiagnosed many times even after clear symptoms present. If a child or young person begins to remember while still in that organized pedophile community, that community will use all of its resources to try to stop the remembering. If the person goes to therapy, in my experience with two people still actively being abused, the person becomes a greater target for abuse and the therapist does as well in hopes one will be too afraid to continue.

I was aware of my client's perps because I don't dissociate my environment any longer. I realized how *I* (the one holding the conscious memories of my life) never saw my environment. At the time I began to heal, I realized I missed years/decades of news and had/have virtually no name or face recognition skills. It was all tuned out without realizing such a mechanism existed.

If parts of me knew about others around me who were part of my abuse, *I* never knew prior to the memories. It felt like a life. I had worked through most of the issues in therapy on some level which, I believe, gave me an advantage over many survivors. Depression, anxiety to include panic attacks, full blown Post Traumatic Stress responses to known and unknown triggers, all require the development of coping skills. DID, by necessity, takes coping skills to a new level.

No one knew. Aside from some odd habits which I now understand, I thought my life was normal. Being diagnosed with DID and remembering just a piece of the abuse can be life shattering. Who was I that I lived a life not knowing of such harm? How could this have happened? Maybe it only happened once. Initially there can be very strong denial. Who would blame someone for not wanting to remember a horrific past? There is no going back though.

Likely all survivors have a moment (or two or three) when they wish their minds would just go back to not knowing again. It was so much easier that way. But at what cost?

Around and around and around

One method very easily available to those wanting to cause a child to dissociate is one vehemently denied by even some who work with survivors. I'm not sure why it sounds so absurd. Do you recall ever being spun around by your hands or a hand and foot by a playful relative because you thought it was fun to be dizzy afterward? In such cases, the child can yell out if it's too much and the adult can (hopefully) gauge when fun crosses over into scary.

A child spun around with the intention of disorientation becomes frightened by the "spinning" alone. Unfortunately, there is usually at least one other element to overwhelm and terrify the child. Survivors worldwide have recalled being spun seemingly endlessly on devices similar to playground rides where someone will run around to spin the others seated on the ride (a roundabout?). A large circle on a spinning device--think very fast merry go round--or even a swivel chair can be used. It doesn't have to be sophisticated. Being dangled upside down in a variety of ways is both terrifying and disorienting. Add dunking in water, bright lights, insects or snakes and you have a trauma situation. Further add a drug that causes another element of disorientation and blurred vision or possibly hallucinations, and you can assure the child will have to "leave the body" to endure what is happening.

I would ask why this is so unbelievable. Possibly the disbelief is in the element of intentionality. My point is that intentional dissociation is the main objective of organized pedophiles. There are many names "out there" for what is done. The names given to such a simple act of torment causes people to dismiss the entirety of what is said. The reality is that "spinning" can be connected by very sophisticated pedophiles to certain memories and even perpetrators. It works like this: the survivor begins to have memories surface about an incident (place, date, perp, some tiny detail) and the survivor immediately is overwhelmed with strong feelings of dizziness, nausea, and other factors to take the attention off the memory and onto what is happening with the body. We don't have to understand how this is done. Frankly, I don't want to know that much.

As a survivor, I had to wade through many memories where an element of "spinning" had to be processed to stop the horrid feeling. A very traumatic memory connected to spinning can cause a survivor to be down (incapable of functioning) for days or even weeks at a time. Apparently barns are popular sites for abuse to include spinning. It is a common element in the memories of many survivors at least in the United States. They have lots of room in a protected environment. They are also nice and isolated.

Spinning is one way a child may try to tell a safe adult--turning around frequently until losing her balance, doing somersaults endlessly, wanting to be spun around repeatedly. Messages can only come out in indirect ways if the child has dissociated. And what about babies who have no voice or ability to act out?

We all know about shaken baby syndrome. Someone could spin a baby around in any number of ways to the point where the baby was overwhelmed. The baby can't tell and it leaves no marks. This is the pedophile mindset. It's very gritty. Toughen your senses so we can obliterate it. Please.

Prevalence of DID & limited resources to heal

Most texts cite the probability of DID as 1 in 100. In grad school I was taught, "It is highly unlikely you will ever see a case of DID; and if you do, you'll want to transfer the client to another therapist who has special training." Let's look at the facts.

