Illusion of consciousness

Thought this was interesting. Have done this many ways beginning with my old collages. It seems to have more impact with the Polyvore collage:


Illusion of consciousness - by grace2244 on Polyvore.com

I'm beyond 100 collages and seem to be moving toward the earlier memories. Not very settling. Still feeling frozen to refocus on any other project until the fusion "flood" is documented. Please forgive my long delays between posts.

An expert explains Tara and DID

Showtime went the extra mile by producing an informative and entertaining interview with an expert on DID about the lead character of The United States of Tara. The interview is on Showtime's website. The International Society for the Study of Trauma & Dissociation (ISSTD) also went the extra mile by devoting part of their website to the Showtime television series.

Dr. Richard Kluft is viewed as one of the country's foremost experts on DID. He provides balance to Tara (entertainment and creative value versus reality). In Grace Uncensored I have expressed my view that it is not often someone with DID will have such dramatic switches. Dr. Kluft confirms my insight. He also provides realistic statistics about the prevalence of DID. Personally, I love his comments at the end of the video relative to what he hopes the audience takes away from the series.

Some dialog on the show alludes to Tara going off medication which had been keeping her alters in check because the medication made her feel zombified. In reality, there is no medication that controls alters. However, if someone with DID is given medication so strong that it does "zombify" (misdiagnosed DID treated with medication for schizophrenia), it can have the impact of shutting the person down. A person with DID cannot heal unless alters can be active. As Dr. Kluft explains, most with DID go through life without ever being detected as DID because changes are so subtle. Perhaps that aspect will be explained or corrected in a future episode through collaboration with the consultants.

In watching the previews for future shows, Tara definitely reveals the emotional pain and anguish that goes with having DID and trying maintain a loving marriage and family. The show has minor flaws but overall is educational, touching, and entertaining. It does not make light of DID as some had feared. Bravo to Showtime!

Alters who speak other languages

The thought just occurred to me that possibly what others used to call "speaking in tongues" was DID with an alter speaking an actual foreign language. Anyway, I spoke of needing a German and Russian dictionary to fully understand some of my collages and internal clues. I would hear a word repeatedly in my head. Sometimes it would sound like an English word. If not, I'd check both dictionaries. It's possible one of me knows French, but that has never been confirmed. The first three years of my life were in Germany and I have no doubt I had German and/or Operation Paperclip "trainers". The words that came up were single words or a short phrase only. Something a young child could understand.

I've relayed this next bit of my history before but is worth repeating here. I was determined to enter the military. In 1972, I was successful in being accepted into the Air Force despite my lack of 1/2" height. Career choices were not made until about the fourth week of basic training. My recollection is auto mechanic, file clerk, or Russian interpreter. I'd been a secretary and wanted more adventure than a mechanic, so I chose the latter. I had no conscious knowledge of Russian. The first day of class we were given a language test to see our level of comprehension, if any. I scored an 85. The next closest score was in the 60s. Everyone stared at me. I was clueless. At the end of the course, I was told that, at the time, I spoke with the best Moscovian accent the school director had heard before by an American. Always got good grades in school so didn't think much of it.

Fast forward to the late 90s when memories began and I discovered a system of Russian alters. I still don't know when I actually learned the language in my dissociated world. I'm fairly positive I was in Russia for "space camp" when I was 11 turning 12 (end of 1964).

I'm confirming that other multiples who recall "knowing" another language without ever taking conscious lessons is not a far stretch at all. In my memories, FWIW, the U.S. was cooperating with Russia in 1964 even though the rest of the world believed there was a Cold War. My reality of history is very different from the written version.

If you are a survivor and see words in collages in a foreign language, don't dismiss them, especially if you see the language turn up over a period of time. Communication Arts is a good source on that topic because they have annual photography and illustration issues with submissions worldwide. Next post (if I remember to check here) will be about what you use as images. The collage "Project Mayhem" which appears two posts before this one has the words "everything matters". That is very true for our healing process.

Change can be good

Fusion is new territory for me so the blog is hopefully educational for many. After a month of continuous visual messages and collages that I don't understand all or part of any message, today was different in a good way. I began to receive direct messages. The internal voice or the answer "landing in my head". I'm wondering if acknowledging Easel as the lovely alter doing the collages was part of that change? Would like to share the answers from this morning.

