Integration from DID: Giving Up Dissociation

I am working through a series on integration from dissociative identity disorder (DID), which begins here. I am using Rachel Downing’s article, Understanding Integration , as a starting point and then building upon what she says with my own experiences.

Downing talks about the challenges of learning to give up dissociation as a coping mechanism. This has been a challenge for me as well. For most of my life, if something really upset me, I could just dissociate it away and not worry about it anymore. Choosing integration means choosing to feel rather than shoving it all back down inside. For me, it felt like being asked to give up a superpower.

Downing viewed continuing to use dissociation as a coping mechanism as choosing to view the world as a hostile place. I don’t really think of it in those terms. Instead, I view choosing to continue using dissociation to get through my life as choosing to continue rejecting parts of myself, which I no longer want to do. Whatever I am feeling, whether I like it or not, is part of **me**, and I don’t want to reject any part of myself.

I have also learned that there is no way to shut down the “bad” feelings without also shutting down the “good” ones. This is one reason I am drinking less wine and taking less Xanax. Both help shut down the feelings I don’t want to deal with right now, but they also suppress my ability to experience joy and the beauty of being alive. Giving up the good is no longer worth it – I’ll just process the harder emotions. I also remind myself that I can deal with the pain today or stuff it down and then deal with it in spades later. I’d rather just get it over with now.

Downing listed the following changes in helping her give up dissociation:

1. Stop talking about yourself in the third person.
2. Allow yourself to experience internal conflict.
3. Examine your trauma-based beliefs.
4. Accept negative aspects of yourself.
5. Realize that nothing is lost.

I never talked about myself in the third person (as a writer, I saw it as grammatically incorrect), but saying that it was **me** in the flashbacks was difficult at first. It took me a long to time wrap my mind around all of these memories actually happening **to me**.

Experiencing internal conflict was a huge change for me. I used to just dissociate away the conflicts, so different parts would hold different points of view. It took a lot of adjusting for me to become comfortable with having conflicted feelings about a topic.

The example of trauma-based beliefs that Downing uses is recognizing that having feelings isn’t “bad.” I had to work through this as well. My entire family was stoic other than my father’s anger. I thought I was so emotional because I would cry, which seemed quite demonstrative when compared to the rest of my family. I now embrace experiencing emotions.

I have already previously talked about accepting the negative aspects of myself, so I won’t cover that again. Bottom line – all parts of me are “good” because they are “me.”

I fully agree with Downing’s words here about nothing being lost through integration:

There is a kind of paradox with integration. One of the fears expressed by individuals with DID who choose not to integrate is that parts of the self will be lost, disappear, or die. The reality is that after integration the parts of the self are actually closer and more real than ever. The dissociative barrier is gone and the aspects of the self are now experienced directly. ~ Understanding Integration

That’s all I wanted to highlight from the article. Thanks for bearing with such a long series!

Photo credit: Hekatekris

Read Full Post »

Integration from DID: Integrating Various Alter Parts

I am working through a series on integration from dissociative identity disorder (DID), which begins here. I am using Rachel Downing’s article, Understanding Integration , as a starting point and then building upon what she says with my own experiences.

Downing talks about her experiences in integrating various types of alter parts. My experiences were similar, and I was immensely grateful to have this article as my guide. Since I had found so few resources to explain how to integrate various types of alter parts, this article became a wonderful roadmap for how to interact with and heal various parts of myself.

Downing talks about a “cooking girl” alter part who had been spared from the abuse. My “innocent part” was my host personality, Faye. Choosing to integrate Faye into my core was challenging because I had to accept that no part of myself had been spared from the abuse. This was a painful reality that I had to grieve. However, most of myself already knew that the abuse had happened and that I hadn’t been spared, so once Faye was integrated, I actually did not need to spend much time grieving this loss.

Downing next talks about integrating “dangerous personalities,” such as those who are aggressive toward others. I actually struggled more with parts that were dangerous toward myself. I had multiple parts that were self-destructive, such as banging my head through self-injury or fantasizing about suicide.

