Experiencing D.I.D

There is an analogy between dissociation and Lord Nelson.  It was at the Battle of Copenhagen when Lord Nelson ignored the retreat signal by looking though the telescope with his blind eye. “I really don’t see the signal”, he said, so he wasn’t lying… sort of.  History shows Lord Nelson stayed and had a great victory over the Danish Fleet.  Maybe that’s where the expression “turning a blind eye to things” originated?

The reality of coping with overwhelming emotion and memories and using dissociation to help with the coping is, nevertheless, an extremely challenging thing.  A client has described her experience in the following passage.  Thank you, R C for doing this.

“I am one body, one brain with many personalities, thousands of parts, (our others) names and memories and we have DID, we’ve collaborated in writing this personal information. What’s written comes from our years of experiences. We have renamed DID as DIO because for us, we now have a certain order, understanding and management in life so we like to see it not as a disorder, although that’s what it is, but as a chosen “order”.

Growing up with DID, “other parts” has meant we didn’t remember most of our life until things became really messy. We didn’t just lose minutes or days, but years, which is really frustrating when you’re at school, raising a family or working.

We believe for anyone with DID to start and continue healing safely, that trust and communication, both internally and externally must be explored. The internal dimension is especially valuable and mapping how you connect with each other really helps e.g. Drawing and writing. Although we choose to live with all of us in a collaborated existence it doesn’t mean it’s easy or without stretching us to the very limits. Healing is about acknowledging the traumas and pain of our life and learning to live each minute at a time. Slowly we began to make sense of our life!

When we started meeting those who shared our life we had many reactions and not all positive.  The feelings and actions ranged from anger, hate, violence, towards myself and others, reliving traumas and pain both physically and emotionally, being very scared and confused, to lots of switching between personalities. Healing has involved knowing the truth and telling it as it is! Being listened to without judgment, especially when” parts”  tell  their own story. God is also a key in our healing and having faith in God wasn’t always completely the case for us all.  We were very divided in our beliefs because of the way we were raised, so faith has been a growing thing within our personality system, but we do believe that without God we would be dead.

In our healing we have learnt many ways to cope and probably the most important one has to be becoming “grounded”.  Grounding —- coming back to a personality that can cope, e.g. the host

personality.  Staying in the present moment is something that’s really important because it’s a way to stay focused on the present or on a goal we’ve chosen. Grounding and mapping is done in many ways and each method works or helps different “parts”.  Sometimes we draw – very complex drawings – or produce paintings from an adult perspective, or from a childs’ view with a large piece of paper and textas, this allows the children to tell their own story and express themselves. We use grounding stones, which might be a colored stone or one from the garden: something to hold on to; or a collage of torn up magazines that come together to tell a story. We also like to run because we feel our body working together and we wear bangles because again it’s something we can feel. We like to sit in our garden and feel the sun on our skin, which is good when we’re really down because it reminds us that God gave us beauty and we love to feel the earth under our feet. Sometimes when we are really confused we just write words, in no order, just whatever pops into our head – “brainstorming”.

We also like the routine of going to work and we’ve had a number of jobs which have been incredibly varied – different work for different personalities.  Working helps keep us connected with people and pay the bills, it also allows us to travel. Working hasn’t been without its unusual challenges so that there have been times when I found myself unexpectedly in hospital which can be interesting but difficult to explain.

Travelling is also very grounding because it allows us to learn about new people, situations, cultures and mostly a sense of freedom and I guess for us it’s a way to escape normality for a while. There’s nothing like being grounded when you’re in another country!

We have also turned some of our grounding skills into a business: we draw, design and make jewellery for other businesses. Recently we sold some paintings for the first time which was really rewarding. It seems that now we’ve started to write about grounding we’ve so many ways that can be shared.  Other things come to mind and one of the most important things in our life is being involved in other people’s lives that are worse off than our own. We help start an orphanage in Nepal many years ago, where we met some really poor kids.  These kids had nothing but a plastic bag for their belongings and a smile and now with support we have built a house, bought cattle and now they are working towards self-sufficiency.  Just this year we have our first child going to university to become a teacher.  This has certainly taken us out of our comfort zone and made us really happy. Happiness, fun and laughter are very grounding and when all else fails we go see a movie because it transports us for a couple of hours. Learning grounding and mapping skills has definitely changed our commitment to life.  When we look back at what we’ve learnt we can’t help but thank God-there’s nothing better than to be grounded in God.  Trust has been extremely important too because without that we wouldn’t be able to connect with people or all our “parts”. These things took years and we trust each “other” fully to function in whatever role we need to be in. Everyone learns to survive in various ways and these are some of ours.”

R.C.