On my art blog, I had a post revealing Easel from the time she was a young girl. The collages showed me she was a very little girl but I also know her abuse began as a baby. The post made to the art blog immediately preceding Easel was a collage I had of my effed up f*ther. He's sitting on a tiny little island painting on an EASEL! Look at that inner strategy! Also, the first three letters of Easel's name are his initials. Knock me over with a feather.

Speaking as a spectator of my own (Easel's) collages, I was blown away by Zen Space, also posted on the art blog. I connected no trauma to the image. My SO's first response was "stairway to heaven". This morning's message was quite profound. The collage is a perfect example of Stockholm syndrome--why captive children may not flee even if given an ideal opportunity. Here is the collage followed by the explanation.


Zen Space by grace2244

The woman appears oblivious to the stairway behind her. In fact she seems oblivious to the beautiful sky behind her. She is focused on the lovely blossoms. She has wings but they aren't large enough to fly. It's difficult to tell but the wings are torn just behind her back. They wouldn't work even if they were larger. She has no curiosity to explore the stairs. If the stairway is an indication of "going to heaven" or suicide, that is forbidden. Even though survivors of organized abuse are plagued with messages of suicide when healing begins, while we are "useful" to the underworld, running away or escaping is under threat of awful consequences. And suicide is under the dire consequences of several innocent or loved ones being killed.

It's easier to block out the rest of the world, to include beauty and escape routes, than to see what we can't have. Pretty picture--powerful message. Stay or suffer beyond comprehension. Don't even think about it. Am watching the special coverage building up to tomorrow's inauguration. It's all about change and excitement. Am pleased with the change in me today.

Project Mayhem Resolved

Wow. Doing that collage with the cigarettes has had some immediate results. I was wondering why I couldn't stop it myself since I knew what was being done. Plus, I got the name of "collage person". I posted a series of her pictures on the art blog awhile ago. Her name is Easel. I know. Slap self on forehead. She goes with art. The little blond girl who has appeared in several collages who I thought was a young Janie was Easel. You can see from my many images of Easel that she is always with short blond hair and has those delicate facial features.

Even though it sounded silly as I was asking inside, I wondered if we just couldn't have a "no smoking" policy so I wouldn't be "burned" again. My always knowledgeable protector indicated by knowing the answer, it was now undone. He also noted how brave Easel had been to show me the answer.

This morning I started off with loud high pitched screams because of the blister. After speaking to my SO about my internal conversation, I realized that the pain didn't even evoke an eek. It's sore but on it's way to resolving already.

This is the part I couldn't make up if I wanted to. Early programming was in Germany and spoken in German. I've kept German and Russian dictionaries near me through my healing since realizing I had clues in those languages too. Easel goes with artist in English but "esel" in German means ass--which is the site of my pain. I don't know if it was a cigarette or something like a cigarette. But some kind of probe was used to burn me.

Fight Club goes with fires and a photo shoot prior to the release of Fight Club had Brad Pitt with fires and a bunny! It all goes together in a very complex puzzle in a way nothing else could go together. The proof will be if I ever have blisters again in "that" area of my body. With all the memories and truth coming out now, that would be a much welcome relief. I thought it was neat that collaging led directly the undoing of this previously unending painful problem. Yes, alters can be trained to do all kinds of things to the body. Typically that's reserved for very sophisticated programming, which, unfortunately, I had.

I'm very happy that Esel is now officially Easel and expressing herself beautifully. I guess that might sound conceited but I'm actually very proud of "her", who I know is making herself known as part of healed me. The United States of Tara is at 10 p.m. My hopes are way up for the series. Please watch if you have Showtime to gain an understanding of multiples. The show can go a long way toward erasing the horribly negative image we survivors have and continue to endure.

Project Mayhem

Some may recall the movie Fight Club. The storyline includes Brad Pitt as an alter of Edward Norton. From my perspective, the entire movie looked like the inside world of someone who was multiple. I'm not sure all main characters smoked, but both Brad Pitt and Helene Bonham Carter's characters were chain smokers. Brad, as Tyler, begins Project Mayhem to raise hell with the city government (as I recall). Why am I talking about Fight Club?

A recent post in Grace Uncensored spoke of the cigarette and/or cigar burns that occur as body memories and have never stopped throughout my healing. I recall having painful "sores" before memories. I just didn't tell anyone I had a problem I couldn't explain. My therapist and I agreed to work on undoing any residual programming in case the burns are the result of a kind of self-harm conditioning. That would mean an alter or alters are creating whatever chemical responses in my body are necessary to cause the painful blisters that always are in my genital area.

