Adding Blogroll to Website

I have added a blogroll to my website. To date, I have only provided links to a couple of blogs that are resources for child abuse survivors rather than tracking individual stories:

• Forbidden Topic
• What About When MOM is the Abuser

I have become aware of many good blogs written by child abuse survivors, such as Beautiful Ashes, so I have decided to add a blogroll to my site. I have moved Forbidden Topic and What About When MOM is the Abuser? to the blogroll as well.

If you would like to include your blog on my blogroll, please post a link in the comments section or send me an email with the link. My email address is under ABOUT FAITH ALLEN at the upper right of the screen. I don’t want to post it here because then I will get spammed to death by bots. I will check out your blog and make sure it is appropriate for my readers and then add it to my blogroll.

Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt

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Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID): Integrating the Original Child

On my blog entry Survey for Child Abuse Survivors with More Than One Diagnosis, a reader posted the following question:

I have been officially diagnosed with D.I.D. Currently we are integrating, sometimes at an alarming rate. There is a question though…how can we integrate with the core when the core has been sleeping and protected for many years? The core is pre-verbal and while we feel her presence, her breathing, her innocence…she does not stir, she is very hidden and protected. – Holly

You can still integrate even in this situation. Full integration is going to take some time and patience, but you can do it.

I think that you have confused the core with the original child. They are not necessarily the same thing.

The best analogy I can think of is this … To assume that the original child is the core is to see fragmenting like a banana. The sleeping original child is like the banana itself, and the alter parts are the peels. Until the banana wakes up and integrates, there is no core to work with.

I see fragmentation and integration differently. My analogy is like an iced-over pond. There is only one pond, but it has frozen, and the ice has broken off into chunks. One chunk holds anger, another holds terror, and another holds the feelings of the original child. However, the one chunk of ice that holds the original child’s feelings, even if it is huge, is not the pond. All parts collectively make up the pond.

The healing process is like shining the warmth of the sun onto the pond and melting the chunks of ice back into one lake. The core is not the one big chunk of ice that holds the feelings of the original child. Instead, the core is the part of the pond that has been melted through self-love back into the pond. The core might or might not contain the feelings of the original child, but the core is still just as much a part of your spirit as that original child block of ice is.

As long as you are shining the warmth of self-love onto your parts, you are melting the ice. All will merge back into one pond, which is where they have always belonged. It does not matter if the original child block of ice melts first or last. In fact, it might be easier for you to absorb the feelings of the original child once the rest of the pond is more fluid.

I remember when my original child woke up. I never felt so “in my body” as I did in that moment. It was a powerful experience. You will experience this, too. Just keep loving yourself.

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Naming Alter Parts to Heal from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

I received a question from a reader about healing from dissociative identity disorder (DID). She is reading a book about healing from DID, and that author recommends naming each alter part and holding “meetings” with the different alter parts to get them to work together. The reader asked if I agreed with this advice.

Before I answer the question, let me take a step back. As somebody over at the Isurvive message board once commented, DID is a “create your own disorder” disorder, so it manifests in different ways in different people. Some people might only have two or three personalities. In that case, each personality might have already named herself, and it would not be that complicated to “hold a meeting” that invites the input of all three.

However, DID can manifest in many different ways. In my situation, I had six layers of alter parts, most of whom were personality fragments but many of whom were full personalities. None of the layers knew about the other layers. I “guesstimate” that I had about 1,000 parts in all. I would have taken me forever to name each part and “hold meetings.” That simply would not have been feasible for me.

I am not saying that the author’s way is the “wrong way;” however, it is not the only way.

Because the traumatized child created the fragmentation, the fragmented adult intuitively knows the best way to heal. The key is figuring out how to listen to your intuition and learning how to trust it again. Severe abuse causes a person to doubt her own intuition. Learning how to hear and heed your intuition is a big part of healing from DID.

For me, naming the alter parts was not helpful. Healing from DID involved loving and accepting each part as “me.” Naming a part made it feel more separate. For example, the first part I “met” was named Irate. I integrated many other parts much more easily than Irate because Irate was my “friend,” and I didn’t want to “lose” her by integrating her. It took courage to follow my intuition and allow her to integrate, where she has become a part of me.

While I never held “formal meetings,” I did invite my alter parts to “come out” and express themselves. Once they expressed their memories and pain, there was no longer a need for them to stay separate, so they would integrate, and I would work through the memories and emotions.

When it comes to healing from DID, trust your own intuition. If another person’s advice sounds appealing at a heart level, then try it. If it does not, then try something else that feels like a better fit.