I believe my experience was consistent with Downing’s that integrating “dangerous” parts was immensely healing. It was easy to love the wounded child parts but not as easy to love the self-persecuting parts that told me that I deserved to suffer. I accepted that every part was me and that, for this reason, all parts were “good.”

I chose to love and accept each part no matter how much it frightened me or how much it lashed out at me. As an example, I had parts that were filled self-loathing (I called them persecutor parts). They would flood my head with messages about how worthless I was. I would tell these parts thank you for the role they served in helping me survive my childhood. I would then tell them that their anger was actually toward my abusers rather than me. I would offer to let them “kill” whichever abuser they wished through visualization. I would scroll through a mental rolodex in my head of various abusers until that part of myself attacked one. I would let the visualizations get as graphic and disturbing as they needed to.

Once a persecutor part was given the freedom to direct its anger at the source and was reassured that I loved and accepted that part, I no longer had a need to keep that part separate, and it would integrate. Because these parts of myself were some of the most wounded, my choice to love and accept them as “me” resulted in amazing healing.

I am going to continue this series next week. I apologize to those who aren’t getting much out of the topic of integration from DID, but I hope that some are finding this series useful. I would have loved to have read something similar when I was trying to figure out how to integrate from DID.

Photo credit: Hekatekris

Read Full Post »

Integration from DID: Phases of Integration

I am working through a series on integration from dissociative identity disorder (DID), which begins here. I am using Rachel Downing’s article, Understanding Integration , as a starting point and then building upon what she says with my own experiences.

The next part of Downing’s article talks about the phases of integration, which is too involved for me to summarize here. I agree with her that integration is not a single event but, instead, a gradual process of moving from being separate parts to being whole.

The metaphor I like is of melting ice. Before the abuse started, my spirit was like a pond where each part flowed into the next. The abuse caused the pond to ice over, and repeated abuse caused the ice to split off into separate chunks, which is what I experienced as alter parts. I was still one pond even though I felt like a bunch of separate chunks of ice. Integration happened by melting the ice back into water through the warmth of self-love. Nothing was lost – it was just experienced in a different way.

Downing talks about integrating and then losing that integration for a while (what she calls “disintegration”). I experienced this as well, but I think it was less stressful for me (perhaps because I had her article as a guide). When I am not dissociative, I experience the world around me differently, as if I have been beamed into my life and am really “here.” I will have moments of feelings extremely present like that, which I see as a guide for where I am heading. However, I don’t stay in that place for long periods of time.

Most of my progress is gradual. As an example, I will find myself getting overstimulated by sights, sounds, or smells as I move into a deeper level of integration because, thanks to living most of my life in a dissociated state, I haven’t had to deal with overstimulation. I would simply switch from one part to the next and avoid having see, hear, or smell whatever I didn’t want to process. Being integrated means experiencing the good and the bad – being present to enjoy the smell of freshly cut grass but also present to get the waft of a garbage can.

I love this perspective offered by Downing:

I could respect my choice as a child to dissociate and survive in the face of overwhelming and ongoing trauma. But I could, as an adult, choose how I wanted to cope now as I remembered the trauma and faced life as a free adult. I COULD CHOOSE AGAIN. ~ Understanding Integration

This has been my experience as well. As I continued to embraced the different parts as “me” and “mine,” I could process the traumas against the backdrop of all of my life experiences versus the limited views that these individual parts had based upon their own limited experiences. I could honor and heal the pain of individual parts while still choosing how to move forward from an adult perspective. The more I healed, the easier this process became.

Photo credit: Hekatekris

Read Full Post »

Integration from DID: Reasons to Integrate

I am working through a series on integration from dissociative identity disorder (DID), which begins here. I am using Rachel Downing’s article, Understanding Integration , as a starting point and then building upon what she says with my own experiences.