Last night I felt a blister begin in a very painful spot. I'm angry today that I haven't been able to stop this before now. With all the collages, I wondered what would happen if I just started putting pictures of cigarettes and cigars on a blank collage page. Not that anyone needs to understand the meaning of everything, but I was able to see the alter who is responsible for the burns or who has the answer to stop it. The burning of my very sensitive orifices began shortly after I was born, if not immediately after my birth. It may have been the first consistent trauma (painful sensation) to cause a split.

I couldn't get the answer by asking inside, but those with the answers in fused me were able to show me who was responsible for my distress and much more with art therapy. I'm still in awe of the synchronicity of finding Polyvore website so soon after the fusion but before the new brain connections began to overflow.

Clearly, you can see from the collage, it was not okay to be a girl.


Project Mayhem by grace2244

Sophisticated conditioning

We are now into the forbidden part of the Forbidden Topic. We have been just by my presenting this topic. But I can't go further without shifting into the language that goes with it. I would hope those wanting to learn about this underground have absorbed sufficient information (and done your own research) to understand how devious and despicable the world of organized pedophilia is to children.

The word I've been avoiding in the blog now has a time and place. If you accept that this underworld has proven techniques to deliberately create a child with multiple personalities, then you can at least consider the possibility that more sophisticated methods exist than to terrorize children and make porn movies along with other categories of child exploitation.

What would benefit an organization that wishes to remain hidden when it is committing crimes? People who are part of the organization in strategic positions is essential. Not all judges and police and attorneys general are pedophiles, but it is known by the organization who is "one of them". Damage control by letting cases get lost in a pile or dismissing charges on technicalities or other means are available, to include attacking the victim's sanity for believing such things are happening.

What about training for the victims? What would benefit the organization? Employees within child services organizations is one area where an alter can keep an eye on cases and follow orders to remove certain files and/or copy certain documents. For an even broader scope, think of any government agency. Remember spy vs. spy in Mad Magazine. One agency wants to know what is happening in another agency. No one wants to be caught though. By having conditioned alters respond to cues for gathering or relaying information, the organized crime has the perfect set up. If the victim were to be caught in the act of stealing or doing something with files against company policy, an alter with no knowledge of the covert activities would present and truly have no idea about crimes. The employee would successfully pass a polygraph test. And if the victim of the programming were to be caught "red handed", no one in the organized crime arena could be identified.

What about insider stock tips? What if a victim subject to this kind of programming (which some call mind control) were trained to relay information covertly in an alter state so the host of the body were clueless about any illicit activities?

The amnesia is the greatest and most reliable cloak for the underworld. Since memories won't surface for decades, what does it matter? Except that the underground world has continued in those decades producing more and more children with dissociative states.

I've alluded to system structures and names used for different systems or parts of a system which correspond to types of alters. At this point, I think it's time for me to take that leap into the very hidden world of programming. I don't know how I was conditioned, but I know what happened to me. I've come to understand some very complex and sophisticated programming that serves to both devastate and simultaneously create extremely loyal alters to the group.

The underground military and government centers where programmers are trained and victims in the more sophisticated groups are taken periodically for specialized training do exist and is ongoing. I am uncertain about local places where I may have been taken for sophisticated conditioning, but am 90% positive of certain locations, especially those I have visited since memories surfaced.

The term mind control tends to frighten people but when a child learns to obey adults with great power over them and are continually threatened with their life, they are controlled children. They live in fear of not obeying. Conditioning is a kinder term and maybe more digestible. Programming seems most suited for what is happening. The abusers want a specific response by a specific alter under certain conditions. This can be expanded to back up alters or a group of alters, each with a job, working to complete a specific task. In the end, a crime has been committed (even if the commodity is only information) for which the victim has no conscious memory.

What can be more evil than viewing any baby born into this world as a new commodity ripe for conditioning? That's what we survived...we being survivors collectively. This is what I survived and now am able to share. All that remains is for good people to listen and to act.

Rebirth Ceremony

This topic has the potential to be highly triggering. Please use your best judgment if you are in the early stages of healing from DID before reading further. I'm sharing this information because it may help make sense of partial memories or fears. My first insight into this ceremony was from the brochure provided by the Ritual Abuse Task Force (Los Angeles?) in the late 90s. One of my earlier collages depicted the ceremony exactly as outlined yet had made no sense to me looking at it. You can see it had no overt horror elements. I had believed from the images that it took place in Holland where my parents took me on a "special" trip without my sister. We lived in Germany at the time.