I know how scary it can sound to blaze your own trail with healing from DID, but try to remember that you blazed your own trail when you fragmented in the way that you did. Only you know the most effective way to put the pieces of the puzzle back together. You hold all of the answers inside of yourself.

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Good Resource for Understanding DID and Dissociation

Over on my professional blog, I write about how trauma affects children on Trauma Tuesdays and Trauma Thursdays. I write this blog for people whose lives are touched by adoption. Most of the people who read my trauma articles are either foster parents or adoptive parents who are parenting children who have suffered from trauma, such as child abuse. I try to explain the mind of the abused child so that the parents can have a better understanding about why their children act and react the way that they do.

A therapist who has healed from dissociative identity disorder (DID) contacted me about a new blog that she has started called Forbidden Topic. Her blog is so good that I added it to my resources section. Like me, this woman is hoping to break the silence and correct the misperceptions that pervade society about dissociation and DID.

If you struggle with dissociation, including DID, or just want to learn more about it, her blog is a wonderful resource.

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Ritual Abuse and Numerology

One of the questions I have been asked a lot about ritual abuse is if certain numbers trigger me. The answer is yes, and this is true for most ritual abuse survivors.

When I was brought into the cult, I was assigned a number as a name. My sister was assigned the next number. I have always been bothered by both numbers but particularly by the number assigned to me. I was not “Faith” to the cult. I was just a number. What really bothers me is that my number was not 1, so that means that other children came before me.

Most ritual abuse survivors are triggered by the numbers 6 and 9 but do not know why. I can provide some insight into this.

The Number Six

Ritual abuse generally desecrates Christianity, which (I assume) accounts for it being viewed as “Satanic”. The issue with the number six comes straight out of the Bible from the book of Revelation:

This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man’s number. His number is 666. – Rev. 13:18

Many ritual abuse survivors find the number six to be triggering. I cannot tell you specifically what is done to bring about this reaction, only that it is common among ritual abuse survivors.

The Number Nine

The number nine is a little trickier. A fellow ritual abuse survivor explained it to me this way: 6 + 6 + 6 = 18; and 1 + 8 = 9. So, ritual abusers see the number nine as significant and step up the ritual abuse when the child reaches the age of nine. This accounts for why I experienced some forms of severe ritual abuse that my sister did not. (She was 8 when we moved away from the cult.)

I do not know why numerology factors into ritual abuse, only that it does. If you suffered from ritual abuse and are triggered by different numbers, you are not alone.

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Basics about Ritual Abuse

I have not written that much about ritual abuse on my blog. This is because ritual abuse is the most difficult form of abuse for me to talk about. It really puts it in perspective when I feel more comfortable talking about mother-daughter sexual abuse than I do about ritual abuse.

Why is it so hard to talk about ritual abuse? One reason is because it sounds so “crazy.” When I tell people that I was taken at midnight to a wooded area and gang raped by people dressed in black robes around a bonfire at the full moon, it sounds “crazy.” It sounds like I watched one too many horror flicks. However, I rarely watch horror movies, and my sister has the same memories that I do.

Another reason it is hard to talk about is because of sheer terror. I endured a lot of abuse during my childhood – none had the sheer terror that came with the ritual abuse.

I compare regular abuse to street crime and ritual abuse to the mafia – I was abused by the “pros.” Ritual abusers are not involved in a “crime of passion” to gratify themselves in the moment. They are experienced child abusers who have spent centuries, if not millennia, perfecting the most effective ways to terrorize children as part of their sick rituals.

Was my ritual abuse “satanic”? I don’t know. The reasons behind why I was being terrorized never really mattered to me. I just wanted the abuse to stop, and I wanted to be strong enough to survive it without becoming like them. I succeeded.

Over my next few posts, I will be talking about ritual abuse. I am not sure what direction my writings will take, and I am not sure how much internal “backlash” I will experience by talking about it. However, I know that I am not alone in experiencing ritual abuse, and I want others to know that I get it. I also want others to know that they can heal from ritual abuse, just as I have.

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Masturbation as a Form of Self-Injury after Sexual Child Abuse

Today I am going to talk about a very difficult topic that affects many survivors of severe child abuse, particularly those who experienced severe sexual abuse and/or ritual abuse. The topic is using masturbation as a form of self-injury.

People who self-injure with masturbation tend to be women who use objects that cut, burn, or otherwise harm their genitals while they masturbate. I know women who have used anything from knives to hot curling irons to self-injure through masturbation. The only way these women seem to be able to climax is by experiencing pain, and the self-inflicted pain can be severe.

