What hope for healing?

I am not "healed". I suppose that in 1 year or 3 years when I read this text again, I will want to modify it and add many things ...

Here is what I know so far about my hope for "healing" :

The pros of treating severely traumatized people do not agree on the "purpose" of the treatment.

Some believe that only " total integration " should be done, even if it means forcing the patient and his parties to agree to "merge" into a single personality (to become again a person like everyone else, the one he should have been at origin if there had been no trauma). For that, they insist and push the parties to "capitulate" by harassing them with questions and by showing them the absolute necessity of merging.

Others think that it is necessary to leave the choice to the different parties, to make a maximum of "integration" but to let the parties choose to "merge or not" if they wish.

It is as if our sense of self, our brain ceased to be compartmentalized and compartmentalized and became an "open space" where each part is free to move as it pleases, where all information flows freely ...

Those who are for "total integration" think that if an unmerged part remains, there is a great risk that we will be dissociated again from the slightest problem or difficulty that we may encounter in our life afterwards. They think that the cooperation between the remaining parties could break down again and no longer work if we lost a loved one or had an accident and that the dissociation and dissociative barriers / amnesias would start again, mutual misunderstanding would return and compartmentalize again. ..

I don't know what my parts and I will decide at the end of our therapy. But I can't help but feel angry when I hear that some therapists are forcing their patients to merge. We have been "forced" all our lives, our most basic needs, our most basic needs have not been met and we have had to build ourselves in spite of these shortcomings. We have survived atrocious things all of our life and society, our loved ones, everyone has closed their eyes and let it go ... When we were finally able to rebuild, that we found a therapist, a person who finally sees, hears and helps us, we had to face the gaze of society and its judgment. People with mental disorders are considered dangerous, crazy or weak when they should be perceived as what they are: incredibly strong and combative people, people who should be admired for their life force. And I think forcing us to merge is to take away our free will again, our right to choose about our life, our own choice about who we want to be. For me, it is in a way perpetrating rape on our mind again.

What I see is that society in general, people, do not observe, do not listen, do not look ... Certainly my dissociation as long as it continues with amnesic barriers is a handicap in my everyday life because it prevents me from functioning efficiently and from having all the information that arrives at my brain at the same time to help me to act but this dissociation is also revealed for me as an "asset". I can be busy, focused on a task like everyone else but at the same time I have "dozens of pairs of eyes" who observe, listen, analyze everything that is happening around me. I put this term in quotes because I know that my parts are not real people inside me but my brain has found a way to make me aware of a lot of information at the same time unlike a "normal" person .

A "normal" person also has a little that, it can happen that our body has a physical reaction to express something that our brain has unconsciously perceived: the hairs which bristle for example if we feel a danger. But you will not have, or so very long and slow, analysis of this feeling to make you realize that something is wrong. Me, this awareness is done instantly! All day, constantly, I have thoughts, reflections, analyzes of the smallest thing that takes place in my environment. I can work and be focused on something and at the same time, I have parts that will look around and observe people and interpret their actions, feelings, feelings, all verbal and nonverbal expressions ... I can identify very quickly if someone is sad or desperate, I can perceive the state of mind of people with their nonverbal language, the posture of their body, the expression in their eyes ... I have parts that in a fraction of seconds in my mind will sweep away all possible actions and their consequences to respond to a given situation. For the moment it is still chaos because we do not get along completely, we do not analyze things in the same way or we only focus on one point but when the internal cohesion is complete I think it will be a great force for me!

I refuse to be an adult like I have crossed throughout my life completely deaf and blind. My brain has developed incredible capacities. We are in the infancy in terms of brain research. Researchers say we only use a very small part of it. I think I found a way to use a little more. It seems a bit pompous and pretentious to say that but I'm tired of being considered a weak, a fragile person to hide in a mental hospital! I survived the worst and I am proud to be what I am! And I won't "merge" just to "get back to the norm" or "be normal".

At this stage, I think that a majority of my parts will merge (because being too many parts complicates cohesion in decision-making) but that I will keep certain parts such as "observers", "analyzes" and "controls ". I want to remain a person with open eyes and all senses. I want to be able to help and rescue if I see signs. I don't want to be an accomplice like all the adults around me have been.

We have talked about integration many times with my psychologist. At first, it scared me very much because I had a lot of trouble understanding how it was going to happen, what it was exactly. I would like to have the opportunity to exchange with a person who has done it, express my fears, my doubts and know concretely and physically what it does. So far I have found no testimony or book explaining it.

I will try to explain my "stages of integration" to you :

Realize that we are in one body .