The words are blurred but become legible if you click on it to enlarge. The vultures are speaking about a dead carcass and the "ad" at the top right speaks about a sheep's uterus. The lower portion of the collage is blatantly classical music and time which goes with conditioning. All intentional horror has a specific purpose in organized pedophilia.

Recently I read another description of the ceremony from a therapist whose survivor clients had recalled greater details. Basically, the young child is placed inside the body of a large dead animal. Since I have always been tiny, I would not be surprised if the animal of choice for me was a sheep even though some believe only specific animals are used. A sheep is not one of them which is why I don't rely on one definition for anything in this underworld.

The child is sewn inside the carcass for a period of time for horrific isolation. In one of the descriptions I read, the purpose was to create an alter to be the loyal cult alter. However in both my earlier collages of Holland and the one I completed last night, I created alters to comply with sexual abuse. Did I say I was 3?! I have maybe five conscious snapshot moments of that trip. One was seeing the bunnies at the zoo. Another was the beautiful view of Kuchenhoff Gardens with rows of tulips as far as the eye could see. They were bands of color. Red tulips for acres, then yellow, and other colors followed.

Yesterday I found a pretty image of the gardens with windmills in the background that I thought I might use. When I began to collage, I went immediately to that image. What happened next I watched from the background as "collage person" went to work. The sea of red tulips became a blood bath. Alters covered in "tulips" emerged completely traumatized. A rabbit managed to get in there along with several who watched from above. When the collage was nearly done, I looked at it and was so repulsed by it but kept trying to add more horror elements which I kept deleting. Enough was enough. I got the message. It was horrific and unbearable.

I must have produced a cluster of alters both from the trauma and those that were meant to be produced. These new collages since my fusion match up to much sketchier collages from early healing. All I knew from that Holland trip was I was taken somewhere, sexual alters were created, and porn movies were made. Testing the new alters?

I'm not going to share the collage here. You can see it at my Polyvore page if you wish. I think it's too much to share openly. What I understand about yesterday's collage is the ones inside who remember have that horror of being enclosed in the carcass seared into the trauma memory. Yes, I was a very special child for my parents to have taken me on that trip for quality time.

The Key

Am at collage 54 in 25 days. My therapist saw them today. We both agreed it was best to allow the driven process to continue because of such information overload. It has to come out somehow and this is safe. The survivor collaging group is growing nicely and the power that comes from the art is just stunning. With permission of the artist, I'm sharing this recent work with you. It's such a powerful statement of ones inside feeling trapped.


key by meshells

"Key" is the perfect title.

Art to deflect memory overload

I've been stuck in collage land for 23 days, with a total of 51 collages as of about 2 a.m. They are pouring out of me. I haven't been posting about it because it will be different for everyone--what they see. How they put things together. But I could already see I was using the same images or elements in several collages. I had them print out so I could move them around like a puzzle.

About three of them have similar words as well as the same littles. The word "obey" ties several into one memory. If I take another component and match all the collages with that, it's a different message. Whatever new brain connections are being made, it's happening fast and needs to get out. I would be overwhelmed with flashbacks or talking in the background if I didn't have this tool right now. You can see from my "production" level that my brain is bursting with new information.

Some is very sad. Some are answers I don't really want but suspected. At the rate I've been doing them, I would think it would be too much for someone to be THAT creative to make up this stuff and consistently relay the story of my past. I did something unusual today, or at least I thought it was. I showed my real life time line...each place I lived, the elementary school (I have no idea why I remember that), and something that went with that time in my life. Ballet and gymnastics went with my life from age 3 until 12. Gymnastics dominated my high school years.

Anyway, I have two real life collages depicting from birth through the Air Force after finally moving out of my house and away from my manipulative controlling father at age 19. The rest of my life is represented as a simple job behind a desk and my travels. Very neat collages. That was followed by one of my memories after the amnesia broke down and it looks like a mess. There are so many elements in it.


Memories by grace2244

Those two real life collages is what I thought my life was. Simple, boring, regular, neat, organized. I guess some of my rage at this happening to me is starting to show. Wonder how much longer I will need to get this new fusion stuff out. I miss doing my blog posts. Wanted to let you know what was going on. I think the puzzle aspect to the collages is really neat. They were not done in any particular order yet some of the later ones actually go with the earlier ones. Strange process.

Please remember there is now an Adult Survivors of Abuse group on Polyvore if you would like to try your hand at expressing yourself through collages. We have 11 members now. Hope to be back soon on a more regular basis.