Ellen Lacter is a psy specializing in complex trauma due to organized violence.She has two websites that you can visit:
Since September 2020, with my psy we have been working in therapy using the stories that Ellen Lacter has created.
They were designed by Ellen Lacter under the supervision and advice of numerous therapists specializing in trauma due to organized violence as well as reviewed by patients of these therapists. They have made little stories of them that bring together the common points, the similarities in the experiences of people who have suffered organized violence as children (the mechanisms used by rapists). They highlight the manipulation and lies used most of the time by rapists in organized violence of network, institutional or family or ritualized types (violence perpetuated in ceremonial or ritual ways with religious or spiritual connotations).
These stories are somewhat similar in form to the books written by Jade Miller "Dear little ones".
Here is the youtube link for the video from Jade Miller's first book:
And for the other two books by Jade Miller:
https://www.amazon.fr/Dear-Little-Ones-Jade-Miller/dp/1523728450
https://www.amazon.fr/Dear-Little-Ones-Jade-Miller/dp/1986128148
A little aside ... Jade Miller's 3 books are excellent and I highly recommend them to anyone with dissociation and therapists! As a patient, we can read these 3 books alone or with our therapist and they can be of a very very great help to initiate understanding, listening, tolerance inside! These 3 books are full of tenderness and love, positivity ... Even if you don't know English, it is easy to copy the text on an automatic translator and translate it ourselves. Personally, reading them brings me a lot of good! I come back to my post ... Ellen Lacter's stories are an amazing way for me and my parts to grow and move forward in my healing !!!
In the last few days, I haven't written anything on the blog because my system is evolving a lot thanks to these stories and the discussion work we do with my psy ... When a big change takes place inside, I need time to understand what's going on and then be able to explain it here in writing.
These stories are not open access and only a shrink can request them from Ellen Lacter. As a patient, it is important not to read them alone and without the help and support of a professional! In addition, these readings can only be approached at a certain stage of therapy.
Personally, I was ready but it would have been devastating for me if it had been done too early by my therapist ... To approach these readings and be able to listen to them, it takes a lot of inner collaboration between the parts, a great stability and internal and external security and an important bond and trust with our therapist. Our parts must have agreed to start a dialogue with our psy without "hiding" behind other parties and that they agree to speak themselves, that the sharing of traumatic memories has started for some time and that the parts are willing to listen and know what others have gone through. You must have made a lot of progress in the 3-phase treatment!
These stories allow a dialogue to be established with the parts "stuck" in the time of the traumas. They are an open door to discussion and help enormously in making my traumatized parts understand all the lies they have been told and in modifying their protective mechanisms, their interventions in my daily life.
Thanks to this, for a few days now I have felt a huge inner upheaval! It's really unbelievable ! A lot of fears disappear, a lot of blockages disappear ... And I feel more and more an inner collaboration like I've never had before!
In therapy, it's pretty crazy! A lot of my parts come and talk to my psy. We no longer hide, what I have always lived inside is now visible from the outside. I feel incredibly free, safe, liberated ... I also feel that I have a lot less internal conflicts, a lot more cohesion, collaboration ... It's ... Wonderful!
I think not all therapists should have access to it either. It takes some training and experience before using these stories with a DID patient who has experienced organized violence. These stories are not to be taken lightly and they deeply affect the DID patient. To do it without knowing how to deal with the patient during and after would be destructive, to do it too early in therapy as well.
These stories are an asset, an extraordinary help for me! My rapists ensured my silence and the continuity of their hold on me through various lies and tortures:
Lies linked to "religious" beliefs modified in their own way.
Tortures and rapes where they told me that I would be killed or tortured if I spoke. Lies aimed at placing the guilt of their actions on me.
Lies and manipulations to make me believe that they were all powerful, invincible, omnipresent ... That they knew everything, saw everything, knew everything ...
Lies and manipulations using religious rituals to make me believe that God was watching me and could punish me at any time ... that God obeyed them ...