Below is a summary of Downing’s reasons for integration:

1. Relationship to Myself – Integration is a statement of self-love, providing access to a full range of feelings.
2. Relationship to Others – Integration resulted in Downing being able to be consistently available to her loved ones.
3. Relationship to Life – Integration enables a person to be fully present in life with a full range of coping skills to deal with life.
4. Relationship to Death – Integration enabled Downing to reach of a place of accepting her life history and eventual death.
5. Children with DID naturally move toward integration – Downing addresses this point later in the article, but I think it fits here. According to Downing, children with DID naturally move toward integration once they are placed in a safe environment, and no debating about whether to stay dissociative or integrate takes place as part of children’s therapy. ~ Understanding Integration

While Downing and I both chose integration, our reasons were somewhat different. One of my reasons for choosing integration was as an “up yours” to my abusers. I was angry that my abusers caused me to split inside to survive their abuse, and I wanted what they had taken from me back – a unified sense of self. I was unwilling to rest until I was a “me” again, in part, to prove that I was stronger than my abusers and that my ability to heal myself had more power than their ability to break me.

I also very much liked the concept I shared in my last blog entry about integration being the ultimate statement of self-love. By claiming each and every part as “me” and “mine,” including those parts’ feelings, emotions, memories, and experiences, I was reclaiming myself. I was making both an internal and external statement (or proclamation!) that I loved and accepted every single part of myself – that there were no “throwaway” parts or parts that were not “good enough” to be me. I loved each part of myself for the same reason I love my child – because he (and they) are mine.

Just like with my child, I wasn’t always happy with the feelings or behaviors of particular parts, and I certainly wasn’t thrilled with many of the memories I had to claim as “mine” to integrate. However, my choice to love and accept each part as “me” wasn’t something to be “earned,” just as my child cannot “earn” my love. My love for my child, and for all of myself, is simply because they are mine … period.

Finally, I wanted to know what it was like to be a “normal” person, although many people assure me that I will never really be “normal.” I might not be “normal,” but I have experienced life as a multiple and as a “singleton,” and I much prefer having full access to myself.

Releasing the splits and integrating had an added benefit that I don’t hear people talk about much. To me, integrating a part feels like getting to put my arms down after having to hold them up over my head for a very long time. Staying split takes an enormous amount of energy that has been freed up to be used in other ways.

Photo credit: Hekatekris

Read Full Post »

Integration from DID: Defining Integration

I am working through a series on integration from dissociative identity disorder (DID), which begins here. I am using Rachel Downing’s article, Understanding Integration , as a starting point and then building upon what she says with my own experiences.

Downing defines integration as follows:

At the most basic level, integration simply means acceptance/ownership of all thoughts, feelings, fears, beliefs, experiences and memories (often labeled as personalities) as me/mine. It means giving up the split(s) that says something is “not me.” Integration is more than about personalities. It is about full acceptance of all dissociated aspects of oneself. ~ Understanding Integration

When I first read this definition of integration, it reinforced my desire to integrate from DID. I loved the thought of finding a way to accept all of my thoughts, feelings, and experiences as “mine” even though they did not feel that way at the time. I saw the choice of accepting all of these aspects of myself as “me” or “mine” to be a very deep statement of self-love – that even those parts of myself that I abhorred (such as parts that I viewed as “bad” or harmful) were worthy of love and acceptance.

I fully agree with Downing’s observation here:

Integration occurs when I accept a dissociated personality, part, or aspect of myself and bring it into normal awareness. It is not about getting rid of or killing off a part of myself. When I maintain the split and say it is “not me,” I am implicitly rejecting that part of myself. Essentially, integration is fully embracing each and every part/aspect of myself …With DID, when I deny/reject a part of myself that wants to cut/hurt me, I can’t control that part of myself. When I incorporate that part of myself I gain control and choices. ~ Understanding Integration

When I “met” the first alter part I became aware of — “Irate,” I didn’t want her to “go away.” However, because I wanted to integrate and be whole, I feared this was part of the process. I was surprised to discover that integrating Irate meant that I had 24/7 access to her in a different way. Instead of interacting with the world without the ability to express anger and needing Irate to come out “defend” me, Irate became an ever-present part of me. Since she integrated, I have the ability to feel anger and choose whether or not to act upon it or how to express it. This was something I had been unable to experience before Irate integrated.

By integrating Irate, I did not “kill her off.” Instead, I freed her to experience life from more than just the perspective of someone who is angry. I did not have to choose between never feeling angry or feeling “pure” anger. Once Irate integrated, I could experience the emotion of anger against the backdrop of all of my other emotions, which has been a much richer way to experience the world and enables me to balance out my anger with my other emotions.