Most of my parties had the mistaken belief that we each had a different body.

When I attempted suicide a few years ago, the party that made this gesture did not realize that it was all of us who were going to die. She believed that she alone was going to die. It is for this reason that at the time when I did it, I had no thought for my daughters (for this part, I had none), I no longer knew that I had found a solution, a new job and that I was going to get by (this part considered itself to be a child and therefore had never worked), this part had no knowledge of friends or acquaintances to whom I would have could turn me (she didn't know them). All she knew was that my rapist (the guru) and his family harassed me (this was the case here) ... I put the pronoun "I" but it is difficult for me to know which one would be the most adequate to make you understand the fact that at the time I was not aware of the different splits inside me and the moments when I did things without being aware of them, without remembering them. The amnesic barriers are very strong and my parties at that time, could "switch" suddenly by focusing only on a small detail and by unconsciously seeing or refusing to see the clues that could help them understand that my situation then was different from the one they were stuck in. I only perceived at the time that the harassment of my rapist and this part which made this "switch" at that time reacted as it could with the options and the reflection that it had at the time where I tried to flee my rapist in the past: the only solution for her to be able to escape them was to kill herself. I wondered a lot about this suicide attempt, I felt a lot of anger (how could I forget my daughters?) And I could not understand the fact that everything contradicted this gesture of despair (I had found solutions to escape them, I was going to succeed!).

I had parts that hurt "small" parts internally by making them suffer and threatening to kill them. These threatening parties could share feelings of pain or suffering with them without their understanding of what was going on. Or the parties "imitating the aggressor" could repeat sentences that my rapists had said and my "small" parties thought that our rapist was always there to threaten us. And finally, by sending images of memories, snippets such as the memory of the dogs chasing me could scare them. Some of my parts were suffering internally while others were not. Each of my parts was isolated and believed to be alone in my head, alone in my body, alone to bear its own suffering different from that of the other parts ...

Some parties find it difficult to understand that they are not physically as they think they are. They have the feeling that they are still 2 or 4 years old ... One of my parts, the "little cage", was "stuck" at the age of 2-3 years. When she came to talk to me or talk to my therapist, she cried a lot (like little children cry, pouting with the bottom of her mouth), she sucked her thumb to console herself (I started sucking my thumb and I curled up on myself), she hardly spoke and needed fluff to show what had been done to her. Other parties are not aware of having become a mom (I have 2 daughters), for them, my daughters are strangers and they took a long time to accept this fact, they repeated to my therapist that these children were not theirs, it was impossible because they were too young! Very small parts recently came for the first time to meet my therapist, my body seemed disproportionate, immense, I was dizzy ...

Some parties believe they can kill or be killed by other parties. And some believe that integration means their "dead", their "disappearance" and refuse to be killed. For a long time I was convinced that integration meant the "death" of the parties.

I had different stages of awareness of the fact that I had grown up and that I was an adult. First for my "small parts", it was to come and realize that my body is gigantic, then to look at myself in my mirror and to see this unknown face and this body of an adult woman (when I look at myself, I do not recognize myself sometimes and see that I have breasts and a hairiness in the sex makes me burst out laughing). I recently thought that all my parts had integrated that we were all in this adult body and I asked my therapist to give me some video extracts of our sessions that I can show to my friends or my family for explain my DID (each session is filmed). Seeing me was a real shock !! Most of my small parts have shown me what they look like. Over a year ago, I made a frieze at home to help me become aware of my life journey, to help me put the memories back in chronological order. Several of my little parties, seeing their photo said to me "it's me there, I'm here, can you see me?". So I kept in mind when one of them was speaking the face shown in this photo. But when I looked at myself in the videos, knowing which part was being expressed, I expected to see the face of this photo appear on my own face. It took me several days to recover, I heard a lot of tears, my small parts realized that they were no longer small ...

I add here a small parenthesis. Having a frieze on my story helped me a lot at one point in my therapy. At the beginning, internal cooperation is not effective, one has the impression of living in a permanent fog, of not really being in the present. When the sharing of memories of trauma begins, we lose the notion of "here and now" and "over there and before". To make this frieze was an obsession. I had to put each photo back in time, hang up every snippet of memory that came back to a date, a month and a place. I needed it, it had become a vital need, a way for me to hang on to the present and make sense of it all. A way not to have the impression of having exploded into a thousand pieces by understanding that I was dissociated, a way to keep a kind of control over what was going on, to put logic and rational into it. This need suddenly disappeared a few months later. Now I can remember my past better and everything seems less messy in my head.