Lies and manipulations about the police, the law, my rights ...
Lies and manipulations to make me feel guilty, dirty, bad ...
Lies and manipulations about my entourage, the fact that they had the right to life and death over everyone ...
Lies and manipulations by making me believe that the violence they committed on other children was my responsibility, my fault.
Or threats to the people I loved so that I would be wary of them and not say anything. Tortures and rapes which associated certain things in my mind with the fact that I was going to be raped and tortured (singing, music, shows, confession, making "papers" ...). Administering drugs when I was little so that my perceptions are biased or strange (related to the effect of these drugs). ...
My parties are starting to take notice of all these lies and manipulations. They are starting to allow themselves to question them, to question their beliefs with my shrink. They start to hope, believe and accept to consider that what they always believed, the rules they always followed may not be true ... They start to hope and believe that something else exists, that the laws and injunctions that they followed to the letter until now are no longer to be followed and respected. That no longer obeying them will not mean that they will be killed or tortured ... They begin to really integrate that I grew up, that I am an adult, free, safe and that we have survived. They are more and more willing to come and see my present and share with my adult parts.
My adult parts are more tolerant and I feel less ashamed and anger to act and think with cult-dating beliefs. They understood that this is the only way to move forward and be better in my present. They agree to show me vulnerable to my shrink, they accept that all those parts of me that still have religious or very "childish" beliefs are me. That somewhere, it is part of me, of my history, even though I, the adult, am no longer a believer or a practitioner and that I am a rational and thoughtful person.
These stories not only help my little and teenage parts but also all my other parts to understand, tolerate, respect, listen to each other ... It highlights and explains a lot of my feelings and experiences. I feel less fragmented, less divided ... I have the impression over time to find myself, me the child, me the teenager and me the adult.
Here I think, the very big difference between a person with a "simple" dissociation, a post traumatic stress disorder and a person with a DID like mine ... Before being able to "treat" my traumatic memory, I must make in so that my parts dialogue, communicate, understand each other, tolerate each other, accept each other, trust each other and share time in my present. If everyone is judging themselves internally, how do you manage to share their suffering, their experiences? If no dialogue takes place, if there is no tolerance, no putting in the place of the other, how can we share difficult experiences?
In fact, it's just like normal people.
A person who has never experienced mourning, an earthquake, an attack ... will not be able to understand, put himself in the place of the one who has lived it. Not everyone can become a police officer, therapist, doctor ... You need training, understand why, how, typical reactions ... You have to know how to ask the right questions, give adequate answers or advice ... A victim of domestic violence who speaks with someone who knows nothing about the subject may be re-traumatized, hurt by the reactions of this person and will lock themselves in silence or return to this violence ... A person who speaks to a child traumatized, if she does not adapt her speech risks hurting her ... A person who has never been through something difficult will not be able to listen to the testimony of a traumatized person. He will judge or give advice that will not be appropriate. He will see things from his point of view and react with his own feelings without taking into account that for the traumatized person the reality, the experience and the healing mechanisms are quite different!
In the same way, each of my parts must "form", understand, put itself in the place of, listen, put into perspective ... My small parts must realize that I am an adult and assimilate what they have lived is a thing of the past and will never happen again. They must understand and accept that they have been lied to, that they have been manipulated.
My adult parts have to admit that I lived through horrors and that at the time I had no choice, no other solutions than those that my little parts found to survive, that I was a child. .. Each of my parts must accept that this is all part of our personal history.
It is very painful. For each of them. That takes time. A lot ! I have to be patient, accept that each part evolves and understands at its own pace, that I must be tolerant ... This is the key to freeing myself and finally being one and only.
It's very painful, it upsets my daily life, it upsets who I am, how I act, how I perceive myself ... But when one of them finally understands her experience, what is it? Well ! What does it feel good! Hear their cries of joy, feel their release, see their thoughts and actions change, adapt ... What happiness !!!!
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