Photo credit: Hekatekris

Read Full Post »

Series on Integration from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

I recently came across an article on integration from dissociative identity disorder (DID) that was immensely helpful for me after I recognized that I had alter parts. For me, integration was always the goal, but at the time I was looking for resources on how to integrate from DID (in 2004-2005), I found very few helpful resources. I was thrilled to find this article — Understanding Integration by Rachel Downing, L.C.S.W.-C.– and used it as my personal guide in moving toward integration.

Before I continue, I want to add the disclaimer that I am not saying that integration needs to be the goal for everyone with DID or other forms of multiplicity — I am saying that it was always right for me. I am not writing this series to persuade anyone that he or she needs to integrate, nor I am meaning to imply that not integrating, whether by choice or not, is some sort of “failure.” Instead, my goal is to provide another resource for those who do want to integrate or for those who want a better understanding of what integration from DID entails.

When I was looking for resources on integration in 2004 and 2005, I became extremely frustrated by the lack of resources available to me. Most of what I found were books written by people with DID who had integrated and whose stories contained so many “limitations.” What I mean by this is that most of the stories I found talked about how integration was helpful but… The “buts” focused on all of the issues that still remained and had to be accepted and grieved. While I am sure this was an honest accounting of these people’s experiences, I wasn’t willing to settle for “integration but’s.”

From the time I recognized that I had alter parts, my goal was to become one or “whole” again. I was angry that my abusers took so much away from me, even my ability to be a “me” instead of a “we.” I was determined to reclaim my sense of self in having ONE identity, and I was not willing to settle for “healing BUT.”

That was when I found this article through the Sidran Institute. I sobbed in relief at finding some sort of resource to offer me hope that my goal really was attainable. It also provided me with practical steps I could take to help move me toward my goal, such as always referring to myself as “me” rather than “us,” even when what “I” was feeling seemed foreign and belonging to “her” instead of “me.”

I haven’t researched what newer resources are available for integrating from DID, but my hope is to add this series to the list. That way, when others are looking for positive resources on integration from DID, one more will be available to them.

Photo credit: Hekatekris

Read Full Post »

Resources for Those Healing from DID

On my About Faith Allen page, a reader posted the following comment:

hi, just discovered your site- congratulations on your integration- we have a daughter who has been suffering for over 17 years, many treatments, many drs., many hospitalizations- not much progress- currently in crisis- looking for help again- who and what helped you? would you mind sharing this info? we would go anywhere just to find person/persons/hospitals. etc. who could be of help
thanks!

The most important element in healing is choosing to heal. Until a person decides that he or she is willing to do anything to heal, you can invest in all the resources in the world, and it is not going to make much of a difference. Choosing to heal is hard work. You have to relive painful memories, and you have to accept that these horrible things happened to me. Until a person reaches this place, resources are going to be of limited value.

If your daughter is sick to death of being in this awful place and is ready to begin the hard work of healing, I have several resources for her:

Books

The two “must reads” for a survivor of severe child abuse are Safe Passage to Healing (book about healing from ritual abuse and understanding Dissociative Identity Disorder -DID) and the Survivor to Thriver Manual (walks you through the healing process in a non-triggering way). Another great resource is The Courage to Heal.

Online Resources

Isurvive is a message board for survivors of all forms of child abuse. The Survivors of Ritualized Abuse forum is for those who suffered the most severe forms of trauma. It is also the place to talk about DID-related issues. The Sidran Institute is another great resource, offering lots of helpful articles on healing from severe child abuse.

Therapy

It is crucial that your daughter work with a qualified therapist with experience in working with survivors of severe child abuse. In my experience, the therapist does not have to be a DID specialist as long as he “gets” what alters parts are and their function. Healing from DID is too difficult to do alone. I strongly advise working closely with an educated therapist.

Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt

Read Full Post »

Do You Need to Remember Every Trauma to Heal from DID?