This progressive awareness is necessary to move towards integration. For some time now, I have internally felt that some of my small parts "grow". Their way of speaking changes, their vocabulary expands, they acquire other more adapted skills and they integrate better with the rest of my older parts. They are less in tears and express much more in the form of thoughts their experiences and their expectations. They have become helpers and are no longer "whining". I use the term "whining" which is not very flattering but well reflects my state of mind at the time, I heard, I heard all my life kids crying in my head, all day long. I did everything to escape them, to pretend that I couldn't hear them ... I hated these dirty kids who were spoiling my life. I finally understood that it was parts of me that had kept the memory of atrocious things that had been done to me, that they had suffered a lot and that was why they were crying. Now I console them internally and I listen to them.

Realize that external people are not in my body, are not parts :

For many of my games, I had to find a way to show what I had experienced, saying it was not enough. They felt that otherwise I would not be believed and that the people I spoke to could not understand the extent of their suffering, they would not measure as I had suffered. They wanted to find a way, a technique to bring the person into my mind so that he can live and feel the rapes in my body, so that he himself is "raped at the same time as me" and so that he understands really what it felt like to be. These parties think this is the only way to be believed, to convince. Find a way to make a film with the images, the sensations, the smells, the feelings ... that I can show and make felt in the smallest details as I feel them.

For other parties, my psychologist was seen as part of my internal system. They believed that my therapist was inside my brain since she understood all or a lot of things without us even having to tell or explain them to her. They were not aware that my body, my posture could say things and that my shrink has experience! Watching these videos I also saw that there were huge and very long moments of silence when for me internally it was just the opposite! I saw, I noticed the difference between my inner world and the outer world ... These moments of silence correspond to moments when, on the contrary, I hear lots of noises! All my parts are expressed, I hear lots of different voices, different opinions ... and on these videos: radio silence! The contrast was very strange for me!

Realize that we have to get along and agree to work :

My "control" parties and other parties have helped to establish an "democracy" within. I will not dwell on this since I have already explained it in another text on this site.

The books "Managing traumatic dissociation" and "Treating traumatic dissociation" by Steele, Boon and Van Der Hart give very concrete examples of how to make the parties feel secure and cooperate internally. I have not talked about it on this site because I experience a huge block about it. On the one hand because some of my parts find it ridiculous and childish to see downright stupid ... They tolerate that parts internally console the small parts but refuse to walk around with a kit to sleep or to imagine a "necklace of positive experiences "," a pond "or" a store "... In addition I experience repulsion and enormous resistance as soon as someone tries to" direct "me or" direct "my inner advances. Having undergone manipulation, I have parts dedicated to fighting all forms of directives in my thought and my actions. I always have to find my own way of testing and testing several alternatives for myself before deciding what to implement. My psychologist is trained at EMDR, so far, we are only talking during our sessions. I blocking unconsciously as soon as she gives me EMDR and when she tried, it was not conclusive. Finally, the imagination is strongly rooted in me as something dangerous (although I have many parts that are "dreamers") related to the notion of religion. To be a believer, you have to imagine that a God exists, that angels exist, that the Virgin Mary watches over us ... The imagination is therefore dangerous. In the sect, things like being treated with "drops of doctor bach" were used to manipulate me, I was threatened with religious stories (the 3 shepherds of Fatima) to scare me (I was going to dive into the flames of hell, hell would open under my feet ...). All the "alternative methods", sophrology, meditation and others are in the same bag for me ...

I know that I have internally implemented techniques to promote exchange and understanding, but I don't know which ones for the moment. At work, at the beginning only 3 or 4 parties were present, I could be a sexy, an intellectual, a paper, the guy or the sweet. Nothing else. My skills were limited to what these parties knew how to do. Now I am much more "flexible", I can joke at work, sing, be attentive to others but know how to put limits too ... I am much better now. Likewise, my way of being a mother was very rigid. I was "a perfect mother". When my daughters were there I was only focused on their needs and how to meet them. I was very sweet, attentive, rewarding, encouraging ... a model a little "false" and impossible to reach for my children ... Now, many more parties interact with my daughters. I also take time for myself when they are there, I am listening but I can also tell them that this is not the time when I am busy ... I have become a more accessible model of mom , more realistic.

When I started to do this, to multiply the parts present in my daily life, I had a long period of dissatisfaction. I had always lived with a part succeeding another. The present part satisfying his needs and his decided actions. Now I have to deal much more with the different desires and the desired actions of a group of parties and necessarily there are disagreements or I leave time a little each time suddenly some things do not end immediately or do are not done exactly as they would have liked. Before, I was obsessed with a task until it was finished. I then felt an intense feeling of personal satisfaction and accomplished duty. I felt briefly but very intensely happy and fulfilled. No longer living so intensely this satisfaction was very painful for me. It was a mourning that I had to do. Now I see something positive, I experience different satisfaction, group cohesion, no longer feel alone, no longer struggle, no longer feel anger or shame or sadness just after ... I feel that I am becoming a more balanced person, more authentic too, more human ...

