Whether you are close to a dissociated person who has experienced trauma or a professional who will hear their word, here are some important points that can help you and help us:
Be curious and inform yourself:
When we understand that we are dissociated, we will have a phase where we will document ourselves a lot, seek to understand and make those around us understand.
We will send you videos, articles, books ... Read them, talk to us. Show us that you are present, attentive, eager to understand ...
Do not hesitate to set your limits clearly.
At the beginning when we begin to understand what we went through, maybe we will flood you with messages ... Maybe you will feel overwhelmed ...
You can then set limits such as: "I have received all your videos or all your articles. Thank you. I understand your desire to inform me but in order to be able to listen to you and be present by your side, I prefer that we discuss it from time to time together. I understand your anger to discover all these testimonies of children or people who have lived trauma like you, your anger is legitimate and I am angry and sad too! Read them upsets me and makes me very sad as you should be too. But to be present and attentive by your side, I need you to send me only essential articles or references so that I understand you and can better understand you. 'help. I promise to read and discuss them with you. Thank you for helping me understand you better. I believe you and I hear you. "
You can also tell us that you have received our mailings and that you will consult them as soon as possible, that you need to choose a good time to read them but that you promise to do so. And when you've read them, tell us.
When we understand what has been done to us, we have a phase of great anger when we see that thousands of other victims have gone through the same thing as us.
We will be angry with society, the state, justice and we will want to make those around us understand it, show it to them, that they share our anger and our indignation at this general indifference ...
Our whole body will cry out the injustice, the distress, the abandonment that we have experienced. This phase is normal.
Little by little we will learn to protect ourselves and to share other moments with you. Let us express this legitimate phase without making us feel guilty or abandoning and rejecting us. This will be our first step in accepting our feelings of anger, understanding them and seeing that they are legitimate. Stay with us and support us. Be understanding and caring.
If you reject us during this phase, it will be very painful for us, our traumas linked to abandonment, all the times we have not been heard, seen, protected will be exacerbated. We will have the impression that once again we are abandoned, again we are betrayed despite all the "evidence" that we show you, despite the testimonies of all these other victims, that nothing changes ... We will have difficulty understanding that you also did not get angry that you refused to see the reality of the omnipresence of violence against children. By refusing to see the violence suffered by others, it is as if it is us that you give up and refuse to see… This moment is crucial to establish a bond of trust with us! And if you show signs of fear and rejection in the face of this anger that we are expressing, you will send us the message that it is forbidden to be angry, and therefore we have no right to be. We had to repress our feelings of helplessness, our rage, our pain during the trauma. Seeing that expressing them and feeling them for the experience of other traumatized people is acceptable, allows us to allow ourselves to think it for ourselves then to feel it for us and finally to accept to welcome it as part of us ... In addition, this phase of anger is associated with a phase of internal sadness and despair. Likewise, seeing that you are not afraid of expressing these feelings allows us to allow ourselves to feel them and therefore accept them without shame or guilt ...
In the beginning, for a traumatized person, it is easier to test and see the reaction or not reaction of those around us to situations outside us. If you defend other people then maybe you will defend us? If you are affected and concerned with the injuries of others, then perhaps you will be affected by us? If you are willing to listen to someone else's story of suffering, then maybe you will finally be willing to listen to ours? It allows us to feel what "person" you are without putting us in danger. And allows us to learn and integrate that this that we have been done is forbidden, that what we have been done is wrong, that they have no right. That for other victims you say it and you react and therefore that perhaps for us too you will do it… This allows us to allow us to finally think of ourselves as victims.
We will also surely have a phase where we will take information on any site, without hindsight, without critical thinking, without protection ...
I myself followed a YouTube channel of a man who talks about a Satanist conspiracy and sees the actions of a Luciferian sect in all the testimonies of child rape. Having grown up in a sect where the use of heaven and hell as a threat was daily, these explanations made sense to me, gave meaning to incomprehensible actions ... It took me a long time to have a critical mind vis-Ã -vis these publications and stay away from them.
Some associations are in hyper information and only convey negative messages. It took me a while to get out of it and see which sites or people to follow and which ones activated my despair or my feeling of helplessness too much.
Help us take a step back and find what helps us move forward. Do not hesitate to criticize our sources in kindness and empathy. Advise us "official" sites or associations, scientific articles supported by solid and recognized research. When we are in this phase, stay open and understanding. This phase will not last, little by little we will learn to protect ourselves and develop our critical mind and find what we need.
Help us in kindness to see that there is hope, beauty, happiness in this world. Do it without rushing us and making us feel guilty because this passage of understanding what we have lived and seeing that other victims exist is extremely painful for us! Help us see the world in all its reality and complexity. And accompany us on this path of understanding ourselves and what dissociation is.
We have always believed that we were alone and invisible, discovering that there are many other victims all over the world hurts a lot but is also beneficial for us! We have "ice floe brothers and sisters" as Adélaïde Bon says.