On my blog entry entitled Dealing with Diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), a reader posted the following comment:

I am only beginning to accept the fact that something did happen, the “others” know it did and can easily say so when they are out. I, however, have found it all too hard to believe. I can’t continue to heal until I believe them, even if I don’t remember it all. Memory is a strange thing, and I’m not sure that the memories are totally accurate. I’m wondering if they may in fact be a combination of memories somewhat jumbled up? Do I really need to get them all straight? or is just the acceptance of them what is needed for healing? ~barbi

This is a complicated issue, and this is a conversation that I had with my therapist more than once. My therapist said that there is no need for me to “relive” every trauma that I ever experienced. Instead, I needed to reconnect enough to understand and accept my overall history.

My experience has been that I needed reconnect with every big issue that I faced. For example, I needed to remember and heal the fact that I was vaginally raped by men. I don’t have to remember every single rape by every single man. However, if there was a particular man who raped me that had significance (versus the nameless and faceless men involved in the cult), I needed to recover those memories as well.

When you have DID, different memories and emotions split off into different parts, whether those parts are personalities or fragments. When I remembered and dealt with anger toward being raped, I could integrate a bunch of different angry parts that might have originally split off from many rapes. I did not have to “relive” every rape to do this.

However, there are other memories that were particularly traumatizing, such as the first vaginal rape, that I needed to heal. Healing the generic “a bunch of men raped me” did not heal the initial horror of that very first time.

I have learned to accept my truths, whatever they are. If a part tells me that X did Y to me, I choose to believe it. As I open myself up to this reality, that frees the part to integrate. As the part integrates, I feel the emotions and may or may not recover the specific memory. In my experience, the key to healing is loving and accepting each part, memory and emotion as “me” and “mine.” I generally do not have to “relive” the memories very often unless they were particularly traumatizing. I trust my inner guide (my intuition) to lead me where I need to go.

I don’t know if this fully answers your questions. Please post any questions that I did not address in the comments or email them to me.

Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt

Read Full Post »

DID: Using Older Alter Parts to Comfort Younger Alter Parts

On my blog entry entitled Dealing with Internal Conflict while Healing from Child Abuse, a reader posted the following comment:

I wonder is it possible for the parts(s) of you that are non-resisting or adult parts to directly communicate with the resistant ones….? Could the adult ones comfort the 2 year old and help her feel cared for enough and safe enough to tell? Could they explain to her that they will be there for her, and that she won’t be dealing with the memory alone? That they will take care of her and that she will only be “telling” the memory, not having to physically face the abusers again… only with her mind, and this time will be different because the others are there to help her let go of it and comfort her through it. I don’t know if these things are possible, but I couldn’t stop my mind from asking it. ~ Mia

This comment is specifically aimed at people who have dissociative identity disorder (DID) or other dissociative disorders that involve alter parts.

I have had a lot of success in encouraging my older alter parts to comfort the younger parts. Ultimately, all of my alter parts are me, so learning how to get the older parts to comfort the younger parts is really about me learning how to comfort myself. Most of my younger parts hold either terror or unmet needs. I use my older parts to help with both.

Terror

I had a difficult time healing the terror. I was not quite sure what to do with it. First, I would tell those parts that they are now living in a grown up body. I would look at my adult-sized hands and feet. I would talk about sleeping in my own bed and in my own house. I would remind my alter parts (myself) that my abusers are all either old or dead, so they no longer have the power to hurt me.

Then, I created a “good mommy” alter part to protect my frightened parts so they (I) could feel safe. I would visualize her comforting the child parts of me. She would rock them in a rocking chair and hold them close. She would look them (me) in the eye and talk about how much she loves me and how precious I am. Then, she would tuck them (me) into bed and be my sentry with a shotgun in her hands. I did not have to worry about being hurt because “mommy” was ready to kill anyone who came near me during the night.

Unmet Needs

Unmet needs have been much trickier for me to heal. Sometimes I simply need to stop working so hard and do something fun. Other times, I need to interact with friends so that my need for a relationship is at least partially met, even though it is not with a mother. I have had less success with older parts healing younger parts when it comes to unmet needs.

Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt

Read Full Post »

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.

Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt

Read Full Post »