For First Time Visitors

If you are a first time visitor to this blog, I invite you to start from the beginning, especially if you are unfamiliar with the potential emotional impact of long-term child abuse.

Trigger caution to unhealed survivors!

Understanding the Incomprehensible

Children of incest or long-term sexual abuse grow up to be wounded adults with complicated emotional issues. Unfortunately, some symptoms are misinterpreted or often dismissed as "crazy", only serving to maintain a tormented victim status. We, as a society, have the power to change this dynamic. Each of us can make a difference.

Jul 20, 2011

Phones & Tones & Bellish Things

I've known since my first year of memories that alters were called out by sounds and/or words. As an adult, am fairly certain I was cued by a phone call that had only a tone when I answered. Depending on the frequency of the tone, an assigned alter would then do as trained: call a handler, drive to a designated location, perform a specific task. Of course all this was done without conscious memory. When I would return home, all I would do is either still be asleep or be standing somewhere at home in a stupor.

I do recall often hearing the phone ring (before knowing I had DID) when it wasn't really ringing. It was a joke that I'd answer the phone only to hear a dial tone.

Last week a new television series called Alpha began on the Sci Fi channel. I was triggered and intrigued. Someone did their homework. The concept is people with heightened sensory abilities are brought into a group by a "good guy" who is helping the previously brainwashed people to do good by stopping the people who are doing the brainwashing. In one scene in the season premiere, a young man answers a phone, hears a tone, and proceeds to assassinate someone in a state of amnesia. Once he is in the care of the good guys, he must answer the phone so the tone can be traced. Of course the tone triggers the man into action. Another person quickly injects something into the man's neck (also triggering) but stops the programming and brings him back to awareness.

All this to share why I'm writing this post. During a therapy session yesterday,  I did work on my trigger to financial information (stocks, bonds, foreign exchange, offshore accounts). I can hear only so much in conversation or in movies or television before I go into overload and have to leave or turn it off. I knew my last active alter had been cued out at my work place by a specific phrase by a specific person. I learned this through a collage and was able to stop myself from responding.

Using EMDR in therapy, I was led back to the alter. She had never healed. She had been blocked from hearing any more signals but was still hiding in the shadows in fear of being accessed at any moment. She was unaware of present time. While relieved she had not been called on to do anything "bad" with money, she also had never moved into a place of healing. We were able to accomplish that in the session. The issue of tones had not come up because the last handler used a cue phrase.

This morning my iPhone alarm for my 7 a.m. pill went off...the bell tower. I sleep with the phone on my bed because of the morning alarms I need and it's so much easier to turn off. Also, I don't have to worry about power outages at night that affect the alarm clock;  and the bell tower is so much less startling than the clock buzzer or other sounds. Back to the bell tower alarm at 7 a.m. this morning...for the first time ever my hand accidentally knocked the phone back against the headboard where it then fell down behind the bed in the crack between the mattress and headboard.

The sound was turned up and the bell tower just played over and over. I ran for the long handled grabber tool. I was unable to reach the phone from the left side of the bed. Bell tower, bell tower, bell tower. Am on sound overload unable to shutdown or turn it off. From the right side of the bed I had trouble seeing the phone but found it after moving some tissues that had also disappeared into the space by the headboard. Finally the phone was within reach and I turned it off.

Three times in the next five minutes I checked to make sure I had turned the alarm off or it hadn't gone off again because I kept hearing it. Then I realized it was playing over and over in my head. Non-stop bell tower. I turned on some favorite music but only heard the bell tower in the background. I grabbed my grounding beads but they didn't help. BB sleeps in the other room due to snoring issues. He hadn't heard any of my trauma. I woke him up and asked him to talk to me hoping a human voice might quell the bells. He couldn't stay awake so I returned to bed grabbing the beads again. This time I turned on Belleruth Naperstek's guided imagery for relaxation. Listening to her voice helped quiet the bells and I fell back asleep.


Stop the Bells!




At one point I asked inside if the one playing the bells over and over again could please stop. But I also wondered if the alter who had moved into the healing place yesterday had been triggered by the overwhelming non-stop bells and was stuck in a flashback.

Part of my EMDR session yesterday led me to flashbacks of being programmed for certain alters to respond to certain frequencies followed by ECT (electro-convulsive therapy). Although ECT is said to supposedly erase memory, I wonder if it didn't also serve to reinforce recently-installed programming.

Logic tells me bells were used for very early programming, much like Pavlov's dog. My earliest programming memories though lead to piano tunes of children's songs like Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. But because the alter rescued yesterday seems to feel traumatized by the bells and she had been the last alter to be active in my DID life, bells were likely also used later in life.

My hope in sharing this experience is that it finally processes in me and maybe will help someone else who experienced similar programming.

Jul 6, 2011

Dismantling Delgado

Since my last post, I have still been dealing with the histamine effects. Mostly the rash is dormant now with sporadic itching. My Pycnogenol is kicking in and I'm taking less and less Benadryl. In the aftermath of this latest attack on my body, I wanted to begin working on the Delgado introject. I believe his job is to continue attacking the body. I've had one issue after another and don't want to have another if I can help it...at least not because I was programmed to self destruct.

Yesterday my therapist began work by addressing the internal protagonist. She kept reminding me it was not Jose M. R. Delgado but a part of me made to take on his likeness. The session ended with that part contemplating his fate...to maintain the loyalty through fear of the past or to allow for healing. When I got home I did one Polyvore set after another processing all that was coming up. Eventually I got to the one who was behind the Delgado mask. He was a tortured teen/young man indentured to Delgado.


Shedding Internal Delgado's Mask



Just prior to my session I had shown a girl imprisoned. Apparently she represented the trauma bond to Delgado.


Untitled



After processing Delgado fear and abuse with many sets, I was able to show the young girl as free although she is very confused about what to do with her freedom. My last set showed her contemplating in solitude by the sea. I am sure she will heal with the help of insiders.


Quiet Reflection



Not long ago I was in a trauma center terrified of my own body. Because of a recent integration, I no longer feel that level of fear. But working with an internalized abuser is rather daunting. Seeing the mask come off to reveal a tortured teen made it easier for me to want this wounded part of me to heal. Clearly he was not doing his job willingly.

Only time will tell if the programming broke. It's impossible to know about back up programming until it turns up. This is the third level of programming I've undone connected to Delgado since my father's death. I can only hope.

I would like to reclaim my life from this point forward, understanding there is still work to do. I have doctor appointments to help me fix what can be fixed of my body to return my quality of life to be more active. It's difficult to believe I'm still doing this much work when I started in 1997. It really is nearly a life sentence to undo the damage. The good news is I still have hope. I'm still evolving into the person who I can be at this time in my life. I know other survivors can too if they keep moving forward. There are times when moving forward was clawing on my hands and knees.  I hated what they did to me. But we can't let them win.

We have to live to tell our stories. And we have to keep telling our stories until enough people believe who can help stop it for future generations. Delgado is alive and in his 80s. The world will be better off when he is gone. I hope I will finally have complete peace inside when that happens.