Why would a woman choose to masturbate with a knife, curling iron, or other dangerous object? The reason is that the child abuse survivor’s first sexual experiences intermixed orgasms with pain. Many child abuse survivors experienced orgasms during sexual abuse, which caused the child’s body to feel both “pleasure” and pain at the same time. Even though the child’s body reacted by having an orgasm, the child did not want the rape or sexual abuse, and the experiences of terror, pain, and orgasm got all jumbled up in the child’s head.

Now, as an adult, the child abuse survivor has a desire for sexual pleasure (just like any other adult human being), but the only way to achieve an orgasm is to combine it with pain and, in some cases, even bloodshed. Numerous child abuse survivors also need to fantasize about reliving the abuse in order to have an orgasm, whether through masturbation or consensual sex. In some cases, masturbating with dangerous objects is a reenactment of sexual abuse that the person suffered as a child.

The women I have spoken with who struggle with using masturbation as a form of self-injury feel deep shame about what they are doing, and each one fears that she is the only person on the planet who does such a thing. They also tell me that masturbating as self-injury is a compulsion: They want to stop, but they feel powerless to do so. This is true of all forms of self-injury, which is why self-injury is a compulsion, not a recreational hobby.

If you struggle with masturbating as a form of self-injury, you are not alone. You are also not “crazy.” Just like anyone else who struggles with other forms of self-injury, you can learn how to stop self-injuring through masturbation. It won’t happen overnight, but you can move toward weaning yourself off your compulsion.

The key to healing from any form of self-injury is learning how to talk about your feelings and express your emotions instead of shoving them back down inside. A good start is finding a qualified therapist with experience in counseling child abuse survivors. The self-injury is a symptom, not the cause. If you had never been sexually abused, then you would not feel a compulsion to self-injure through masturbating. Healing your emotional wounds from the underlying pain will help you stop feeling the need to self-injure through masturbation.

Related topics:

• How to Express Emotions
• How to Stop Cutting or Burning
• How to Use a Message Board for Child Abuse Survivors

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Dealing with the Unbelievable in Ritual Abuse

A fellow ritual abuse survivor contacted me with questions about “unbelievable” ritual abuse that she suffered. She was having a hard time believing that the ritual abuse happened because, from a logical standpoint, it did not seem possible.

Chrystine Oksana’s book, Safe Passage to Healing, calls this phenomenon “The Real Unreal” and “The Unreal Real.” What she means is that ritual abusers are masters at setting up the child to believe some things that did not happen while not being able to believe other things that actually did happen. To put it more colloquially, they are experts at the “mind f@#$.”

Here is an example of one of the mind f@#$’s that I endured. I am putting up a trigger warning because the incident is very disturbing. Please only read the section in triggers if you are in a good place.

+++++++++ ritual abuse triggers +++++++++

When I was around nine, the cult told me that I was going to be initiated into a higher level within the cult by killing a child. I did not want to do it, but the cult, as always, was not asking my opinion. They put me in a robe and laid a child at my feet. Her eyes were closed, as if she was sleeping.

The cult leader, who was wearing his black hooded robe as usual, stood behind me and placed a large knife in my hands. He then put his own hands around my hands so I was unable to drop the knife. He pulled my hands straight up in the air and held them there for a very long time, so long that my hands went numb.

As the cult leader held my hands up, he was making this long speech about inducting me into this new level. While I stood there, terrified and going numb, somebody shined a flashlight into my eyes the entire time so I could not see. (This was at night, so I could not see a thing.)

The cult leader finally forced my hands down hard with the knife, and I felt the knife sink into something. Lots of blood poured all over my body, much like in the climactic scene of the movie Carrie when someone poured pig’s blood all over Carrie at the prom.

++++++++ end triggers +++++++++

This was one of the few memories I recovered with another person in the room. My Reiki master “saw” the flashback along with me while I was receiving Reiki. I did not tell her about having a flashback. She just started asking me about seeing a lot of blood.

My first reaction to recovering this flashback was extremely intense, as you can imagine. I did not think I could survive having “murdered” someone. However, with lots of emotional support from the right people, I was able to see through the charade and realize that the entire episode was just one big mind f@#$.

The girl was not sleeping – she was unconscious. Unconscious people are not going to struggle, which means that there would not have been blood flying around as in a struggle. Second, even if I had hit an artery, there is no way that amount of blood would pour out of a child like that. The amount of blood involved was way over the top. Third, having a flashlight in my eyes at night would have blinded me to anything going on around me. I was relying on what I felt and what others told me was happening. And, finally, there was plenty of time to make the switch. The long speech was just to provide time to move the girl and replace her with something else – maybe a slab of meat.

