Yesterday, I blogged about dissociative identity disorder (DID) introject, or persecutor, alter parts. Today, I will share the process that I used to heal my persecutor alter parts. This method may or may not work for you, but it was very effective for me. In order to be willing to try it, you need to open your mind to the possibility that your persecutor parts are actually “good” because they are a part of you. I first did this as a leap of faith based upon what I had read in Chrystine Oksana’s Safe Passage to Healing.
I would begin by telling the part thank you for the role that s/he served in helping me survive the abuse: I could not have survived without that part. I would then tell the part that the body is no longer being abused and has not been for many years. I am now living in an adult body. Then, I would look at my hands and feet so the persecutor part would be able to see that my body is an adult’s body rather than a child’s.
I would tell the persecutor part that s/he has every reason to be angry, but s/he is taking out the anger on the wrong person. I am not the one who caused the abuse or who the part is really mad at. However, I invite the persecutor alter part to take out that anger directly onto whoever harmed him or her.
I would pull out a mental rolodex and flip through it, viewing the faces of different abusers. (Sadly, it’s a pretty full rolodex.) As soon as the right abuser’s face came into focus, the persecutor alter part would attack that person with a fury through visualization. I let the visualization get as graphic as I needed it to get.
The first time I did this, I was sickened by just how graphic the visualization got. My first persecutor part had to keep bringing the abuser to life again to have another opportunity to kill the abuser, and the attack in my visualization was very graphic and sadistic. I questioned whether this was healthy for me but decided to trust that I was experiencing this because my persecutor alter part needed it to heal.
The visualization would go on for five to 15 minutes – as long as the part needed. After it ended, I would tell the alter part that I loved him or her and invite the part into a safe room over my heart. It’s a room that can only be opened from the inside and is warm and cozy with treasured items from childhood. The persecutor part would enter the room and typically integrate fairly quickly. Once the persecutor part had expended its anger and knew that its services were no longer required, it was ready to melt back into the core and feel loved rather than hated.
Photo credit: Hekatekris
Blooming Lotus 
We do something kinda similar other than the focus of “I” it is more about the separate self being and others getting out of the way. I would not invite them rather they would decide. That sort of thing. A kinda letting go of ego and intellect.
The final integration is being sadder than sad that they ever had to be. All of us.
Faith,
Thank you for writing this post, and your earlier posts about dealing with persecutor parts. I’m not MPD or DID, but I have had two odd and uncomfortable experiences: one with hypnosis, one with EMDR, that make me wonder. Years ago (more than 20 yrs ago) a psychiatrist I was seeing attempted to hypnotise me. He wasn’t successful, and yet when he was trying to ‘put me under’ an odd thing happened: I had this urge to laugh. I didn’t laugh – it was just a feeling that I couldn’t place – but I told him about it. It seemed to disturb him, but we never followed it up, and he said it was difficult to hypnotise me.
Then recently I attempted EMDR with a new therapist. Again, I got the same odd feeling of wanting to laugh. Again, the EMDR was unsuccessful: my mind went completely strangely blank and hollow, as if it was completely empty. I couldn’t think of or get near any of the emotionally laden images or situations I was there for – or anything else for that matter. I’ve never experienced anything like before, and some articles I’ve read say that some people too easily dissociate for EMDR, and need prep work first. My therapist said not to worry, that that sometimes happens and she’s been able to work through it before. But the more I sit with it the more that urge to smile/laugh disturbs me.
Although there was no strong feeling associated with the need to laugh, I was frightened of the reaction (partly because of the way my earlier therapist had reacted). The only thing that came to mind was my mother: she was (is) a sadist, and the most salient thing (at least in my memory) about sadistic abuse is the smile/laugh at seeing someone else’s pain. Part of that pain is making the victim feel responsible for their own abuse because of things they’ve done that ‘make them deserve it.’ The one solid ‘truth’ I could always hold onto in my life to defend against that thought, the one thing that I always felt differentiated me from my mother, was that I am not a sadist.
So that urge to laugh has me really troubled. I haven’t been able to find anything on line that could help me to understand what it’s about, but my fear is that I DO, or at least might, have parts inside me like my mother. God, I would absolutely hate hate hate that. I logically know that the urge to laugh could come from all kinds of reasons, but even coming up against the possibility that I could have anything like my mother inside me is absolutely terrifying and sickening.
So knowing, if I am indeed dealing with something like what you’ve written about here, that someone has been there before and has cared enough to write about it to help guide other people through it, is hugely comforting.
Thank you.
We did something strange last year. We “broke” the parts in two – assigning the ones with bad values as “insane creatures” and reducing them to babies whining in my mind – we pretty much ignore all the things they say (eg. “go out and kill someone” – or myself sometimes) – and ‘cuddle them’ and treat them as they are: insane children kept in cribs. For our little ones to cuddle sometimes (oddly the children are not bothered by their venomous spew and ransom).
The ‘other ones’ we kept; for instance we kept Satan; only 2 parts of ‘him’ – the baby part (now dubbed insane) and the ‘other one’ – who is pretty smart, can lie, and is quick of mind. (We needed those things back then – not now so much, unless we are in business, LOL!)
Ditto and the same with “MOM” (a ‘ghost’ alter based on someone’s outside personality): reduced her to a serpent and snake living amongst the rocks – she took some work; we split her down into “3” – one is “Aoela” living with the children in my mind (she is a grown and caring woman – one who *could* have been my mom). And then took the last ‘dab’ of her (the violence in ‘her’ mind) – and assigned it to another creature in my mind (the Beast) which we then ‘put to sleep’ in a Garden of OZ. (kinda like the poppy fields, but not there – in the woods). And now ‘he’ (the Beast) is rather kind to us. However, still willing and ready to go “on guard” given the right cues (e.g. a nuclear world – some kind of apocalyptic event that ‘we’ were all being trained for at one time).
So – by ‘splitting’ personalities in ‘two’ – and making one juvenile and thinking of ‘it’ as an insane infant – and ‘giving’ it to the others in my mind to take care of – really helped.
Different paths; whut can I say. As long as they work, eh? (grinning . . . with a multiple mind.)
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