Childabuse.com
Sexual abuse most commonly occurs by an individual known by the victim, parent or other family member (intrafamilial). Rarely is the abuser a stranger. Children who become brave enough to overcome the threats and coercion to remain silent may decide to recant accusations of abuse due to fear of retaliation by the perpetrator or other family members. They may also recant out of fear of losing contact with the perpetrator who is commonly a family member or close friend tied to the family by various social means. (The double bind of "I love you"/"I hate you.")

Incest victims are mostly unreported so are not included in the statistic for reported abuse. Of reported cases:

33% of sexual abuse victims are under age 6
33% are 6-12 years old
33% are 12-18 years old.

RAINN Organization* (Excellent website/resource)
In 1995, local child protection service agencies identified 126,000 children who were victims of either substantiated or indicated sexual abuse.

• Of these, 75% were girls.
• Nearly 30% of child victims were between the age of 4 and 7.

Survivors' Healing Center
Data from 2002 National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) indicates that approximately 4.6 million children were reported to child protective service agencies as purported victims of child maltreatment. Of that number over 88,000 children were documented as sexually abused.

At the community level, epidemiology studies of adults have found that 15 to 33% of females and 13 to 16% of males were sexually abused in childhood.

Different studies use different methodology for their statistics. The statistic found to be most on target in the community of therapists who treat survivors of sexual abuse, is 1 in 4 women are victims of sexual assault. Even for adults, rape is more often someone known to the victim.

The entirety of incest victims will always be unknown because of the secrecy factor. A statistic cited in this blog's second post is:
Some estimates show 20 million Americans have been victimized by parent incest as children. (Jeffrey Turner, 1996). As cited at the website for The National Center for Victims of Crime.

radKIDS.org
...it is estimated there is one pedophile for every square mile in our country, everywhere from big cities to small rural communities.

Given the enormity of the prevalence of incest survivors and abuse statistics for those under age 12, it is more probable that DID exists in closer to 1 out of every 10-20 incest survivors. In populations such as those seeking counseling through YWCAs and other survivor centers, the statistics are prone to be higher for a therapist to have someone present with DID.

While many therapists claim they have never seen a case of DID, it is more likely the therapist is not trained to identify symptoms and therefore "does not see". In addition, because of lack of training, even if someone did see signs of dissociation, the treating individual might be inclined to treat the person as if dissociation were not present. For those therapists who recommend the patient see someone who does treat dissociation, there are insufficient numbers of therapists in many areas of the country to treat the number of survivors.

Kudos to schools open to education to identify dissociation in children, which is relatively easy to spot in the classroom. Again, however, the societal problem is lack of qualified therapists to treat the child. Part of this unwillingness of therapists to be trained to assess and treat dissociation are the efforts of the media and groups such as the FMSF who have targeted experts in the field for lawsuits and shattered their lives and careers.

On the positive side, excellent training is available through organizations such as ISSTD. Sometimes therapists who first encounter DID are willing to learn as they go. A therapist willing to learn on behalf of the client is how many enter the field of dissociation.

For survivors unsure about whether they might be dissociative, Marlene Steinberg's book, Stranger in the Mirror, has an excellent section of self evaluations. It's a good safe start, although admittedly disarming if you score in the range of likely dissociation. Remember that symptoms may not mean dissociation or DID for you. Symptoms may go with another issue. Don't make any immediate assumptions about yourself until you are able to speak with a qualified therapist.

Fear factor

Fear is not a sufficiently strong word for situations in which a child is placed to create terror. Terror is a necessary factor to ensure dissociation. Terror is also the means for creating the trauma memory that locks in components of the intentionally bizarre and incomprehensible abuse. Fear of telling is so embedded into the brains of victims, the level of panic when the abuse is remembered brings up more terror than most can possibly imagine. What may appear as paranoia to someone who wakes from a life of amnesia from years of abuse is coming from threats and horrific experiences where the victim may have tried to tell or was placed in to reinforce what would happen if she told.