How is sharing done?

"The survivors did not only need to survive to be able to tell their story; they also needed to tell their story to survive. In each survivor, there is a pressing need to tell and therefore to get to know their story. history, without being affected by the ghosts of the past, against which we must protect ourselves. " Dori Laub (1991, p.78)

"Phase 2 focuses mainly on the treatment of traumatic memories, that is to say the integration of these memories in autobiographical stories which are no longer relived as present experiences but rather as chapters of the own autobiography of the patient." (Janet, 1928)

"Traumatic memories contain pathogenic nuclei, that is to say experiences, emotions, sensations or beliefs which were the most overwhelming. The patient must have access to them, become aware of them and integrate them so that the treatment of traumatic memories is effective. " Treating the dissociation of traumatic origin Steele, Boon and Van Der Hart (p.493)

Here is my big question and my great fear of the moment. Here I am at this point in therapy ...

Sharing has taken place of course for 3 years! I know quite chronologically and generally what I experienced. The sharing took place first with an explanation in my head. I heard a fact: "such a person did this to you", "it happened like that". And a partial sharing took place to convince the recalcitrant parties to accept and hear what I had experienced by feeling it in a certain and excruciating way in my whole body. I was forced to know and I could no longer doubt it.

I therefore "know" constantly that I was raped and that I suffered a lot but the details are fading and these facts take a sort of distancing most of the time because I still refuse to face it up.

I ask myself a lot of questions, again I would like to chat with someone who has been there ... Do we suffer a lot? Does it hurt even afterwards? Do we remember it all the time? How do we live with it? Can we be happy? Don't we commit suicide afterwards? Do we get to see beautiful and good afterwards? How do we keep from crying and screaming all the time after? Can we still laugh? Don't anger and rage explode afterwards? How do we not yell at everyone and not hit them so it was all unfair? How can we not make them pay? How do we live when we know everything: the taste of their sperm, their smells, their groans, their sighs, their monster faces? ...

At the beginning, 3 years ago, sharing was mainly sensory. It was like a huge tsunami engulfing me and knocking me down. it was accompanied by intense pain, uncontrollable emotional feelings. And they happened at any time without my being able to stop or stop them. Now, when a sharing takes place, it is done more gently, I understand that a party wants to tell me something, that she is suffering and needs to make me understand an important point in my life. I know this sharing has a beginning and will have an end. I let this wave of memories come to me and I manage to keep a little the notion that I am safe now and that it is part of my past.

I also don't know when or how to share it. Do it alone at home with the risk of being alone and have no support if it is "too much", do it in the presence of my shrink with shame and the risk that she can see me in such vulnerability. .. I'm afraid of being alone and I don't want someone to see me going through this ... It's so disgusting, so abject ... I'm still so ashamed, I feel still so dirty ... The details, I'm afraid of the details ... I'm afraid they will haunt me until the end of my days ...

I also have certain parts that are wary of my memory (with all these amnesias it's normal!) And have trouble understanding how memory should work in normal times. I can't understand how people remember their past, what exactly they remember ... Will sharing cause me to lose data, details? Normal people don't remember everything, they forget ... Will I suddenly lose information if I share everything? Will I still be able to go to the police and answer their questions or will I forget things and be unable to? And I understood that the memory of trauma is not stored in the same place in the brain as autobiographical memories, that it is "exceptional" in details and details. So transforming it into an autobiography will it not make it change?

According to my psychologist, we can share :

By asking who wants to share and who wants to receive information among the parties. These agree on a given quantity and intensity (for example 1%). The more "participants" there are, the more the suffering is "diluted" and therefore more bearable. As soon as the receiving parties say stop, sharing is stopped.
Imagine a room in which sharing takes place or make our two index fingers touch each other and imagine that sharing is thus diffused through the tips of our fingers.
Sharing can also be positive: sharing acquired skills (knowing how to drive a tractor ...).
You can temporarily merge to accomplish a task in the present for example.

I think the most important thing is to ask each party what it wants to do, let it go at its own pace, share its burden when it wants to. To regain its integrity, to take control of our life and our actions ... We have been alone for a very long time! Let us decide if we want to stay "several" all of our lives and therefore never be alone again or if we want to form only one ...