Diffusing harm alters

This is a technique my system already developed for me. I haven't seen it written as a technique anywhere. Will share trying to translate from both survivor/therapist perspective. I firmly believe this safe way of acting out harm programming saved my life...likely more than once. To engage in this technique, you must have acquired several coping skills and be comfortable with them. One is the ability to watch from the screening room a/k/a projection room.

Secondly, you must have protectors or caretaker alters who are strong and say they have the ability to do this. You can ask after you get all the details. If you don't have strong protectors, you can place protectors inside of you for this purpose. I tended to internalize television or movie characters who were strong and safe (to me). Some actors look kinda scary. I chose protectors who could handle me as a little...hugs were safe and telling me something was not okay was heeded (sorta). Loving discipline. But also able to handle adult who came out swinging or wanting to engage in harmful activities to self or others. You can use superheroes too.

Hopefully you have a main protector who will work with you on doing this because modifications might be needed for this to work in your system. My first cue to using what I called "The Halfway House" was feeling an urgency to SI or run away or go away or acquire something harmful. The purpose of the halfway house is to watch an alter act out his or her "programming" (trained job) in a safe manner.

I started out with the setting being my safe place. But I watched as a movie and "placed" the alter in the setting. Sometimes I didn't know which alter was causing the compulsions but she would show up when I did this technique. For me, I almost always had adult or little females, but occasionally had a young male alter.

These were the rules for the halfway house:
Only one alter in the halfway house at a time.
All necessary internal resources are available.
No matter what the alter does, s/he will be saved/rescued/live.
Once saved, the alter remains in protective care somewhere in the system where s/he can heal because she will have seen what was supposed to have happened to her/the body.

This may be triggering to some because of unhealed messages of SI. And if you are able to make this resource available, SI alters are welcome to come forward and ask to use it. Other times you may have to use it to be safe because you *know* something bad is supposed to happen.

This is a movie. You watch it as an adult which means littles are in a safe place unless there are littles who go with the alter to be in the halfway house. (By the way, you can call this place whatever you like.) I used to have an army of protectors initially...about eight because I could outsmart (at least temporarily) whatever safety measures were in place. I haven't used the halfway house in a very long time, thank goodness, although I used it briefly when Ellie was feeling so sad, wondering why she felt she needed to die and if she had a "plan".

In my internal world, I lived in a lovely mansion :-) My room had it's own bathroom which was always a source of concern for protectors. Because you know the kind of trouble we can get into in there! A protector was always assigned to keep guard over the bedroom and *me*. I was/am a different kind of child/adult as the inner adult. Thank goodness I've stopped acting out all that sh*t.

Whatever your set up is, have a separate contained room as part of the main safe place to begin with the halfway house. All protectors assigned to the halfway house will have their strategy which you don't need to know. You just need to watch to make sure you have time to follow through...when you are ready to go to bed at night, go inside and watch. Or take time for a nap but do this exercise instead. What you learn about the alter's ultimate objective may be upsetting to you so self care coping skills are also essential.

Ready? Let the protectors give you the "go ahead". You go into the movie screening room and sit back and watch as one of you takes up residence in the halfway house. Will give you an example. The movie starts and I can hear water running. A protector checks on the occupant and sees she is taking a shower which looks innocent enough. She confesses to wanting to cut so protector makes sure no razors are in shower area or in bathroom/bedroom at all. Alter becomes frustrated, angry, enraged and begins to scream and pound fists on glass shower wall. Protectors coaching her through anger but want her out of the glass enclosure to continue (safe anger). Sudden loud crashing of glass as alter throws herself through the glass landing on the floor cut and bleeding.

Immediate 911 call and protectors tending to her. She is fine at (internal) hospital. You and your system now know what was supposed to have happened--cut self any way possible with major damage. Now alter's messages can be healed. The lies about her having to die can be addressed.

Sometimes I've watched the alter sneak out of the house and take off in a car to go somewhere isolated. Magic works for the halfway house. For instance, if alter goes to jump off building, you can have Superman get to her. Or instantly there is fire department below who can catch her. Whatever you see happening, she will rescued and live. That's the rule.

A few internal techniques. Protectors knew how to anticipate escapist behaviors. GPS on car to track whereabouts. Cell phone with GPS if she finds GPS on car. There's always a one upmanship in strategy.

Feel free to ask questions. Have never attempted to put this into writing before. It should work for all as long as you have the strength and coping skills noted in the beginning. If not, and you are in therapy, maybe your therapist can help you through a similar scenario during a session. Wishing all of you a safe December.

Creating internal healing space

One of the remarkable aspects of a multiple is the ability to create or modify their internal world to facilitate healing. Each multiple will have his or her own creation. Only that person can tell you what is there...what is seen, heard, changing, growing, etc. Much of healing revolves around the survivor's ability to work with the internal world.

What I'm offering here are both techniques suggested by others working with DID and/or what was implemented in my own internal world to help. I had about two years before I had a therapist. My healing was guided internally. I researched, read, joined safe online support groups. I realized I had already created quite an intricate safe place where *I* lived with my protectors. It was heavily guarded with security systems and I always had "bodyguard" protectors when I ventured outside (meaning outside of the safe place of my internal world or outside into the real world). Before finding my therapist, I already had an anger room, a very calming zen-like place, and a very large living room where I sometimes met others who were healing and were safe to meet.

An anger room is an internal place for any identity to use as a safe release for anger. As a therapist, I would have survivors create the rules of the safe place. Often the rules would include: no one can hurt themselves intentionally or accidentally, a protector needed to be present for littles or adults with self harm thoughts, lots of pillows and stuffed animals, walls made of something soft. Additions might be to soundproof the internal room so as not to upset others overhearing the words yelled out. No limit on words yelled or ability to scream. I would ask if the survivor might like a peaceful room connected to the anger room to go and curl up and cry or just to rest after the anger release. Many chose that option.

It was by working with others, I realized internal safety always had to be insured. One person created the anger room and threw glass into trash cans to hear the sound. Then she told me the glass had cut her leg. (The alter was experiencing being hurt internally.) From that point on it was glass that turned into pixie dust or similar harmless substance so it could never hurt anyone.

Sarah Krakauer's book, Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder, suggests an Anger Rock exercise which worked very well with clients. Her book has healing ideas that either therapists can use or survivors might adapt for themselves.

Because a survivor's safe place might take many forms, either an existing room might be used or a new room added to the structure for the healing purposes. Internal landscapes can also include outdoor settings such as a meadow, mountains, streams, the ocean. Anything soothing is good. Once a new healing place exists, all identities who would like to share in the new place are invited. I always had the survivor implement the rule that only identities who would honor the rule of peaceful cooperation could join. (If needed, a protector could enforce the rule.)

One aspect I found helpful as a new identity came forward who wanted to move into the safe place was he or she (regardless of age) could create their own room. Littles always knew exactly what they wanted. They could have as many toys or comfort objects as desired. Some littles wanted a door but kept open a little. Some wanted the privacy of a locked door (which was allowed as long as it was privacy for safe activities). Very interesting to hear what each created. Once the new self state was in the new room, the host would generally return saying the new one was in the room and okay.

Another important special room is the safe place for littles. A room inside a room without windows and several protectors. Lots of toys and activities. This is where littles could go if they were afraid of anything going on outside of the body and where the host could request the littles go if "adult only" activity were being conducted. That could mean going to work, being mom, engaging in behavior not appropriate for littles, etc.

At another time, I'd like to share how my protectors helped me to diffuse the self-harm, self-destruct alters. That internal room likely saved my life.

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.

"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

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.