It doesn't matter whether elements were real or not real. Organized pedophiles have access to extreme technology. They were using virtual reality long before it was known to the greater world. If you have ever experienced virtual reality, you can understand why a child would believe they just witnessed something "real". This is not to minimize any survivor's memory of actual horror. As a survivor, I'm saying I really don't know what was real or manufactured to appear real. What is absolutely genuine are the emotions of tremendous fear of a perp (if recalled), fear of perps coming to lock up those who remember *and never get out because whatever you tell they will think you are crazy*, fear of an abuser showing up on your doorstep and killing you. I probably spent several months in that heightened state of fear/paranoia and have residual PTSD after many years of healing.

A therapist's job is to help provide the client with coping skills to work through the emotions and provide new messages of current life safety and view the child messages "through adult eyes". Healing from the terror is the main objective. Imagine not having ever felt safe in your lifetime. Many survivors have no crossover of fear into their conscious lives. The best scenario is that the fear/anxiety/panic attacks do crossover so the individual seeks therapy. Learning coping skills for anxiety is helpful for survivors when that tremendous fear wells up if/when they begin to remember. If that component isn't in place, it is difficult for a survivor to *hear* coping skills while in a state of panic.

For many, a compassionate therapist knowledgeable in working with that level of fear becomes the first safe person. The therapist's office may become the first safe place. Becoming that first connection to safety is an honor and also essential to healing.

Falling apart is beginning to heal

Often the individual realizing they are not alone internally says it feels as if she is being sucked into a black hole or falling into an endless pit. The good news is that DID is highly treatable.

Regardless of age, when someone with DID begins to become aware of their dissociation, the typical response is fear and confusion. Noticing the gaps in time; having friends tell you that you behaved "totally out of character" in a recent situation; people claiming they know you from a party or business function and having no memory of the event. The most frightening, in my opinion, are fugue states. I had clients who routinely found themselves in their car miles from home in an unidentified parking lot. Or "someone" went shopping and the person has no memory of the drive or any part of the shopping spree. It's crazy making stuff.

Then what happens? Hopefully the person will seek a therapist experienced in treating DID. That is not so easy. Far too few doctors and mental health professionals acknowledge DID, possibly because it's too complicated and time-consuming to understand, let alone treat. Add to that the propaganda that multiples are fakers and therapists worldwide implant similar memories of childhood abuse into their clients. I would ask, "to what end?" WHY would an ethical therapist even want to implant a memory? If the client is there, she already has issues. I wish someone would answer that question.

If you are a survivor seeking a therapist, a good resource is the ISST-D website where you can look up a therapist by state. Another strategy is to call a number of therapists in your area and ask if they can refer you to someone who treats dissociation. The therapist with the most recommendations is a good start.

To the outside world...

To the outside world, someone who has DID and is not in any stage of healing, may only appear as possibly having mood swings. No one in my life, including a therapist I saw on and off for many years for relationship issues, knew I had DID. My life until the fourth decade was only my conscious memories...a sporadic history of being in school and workplaces and a spattering of childhood memories with no abuse worse than unwarranted physical abuse by my scary father. I was the little girl with gold stars in kindergarten, an honor student in high school and college. I was the good girl, the good employee. Always did as told.

Someone who has never noticeably switched (changed from one self state to another) may begin to do so in the work environment or to family causing fear among loved ones and co-workers. It is disarming to say the least. Especially when another self state is a young child. I would venture to say that most multiples surround themselves with stuffed animals or dolls or coloring books without realizing they are filling the needs of the desire for such toys from within. Often the dissociated self state will have it's own age, personality, and name. Understand this is simply one aspect of the same person which became isolated in trauma.

Admittedly, it is very difficult to be a support person in the life of someone who has DID. Yet it is the one element they most need. Although it looks crazy, it is not. It is a complex survival skill adapted during childhood trauma that made perfect sense at the time. Coming undone at an adult age brings challenges for the survivor, the medical, and mental health community.

The photo of the Nautilus shell is a perfect image of multiplicity to me. It is a beautiful shell (an amazing entity) with many hidden chambers inside supporting the whole.

Can you imagine...

You are at work in a meeting giving a presentation to your company. Let your mind absorb how you speak, your mannerisms, your responses to others, what it feels like to be in that situation.

