I have already shared the two events that caused my inner child, “Annie,” to go to sleep. You can read about them here and here. Both stories are very triggering.
After Annie went to sleep, I woke up, and I did not know who I was. I just knew that I was not Annie, and it bothered me to no end that people kept calling me Annie. I hated Annie and everything about her, including her name. I did not want to be called Annie any longer. However, I did not know who “I” was.
I now recognize that my new self-perception was through a newly created “host personality” who had not yet been named. I had a multiple system in place to drive me through my day, but this nameless part of myself was very confused. I had to take a standardized test at school, and I was told to write my “full name.” That was when the host personality first learned that my full name was “Faye Anne Allen.” “Annie” was just a nickname. I decided that, from that moment on, I would be called Faye, and I refused to respond to any other name.
The weirdest thing was that there was not one part of myself that related to the name “Annie.” It wasn’t like I had to retrain myself to embrace this new name. There was not one ounce of Faye that felt like an Annie.
As you can imagine, announcing my refusal to respond to the name Annie did not go over well with my second grade teacher in the middle of the school year. She did eventually relent because I was simply that stubborn. My mother’s name is also “Faye,” so my father flat refused to call me that. I succeeded in getting everyone in my life other than my father and his parents to call me Faye instead of Annie, and I cringed whenever my father would call me that vile name.
When I became a multiple, I endured numerous severe headaches. I complained about them so frequently, both at school and at home, that my parents took me to a doctor. The doctor could find nothing wrong with me. He referred me to an allergist. I was tested for numerous allergens in my back, but I was completely allergy-free. The doctor’s diagnosis was that these were “stress headaches,” and all of the adults in my life seemed completely okay with the fact that a seven-year-old child was having multiple severe “stress headaches.”
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
Do you correspond with Annie now? Does she feel safe enough for that?
Peace,
mia
Hi, Mia.
I integrated Faye back into Annie a few years ago and took the name Faith to represent the core. That story is here:
http://faithallen.wordpress.com/category/aftereffects/dissociative-identity-disorder-did/integration-dissociative-identity-disorder-did-aftereffects/page/3/
I am going to tag that short series as part of “My Story” so people can find it easier.
- Faith
I spelled my name Micheal instead of Michael. For a while I spelled my middle name different.
I had to do a bibliography for school at age 9. That was a horror, that paper became my history.
I went to the doctor for everything from tape worm to lock jaw. I would grow out of it.
When ever I have to introduce my self in class or my name is called from a list I have to say my name over and over in my head.
If you ask me now what my last name is I can not tell you with out saying my full name.
Drives me nuts when people call me Mike.
oh Faith your story has so many familiar components. Though I did not change my name (I was far too shy to be assertive enough to do that), I did change the way I dressed and behaved and I hated my name.
Thank you again for sharing…..it makes my own story a little more clear.
barbi
I see this sort of negates my last comment on your last post. I had similar experiences… to the given birth name.
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