She story sounds unreal, and yet the terror I felt in the aftermath was very real. If I had told anyone about the incident, the cult could have produced the child that I claimed to have “killed” and proven that I was a “liar.” Because I felt complicit in the “murder,” I was much less likely to blow the whistle on the cult. It was a win-win situation for the cult. Whether I told or did not tell, they had the power.

Ritual abusers do mind f@#$’s like this. It helps them break down the will of the child and ensures that the child never tells. Nothing is too “unreal” for ritual abusers.

Related Topics:

• Talking with Abused Adopted Child about Severe Abuse
• Trauma Tuesday: Believing Your Traumatized Adopted Child
• How to Heal From Ritual Child Abuse
• How to Support a Survivor of Ritual Child Abuse
• How to Forgive Yourself After Ritual Child Abuse

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Issues with Consensual Sexual Relationships after Child Abuse

In my last blog entry, I mentioned that the reader who asked about challenges after integration also wanted me to address issues with sex. As I stated in that blog entry, I believe that healing from child abuse and healing from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) are two different process. I believe that this woman’s issues with sex are not from the DID but from the child abuse, which is why integrating from DID has not fixed the problem.

I get this because I am in the same boat. You might have noticed that I have not discussed consensual sexual relationships much on my blog. That is because this is an area of my life that continues to be a challenge. If I were a single woman, I would go on sabbatical from sex so I could work through my feelings toward it. However, as a married woman, that is really not an option if I want to stay married.

Several child abuse survivors have recommended that I read the book The Sexual Healing Journey by Wendy Maltz. They tell me that this is the best resource for healing your consensual sex life after sexual abuse. I have purchased the book and have even flipped through it, but I am not yet ready to work through the book and do the exercises.

This is not to say that I have not made progress. A couple of years ago, I would get drunk before and self-injure afterward. I no longer rely on either crutch. I have also set more boundaries and no longer have sex when I don’t want it as frequently as I used to. I used to drive myself crazy trying to make something “good” out of something that made me feel “bad.” About a year ago, I moved toward indifference. That stopped the momentum of sex being “bad” and moved it into a “neutral” experience. Of course, hub would prefer that it be a “good” experience, but I still have a lot of healing work to do in that area.

I am sorry that I cannot be more helpful in this regard. My best advice is to read through The Sexual Healing Journey because several people have told me that it helped them to heal their feelings toward sex in powerful ways.

Related Topics:

• How to Heal Feelings Toward Sex After Childhood Sexual Abuse
• Trauma Tuesday: Sexual Aggression in the Sexually Abused Child
• How to Love Body After Childhood Abuse

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Challenges after Integration from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

A reader asked me to talk about the challenges after integration from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). As she pointed out in her email, many people who are healing from DID see integration as the end goal, but really integration is only the beginning. Interacting with the world as an integrated person is very different from interacting with the world from the perspective of a “multiple.”

I was in the same place as this reader a couple of years ago. I went looking for resources for people who had successfully integrated from DID, and I could not find many on the market. I think I found three books in all, and I bought two of them. I started reading the one that sounded like the best resource, and it only wound up depressing me. While the woman who wrote the book had succeeded in integrating from DID, she had many limitations on her life. I did not want any limitations. So, I chose to stop reading that book, and I never picked up the other one.

Healing from DID is not the same thing as healing from child abuse, although there is definitely quite a bit of overlap. Healing from child abuse is healing from the underlying trauma: it is turning your emotional wounds into scars. Healing from DID is about changing your internal reaction to the trauma: it involves changing the way you interact with the world.

The woman in the book I read continued to have flashbacks after integration, so it sounds like she healed from the DID faster than the underlying trauma. My experience was different: I dealt with very few flashbacks after integration from DID. I really believe that they are two different processes that are being healed at the same time through self-love.

As for specific challenges – Every single relationship in my life changed after I integrated from DID. I had to learn how to manage frustrating situations instead of just dissociating – that is still a challenge for me. I had to learn to feel pain in the moment instead of just encapsulating the pain and tossing it aside.

Interacting with the world as a “singleton” instead of a “multiple” is very different, and I am still learning how to do it. It comes second nature to me to split off an alter part, but I can also bring that part right back in again when I want to.

This article from the Sidran Institute is the best resource I have found regarding challenges you face after you integrate from DID. I am still in the process of learning to give up dissociation as a coping tool. Even though I am not fragmenting into alter parts, I do continue to dissociate on occasion, which is true of many child abuse survivors, even those without a history of DID.

Dissociation runs on a continuum, so I do not have the expectation of going from polyfragmented DID to completely “normal” overnight. Any progress toward staying whole and present is a step in the right direction.

The reader also asked me to address issues with sex. I will get into that in my next blog entry.

Related Topic:

How to Stay Integrated After Healing Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID

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