Suddenly a secretary rushes in saying your child or other loved one has just been in a serious accident and the hospital is on the phone. How do you respond? Can you feel your pace change? Your voice? Your emotions? Allow yourself to feel that transition from in-control worker to frantic parent, sibling, or friend.

You are in the hospital with your loved one and she is okay but badly hurt. You are speaking to her at her bedside. Feel that transition...in your voice, in your pace, in your emotions.

Internal parts all represent an aspect of yourself, which is why I like the term self states. For someone with DID, all of the above happens, except there is no memory from worker, to frightened adult, to caring mother.

Maybe as you were running out of the conference room at work your boss said "Take as much time as you need. But at least take the rest of the week off." That would have been heard by frantic you rather than work you. You might call later that day or the next morning asking for time off. Your boss will write that off as you were too emotional to hear at the time.

The next time you visit the hospital, worker you is "in charge" because you just spoke to a co-worker on the phone. A hospital employee that you know by name in the "mom state" greets you by your name but you have no knowledge of that person's identity.

People with DID have constant inconsistencies but pretend. They have an internal sense of "somehow I just got here and have to figure out what's going on". That's been their life experience--missing gaps. "Oh right! How could I have forgotten? My mind was focused on something else. Sorry."

Most can't imagine what it's like constantly having memory gaps but for some with DID, it's invisible. The time gaps are dissociated too. Gee, that last four hours sure went by fast. The person may have begun reading a book and ended four hours later reading the book, but another part could have cooked dinner, done the laundry, and vacuumed. That person will not recall having done the chores but will figure she must have done it yesterday and forgot...or something along those lines. And the lack of movement forward in reading will be "I must have fallen asleep."

Life is an unknown puzzle. Each self state is unknown to the others.

Trauma is in the eye of the beholder

A traumatic event is one that overwhelms an individual's senses. Two stand out from my lifetime so far: the assassination of President Kennedy and 9/11. Numbing, shock, remembering the moment we saw or heard in clear detail. On the other end of the trauma spectrum is whatever is viewed as traumatic by a child. One child may find any doctor visit traumatic but that would not induce dissociation. An early childhood injury requiring long-term hospitalization or long-term confinement or serious medical conditions requiring many doctor/hospital interventions might lead to DID. Medically induced DID, is not as common as DID resulting from traumatic physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse.

A fire, car accident, parent/sibling death may be viewed as traumatic by one child but possibly only very sad or scary by another. A moment internalized as trauma is preserved like a photograph with senses. Often anyone experiencing a traumatic incident will remember sights, sounds, smells, colors, particular objects, and/or textures (how something feels physically--rough, soft, slimy, scratchy). The emotions of the trauma also become locked along with the sensory experience in what I call a trauma bubble--a bubble wrapped in amnesia.

Lets talk parts

Any woman might have the roles of mother, daughter, sister, manager or employee, soccer mom, and wife. A man might be policeman, baseball coach, father, son, brother, husband. Don't each of us adapt our personalities in some way depending on who we are at the moment? A man is going to act very differently at work than he is with friends in a bar. And different when he goes home to his wife. These are generally subtle shifts with some crossover for each role we have in life. And of course we remember ourselves in each role. Most of us also can relate to releasing our inner child when we are having fun. In this respect, all of us have parts. We are multiples without amnesia.

When there is a dissociative split to compartmentalize the trauma of a child being hurt by someone who loves them--and the abuse continues--so does the dissociative split. For children with DID (remember this is decided usually by age 6), the personality develops as fragmented. Many roles in the child's life become compartmentalized by amnesia, meaning the child (and later the adult) does not know of this splitting, nor the teenager, nor the adult. Some children may begin to heal when an abuser moves out of the home or is arrested. Safety is a factor for healing.

People with DID spend three to four decades of their lives (on average) before realizing they are dissociative. I can attest to this statistic since most of my clients with DID were between 35 and 45 with some younger and a few older. The survivor art shown at left is what it feels like when someone becomes aware she has DID. For me personally, as a therapist, and in witnessing survivor art and hearing other survivors' stories, this depiction "hits home". Anything leaking through the amnesia is terrifying to feel. It's not uncommon for the person to feel crazy. It doesn't help that society reinforces that message!